Safe & Sound

I'm in London! I already love it!

It's been an interesting few days. Saturday I met up with Alisha at the airport. There wound up being 4 other Clarkies on the flight, so we talked with most of them before boarding the plane. The flight was smooth for the most part, but the landing was a little rougher than I'm used to. I caught a cold last week, so my ears got blocked. We had a two hour layover in Iceland (I have the passport stamps to prove it!) and we just found couches & crashed for a bit. I didn't get my ears to pop until right before we took off for London. That flight was fine, but my ears got blocked again. :/ It was much easier to pop them the second time though.

Once we got to London, we went through immigration. After that we just collected our luggage & met someone from the program in the terminal. There was a problem with the bus that was supposed to be waiting for us -- it wasn't there -- so we had to wait a while for that. I called my mom VERY briefly from a payphone to let her know I was alive.

Taking the bus was nice because we got to see some of London. However, I was so tired because I have a hard time falling asleep on planes & got no sleep. My eyes kept closing even though I wanted to see everything. We were dropped off at 11 Bedford Place & they let us wickly go to our flats to drop off our luggage. I live at 12 Bedford Place, so I didn't have far to go. We had an orientation meeting and then were able to go back to our flats. They're huge! Well, the ones on Bedford Place are. We have a living room, eating area, and kitchen upstairs, then the bedrooms and bathrooms down a set of stairs. There's also a ton of storage space, which is great for our suitcases, etc. I've actually taken some pictures of the flat, so I'll get those up once I get them on my computer.

I put most of my stuff away -- we each have a closet & set of drawers -- but they only gave us a dozen hangers, so some of my stuff is still in a suitcase waiting to be put away once we get more hangers. We each have a cork board, but no tacks. I actually saw one on the board in the hall right when you come in the first door of the flat, so I took it because I only need one to hang up my calendar. I brought a board from home with ribbons to put pictures, etc. in, so I already have all my pictures and letters up from home. :)

Classes start this week, unlike what I thought. Mine is on Tuesdays, so it starts tomorrow. Alisha's class is at the same time, so we're going to walk over together. We were at Birkbeck today & it's very close. The building our classes are in was actually Virginia Woolf's house! I'm looking forward to my class. We're planning on going to get our Oyster cards for the Tube afterwards & looking for the A-Z guide of street maps, which has been quite hard to find. Today we already got our mobile phones and went grocery shopping.

I'm starting to settle in a little more, especially now that the internet is working (it wasn't until a few hours ago) and I have a way to get power to my computer! Long story. I don't really have my bearings yet directions wise, but I do know how to get to a few places. Yesterday I was so tired & it hadn't really sunk in that I'm in London. Today, walking around and seeing so many people, it's crazy!

The weather is actually nice. It rained last night & it raining for a few minutes today, and now it's raining again. Other than that, the temperature is very nice. Feels more like maybe late October in Massachusetts. There are a lot of parks -- one on each side of the block (Bloomsbury Square and Russell Square), and one by the building my class is in on Gordon Street.

I'm so sorry that I didn't get to call some of you before I left! Things were crazy because I was only home for two and a half weeks and had so much to do. I'll make it up to you. :)