Day 1

Day 1

Well, the day started with a 3 and a half hour flight to Chicago. After the flight, I luckily got called out by another person on the same study abroad trip as myself, Erica Kris, due to my ASU shorts. We then got lost at the airport and pretty much used up our entire 2 hour layover time to find our flight. We luckily got to sit next to each other for the 8 or so hours on the plane, and we filled up the time by alternating watching movies (Oz: The Great and the Powerful and the shitty movie about the guy who rides his bike), listening to music and talking. After the flight, we had about a 2 hour wait until the big flight with everybody else arrived so we decided to chill at this little coffee shop.

We finally made our way to the correct terminal and met up with a small group of people before the big group finally showed up. It was sort of chaos until we were directed to the lovely buses. Sadly, I chose to carry my extremely large and heavy suitcase the entire way to the buses since it squeaks and annoys everybody if I drag it on the ground and I'm, you know, nice and all that. So anyway, we took a little ride into Kensington to our flats located at Courtfield Gardens (fancy, I know). I found out that I have a two story flat with a pretty chill roommate named Nate.

It's got a bathroom, a fridge, a TV, and a tiny little kitchen area for him to cook me food in. After throwing our luggage down and all that, Nate and I met up with a few people (Dylan, Jake and Parker) and went down the street to check out the local area a bit. We ended up, ironically, sitting down and eating at Subway (I didn't eat here). We then went with everybody on a short walking tour around the local area to get to know the supermarkets, tube station and all that fun stuff. Afterwards, my little group decided to hit the town and took the tube a few stops into Piccadilly Circus.

Once we arrived, we had to walk around a bit until we found a cool little pub to drink at. We all grabbed some of the local beer and I ordered some pizza (yes, pizza). It was a cool experience drinking with some chill people and relaxing at a local place. We then walked around A LOT until we eventually wandered back to the tube station and hit up a few more spots on our way back to the flats. We grabbed some beer at a couple of the stops on the way back and finished out the night at a local place near our dwellings. After we got back to our room, Nate and I passed out pretty quickly and ended up sleeping throughout the entire night. Overall, it was a pretty awesome first day in London for my first ever trip abroad and I am so glad that I already know some pretty awesome people. I even got a nickname, T-rebel, for my rebelliousness...apparently. Oh yeah, and when I was climbing up the escalator at the tube station I ended up face-planting, trying to stand up again, and face planting again. Luckily, Nate was the only person I see this occur, although he did laugh his ass off continuously for a few minutes afterwards. And here are some pictures! I know they're pretty crappy photos, but I wasn't doing much sightseeing and am just honing my skills for the days to come...