I have arrived!

First days are always awkward. I’ve come to that conclusion, and it’s helped me not to freak out completely. On the positive side, my flight was short—6 hr 10 min—and the man next to me was quiet, thin and showed no outward signs of some tropical contagion. On top of that I think I’ve burned about 7,000 calories today lugging my 100 lbs of luggage from one end of Heathrow to another and from one end of campus (which by the way is bigger than it looks online) to the other.

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The ‘beginning’ of my day, which was actually the 20^th hour or so of my day, was spent trying to look effortlessly cool as I gazed out the window of the charter bus on the two hour ride from London to Bath. Instead the trip was a mix of that dozing off until you jerk your head up suddenly, wipe the drool from the corner of your lip, and frantically look around to see if anyone saw your momentary lapse in stone cold foxiness and scarfing down a prepackaged airport salad so quickly that I only noticed the dressing container after I was done.

Getting from the bus to the dorm wasn’t terrible, and I unpacked in absolute calm. In fact a little too calm. It was one in the afternoon, I had already pushed through that nap now or risk loss of motor function stage and was now sailing on whatever chemicals the body pumps out when it thinks you’re being tortured, and I had nothing to do. So I thought of my adventures with Gia, Kristine, and Christina in Europe and the ultimate lesson of that trip: in order to really start to get to know a place, you have to just get lost there. We also learned that we all get “hangry”.

Setting off and with a backup map in my bag, I got lost. A few hours later I was stocked with fruit and fibre, “practically fat free” milk (wtf? who’s in charge of labeling here?), a pre-made BLT, and 8 of the cheapest clothes hangers on Earth. Two subsequent forays from the fringe of campus (my dorm) to the pulsating heart of the beast (‘the parade’) and an international students’ soup social later, I had a firm handle on things. On the walk home from said social I decided I liked it here. Sure the campus is no TCNJ and in fact dilapidated might be an understatement, but I like it.

p.s. the guy in the dorm across the courtyard from me (is he 18? no idea) seems to be unaware that we have curtains…i knew there was a reason i put my laptop in front of the window.