Baby Steps

It’s been a long day- I have been fighting (unsuccessfully for the most part) to stay awake and motivate myself out of the dorm room to explore. Everything’s ready to go, and then I look at the pillow, and I wake up an hour later.

Anyway- I didn’t sleep much on the 8+ hour flight. I had the misfortune of sitting in front of a squirming small child with sleepy parents. While I’m usually ok with being mean, it seemed inappropriate to chastise a kid for squirming when her parents were asleep and I wanted to squirm like she was. As it was, I watched movies and dealt with getting kicked.

I got two surprises on the flight. The first was the they actually fed us dinner (!) on a 10pm flight, and then a bitty breakfast! Weird. I couldn’t get to my camera in time to photograph dinner, but look at that cute box for breakfast!


Despite the grave warnings from Greg, who gave me tips for study abroad before I left, I did try the orange juice. Thankfully it has either improved since he has his study abroad, or they picked up the juice in the states.

I was very happy to receive the window seat on the plane. For the great majority of the trip it was dark, or we were flying over boring ocean. However, I was awake when the sun first started coming up.

It was lovely. Almost worth being kicked so that I could see it. Almost.

I will admit that the touch screens on the back of the seats were cool. Not only did they have a surprisingly great selection of movies- they also had BBC radio shows, TV shows, CDs and “radio stations” based on certain genres. My favorite when I was ready to scream from sitting was to watch the little cartoon plane get closer and closer to the dot that was London.

Thankfully for my sanity, the little map showed me when we were got over Ireland so I could look at something new. If you look carefully between the clouds, there’s Ireland!

When we landed and I finally got past the boarder agent and grabbed my luggage I got my first taste of the wimpy US dollar when I exchanged my $120 American for about 60 pounds. It was a sad moment. What else can I say?

After making some expensive calls on my cell phone, I headed off to the tube trip I had thoroughly researched in order to find the easiest tube route to the dorms. Well- there’s construction on the line. So instead of the quick and easy: 'get on one train and stay on until the dorms' trip I had planned, I got to hop on and off 3 different lines, carrying my luggage up and down lovely flights of stairs. Ugh! Thankfully I met another student (from Australia) that was trying to get to the same area I was. Between the two of us, we figured it out and got to our stop.
I’ll bypass my minor heart attack when the front desk at the dorm said they weren’t expecting me (now I sympathize more with the international students I see at McD every semester). I’m up on the 10th floor (which would be the 11th in the US) and have a great view.

I don’t have the heart to post a pic of the room right now. But here I am!

Voluntarily in front of a camera… You know I must be tired!
Well, now I’m going to see if I can’t find an ATM and increase my cash on hand up to something higher than 20 pounds.

*I typed this up on my laptop so I could just jump on the computer at the internet cafe and upload quickly. I now know that my jump drive isn't recognized by PCs, and e-mailing this many photos takes 1 1/2 hours. However, I also sat around two different parks people watching and eating fruit. It was a good use of my afternoon I think. Also, I found money (well, an ATM) but now I need to find a jump drive, dinner and pay 3 pounds for the computer.

Hope you enjoyed the post! ;-)*