Maggie and Terry: Thursday and Friday February 5th and 6th 2015

Unofficial song of the day: The Nights by Avicii

Terry:  Everyone met near the Air Canada international counter in YVR by 3 PM to check in. Our team composed of 22 students and two instructors. A few interesting events happened prior to boarding - one person from our group lost her birth certificate followed by her cell phone an hour later. The good news is she recovered both items after a furious search. I also dropped my scarf at Milestones before retrieving it. This is a friendly reminder to always look after your belongings.

Once boarding was complete, our entire group sat in different sections of the plane and we flew over the southern end of Greenland and watched the sun rise near the U.K. before descending. Below is a picture overseeing Glasgow. The world is a beautiful place.

Maggie: Terry and I were the assigned leaders for day 1. We were not entirely sure how to lead upon arriving in a new country but as the day went on, we got a better handle of the responsibility. Air Traffic was congested at Heathrow and the plane went in circles four times before receiving the go ahead to land. Once you pass customs, there are vending machines where you can buy sim cards. £20 gets you about 4 GB of data, 400 minutes and unlimited texting.

Terry: Our class took a shuttle bus to our hotel, about 25 miles east to Greenwich (pronounced Gren-ich). The trip took approximately 90 minutes but we either were asleep or enjoyed the tour. Check in went smoothly and every student was assigned a room prior and after settling in, Samir and I went to explore our area. There is a royal observatory park, ship, two supermarkets and many small shops surrounding our hotel.

This is a picture of Thames River. Its quite the view.

 

At 6 Pm local time, everyone gathered in the hotel lobby for a quick orientation and to receive our oyster travel card before making our way to the Yacht Pub for dinner. It was a ten minute walk and the weather was windy, just like back in Vancouver. Oh Canada.. The fish in the fish and chips at this pub are gigantic; about a foot long! No exaggeration. We enjoyed our food and the pub's hospitality as you can see in this picture.

Rugby is a popular sport in the U.K. and as the 8 pm match started between Wales and England, the pub was crowded with fans. This was the time when most of us started to leave because we were exhausted from our travels. I had been awake for 31 hours straight and fell asleep with the lights on and laptop still running in the hotel room. I woke up at 3:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. On to day 2....

Maggie Wu is a first year Tourism Management for International Diploma student.  Terry Yan is a fourth year Bachelor of Business Administration student.