Scholars and Sailors

Ahoy, mateys!  After a fun weekend traveling in Rome, I was excited to be home in London and host my fellow ND students for affectionately-titled "Booze Cruise."  Now this cruise is not organized by Notre Dame, as made crystal clear by the school’s emails to our parents haha.  However it is a long-standing tradition, since London kids have been hosting their classmates for a semester-end cruise for the past 10 years.  Our program took this responsibility very seriously!  Within the first few weeks of our arrival here in London, we were already deciding dates, boats, organizers, etc.  We wanted to do a spectacular job showing off our city and making the cruise an amazing night for all of ND’s study abroad students.

My fellow classmates from Toledo, Dublin, Rome and Bologna started flocking to London as early as Thursday afternoon—and believe me, flocking is the perfect verb to describe their mass migration!  It was so fun to see random classmates at our local market, in the hallways of Conway, and on city streets.  A lot of my roommates took their friends around to do classic London things, such as take pictures in telephone booths (come on, we’ve all been there).  I would have loved to explore the city with them, but I had a ton of midterms due the following week, so I couldn't. However, I did take some time out of my schedule to give two tours of Parliament on Friday.  Since Parliament was on recess, the chambers were not in session, and I could walk my friends through the debating chambers.  I’m proud to say they really enjoyed the tours, and I did, too.  Every time I walk through Parliament I learn something new, and since my days there are winding down, I’m trying to soak it in as much as I can.

Girlies in Westminster Hall.

Tour guiding like a champion today.

After my fun on Friday, I spent the remainder of my time preceding the cruise cranking out more papers.   When it was finally dinnertime on Saturday, I could barely contain my excitement!  My flat of 12 prepped decided to host a gigantic refined Pre-Cruise Dinner Party, inviting 25 of our friends over for a tasty chicken and pesto dish.  (Props to my 2 roommates who made like 40 chicken breasts that night).  We had so much fun getting all dolled up and welcoming people into our home.  Before we knew it, it was time to take a couple hundred pictures and head out for one of the semester’s most anticipated events!

This beautiful girl traveled from Rome to go cruising!

Roommates all dressed up and feasting.  Quite ideal.

75% of the Wild Flat residents in one picture...I'd consider that pretty successful!

Roommates, soulmates.

Around 7pm, 220 ND kids (over 10% of the junior class) boarded the boat at Festival Pier, conveniently located off of the South Bank.  My goodness it was a beautiful boat—2 floors of indoor/outdoor dance floors and open bars.  The weather was gorgeous, so we were able to relax on the dock and take in London from an entirely new perspective.  I did not take any pictures from the boat because I love my camera way too much to subject it to a night on a boat with two hundred college kids.  Thankfully, there were a couple photographers on board, who although were quite aggressive caught a few special moments. 

Ready to cruise! 

Notre Dame taking on the Thames.

Popping out amidst a few bros.

 London friends, in front of the Jubilee Bridge we take to class daily.

Credit to this intelligent chica for the clever blog title I used.

Getting into the nautical British theme.

My favorite.  Getting our groove thing on!

The night went very smoothly.  We danced the night away, especially when "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" came on!  That Whitney Houston hit is definitely the London program favorite.  At stroke of midnight we docked back at Festival Pier.  The cruise, of course, has a primary purpose of reuniting the ND kids for a great time.  But more than that, it sparked in me a sense of pride for my city and my program.  I could not be more blessed to be studying in London, the most beautiful city in the world.  On top of that, it was so cool to celebrate the night with new and old friends.  I'm so happy to call the night a success and report that we did good old London proud.  

Cheers,

C