Connecting to Wales

Well, here I am!

It has been a long 48ish hours! I flew out of Cedar Rapids on Wednesday at 1:35 pm and arrived in Detroit an hour and a half later, and left again at 7:00 pm for London Heathrow! My flight was mostly enjoyable to London, although I was literally in the middle of the plane next to two larger men. I didn't sleep on the plane, which in retrospect was a very poor decision, oh well, all is well that ends well. So after finally getting off the plane it was 7:30 am London time... I got to wait in line through the UK border for an hour and a half! And I was supposed to meet up with Alison to take the Heathrow Express to Paddington and then Paddington to Wales at 10:45 am so I felt like I was really late and I was feeling very tired and hungry. The actual process of getting through the border was super easy and I just showed my passport and my acceptance letter from Wales and waltzed on through... lugging behind me two suitcases and a backpack, looking as my mother had told me not too, "very green." So then began the process of getting from terminal 4 to terminal 1 where Alison was... it didn't take too long but I was really fearful of not finding here because somehow my ipod went from 100 % to 0 % in a matter of an hour and then internet cost 10 pounds... Ultimately I did find a very relieved Alison in a corner trying to use a nice man's internet to contact me as well! As we were waiting for the Heathrow Express I of course got my second bloody nose of the trip and a young guy came over and asked me if it was the air or if I had gotten in a fight and so we chatted for a bit and he laughed when he understood I was american because with my bloody nose I sounded British, already getting my accent! From there we took the 15 minute train to central London to get the next train to Swansea. Everything went well with tickets and we had an hour to spare. From London to Swansea was a three hour train ride which we slept the majority of and found another guy who was going to Swansea University as well!

Getting to the University was pretty simple from the train, we just hopped in a cab; had a very nice driver who showed us all the good places to eat and drink... there is a street called Wind Street that on the weekend you cannot drive down because there are literally 20,000 people there drinking in one of the 40 pubs... we are touring there tomorrow night with a group so that will definitely be an interesting experience for me. When we got to the U we immediately got our housing for the next week and a half, it is in the middle of campus and we each have our own room and all of the pre-sessional students are staying together so it is really nice. I can also see the ocean, if it is not too foggy, from my window. The bathrooms are teeeny and the shower makes you feel very claustrophobic, as well as each time I use it my bathroom floor is flooded. Makes you very appreciative of the size of our American things. After saying hello to a few students, a few from Colorado, North Carolina, one from Tennessee, Massachusetts etc. Alison and I went to dinner at the pub on the pond, which was pretty good but truly after eating nothing all day anything would have tasted wonderful. Sadly after that, it was only 6:15 pm but both us of were super exhausted so we said we would go to our rooms and hang out for a bit but I was asleep after 10 minutes and woke up to a wild party outside of our dorm; we found out this morning that there are some high schoolers here for a visit for a week or so. I slept until 2 am and was up for an hour before falling back asleep until morning! Clearly traveling is very exhausting and I didn't even feel like it was that taxing.

...I apologize for the length of this blog and promise not all of them will go on this much...

This morning our floor mates (about 10 of us) went to find this free breakfast we had been promised and we found a free breakfast but were not certain it was for it because it was all the high schoolers from the previous night. We all got to know each other a bit and all of us come from varying places with varying majors; another girl is  from Austin, one from Notre Dame, who will live with Alison in the Student Village, and another guy from Chicago. Then today we had a brief orientation to our class that starts on Monday and we are getting registered today, in 10 minutes. Then this afternoon we are taking a small trip to the Gower Peninsula and then one of the girls' birthday is today so we are all going to go out to dinner and to Tesco (their equivalent of a Wal-Mart to grab some groceries and soap...)
All is well and today has been a really great day; hopefully a preview of how life will be here on the other side of the pond.