The Last Five Days: The Great Arrival

It's been a few days here, and I thought I might as well start blogging my experiences, in the event that people really want to know my day-to-day activities.  It's not really that interesting, but who knows?   Interesting things are made interesting by interested people.  

So, I might as well go through what I've experienced over the last few days.

Friday: In Motion

After narrowly getting onto both my Charlotte and my London flights (the Charlotte one was delayed, and I came late to the airport, to boot; my London one was early - airport insanity!), I had one of the worst flights that I can remember.  Seriously.  Nothing on the flight worked - in terms of entertainment... which I don't usually mind - save for the people next to me who actually did mind... and that was annoying to listen to while I was perfectly happy reading and doing some Sudoku.  Unfortunately, being perfectly happy didn't last long - as we, rather early in the flight, hit turbulence and stayed turbulent for a good portion of the flight.  Being rather prone to motion sickness, I couldn't read or do Sudoku, because that made things worse.  So there I was, with an awful headache and stomachache amongst frustrated passengers and increasingly frustrated flight attendants (who were probably sick of having to address these issues with movies all up and down the flight, and having passengers yelling at them - I really sympathize with them, I suppose, having worked at that ice cream store for however long it's been...) - and I barely got any relief.  Fortunately, I fell asleep at some time after dinner, after the plane had calmed down just a little bit.  Our landing was terrifying, though - it was like we dropped out of the sky and plopped onto the runway.  Apparently, those landings are not really uncommon, which made me a little concerned, I guess.

After getting on the ground, I basically chilled out in the airport.  I moved a lot less - just to chill my stomach out and to relieve that nasty headache one gets with motion sickness.  But, I pressed on to Immigration, knowing that it'd be a lot easier to not move with a chair.  When I got to those lines, and made my way to an official (which took maybe ten minutes, actually - the lines weren't that bad), I almost wanted to say that I wanted to work during my stay in London - but I thought better of it.  The official kind of noticed that I had, too - and asked why I had to think about it.  So, I just told him that I'm a poor college student and money's always nice, but I can't work here.  It stinks that I can't work here, though.  I actually miss working... but I also like the huge amount of free time that I have now.  Anyway...

I was primarily surprised at how many non-English speakers I ran into on my way to my flat.  I mean, you'd think that this is England, right?  You'd hear a lot more English being thrown around - but no, that's not really the case.  London's a really diverse city - and you can tell within the first couple of hours that this is, indeed, true.

So, I caused a huge fuss having come a day early to the flats.  Fortunately, I was helped out by the staff who actually spoke English, so it was really convenient.  They were also pretty nice.  I guess I got lucky - but I was dead tired, and I just wanted a place to crash.  After being told that my flat would be ready around 3:00pm (at around 11:00am) - I decided that I had a lot of time to kill.  (Hey, common sense is miraculous when one's that tired.)  So, I took a walk over to the British Museum, which was just down the way.  And, for the next few hours, I saw some pretty sweet things.  There was some samurai armor, there were miniature Chinese jade sculptures, there were some Indian artifacts, there were things from the "Islamic World" (wherever that is), there were ancient Greek and Roman things... and after I got around to the Bog Man, I started wondering, "Would it be better to sleep in North Korea or Mesopotamia?  That bench in the Americas looked really attractive."  So I thought it might be a good idea to get some food, or, even better, some sleep - but it was only 1:30, so I decided to find out where Winston House was.  And that was when I came across an important discovery: There are six "Bedford" named streets in the area.  It took me a little while to find the right one to go to... but I eventually got there, got a brief tour from the receptionist, and gloriously crashed on one of the couches in the basement.  I woke up right when the receptionist was going to wake me up, which was nice. 

