London Calling

Well, I arrived in London just about 24 hours ago.

The week leading up to my departure, I went to AT&T with my parents and got a new iPhone. I'm super excited for my toy, as it allows me to make Skype calls anywhere for free without using phone minutes (or pay for international calls). It also has an interactive Tube map, and it allows me to find stores, pubs, cafes, whatever. Oh, and there's no shortage of Starbucks, so I have a Starbucks ap to tell me where the nearest one is. It's awesome!

As I was packing on Thursday, I realized I had no idea where my camera was. I'm fairly certain it's not actually LOST, but I didn't really have the time to thoroughly look for it. The camera is 6 or 7 years old now, so I decided it wouldn't hurt to buy a new, cheaper but better camera. So I bought a pretty red Nikon point and click, which I have not yet used once on this trip. So now I have two new toys to play with!

Annie and I met at the airport bright and early Saturday morning (which feels like yesterday to me, even though it's been nearly two days). Our families waited for us to get through security before departing. It was definitely nice having somebody to travel with. The flights were pretty uneventful, except the flight from Chicago to London hit quite a bit of turbulence, and so we were never fed breakfast as it was unsafe to wheel carts down the aisles.

When I arrived at Heathrow, I couldn't find Maggie. So I went to wait at the meeting point, as I was instructed to do if we missed each other. I got a call on the loudspeaker telling me to come to the information desk. Turned out, Maggie and her friend Leslie had gone to the wrong terminal and had to drive around to come get me. It took half an hour, but they got me without anymore problems.

Leslie lives down the street from Maggie, and she is also hosting a student. Her student is Amber, an art major from Ashland. Amber and I did some Twilight bashing and then we wandered around locally looking for a Starbucks that Leslie and Maggie told us existed but we never found. We settled instead on Costa Coffee, where we had not-very-chocolate hot chocolates. It was after this incident that I decided a Starbucks ap was a must-have on my phone.

This morning, we have orientation at AHA, so Amber's going to come get me around 8:30 and then we're going to take the tube to school. Maybe I'll make Amber pose for a picture on the way, and then I can post her picture on my blog.

Anyway, not long after my excursion with Amber, Maggie's daughter and ex-husband came over. Eleanor is Maggie's daughter, and she just had her birthday last week. The four of us had dinner, which was nice, and we mostly just chatted about the differences between English and American cuisine. (Apparently, the Brits think that our pancake eating habits are strange. They eat pancakes as a dessert, without maple syrup or bacon, and their pancakes are really thin, like crepes or Swedish pancakes)

It was a nice dinner, and Eleanor and her dad are both very friendly. Eleanor has told me she's going to show me around London proper while I'm here.

I kept myself up until 7:00 PM, and then decided it was okay to go to bed. I was up for a grand total of 36 and a half hours. Yuck!

Hopefully I'll be getting a SIM card and a pay-as-you-go plan with a cellphone company (probably Virgin Mobile, but maybe Orange) soon, and then Pete (my iPhone) won't have to rely on wifi so much.

That's all for this update, I'm sure plenty more will happen today.