It seemed that most of my transit was spent eating, waiting, waiting to eat, and eating while waiting. The flight from Philadelphia to Heathrow wasn't as bad as I was expecting, except I only slept (very poorly) for about 2 hours because the guy sitting next to me snored louder than the engines of the airplane.
After circling in a holding pattern for forever, we finally landed and went through immigration. Due to bad information from an employee (shocker) 75% of my flight stood in the wrong line for 45 minutes, causing many of them to miss their connections. Happy people! I made a beeline for the nearest normal-looking restaurant (figured some food would wake me up) and ordered the most American-sounding thing on the menu. After what seemed like forever, I boarded for Edinburgh and immediately fell asleep (during the safety video, oops). I woke up after what I thought was an hour only to find that we were still on the runway and hadn't even taken off yet.
Once in Edinburgh, I stood waiting for my baggage and watched it go around several times before I was able to squeeze through and grab it. I was awkwardly reaching for it while still having my hand on my carry-on stuff (you know, never leave anything unattended) but finally managed. I stood and waited for the rest of the passengers on my shuttle to my flat and the lady in charge told me to go wait over by the "Loud American" who turned out to be a story in and of himself. The shuttle that took the students to Edinburgh was the single most frustrating experience of the entire journey... the driver had no clue where he was going and had to use GPS and still couldn't find it. Meanwhile, the Loud American was practically shouting into his phone a play-by-play of everything he saw--in detail--describing it to some random friend on the phone. Finally the driver pulled over and stopped the van and just sat there until the Loud American asked what was going on. The driver said that he couldn't concentrate with all the noisy shouting going on in the back. The Scots don't mess around.
My flatmates were out when I got in so I settled in and unpacked everything. My last flatmate arrived and moved in while I was there and we decided to go out for dinner but everywhere was too packed since it's the first night of the freshers' orientation week. Instead we went to a grocery store and bought: bread, butter, an apple, an orange, greek yogurt, and orange juice. Dinner? Also we don't have a toaster so we had to improvise and use the oven. Word of advice: a toaster works better.
Oh, speaking of flatmates, 4/5 of us are Americans and the other is Scottish. So much for cultural immersion, eh? One of the girls is actually a UNC student. I wore my championship shirt tonight.
Once things get going I will post some pictures! Tomorrow night is the pub crawl (hi mom!).
Sidenote: no wireless in the flat except for in the common room. We have to actually plug in to get internet in our rooms. What is this, 2004?
Were you able to find any "soda" that was anything but lukewarm? When do classes start?
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