Hello. Here I am. The shift button is all in the wrong place. Okay, since my mom is reading this I am going to give a play-by-play of what's going on so far. The plane ride was an eternity. Seriously. I watched Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya blah blah. Great book, terrible movie. Turns out that the plane is over-run with BUNAC students. I was cornered in the window by a snoring businessman for the majority of the seven hours and couldn't make friends. We arrived at about 11pm. The last Heathrow express train left at 11:23. There were no luggage storage places. I comandeered a luggage thingey and raced around Heathrow with aprox. 150 lbs of luggage. The fun part was racing around the express train (customs? where? no one seemed to notice that I was entering a new country...did get my passport stamped but...I always expect these boarder crossings to be more complicated than they actually are). Yay. Express. WELCOME TO LONDON. MIND THE GAP. Very soothing automated voices to give you directions.

Me + 2 fellow BUNACers were on train together. They helped and made it not so scary. One actually split a cab with me since I was unable to carry all of my luggage. Nice people abound. The hostel owners think I'm nuts. After travel and no sleep in Dallas (!) I was speaking gibberish. Got to my room. Full of sleeping girls. Managed to find alarm clock, find c.d. player, remove batteries from c.d. player, place into alarm clock, set time, set alarm, change, and get into bed without any light and without waking anyone up. Slept like the dead. I woke up at 7:30 clutching the alarm in my hands with some vague memory of it going off.

Went to BUNAC orientation with new friends and loads of others. BUNAC is a very nice organization. I highly reccomend it. Am now going to see abt getting a cell phone (evidently everyone has one and they are quite necessary) and will soon be calling abt jobs and places to live (ugh). Am hanging out in street market full of people who are obviously way cooler than me. Excepting the woman in the pink polka-dot dress and nude fishnet stockings, of course.

Number of times lost, going wrong direction: 5
Number of successful navigations of famed Underground: 1
Number of times regretted not bringing shower shoes: 37
Weather: Beautiful, cool, humid but nice.

love, updates (more exciting, i promise i know you're all on the edge of your seats). everyone wears tight pants, not hats.

my room had better be pristine although you might want to run through and check for civilizations of mold in glasses for health's sake.