Whelp folks, it's official. I currently live in London! What a dream come true! At least for a month. Class won't kick off until tomorrow, at which point I will start sharing England/Euro tales, but today through yesterday had a few of its own to mention.
One thing to note if you haven't read my blog before, family or classmate alike, for confidentiality and my own personal life I abbreviate names to initials. It takes a little getting use to, but the way I figure you wouldn't be able to keep them all separated anyways. Unless you're me.
Thursday morning I promptly woke up at 6:30am. My parents drove me to the Portland bus terminal, a move I was uneasy about until three days ago when I spoke with my cousin AP. AP lives in California at present but comes home to Maine once, maybe twice a year. To do this, she does through Boston's Logan Airport and shuttles up on a bus. Being so experience(love you AP) she kindly gave me the information to assuage at least part of my travel jitters. So, knowing the bus would drop me off at the correct terminal, I waved goodbye to my parents and began chatting with an old high school classmate(NB) whom also was headed to Logan. NB is a current library graduate and was on his way to the ALA conference in Chicago. Once we caught up, we settled in for Grown Ups, a comedy starring Adam Sandler and David Spade that I've been meaning to see.
Arriving at the terminal, I then proceeded to walk in the building. And stand for several confused minutes. When you first walk in, it is hard to pick a direction. Until you process the signs. Checking-in my 30lbs(yup, you read that right) I continued to the gate the attendant gave me. From here, I went through security, which was uber simple, and on my way once more. On my way, I noted food places worth returning to that were not fast food joints. Finding my gate, a rather small feat when compared to the JFK I would later navigate, I doubled back for lunch and coffee. I hung out for a while, slowly getting my worried feeling back, and finally boarded in group 4. I was very appreciative by the time the flight attendant offered a drink- hellooOoo ginger ale! I sat next to a lovely couple. As it turns out, they had been married about a week and were also on their way to New York. From what I could tell, she is from Germany and he has either learned it or studied there. Either way, they were super cute(not in a mushy sort of way!) and made for great small talk in the 45 minutes we had.
Landing at JFK, I made a new friend. I don't know her last name, so I will call her KT. We met looking for the same gate. American Airlines at JFK is a ton times larger compared to Logan. We walked and noted many stores(of which we later viewed while we passed the time) and food places(I ended up having pretzels with marinara!) and eventually settled in over a cervesa- KT is from the Dominican Republic was often switching between English and Spanish- for my benefit. I know French better. KT was a very driven woman. At 27 she has had MA in business, is a manager at a bank, and works for a group called Amway. She was headed to London as well, to see her sister. Along the way, we met up with E(do not recall her last name at the moment) and GOP. We played a game that everyone should try at some point. Its called "Stop" and how you play is simple:
There are several categories- name, thing, color, fruit, country, & animal. The point is that one person starts at A, a second person(to their left) says stop at some point as player one silently counts through letters. Let's say we have "T". You then have to think of each category for a T item. You go until the "stopper" says. Then you share what you wrote and get 100 points for an original answer and split the points if there is a duplicate.(ie., Tiger and Tiger would be 50pts and 50pts to the two players, etc) This taught me a lot and passed a lot of necessary time- we were delayed from 7:40pm to 9:00pm boarding, which didn't fully leave until 10pm or later(I lost count as I was watching a movie On Demand. Admission.)
It took me a while to fall asleep on the flight, also because they fed us(yay!) and then I had to wait for them to collect the tray. I fell asleep to Cirque du Soliel's World's Away, which I had really wanted to see but the music in it was perfect. I didn't wake for a while, but I don't think I slept long. (Yet, I am still awake! I have a tour at 4pm with my class and I look forward to food!) When we arrived, we went to immigrations. There my class information was taken into account and I was allowed to pass through and go chase down my generic black luggage bag. Note: everyone has a black bag. Before I leave, I will be buying something to distinguish my bag from the others. Maybe a nice British flag bandana. (I'd re-ware it!) To get to the college, we (E & GOP and myself) hopped a taxi/rental car. Luckily there wasn't an extra fee for our delay. On the way, we went by Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben, and Parliament. I am full of excitement. I already changed my Facebook town ;D Anyways, I am going to go milge and talk to you lot soon!
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