Our hotel was just outside of Heathrow and we had to take the tube into the center of London every day, which took about a half an hour. We came home each evening with throbbing feet and calves from walking around all day. I really enjoyed taking Seth to some of the places I had loved in London - Covent Garden, Russel Square, St. Paul's Cathedral, The Globe Theatre, The Tate Modern, Buckingham Palace, etc - as well as experiencing a few new things that I hadn't ever done before - The London Eye, getting lost, new pubs, and an under renovation Platform 9 3/4.
Basically, all of London was under renovation in preparation for the summer Olympics in 2012. The Piccadilly Circus screens were covered up, tube stations were temporarily closed for elevator renovations, and almost every building was covered in scaffolding. I guess London will look ship-shape by next summer.
On Monday when we left London, we got up way before the sun and barely squeaked by every deadline for the flight. There were some extraordinarily long queues and by the time we got our baggage checked (only a few minutes before the 40 minute cut off) and got through security, we had to run to our gate since the flight was on "last call" for boarding. But we made it!
We took a taxi from the Derry airport straight to our housing at Duncreggan Student Village. Then we had to go back and forth from office to office to collect our keys, but we finally made it to our top floor suite thing. It's a little cramped: we had to push our two single beds together in order to get a bed, but we still have a lovely crack down the middle. The bathroom is there, but just barely. The shower is right next to the toilet with just a shower curtain separating them, so if we don't towel off the floor after showering, we're left with wet feet every time we use the toilet.
Our room certainly isn't deluxe, but it isn't too bad. We share a kitchen with 5 other rooms, and we met a couple of the girls yesterday. They've been really nice so far, so hopefully everything will work out just fine.
Duncreggan Village is certainly the hot party spot, which is a huge adjustment from Bethel. I'm pretty sure there were small parties going on in just about every kitchen on campus (including ours) so it was pretty noisy last night. It should be an interesting year; that's for sure.
I started some international orientation this morning, and I actually met a couple other American students who will be in the same program as me. It's reassuring to know that I have a few people who have to register for the same courses and will probably have some of the same problems as me.
I have more orientation during the rest of the week, longer on some days than on others. But it usually doesn't go much further than about 3:30 in the afternoon, so Seth and I have been spending most of our free time out shopping and trying to find what we need to make our small room homey. It's really been quite the adventure to have to walk to every store and carry everything we buy all the way back to our room, so it's taken many trips out and a lot of leg and arm muscles with all the walking and carrying. Maybe I won't really need to worry about working out much this year.
One thing we're lacking is a coffee maker. Clearly, coffee isn't a priority in the UK. I knew they were big on instant coffee, but I had thought that normal coffee beans would at least exist. But no, so far all we can find is electric kettles and instant coffee. And buying a cup of coffee somewhere certainly isn't in a grad school budget. We'll keep looking, but we caved and bought some instant coffee (but not the cheapest, because we're hoping it will at least be somewhat good).
So life is different, and somewhat confusing right now as we try and settle in, but so far both of us are enjoying it. Hopefully things will smooth out a bit soon as we figure out a routine and how things work around here.
