Welcome to Londontown!

I've arrived! I've had a crazy flight schedule, stayed awake for over 30 hours, wandered around London, and met a whole lot of people that I will not remember tomorrow.

Although my flight to Chicago was delayed, I managed to make my connecting flight. I had been advised to collect my luggage and bring it manually to the Air India check in counter so that it wouldn't get lost. However, no one informed me that the international flights left from another terminal and that I would have to take a tram to get there. So I set off with 100 pounds of luggage and, after much stumbling around and asking for directions and taking luggage carts into areas where they are prohibited, I managed to make my way to the Air India check in counter. I met up with JT, Lisa, Sarah, and Gen at the security checkpoint, where we waited in line for over and hour. Our plane had been boarding for 45 minutes by the time we got there, so we made it just in time.

My flight was uneventful and about as boring as most international flights normally are. I couldn't figure out how to work my tv screen for about three hours, and when I finally did, the couple next to me wanted to know how I did it. They were an older Indian couple, and it was a little difficult to explain because they didn't speak any English. So we mimed to each other and they eventually figured everything out with my sign language help. My first international experience before I even got to England!

I didn't sleep on the plane, so I was starting to feel sleepy after we had landed. We all made it through customs okay and met up with the IE representative. There are eighty or so people on the program, so they split us up to take us to our flats. I was assigned to live in Knaresborough, which meant that I didn't have to walk for two streets to Hogarth with all of my luggage, so I was happy. Our flat is pretty small, with a bedroom/living room (and a bay window!) and a small kitchen located up a few stairs that leads into an even smaller bathroom. We have a ledge outside our window that is pretty big. If you open the window, you can climb onto the ledge, so we have started referring to it as a mini balcony. We plan on having tea parties out there throughout the semester.

I met two of my roommates, Crystal and Elizabeth, right away. My third roommate had major flight delays and wouldn't be in for another six hours. After I had a quick shower, we were shown the location of the local library, and then taken to have fish and chips at a local pub. Lunch took approximately three hours, probably because the pub had to serve eighty five American college students. By this point I had been awake for 25 hours, and everything was starting to feel like I had taken way too much Sudafed. While waiting for lunch, a few of us ran down the street to Starbucks for some much needed caffeine.

After "lunch" which ended around early dinner time, we went to Imperial College for our "safety talk." I don't think anyone was awake enough to remember anything that was said.

When we got back to the flats, our fourth roomie had arrived, a girl named Lola. We went with her to get dinner, then came back and crashed. I fell asleep around 8:30, which was a lot later than I thought I would make it, but we all woke up at 1:00 a.m. feeling wide awake. Crystal and I couldn't go back to sleep, so right now we are sitting on the floor of our kitchen on our laptops. It's 3:00 am local time, and we have to be downstairs at 8:45 tomorrow morning for our tour of London with a Blue Badge guide. Hopefully this guide is not as weird as the last Blue Badge guide I had a tour with two years ago, who told me that makeup would give me skin cancer and that she had lived many past lives and could remember some of them.

Pictures to come tomorrow. As for now, I'm going to try and get some sleep.