All Moved In

so i'm sitting in my bed for the next 4 months! everybody's all moved in, and now it's just a matter of organizing. luckily our flat has nice big closets, but no drawers, which is proving to be a problem. this morning maggie and i went to 'primark' which is like a huge department store that kind of looks like H&M, got some sheets, towels, hangers, etc. and then went to Argos-which is basically a store full of catalogues, and you look through the catalogues and see what you want, and can put the item # into these digital inventory checker things and it tells you if they're available, then you take the item #'s of whatever you want to the front and they go into this big warehouse and get them for you. we were on a search for some sort of drawer apparatus but came back empty handed. this is maggie/my bedroom (we rotated the beds after i took this to try to get more room)

i went food shopping for the first time--so far the prices have been very reasonable (mom & dad)...but luckily it's right across the street so there's no feeling of "i have to grab everything i can so i dont have to lug it across the city."

p.s. dad-i had penne arrabiatta yesterday...didn't compare to the Seaview Cafe/Rome

little by little the place is coming along. we discovered we're right by marlybone, which is a really nice area, and regent's park, and abby road! we're also in an area with lots of middle eastern restaurants, so there's the smell of chicken schwarma wafting through the apartment. i'm going to try to post some pictures here, eventually ill set up some sort of album thing on snapfish and post it on here

our living room

tomorrow we're going on a bus tour of greenwich which i'm loooking forward to, then classes start monday!

maggie, arielle, dana and i by the Thames river

the Faraday House, where the SU program is

No Longer Homeless

so, basically the past 2 days have been housing hell. the idea of finding your own housing in a city that is probably the MOST difficult place to navigate after 48 hours was slightly terrifying. nonetheless, maggie and i found this great student guide working with SU who volunteered to take us and the 4 others we're now living with around the city. we went from [real] estate agencies, to more agencies(god forbid you say 'real estate') getting shown apartments. we started in Marble Arch, which yesterday we thought was ok, but it was all we had seen so we branched out to look at one in Kensington, a little more of a commute from school. we were almost ready to sign right there but decided to sleep on it, and it's a good thing we did.

this morning we decided we should look some more and not commit right away. we had an appointment scheduled with an agency that was recommended by a friend who used them in the spring, but they didnt really show us anything that could comfortably fit 6. luckily, we went back to Marble Arch and the first place we looked at was AMAZING. the bedrooms/family room look brand new, and kind of make up for the slightly dated kitchen/bathroom, but it's all good. some of us got double beds, there are leather couches, a flat screen tv, nice wood floors, and a swanky glass coffee table--and it came in about 20 pounds under our per diem A WEEK which is SO nice in a place like stupid expensive london.

tomorrow we move in! and thank goodness because i'm sick of living out of only one of my suitcases (the other one being in storage). tomorrow we also have to make sure our schedules will work out, etc. and go for some academic stuff...boooooooring.

so, all in all, opting for independent housing caused 2 days full of a lot of stress, but in the end, it was totally worth it and we've each ended up saving 300 pounds over the semester, which means i could come back with $600!

pictures to come soon, once we have the hotel we wont have wireless for a while-although we are next to a mcdonalds so we may try to bum off of their free wireless-but we'll see what happens!

I just ate brushetta in a pizza hut...somebody get me some real italian food...STAT


...more to come tomorrow, today was TOO long!

Sleepless in London

so it's been 48 hours and i've probably slept 2 hours. the jet-lag is getting the best of everyone, but luckily London is AMAZING. we arrived around 10 AM london time, and after dragging 200 lb of luggage across what felt like the entire country, we got to the hotel. definately not as nice as the web site showed, but at this point who the heck cares.

we all decided to persevere the jetlag and stay awake until 8 or 9, which apparently turned into 11:30. Maggie and I reunited with Arielle who was in London after her 4 weeks of backpacking in the UK, and decided to wander around and find phones. After lots of confusion we all got our nifty british phones and wandered some more.

the school was hosting a dinner at 430, which we were all glad was early since we hadn't eaten really--but of course it turned into them talking for 90 minutes while we all sat there salivating at the food on the buffet table. the only thing keeping me awake at this point was a. food and b. the free trip to the London Eye we were getting at 6:30.

this was DEFINATELY worth staying awake for-i thought it would be more of a cable car type thing around the city but it was actually like a large ferris wheel with HUGE carts you can walk around it. It is right on the Thames river, overlooking parliament, buckingham palace, and of course, big ben.

so now that we were out and about we decided to persevere AGAIN and walk around some more. we ended up walking back to the hotel after a few hours of wandering around-but it was definately something I won't forget. the weather was perfect, cool but not too cold, and the lights from all of the amazing buildings lit the walkways.

aside from never getting used to the cars on the other side of the road, i think ill like this place. tomorrow=hopefully finding a place to live for the next 4 months

cheerio