A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sorry for the delay in my updates! Things have been a bit hectic. We made it to England! Our awesome group waited for four hours at the train station for us, thank God. Otherwise Phillip and I would have had to buy train tickets to get to our flat.

Before I forget, we have already traveled a bit before orientation. Sorry about the disrupted timeline, I am sick and don't feel like trying too hard on this. Lo siento! As soon as we got to England, David Ranum (or D Ran as we call him) had us walking everywhere! We had a tour of Nottigham, we ran out to Lincoln for a day, and to London for a day as well. All of these were brief visits without much time to spend in the beautiful buildings that towns had to offer. They were more of an overview in case we wanted to visit on our own. I did take lot of pictures and put them up on facebook.

Now back to the flat, it is fairly big, with 5 bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, dinning room, entry way, and library. It is a little janky, as we expected. The bunkbed I share with Marin shakes like an earthquake every time one of us moves in the slightest. If you want to have a shower that is not rotating between boiling hot and freezing cold, then no one else can be running water. But we all realized how good we have it after attending orientation this week and staying in a dorm called Crips. I still maintain that I had a ghost in my room that shuffled around while I tried to sleep- an activity which proved more difficult than I ever before. In true form to my unlucky life, I got sick while staying in the dorm, and so have half my flatmates (possibly due to me but who really knows). We are all sitting around our living room in two or three sweatshirts trying to fight off the shivers and aches we are having.

This last paragraph is just really a jumble of last thoughts, sorry. I've really gotten to know the neighborhood by going running most mornings, just a mile or two. And I usually stop by the local fruit shop that we have an account with. Next week we sign up for classes which don't start officially until October 1st (I believe).  We walked to the city center today which is downtown Nottingham.  We got our bus passes today which I view as a Godsend. If you know me well you know I hate walking places. Alli Wright my summer roommate can attest to this. But we have all been whipped in to marching shape as D Ran's walk is like a normal person's light jog. The Ranums ( D Ran, Brenda his wife, and Rylea their 13-year-old daughter) have been great helping us get settled. Brenda has been cooking for us and it had been delicious!!! Rylea is an energetic girl with a great sense of humor who we would all love to spend more time with, I think maybe to the chagrin of the Ranums. Oh and needless to say Brenda makes us all miss our moms (shout out to Teresa Preston). T-t-thats it for now folks

Genie

Goodbye 'Merica

Goodbye America! I was ready for this plane ride! I had not been on a plane since our last family vacation to Florida, which was circa 6^th grade. 8 hours would be no problem for someone who did a road trip to Alabama. That is if it was indeed 8 hours. Our flight first got delayed for 45 mins in Chicago, and as I watched the flight attendents congregate together and whisper, I knew we would not be boarding soon. This was confirmed by the unfriendly blonde attendent who announced we wouldn't be departing untill 2 a.m,. and there were no hotels available near by. As if I was willing to pay for a hotel for 4 hours.

Now, as I sit 3 hours into our 5 hour delay with my 12 dollar dinner voucher, I am pondering the idea of Dunkin Donuts or Starbuck hot chocolate. Our new friend, who is unfortunately nameless because I don’t remember his name (he is going to graduate school at Kingston next year) and Philip have gone off to get their dinner/breakfast. Only the wailing baby near me seems able to express what all of us on American Airlines flight 98 are feeling at this moment: fatigue, hunger and impatience for this part of our journey to be over.

Hopefully we will find some cheap train tickets to Nottingham since we will most likely no longer have a driver to pick us up at the airport. But this mode of transportation may be a little more scenic.

I'm not what you would call a creative type

Hello,

First off left me apologize for my blog title. I'm not what you would call a creative type. You may now be wondering,"why are you writing a blog if you are not creative?" The answer is and will always be, because I'm lazy. There will never be time to write personalized letters to each of my friends and family back home telling them about what it is like for me to watch t.v. in a different country instead of on my futon. So if you get an email or letter you should feel special and write back! I hope I meet my reader's standards of what a travel blog should be with my witty and cynical observations on life that you can chortle along with. I am not writing this to pass on my traveling wisdom or promote any political statements. I just tend to have awkwardly funny encounters that I know my friends will appreciate. Hopefully that will not include painfully detailed recollections of food that I have eaten along with photos of said food.  But I make no promises.

Right now I am in the midst of packing/putting off packing. It doesn't feel as if I am really going to go to England for 9 months. It feels like I am just telling everyone that I am leaving while instead I am really living in my parents' basement. Yeah, all those photos you are going to see... they are fake. I totally photoshopped myself in them while in my new basement home. All of this is leading up to why I do not feel like packing my bags. I don't think I can fit my pillow pet into my bags, which just makes me sad. Goodbye Montague the giraffe. 

Phillip, my friend and classmate, is currently getting our seats. He has assured me that if we dress nicely that we will have a greater chance of  being bumped up a class as he is still grumpy that we are in economy seating. Oh, he also reminded me that dress clothes are just more comfortable anyway. I must have forgotten that fun fact the last time I wore heels. I hope that a nice sweater, jeans, and chacos count, because that is as dressy as I am willing to get for our 8 hour plane ride (I don't really know how long it is but that is my best guess).

Monday has never seemed so far away!