Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay on my first blog post from London. I've only been here for about 36 hours, but have already accomplished so much, gotten lost a few times, and started loving the city of London!
I got here really late Sunday night, so I guess you could consider it early Monday morning. My journey to the dorm was pretty simple- I had a driver holding a sign with my name on it waiting to pick me up right outside of security (I felt pretty special since I was always jealous when I was little of the people who got their names on signs). The drive to my dorm was quick, only about 20-25 minutes and my driver was really chatty, talking about how great London is because everything is open 24 hours unlike the United States. When I got to my dorm, I just had to do a quick check-in at the front desk and then struggle with my bags up to my room. Luckily, I was only on the third floor and there was an elevator, but dragging the bags down to the end of the hall where my room was proved to be a bit more difficult than anticipated.
Since I am in a positive mood currently, I will describe my room as exceptionally modest or petite. But to be quite honest, if you caught me at a different moment, I would probably just say that it is very... very small. Even though I panicked a little bit at first sight, I was able to get my bed lofted a few feet off the ground so I have a TON of storage space underneath my bed. It definitely makes the room look a bit bigger. My roommate gets here tomorrow so I'm sure we will finalize all the arrangements on the room!
So yesterday (Monday) Alexa got to our dorm around 11 am. I was very very happy to see a familiar face since the rest of my group does not arrive until tomorrow. We decided to explore our area, mostly walking up and down Kings Road and Fulham Road. The Chelsea area is so cute and hip, though very expensive. I'm really excited that we are living in such a well-known and fun area! All of the streets and houses look like they are straight out of the Parent Trap movie with Lindsay Lohan haha. Alexa and I's main adventure of the day consisted of trying to find Primark- which supposedly would have hangers, rainboots, and sheets, our main shopping goals. Since we are not quite experts on London transportation yet, we ended up taking a few too many tubes, walking the wrong way a few too many times, and spending a few too many hours on actually finding the store. Sadly enough, when we got there, they were out of hangers and rainboots. I managed to beg the lady behind the counter to give me some used hangers before we left. We were planning on going out later that night, but found ourselves absolutely exhausted and ended up calling it a night after a quick dinner at a random restaurant by the South Kennsington tube stop.
Today was much more successful in terms of getting around! Alexa and I took a short tube ride to Sainsburys, a giant supermarket (very similar to Walmart). We bought a ton of food to keep in our kitchen back at the dorm so that we could start cooking our own meals instead of spending so much money on eating out. Tonight we are planning on making some stir fry! Since this was our first shopping trip, we each had like 8 bags and ended up having to take a cab back to our dorm, which was pretty quick and cheap. After that, we wandered to Carphone Warehouse, where I somehow managed to get a sim card for the same phone that I used while in China. I am going to temporarily use that phone until our family friends, the Reids, who live about an hour outside of London, give me my other phone which I'll use for the remainder of my time in London. I also got to explore the other half of King's Road, down to Sloane Square, which I absolutely loved! There are a ton of stores and restaurants, and everything is crowded and exciting.
Everyone on my IES Program arrives at the dorm tomorrow and I cannot wait! I am a little bit nervous, but am really looking forward to meeting a ton of new people to share the next few months with me! I'll keep everyone updated on how that goes :)
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