The arrival

Last night my dad dropped me off at Philly International. I was nervous to leave without the constant advice my travel-expert father. I coped by getting fruit at Au Bon Pain and calling people while I waited to board.

On the plane, I sat next to a nice poetry professor from UNC-Asheville. He was on his way to vacation in London and Paris with his family. Luckily, he was a fairly experienced traveler and able to comfort me when the television shut off as the engines were starting.

I slept for most of the night, but it was an uncomfortable and fearful sleep. I'd wake up every so often and think about crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. Because we were flying towards the sunrise, I had no clue what time it was, which I'm finding drives me crazy. I also kept thinking we were flying over Ireland, which happened two or three times, so it must have been creative cloud formations.

Just before we landed, I got a packaged mystery-fruit-jam-croissant and a cup of tea for my U.S. Airways meal. The first thing I noticed when the plane touched ground was that all of the signs were weird. When I got into the terminal, I realized that the U.K. loves this one particular font. All of my study abroad material, as well as many of the advertisements and government and tube signs are in the same font.

The second thing I noticed was a poster in the terminal advertising for a bank. It had three pieces of chocolate on it and said, "energy - integrity - sex." Hmm, clearly. American advertisements probably wouldn't be that frank.

Getting through the U.K. Border Agency was mostly painless, except that I was nervous. I'm relieved that the procedures seem safe. But getting on the tube was an adventure. It's easy to get to Central London from Heathrow Airport using the Piccadilly Line, but the first train I was on was terminating its service, so I had to switch. Then, the second train I was on got delayed because the signals at a stop ahead stopped working. Although this was a little nerveracking, I really appreciated that the operators kept us up-to-speed with everything that was happening on the line.

I figured out how to make the necessary connections and got to Farringdon around 12:30 pm (7:30am eastern time). The flat is a ten-minute walk from the tube station. A guide from the study abroad program (CAPA) was there to meet me. I met up with my room mates and felt exhausted from jet lag. I fell asleep for awhile (in the wrong bed).

The flat is very nice. We went on a walking tour of the area - saw the post office, learned to use the tube (I'd figured it out before out of necessity), talked about withdrawing money, etc. Then my room mates and some of the other CAPA students living in the building went out for dinner at the Pizza Express, which was good but expensive (to me - an 8 pound meal is about 14 or 15 USD). I had a mushroom-avocado-mozzarella salad.

The four of my room mates who are here (we are awaiting a fifth) went to the Sainsbury grocery afterwards. I got some weird custard creme things, bread, apples, bananas, 0.1% fat milk ("skimmed" milk). There was no peanut butter to make sandwiches, and I felt sad.

We were all exhausted from traveling. We figured out how to connect to the Internet. We attempted to turn on the television - no success there. We lamented the strange outlets and the washer/dryer being a single appliance. But I'm so excited about being here - it hasn't yet sunk in.