Arrival

As one of the few people in my program whose flight took off with relatively little delay, I can honestly say I'm glad to be sitting in my flat typing this. Because even though the flight went off without much problems, the rest of the day was pretty stressful.

I left from New York's JFK International Airport yesterday on a 9pm flight that didn't take off until 10:45pm because the flight was overbooked and the people who manage boarding insisted on taking an hour to try and have people give up their seats. But finally we were airborn, and what a flight it was. I only got an hour of sleep for the whole night, but I got to see lightning at night from above, the moon, and upon landing, the city of London.

Seeing London while flying in got me extremely excited for what was to come. I loved London last time, after all. After a rather surprisingly quick immigration process I got my suitcase and took the tube into the Bloomsbury part of London, thinking that I would get the keys to my flat, drop everything off, and then go searching for a phone to have on me.

Instead, I got told that I could only get my keys after 2pm, a fact of which I was not made aware of in any of the trip paper work or during orientation, and it would've been useful to know. Especially seeing as I got into the city at 11am. I had to wander around on foot for most of the time. I tried to find a phone store to get a phone so I could tell time somehow and be connected with people, but the store I looked up wasn't there. Or it was closed. Either way I was unsuccessful. Then it started raining. Really I just wanted to call someone to have a bit of a rant before calming down and it's the first time I haven't been able to do that even if I wanted to. So I ranted to myself in my head. I don't recommend it.

Eventually I got to the flat, a 20 minute decent walk from where class is going to be, and also in a bit of a sketchy abandoned looking area. (There is a photography studio next to it, though). Not sure how I'd feel about that at night but I think I'll find out tomorrow after seeing "Much Ado About Nothing". Which I want to enjoy.

So far only two of us are in the flat that is supposed to be occupied by 5. A few people had their flights outright canceled. Some twice.