First day in London
Well, seven hours in a plane is not terrible. I checked in at Kansas City International to go to Chicago. Each bag weighted barely under 50 pounds, which means I will have to ship everything home that I pick up in London. In Chicago I had a six-hour layover. It would have been less, but I ended up taking an earlier flight so that I wouldn’t be trapped in KC due to the heavy snow in Chicago. For the international flight, it ended up snowing quite a bit here around the time that we were supposed to take off. It didn’t cause us any problems though. Once I got on the plane, I was excited, but then I realized that I would have 9 more hours of not doing anything except flying. I tried to sleep as much as I could.
Once we arrived in London, we hopped on busses to take us to our flats. At this point we are exhausted, but really excited. I’m rooming with just one other person. This will be good for sharing bathroom time, even though we are living in older flats. We then are taken on a tour of campus to show us where all the safety lights are as well as are fed our first fish and chips meal. This will certainly not be our last fish and chips.
We went to Sainsbury’s to get groceries. There is nothing more confusing than shopping in a foreign grocery store. I had a lot of trouble figuring out where things were as well as buying what I wanted /similar to what I had bought back in the states. I learned that they are very anti-plastic bag here. Next time, I will bring a bag to put the groceries in. It’s all a bit more expensive than the states, but not outrageous.
After unpacking a few items, we then went on a pub-crawl. We went to a few pubs around the area and ended up at the Imperial College student union. I was so surprised to see a pub on campus. We got there early, but it got packed around ten or so. I tried a snakebite—half beer, have cider with some black current syrup. That cost me about £2. I met students from Ireland, Australia and Russia, but have not yet met British students.
What an adventure the first day has been. Photos on the way.