First Day!

Hello everyone,
I've never really blogged before, but I thought now would be a good time to try! So, here it goes! I, Sara, am in...London! (hence the title) I'll be here until May studying for the semester with a program called ILACA London (through AHA International). I suppose I had better start with my journey over here.

My plane was supposed to leave Sea-Tac at 9pm on Saturday and arrive in Heathrow at 2:15pm on Sunday. However, apparently our plane was struck by lightning as it landed in Heathrow earlier on Saturday, so it had to be checked over before it could fly back to Washington. Consequently, we did not board the plane until about 12am and we didn't actually leave until 1am (because they had to de-ice the plane's wings). fun. The plane ride itself wasn't bad. I got to watch Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which was nice. Because I had a whole row to myself, I was able to stretch out and sleep for a bit. yay! We did not land until 6:30pm (or somewhere near that time). Going through customs was no big deal and, after searching around, my roommate (Anne, who was on the same flight) and I found our shuttle driver. (He had my name on a sign!) I was quite a bit weirded out by the whole driving on the "wrong" side of the road thing. I was sitting on the left side of the car and I kept thinking that the car was driving itself because no one was sitting in front of me! Finally, (at about 8pm) we got to our homestay family's house. Everyone is very nice. We were surprised to discover that another PLU student (Nicole), who we know, is also staying here. Crazy coincidence! We ate dinner, gave our presents to our homestay mom, showered (you have to be really quick so you don't take all the hot water), and did most of our unpacking. Because our bodies are still on Pacific Coast time, it was kind of a rough night. We went to bed at about 11pm, but I woke up at about 2am. We (Anne and I) gave up trying to sleep at 4am and turned on the lights for half an hour to putter around our room a bit. I think I slept a bit for the last couple of hours before our alarm woke us at 7:20am today.

Our first day has been interesting. We got snowed in! It is very pretty outside--quite picturesque! Orientation had to be postponed, because almost all of the public transportation is down. So, today (instead of going into school and getting our schedules and what not) we are hanging out around the house, finishing unpacking, and checking out the Internet! Our room is nice. The stairs are so steep and the upstairs is just a little landing with doors leading off to the rooms and bathroom and toilet (which is in a room all by itself). I hope the transitions of living in an English household aren't too hard. There are differences, but our homestay mom seems really nice and full of lots of information and advice. I foresee small eating issues (knowing my picky-ness), but I'll try to just eat whatever there is to eat.

I hope I can keep up this blog thing. I don't know who will want to read it, but hopefully it will be interesting to some people and I'll have it to look back on later! :)