Welcome to Londontown

'Ello! Sorry for the delay in posts- We haven't had internet in our flat until recently, and I just never had enough time in the computer lab to update! I'll give you a brief time line of my life since leaving the states.

On Sunday I flew into New York to stay with Liz and her family for a night before we flew to London. Three of our friends from Wake who are doing the program (Lindsay, Megan, and Madelyn) also stayed with the Keatings. Basically our night consisted of lots of weighing, reorganizing and reweighing luggage to fit an entire semester's worth of stuff into 2 50 pound suitcases. We had a lovely last supper at Liz's beach club filled with fried chicken, cherry pie and everything American. Traveling to the Newark airport was slightly stressful as we got a little lost - but no worries we left plenty of time for delays in getting there. However, dealing with our bags was a different story. 5 girls each with 2 bags, a purse and a carry on was just a debacle all together. Constantly suitcases were falling over and no one really knew where the line was, and then ALL OF THE SUDDEN this airport man picked our group out of the hords of people checked us in at a little kiosk so we didn't have to wait anymore. We must have just looked pathetic with all our bags.

The flight over was long, but surprisingly I was able to sleep a decent amount. Right when we got through customs the Syracuse guides (mostly British college students) were there to help us find the buses and we were on our way!

45 minutes later we arrived at our flat. I am SO happy we did prearanged housing- We lucked our with our flat. Since we have an 8-person apartment (the 5 girls who were at Liz's plus one Syracuse girl and 2 from Colorado Boulder) we have a big common room and nice kitchen-it's in a good part of town and so close to where we'll have class. Plus I can't imagine having to find an apartment right when we got here. 16 Bedford place- doesn't that just sound like an address from a story or something? We're up one flight, which was a struggle on move in day with my suitcases, but Liz and I have a balcony off our room so it's worth it (plus there are 2 more stories above us-- I can't image having to drag my suitcase up three flights of stairs!)

Our other (non-Wake) roommates seem nice- slightly intimdated by us as a group, but very friendly. It's also nice because we've been getting to know the other kids in prearanged. (Buildings 12-20 are all syracuse abroad students so it's almost like a cluster of dorms). There seems to be a slight divide between Syracuse students and those of us coming from other colleges, but I think that will change once we start classes next week. It's been interesting to meet people from other schools-- most of the people I've been hanging out with (aside from WFU kids) go to Boulder, University of Miami, and Dickinson college, but honestly people are from all over. On the plane I even sat next to a girl in our program who's from Ecuador!

So far we've mostly been getting settled in: trying to organize our rooms, getting a lay of the land, buying phones etc. so we haven't had much time to explore the city but I'm already having so much fun. I've met great people, and I'm really excited about this semester. I have to go get ready for dinner but I'll post pictures of the inside of our flat once it's clean enough for other people to see it!