I made it!

Hello from London! FYI, it looks like this:

AMAZING. I have now been here for two full days. I was awesomely upgraded to first class for my flight out here, which was a brand new experience. Did you know that they give you a MENU after you sit down?? They have appetizers and champagne and real cutlery and the seats lie all the way down. And when you’re finished with dinner, they give you an international cheese plate and an ice cream sundae. I had already filled up on free cheese in the United Club before departure, but I’m not the kind of girl who says no to Brie at forty thousand feet.

That was awesome, although the flight was shorter than expected so I slept off and on for only about three hours and then when we landed I remembered that my carry-on weighed almost as much as me. So after walking through the longest airport terminal in the world with the heaviest bag ever and then standing in line for a thousand minutes waiting to cross the border and spending over $100 on a taxi because I couldn’t manage all my luggage on the tube by myself, I was pretty much exhausted and it was only 11am.

I couldn’t pay the taxi driver properly because I had this brilliant idea that I would save my cash and use my card instead, but his machine couldn’t read my card. I was about £10 short on cash, but as I was rifling through my wallet to see what I could come up with in terms of coin, he said, “Oh, you have dollars? That’s all right then. You can give me some of those. I’m taking my kids to Disney World in three weeks so I’ll spend them there.” I gave him a twenty and wished him Godspeed, and didn’t tell him that in Disney World twenty bucks will only buy you like two cheeseburgers and a maybe a small diet coke.

I checked into the hotel, allowed myself a few minutes of sitting down with my feet up, and then hit the street to see if I could find a place to buy a SIM card for my iPhone, which actually turned out to be way easier than I expected. They are EVERYWHERE here, and the guy at Carphone Warehouse was very helpful. I’m not entirely sure what I wound up with because I couldn’t really understand him, but his name was Callum and he said “cheers” a lot and my phone works, so I’m good.

That didn’t take very long, so I went to Westminster and walked around by the bridge where I paid £2 for a crappy cup of tea from a vendor, which was totally worth it because it was kind of raining and I was cold and starving and exhausted. And then I took these lovely pictures, because I live here now but that’s not going to stop me from acting like a tourist:

After heading back to the hotel and sleeping for about ten hours, I woke up and spent today at UCL doing enrolment-type things and going to useful seminars. And now I’m very sleepy, so I’m going to put on a channel I found that is inexplicably playing a Hoarders marathon, and try to stay awake for two more hours before I crash. Later!