Day 1

Yesterday was a long day of travel. It started out when I left home at 7 am and got to Sea Tac at 8:15. My first flight was from Seattle to Dallas, and it only took about three hours but we were delayed a half hour because of thunder storms in Dallas. Then when I got to Dallas I had about an hour layover before taking off for London. I’ve been reading a book called Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (Danny recommended it), and it’s fantastic. I read that the whole flight to Dallas and part of the flight to London. The plane we took to London was a 767, and it was way bigger than any plane I’ve ever flown on before. There were two seats on each side and three down the middle. I was in the very first row of the commercial class on the window seat. The girl sitting on the aisle in the middle noticed my Cougar sweatshirt and it turns out she’s from WSU too. Her name is Taryn and she’s staying here for the whole 9 weeks. I also met the guy that was sitting next to me. His name was Tim. The three of us had a pretty good flight, laughing about a lot of stuff and talking about nothing in particular. We all drank a few rounds and had a merry time. As the night wore on we wanted one last round but the flight attendant wouldn’t serve anything else because some guy in the aisle seat on the other side of us drank so much he literally passed out on the floor of the plane, and then he threw up all over himself. He even whipped out his cell phone mid-flight and tried to call his buddies. Talk about one too many. Other than that the flight went well. Sleeping was not comfortable at all, and I’m not really sure how much sleep I actually got. It doesn’t feel like much. Then once I woke up in the morning it was about half an hour and we were landing. Taryn and I went together through customs and to get our bags and all that, and we met the guy waiting for us with the AIFS sign. He was talking on his phone in French the whole time. His name was Francisco.

The drive to town was interesting. It’s weird having the driver’s side of the car be the right side instead of the left. And it’s REALLY weird seeing cars pass you on the right. They all drive like maniacs, with no regard to blinkers or lanes or anything. And they don’t stop for pedestrians unless said pedestrian is already crossing the street. But we made it to Atlantic House just fine. It’s in the middle of Kensington, which is apparently one of the richest neighborhoods in London. We’re a couple blocks away from Kensington gardens and Hyde Park. Anyways, it was not fun dragging my bag up four flights upstairs to my room on the fourth floor. My roommate was already here. Her name is Nikki and she’s from Boston. She definitely has an accent. She’s pretty cool though. She has some other friends that are here. So we got our room all situated and then I went and did the computer orientation that we had to do and found out I wasn’t registered for classes yet. An RA took me over to Asa Briggs Hall, which is where our classes are, and helped me fix that. I have to go and send a request to have my laptop wifi enabled, and it’ll take till like Monday for them to accept the request. Until then I get to use the computers in the labs downstairs.

After all that I went with Taryn and her roommate, Sue, to walk around and see what there is around here. We walked pretty far down High Street and saw a bunch of shops and stores. There are tons of little food places. There are a couple bakeries that I’m definitely going to go get breakfast at while I’m here, and there are some good looking pizzerias too. We almost got lost on the walk back but we found our way back to High Street and found our way home from there. Then they took us on a walking tour to see basically the same stuff we had just seen. There’s a pub up the street a little ways that I think we’ll be going to later tonight. I guess Lester Square is the place to go so we’ll probably be checking that out tomorrow night.

I haven’t tried to figure out the Tube yet but I think I’ll be doing that on Sunday. Tomorrow we have an orientation at 10 am and then a half day tour of London on a bus. Then on Sunday I’m going to go on the excursion to Camden and Primrose Hill. I’m very excited to go to Camden, I hear it’s a lot of fun. I’m a little worried though about being able to do all the things I want to do. I don’t know if anyone else wants to do like the Big Bus Tour or any of those things and I don’t really want to go alone, but I don’t want to miss it either… I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that.

Well, I’ve already eaten dinner and now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I don’t know where anyone went and I have no way of calling them or anything, so I just have to go sit around in the common room and hope they turn up before they leave without me. I don’t want to sit around bored all night, but I’m not going anywhere alone either… I guess we’ll see how the night turns out.

I haven’t started taking pictures yet because there’s not much around here to take pictures of (without looking like a ridiculous tourist), but I’ll get on it tomorrow.

Love you guys,
Jaime