I was embarking on an adventure...when DISASTER struck!

Let me start off by saying that this has probably been the longest day-two days, I guess-of my life. I woke up yesterday morning a little before 5 am and got to the airport only to find out that my flight was delayed 50 minutes. Ha. Lovely. It was fine though. I traveled with 5 other girls who are a bundle of fun and we had a good time. I had a whole row to myself on the plane, so I spread out and slept for a while, until we landed and had to scamper off the plane as fast as we could, because we had less than ten minutes to make our connection. 

As we're weaving in and out of people in the Minneapolis airport trying to get to the completely different terminal where our connection flight was. I'm hauling my two carry on side bags and riffling through it looking for my phone, when WHAM! Disaster struck. No dice. Phone's gone. I move over to the side to make sure I don't have it, and Hailee says, 'Well if it's on the plane, it's long gone by now.' Sure enough, out the window, we see the plane pulling out of the gate. SILENCE. OH. MY. GOSH. But we had a plane to catch and there was nothing we could do now! So we jogged, sweaty and stressed, to our connection flight-and we barely made it. When I sad down in the front row of coach, I had time to think about it. Definitely one of those moments you wish you could rewind and do over. I think it fell out of my jacket pocket when I snatched it up in a hurry from off the seat. Blast. 

I sum up the story to the old woman sitting next to me (it didn't take long at all. I can sum things up...) and from then on she talked AT me pretty much the whole flight. Her transitions completely eluded me, haha, seriously. I had no idea what she was talking about. But hey-she was nice. And so was the business man on my other side, but he was too scared to say more than a few words to me at a time. He asked to borrow a pen. 

Thank heavens for our layover in Detroit. We had over an hour to eat and take the express train and take pictures. We sat at the gate for less than ten minutes before they started boarding. Wow. Talk about fast. 

I almost had a whole row of 4 seats to myself..I figured I'd share-so Lauren came to sit by me. But sure enough, last minute, a man and woman boarded and filled them in...and lucky for us! She had been marinating in her perfume for a long while and we were BLESSED with the fresh intoxicating scent. Lovely. Lauren and I thought we were going to die. On top of that, sleeping was an  issue. I guess Tylenol PM is for wussies.

We landed in Heathrow almost 40 minutes early. Awesome. Minus the fact that we agreed to wait for a girl who didn't land until 40 minutes after our ORIGINAL landing time. We went through customs, where the lady asked me loads of questions about what my parents do and how much money I'm worth. My favorite one of her responses was when I told her I was here as a student studying English. 'English?' she says, in a thick British accent. 'Do you not speak it?' HA. Love it. I officially want an accent-and I'm determined. In baggage claim Hailee's luggage broke. Well, the pully handle thing did. I was told that I couldn't do anything here about my phone, and that I should have filed a report in Minneapolis where it was left (where I had a whole 30 seconds to do that). I was told in Detroit to file a report at my final destination. Make up your mind, people. So I decided to do nothing. It was a piece of junk anyway.

We waited for the other girl for hours. No dice. We didn't know what city she was coming from, and at 845, we couldn't wait any longer and went to catch our train. (Meanwhile, about 45 minutes ago, half of our group set off for the centre in a taxi.) We missed the train by one minute. It comes every half hour. Perfect. By the time we got on the train a half hour later, there was still no sign of the girl. We got in trouble for boarding too quickly, I got in trouble for my bag oozing half an inch into the isle, and a door broke for a bit and wouldn't close. We finally pulled up to Paddington station and we have to put our ticket through a metro-like device where doors open and you walk through. It's very interesting with two large bags of luggage and we were trying to run and squeeze through. There was one lady that went ahead of us whose luggage got stuck on the other side-she tried to pry the doors open by bending down, and almost got her head stuck in between them. Talk about intense. This is a serious business. 

We walked up hill through a wide alley full of dozens of people smoking (London is the worst place if you want to stay away from second hand smoke), and hailed a cab. It was a tad bit squishy and Lauren was turned sideways facing the door the whole time because we couldn't fit. Haha, at this point everything is hysterical because we're super beat and the hits just keep on coming. 

Then our cab takes us to the wrong place. Yup. He did. He ended up correcting it and didn't charge us, which is super (I had no idea what I would have done if he'd tried to). And FINALLY we pulled up to the centre. We got the tour, made our beds, unpacked, but were NOT under ANY circumstances allowed to sleep. :( So we read through paperwork, wrote emails, went out to get our temporary oyster cards, and took a stroll through Hyde Park and Kensington gardens. Wow! It is amazing here. The weather is perfect-60's and 70's, but overcast and sprinkly. I'm in love.  The showers, however, is a different issue. Two words. Clear glass. :)

It is now almost 930pm and I've been awake for 35 or 40 hours (I'm too tired to count) and it is SO time for bed. Pictures and more updates soon to come.

Toodles.

-T