Living In London

Well folks, I certainly have been bad about updating my blog. The tradeoff between spending time writing about whats going on or going out and living whats going on can be a tricky one.  But I have found some time now to write me first blog since arriving in London 13 days ago. A TON has happened in these last two weeks and I think most of you would be bored by a lot of the in depth details, so I think I will bullet point the highlights of each day and if you are interested in finding out more about something that happened then I would be delighted to enlighten you! :-)

Ok here goes.

Flying over (Aug. 12th-Aug14th.)
-smooth flying an on 6 legs of my trip!
-spent the night on a bench in the Chicago airport. There was a pretty good amount of people doing the same and there were no armrests on the bench so it worked out pretty well. There was a man who kept yelling names all night which I thought was weird until I saw the throngs of new Navy recruits boarding planes in the morning.
-spent Saturday in Boston with my Aunt Betsy and we had a terrific day of sightseeing and exploring! We went to so many cool spots- the Harvard Yard, Beantown, the Market (where there was the most amazing street performance) Bunker Hill and a bunch more.
-in the airport in New York there were ipads situated on EVERY table. It was crazy!
-on the flight over to London there was no one sitting next to me so I got to stretch out and enjoy Soul Surfer before snoozin the rest of the way over the pond.
-I arrived safely with only a slight bump (not being able to take the luggage trolley on the terminal transfer train proved challenging) and we bussed over to the hotel and I met my very first friends :-)

Sunday the 14th
-we arrived that the Thistle (not quite as glamorous as the excellent photography let on, but perfectly livable) and just as our group of over 80 people was arriving to check-in an equally large group of Spaniards showed up to do the same- needless to say we waited around for a long time before getting our room!
-a group of us went on a walk to find dinner and I was not overly thrilled with the area we were in (the hotel is less than a block from my apartment). We struggled to decide where to eat and I was left wondering why I didn't just go back to Spain. We did however find Kebabs!!!! (thank goodness because man-o-man do I love Kebabs. I am so looking forward to my first one!)
-in the end we just went back to the hotel to eat and it was ridiculous. Our server really didn't have any idea what he was doing and one girl never got her food. Customer Service over here is definitely different...

Monday the 15th ---I'm well aware now that this highlighting the days things is still going to be too long... but don't worry- I only wrote down stuff about the first couple of days- pretty soon I won't be able to remember all these details about every day.
-we had to be up for breakfast by 8am-which turned out to be less painful than I thought it would be. I was pleasantly surprise by how nice the breakfast was- yogurt, lots of cereals, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, fruit, and lots more.
-next we headed into orientation and found individually wrapped jelly bellys on the tables! We played a "get to know you" bingo game and I won twice! (first bingo and first blackout = 15 pounds to Boots the local Rite-Aid type place!)
-after Orientation we went exploring again (this time in search of cell phones) and found a super cute area around the Angel Tube Station that is really close by. Seeing that we were in fact close to a nice area eased some nerves for sure! Getting lost for over an hour on the way home did not. Haha. Tana, Kelly, Jessica and I got very lost on our way back and were given many wrong directions by many different Brits. Finally some guys googled mapped it for us. We stopped for dinner first and then made it back to the hotel safe and sound (and exhausted)
-we went and had a short little hot tub and sauna and then my roommate and I headed with some girls to the local pub on the corner. This is where it gets interesting! We were chitchatting away with the bartender when all of a sudden I realized there was a group of americans next to us. The recognized us as the new Mountbatten Interns and we got to talking. A couple of minutes into the conversation they asked us where we were living (there are two different locations where people in the program live) and when we told them we were living at Ability Towers they nonchalantly remarked that they lived there too and that the reason they were at the pub was because the grocery store underneath the building was on FIRE and they had been evacuated!!!! Don't worry though- everything turned out just fine. Super bummed that our 24hr grocery isn't up and running- but it will be soon!

K I'm tired of giving so much detail so I'm gonna condence it down a bit from here.

-Kelly, Tana, Mary Walker and I went to Hyde Park. And got caught in a downpour. (It pretty much rains everyday- not all day, but everyday for a while- normally during my walk to work) They all got trashbags to use as ponchos- the man wouldn't give me one.

-toured all (we actually walked the width of our map) of the touristy area of London with my roommate and her family which was super fun.

-after a week at the hotel we moved into our apartments. They are really nice- big and bright and modern . I share my room with a girl name emily and we have 2 guys that share our flat. One is from India and one is from Nigeria and they are both great!

-my work at the shoe store is alright. Its more shoe selling than I had anticipated, but we will see how it goes. I do enjoy by bus ride over there though! I get to sit on the top of the 2 story bus and see everything. My whole commute takes about 45 minutes, but since I don't to be until work until 10 its really not that bad.

-we have gone out 2 so far and its been pretty fun. Living in an apartment complex with about 50 other Americans is sorta like being back in dorms, which I kinda like. Everyone is close by and hangs out in everyones rooms.

Crossing the street here is trying- I have no idea which way to look and I pretty much just run scared every time.

I'm sure there is a bunch more I could write about but I can't think of it now. If there is anything you want to know about let me know! Sorry this entry was SOOO long- I'll get better! I'm off to go post so pictures!!