On one of the tours I took of the many fabulous buildings London has to offer, I heard a tour guide quote Samuel Johnson.  "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."  After two weeks here, I don't know if I have ever heard truer words.  


London has offered me so much.  I learned great things through my research for my class, I learned things about myself (like the fact I can fearlessly ride the subway alone without getting hopelessly lost), and I learned about the great history of this beautiful city.


I've finished my research project, and I'm preparing for my last day here.  I've seen everything I wanted to see most, but in London, there is always something else to see and do.  I will never forget this experience.  I don't want to waste any of my final hours here, so instead of a lengthy summary of my research, I will leave you with a link to my final paper.

I've been hoofing it all over London, trying to get in everything on my Top Ten List. My legs are tired and my feet are sore, but I've almost seen everything I wanted to see!

I've had the opportunity to interview two people so far for my research in London.  I've learned that, although we speak the same language, our cultures are very different.  By extension, social media habits are also different.

Send In the Clowns
I spoke to Maria Surcel, the Digital Marketing Coordinator for Ronald McDonald House Charities U.K.  In my interview with her, I found a huge difference between the RMHC branding here in the U.K. versus in the U.S.  In the U.K., the role of Ronald McDonald, RMHC's clown mascot, is downplayed.  

Surcel said that clowns simply aren't as popular in the the U.K. as they are in the U.S.  Completely opposite of that, Laura Doyle, Communications Manager of the RMH of Cleveland, told me that some children are disappointed to arrive at the House only to find out that Ronald doesn't live there!

Although Ronald plays less of a role in the U.K. branding, his hand is still visible in the logo.

I'm finally in London with the rest of my class, and my first impressions of London are that it is huge, and clearly not laid out in a grid. That makes it a little confusing to find your way around, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

The Tube is a lot easier to manage than I anticipated, and I was really surprised by how quickly you can get from one end of the city to the other. And I was not expecting to see people pay 30 pence to use the loo in the train station!