Cheerio!

I am finally in London. No plane crashes, no riots, all is well. Our flight was delayed over 3 hours, which was fantastic (not really). A rather amusing flight attendant explained that our original plane was broken (first delay) so they brought over another plane to save time. Turns out this plane was meant for Delhi, meaning it had 3 times the amount of fuel we needed and way too much for us to safely land in London, so they had to take out the extra fuel (second delay). However, there was so much fuel that the available trucks could not hold it all, so they had to go empty the trucks and return to get the rest (third delay). I sat next to a couple from Australia (who I first thought were from England, oops) who were very nice and quite funny, in typical Aussie style. We complained about the delays and discussed traveling and Australia. While the delays were a bit of a bad omen, the Aussies were definitely a good one (because I basically love Australia).

Ok, it's finally time to write about something interesting, since I'm actually in London now. You know, that whole "abroad" part of a study abroad blog. But it doesn't feel all that different. The shock of living with new people, having to cook for myself, and living in a city overshadows being in another country. They just have funny-looking traffic signs and taxis, and vacant red phone booths everywhere. I keep thinking in a British accent, but I still find the general accent a little weird. It's like I just happen to be around a big tour group of British people, and keep running into them... working at the grocery store, and the market, and the subway... We all seem to assume that every accent we hear is just a fluke or a fake, even though we know they aren’t. I think it's just that they all sound a little different, so there's no new "normal"- just a bunch of funny-talkin people. A number of people have a foreign accent as well, like an Indian or French accent on top of their British one. Weird. I swear I heard people speaking English on the street but could not understand them at all. It seems there are light, cute British accents and Are we speaking the same language? accents.

Other than that, my flat is very nice, and London is actually cool, if not entirely unfamiliar. London is like a clean, old, shorter New York. The tube/Underground/subway/metro is really nice and easy to use. The streets, on the other hand, seem perfectly logical until you hit one five-road intersection after another, and cannot figure out how you turned when you tried to follow a single straight road. And of course, road names change with no warning and similar sounding roads have no relation (for example: Bloomsbury Street and Bloomsbury Way).

It does rain often, but not all day. It feels like fall here (60s-70s, it’s hard to remember that it’s actually August). There is so much history, and it seems like nearly every building has a story (though some are certainly better than others). We live near the first YMCA, and saw a church built on top of a Roman road (it was exposed due to excavation). That’s pretty cool. We travelled down around the Thames on Saturday, and it was pretty and very nice. I really enjoyed that area- it’s a good place to visit as a tourist, and certainly a nice place to live too!