Of course, by then, it was 4:00, and already it was dusk.  So, I went back to the flat office, got my bags and keys, and I was actually escorted to my flat.  I took a couple of minutes to stumble around and figure out where everything was and what things did around in my flat.  I discovered that I had no wireless, which made me sad, because that meant that I couldn't call anyone or talk to anyone.  So, being alone in the flat sucked, and there was a party going down in one of the warehouses that I live on top of, and a pub across the way.  So, I armed myself with a twenty Pound note, and went out into the night and wandered around.  Oh... and I got lost.  The city's not that bad of a place to get lost, really - the people are nice to lost persons.  Fortunately, I came across an Internet cafe and a small grocery store, sent some e-mails, got some things, and went back to the flat.   The party was still going on, and the pub was still open, so I got bored quickly up in my flat by myself.  With the rest of the money I had in my pocket, I went down the the pub.  I chilled out there for a good hour, people-watching and drinking shots of vodka, as I didn't really have a good meal to eat that would settle my stomach enough for some ale.  I got bored people-watching after that, and so I wandered to the party, which turned out to be a small live venue.  I bought a CD from the people in there, swapped e-mail addresses with the band members, and went back to my flat.  

It really wasn't that bad for the first day - apart from the fact that I knew that I was really alone, and really bored.  I figured out how to work the telly, and watched that for a bit before I went to sleep.

Saturday: Company

I was woken up the next day by Russians.

They had been called in to make sure that I had heating and hot water, of which I had the latter.  They turned on the former for me, because I had no idea how to work that.  Shortly after the Russians left, I got company - my first flatmate - and I just started talking.  I don't really remember what I talked about - I was just glad that I could somewhat comfortably talk to someone.  Soon after, my other flatmate came, and we went shopping for some groceries.  Humorously enough, we all bought some alcohol with our foodstuffs, and I was the only one carded.  And the drinking age is 18!  What sucked was the fact that I didn't have my ID with me - so I just gave my bottle of cheap vodka to one of the flatmates, who was gracious enough to cover me.  It was great.  Later that day, the last flatmate came (who also happens to be my roommate)

That night, I made my way to the nearby pub, and sat down at a rather large table.  That was when a group of Britons, looking for a place to sit down, decided that it would be nice to sit next to me.  I was happy - and we had a great conversation about stuff - like what I was doing, and local issues that I should be aware of.  After that, I decided to take a little night walk.  You know, walking's a great way to clear one's head - and that's why I did it.  The streets are seriously nice around here - even at night.

Anyway, after my walk, I went back to the pub, drank some more, went back to my flat, drank with the mates, and went to sleep, feeling actually not at all tipsy.  I wasn't that concerned.

Sunday: Touring the City

My roommate's alarm went off at 7:30.  I hit the snooze button.  Went back to bed.

Bad idea.

We had a bus tour at 9:00.

So, everyone in the flat, all at the same time, woke up at 8:38.

And we had the same thing to say about it, too.

"Oh, shit!"

(I thought it warranted a curse word at the time.)

Somehow, we managed to get ourselves out of our flat at 8:50, after using our one bathroom and getting dressed in our small spaces and other morning craziness.  And we all managed to get there at 9:00, looking very confused and somewhat distressed at being awake at 9:00 in the morning.  And so, we took a tour of the city.

Unfortunately, I spent half of it suffering through motion sickness.  Go figure.  But, I wasn't the only one, which made me somewhat relieved.  Somewhat.

We did get to get off the bus and see the following: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park - as well as a monument to Prince Albert.  It was pretty cool, actually - but surprisingly barren of people.  Probably because we went on Sunday morning.

Anyway, we went back to Winston House, chilled, and basically hung out as a group, touring the neighborhood and seeing more useful sights.

Monday and Tuesday were actually pretty cool, but not especially that interesting.  Monday was our general orientation day, while Tuesday was our first day of classes.

Oh, heck.

Tuesday: First Day of Classes

So, classes are long.  Reaaaaaaaaally long.  But we only have them once a week, which is great. 

We also went to the Courtauld Institute for our Art History class, to check out some paintings - specifically, a Walter Sickert exhibit: The Camden Town Nudes.  The exhibit was kind of depressing, actually, so afterwards I checked out the rest of the museum.

After leaving the museum, I went in a group to go get some Indian food - which was really good.  If there's one thing they know how to do here, it's cooking Indian food.

I'll be posting a bit more tomorrow, I suppose.

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