Cheerio!

So I've made it here to London. I must say, its a pretty sweet city, at least from what I've seen in the past few days. There's definitely a lot of changes to random little things in life, but overall its pretty much like any big American City.

The plane ride over wasn't at all bad. Virgin Atlantic is definitely the way to fly; everyone gets their own personal tv with the choice of a couple hundred or so movies and tv shows. I got my Marky Mark fill by watching The Happening, which wasn't as bad as people said, but its definitely not something I would spend money on. Honestly, what happed to M. Night? Talk about peaking early. Signs and 6th Sense were quality, Unbreakable was good, and then the rest were just trash. The Happening definitely had a pretty cool story, but the acting was horrendous and nothing really stood out about the directing/cinematography. Its almost as if the actors were purposely trying to make it cheesy and stupid. Thumbs down, Marky Mark. At least there's Max Payne to look forward too. Oh wait, that looks terrible as well.

The one bad thing about the plane ride was the fact that I didn't sleep at all and London is 5 hours ahead of East Coast time. So I was essentially up for a good 40 hours straight once I get here. It's a good thing that I slugged it out with my basic human need of sleeping, however, cause I've already adjusted my body clock to the time here. Screw you, Jet lag. Oh, and the beef stew I ate for dinner on the plan gave me a ton of gas. But everyone was asleep so they dealt fine.

So the living situation is fairly unique, to say the least. There's 17 of us, 13 girls and 4 boys, all living in one giant apartment flat. There's 5 or 6 bedrooms, each of which house anywhere from 2-4 people. Mine is tiny, but there's only 2 of us so its not too bad. Aside from the obvious bonuses of living with 13 girls, I don't really know how I'm going to take it. Let's just say that my living style isn't very girl-suitable, as I'm sure Stumpo and Demarest can attest to. We shall see. My roomate's name is James and he seems pretty cool. Honestly, everyone seems pretty cool, but who knows what will change once I've had to live with everyone for a while.

We went out to a couple of bars last night, which was ok. Nothing too out of the ordinary thus far. The prices aren't even that bad for drinks; at the one place, each beer was 3.50 pounds, but it was quality beer and you don't have to tip the bartenders. So even though that translates to about $6, you'd still spend at least $5 on a glass of something like Becks and still have to tip $1. And the buy beer in stores isn't even that bad. I bought an 8 pack (weird, I know) of Carlsburg pounders for like 6 pounds. not too bad of a deal for decent beer. there's also a college bar right down the street at Imperial College, where they have 2 pound drinks. So hopefully it won't be too much of a financial burden.

Coffee will prolly be my downfall when it comes to money. There are starbucks all over the place (+), but the prices are exactly the same as the are in the US (i.e. 1.90 pound for a venti coffee instead of $1.90), which is no good at all. And when you order coffee, they ask if you want it black or white, white being with milk (they don't have half and half here, another minus). And to get something "To Go" is actually called "take-away."

My neighborhood is one of, if not the, wealthiest in London. A lot of royalty live here, which is cool I guess. I've never seen so many Bentleys, Aston Martins, and Rolls Royces just parked on the street. The standard car is essentially a BMW or a Benz, and it just goes up from there. This affluence definitely sucks when it comes to prices though, especially for us poor college kids. We'll just have to deal. Like I said, restaurants and bars aren't that bad, as well as the supermarket, so I'll be fine.

My class schedule is also pretty awesome. I don't have classes on mondays and thursdays, i have class tues 1-5, wed 1-9, and fri 9-1. About as good as it gets, me thinks, besides the 9am on fridays. But its my british food and wine class. So I think I can deal with eating and drinking that early.

Well thats about it for now. I'll check in sometime soon. Adios.