The past two days have been a whirlwind. I finally have wifi to update everyone on life in London!! Typical of my life the adventures began on the plane to Amsterdam -- a layover before heading to our final destination of London Heathrow. Hanna and I had made sure we were next to each other on the plane and we happened to be right next to the bathrooms. In the middle of the flight, after watching Katy Perry's documentary (ha classic) I settled in to get some sleep. All of a sudden, I was awakened by someone hitting me. Turning towards the aisle I saw a man sprawled out on the ground. Freaked out, I woke up Hanna as many passengers around us bustled about trying to wake up the passed out man. He came to quickly and proceeded to stand up just to pass out again this time smacking his head into the bathroom door. Luckily, the rest of our flights went smoothly.
Hanna and I arrived in London on Wednesday around 2pm. We hurried through customs (which went better than expected--hooray!) and made our way to baggage claim. On our way down the escalator a man stopped Hanna to ask her survey questions. The "quick survey questions" turned out to take FOREVER and we eventually told the man that we HAD to leave even though he was pretty persistent --we ended up running away down to baggage claim.
We knew we had to get to the IES orientation in a timely manner since we were already late. Dragging our bags towards the Heathrow Express we found machines to buy one way tickets. I bought a ticket first and had a "we're screwed" moment (thought of you aunt marie:)) when I put my credit card in the money intake slot that sucked in my credit card. AHH! I saved it though.
Hanna and I got settled into our hotel and made our way to the IES orientation. It turns out that streets in London are not labeled well AND they all have the same name! We walked around 4 blocks for 45 minutes looking for Bloomsbury Place eventually we gave up and knocked on a door that we thought was the correct place to go. Oops...we had knocked on a random man's house. He opened the door looked at us and pointed the other direction then shut the door.
We are officially moved into our flats at Queen Mary. I'm living in flat 11. A few quick mentions:
-Jet lag kept us up until 2 am last night woooooo
-Driving is CRAZY here. The double decker buses almost run everyone over...its scary.
-Our school schedule is semester 2 from January 7th - March 28th. We have Easter Break from March 30th - April 28th. Then we come back for Finals which ranges from April 30-June....so basically I'm here for a little over a month for four finals which is weird!
-Even though they speak english here it is SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND. Almost everything sounds the same except a few words and then they speak super fast with thick accents.
I miss everyone so much!
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