When I first arrived in London, I met this awesome lady Rebecca who helps run the Fordham in London program, and she told me that my favorite part of orientation would be “Monopoly,” which she elaborated further to say was really more of a scavenger hunt, but then wouldn’t give me any more details. I was definitely intrigued, but also skeptical, because in my experience orientation is code for a few days of excessively long and dull talks filled with common sense information. While there was one day chock full of the usual mind-numbing boring information, I was pleasantly surprised that the next two days actually were not the usual orientation horror. I enjoyed a pizza party (complete with gluten-free pizza option, potato pizza, and a new tasting crust because in the UK, you can’t put sugar in bread), an entertaining talk from the local police (complete with a slideshow set to Greenday’s “Time of Your Life” and British speak such as “tea leaves” and “chopstick fingers” meaning thieves), and yesterday, finally, the monopoly scavenger hunt.

No one seemed to know what to expect from this Monopoly orientation, and all we received was an email telling us to meet at Walkabout, an Australian pub, and requesting that everyone dress up to the theme “British.” I’m not a big fan of looking ridiculous in public, and their costume suggestions included Queen of England and the Union Jack:

 

 

(I am not kidding, these are the exact images attached to the email invite and labeled “costume suggestions”)

I went for something a little more tame, as in, I woke up a half hour early and bought a £2.50 tank top that any tourist would love (myself included):

(please excuse awkward selfie in my quest to have lots of pics to make this interesting. Plus, Rachel told me to take lots of selfies, so I’m just following through on that).

Decked out in my tourist gear, I figured out the bus system and successfully made it to Walkabout with a group of girls I met in the lobby headed the same way. It turns out, everyone who works at Walkabout, at least that I encountered, is from Australia, has a beautiful accent that in my opinion ties with the English one on the beautiful-speech scale, and calls themselves a “kiwi.” Even better, as soon as you walked in the door, the free drinks began flowing. Something that had pineapple, papaya, and rum; the drink was never identified but if you had an empty glass for even a second, someone was there to urge you to get another. Keep in mind, it’s only noon. Most of the people here only woke up an hour ago and are still drunk from last night. We were split up into teams, and it turns out, Monopoly/scavenger hunt is essentially a pub crawl. Each team had a list of tasks to do that had to be photographed or videoed, and then these photos/videos were shown to the moderator at each check point in order to receive points.

I say this is actually a pub crawl because the tasks were primarily to visit pubs and photograph the team having a “beverage” there, with a few side tasks to take photos doing weird things – like a human pyramid in front of a monument or cramming the entire team into a phone booth – and the pubs counted for the most points. My team was called “The Bloody Wankers,” and I am proud to say we did not come in last, or even second to last, in the whole event! This is impressive, because even though all of this was a walking tour, with only one person in the group with phone data to use a map (and she had low cell battery), we ended up guessing a lot and wandering around the city aimlessly for quite some time in between finding each pub. However, I got to see some awesome sights and the most interesting pubs/bars I’ve ever visited!

The London Eye in a rare moment of sunshine

No one on my team actually knew what to call this, so we had great fun referring to it as the Big Blue Cock in Trafalgar Square for the rest of the afternoon. Some googling turned up that this is actually called the “Hahn/Cock.” Well played, Katharina Fritsch, very punny.

 

The Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite pubs we visited. Primarily because of its pretty kick ass signage. I didn’t try it, but according my team, the beer was pretty good too.

 

The Piccadilly Institute was another cool pub with some awesome decor. This cityscape was made of old school VHS tapes and VCR remotes, and a few other vintage electronics pieces.

 

The game lasted 9 hours. This was definitely excessive, and the balmy 55 degree F weather we began with dropped to 40 by the time my team returned to the Walkabout at 9:30 pm for our final check in. We finished off the evening competing for bonus points by saying our best pick up lines in a British accent. By this time, my entire team was, as they say here, pissed (US speak – drunk as hell) after a day of drinking from noon to 9pm, and gave this a very valiant try, but we did not win. However, I can honestly say this was the most entertaining and enjoyable orientation I have ever had. Go Team Bloody Wankers Go!

 

xox,

Lauren