My first day in London.

With my trip to London I would like to start a new stage of my life.
Becoming an Erasmus student in Krakow the next month,to develop my Master Science Thesis, I want to be a blog user
to keep all my adventures and disadventures all over the world written down.

As the title says, my first day in London is the topic of this page.
I'm here, the famous capital of the United Kingdom, because I selected it for
doing a course of English paid for the Ministry of Education of Spain.

After going to Dublin in October 2007 and had to pay 800€ (yes, eight 0 0) for three week classes of English,
this year I had liked to find something more economic knowing that many companies knows the money that the Ministry gives to us...

A very friend of mine, Alberto, found a place in London that seemed cheaper and in the same conditions of learning than the Dublin place.
I had no doubt, and applied for the same place than him, but in different dates (He will come one week later).

The very first problem I have had today was to find the place where, supposedly, I was going to take my classes.
Soni, my roomate during this month, suggested me a way to get the centre as quick as possible and I tried to do as she said. Unfortunately, the Overground wasn't working at this time and I had to come back to the place I started and find another way to get my destiny.
It meant 45 minutes of delay in my city centre trip.
I knew that the studies centre was at Seven Sisters Road, but they call it the Finsbury park centre. Looking at the tube map, I saw two stops in the Victoria line (blue one), one called Finsbury park
and other one called Seven sisters. I thought of the name of the road and I chose the Seven sister stop. Never in my life had I take worse decision when orienting in a city. The point is that I was, in fact, in Seven sister Road, but I stopped
in the number 700 ish and I didn't know that the place for studying was at number 67-83. As I had no pounds and no credit in the Oyster card* (without realising that I could pay with the credit card), I had to walk for a long way since the roads in London are veeery big.
Once I walked during 45 minutes more or less, I found Finsbury park. I watched it from the outside hurrying to find the centre (one hour and a half late at this time).
Sweating, being hurt by the shoe and carrying a backpack with my camera, my laptop and some papers, I was thinking: 'Ok, it's my first day in London, tomorrow it'll be better'.
Finally I found the centre of studies, it was 11:20 and I supposed to be there at 9:00.

The girl at the reception was talking with a girl when I arrived and I had to wait a little more to get in contact with the people I was looking for the whole morning. After some problems seeking me in the computer (date of birth wrong memorised), eventually, she managed to find me.
As in the majority of the cases, these kind of academies give you a test of aptitude for placing you in one of the 6 or 8 levels of study they have. Here wasn't different of course. She gave me a 100-question test and said to me that I had to fulfill it. I did properly and I give it back to her.
My score was 74 of 100 (tests were never my best point in the English language), and she said that with this score I would be placed on level 6 (First Certificate), but looking at how I speaked and the fluency of my English she decided to place me at the level 7 (Advanced), but also told me that
if I wanted to atted level 7 classes at 9:00 I had to change of centre of studies. My new destination, Oxford St.

After all this chaos, in the same Seven sister Road, I got a bank and I could finally change my lovely Euro into Pounds. With pounds, the life in London became different, I change my possition from cannot buy a little can of coke to can recharge my new Oyster card with 109 pounds for 3 zones and the whole month.
One problem was solved. The second problem was my mobile telephone connection. In this month I will have to get in contact with Soni, because she has different schedule than mine and we share keys by the beginning.
I went to T-Mobile and to vodafone. The best one month-payment plan was in T-Mobile, with 350 minutes to every network and 650 sms for the whole month. I tried to buy it but without having a credit or debit card I was not allowed to buy it... What a pity, it will have to wait until next day...

Knowing that my place of studies would be in Oxford Street, and noticing that the omelet and the banana that I had eaten for breakfast was enough for two hours more, I decided to meet my new place of studies.
Oxford street is such a big street with many people, many shops and much of everything. You can find all you want there, even an English studies centre 5 minutes walking from the tube gap I got off. Oxford street 103A, my next place for studying and learning English during 4 weeks.

Once the place was recognised, I decided to go back home eat something and relax a bit.