Bloody Brilliant

Shortly after I posted my first blog "Airport Chaos" I found out that my flight was temporarily delayed because one of the pilot's windows wouldn't shut...15 minutes turned into 30 which turned into 1 hour which eventually turned into 3 just sitting in the airplane waiting for the airport personnel to fix the window. I arrived in London 3 hours later then scheduled and I was so scared that the study abroad agent wouldn't be waiting for me to pick me up and of course my phone was dying, but thankfully I was the last student to arrive and he had seen that my flight got delayed.

The ride from the airport was beautiful, going through suburbs and the countryside to reach the city. As we were driving all I could think about was 101 Dalmations (the cartoon) and all the duplex houses side by side. I checked in the hotel and freshened up then met up with the rest of the group (so far there are 6 girls and 1 guy, the rest, 3 more girls and 2 more boys who are meeting up with us on Friday when we arrive in Grenoble, France) to check out the British museums.The girls are hilarious and we have quickly become friends, laughing and talking like we've all been friends for years. The museum was paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance times and even fashion design from the 18th century to today. The queen herself even allowed the museum to "rent" her collection of Raphael paintings, which were at least 20ft x 15ft. They were gigantic.

Throughout my day I kept trying to remember to smile less at strangers and not making it obvious that I was American, however with these girls I couldn't stop laughing and we made so many mistakes with the transit system that we were all just cracking up at each other and making it painstakingly obvious that we were foreigners :/ Fortunately we made it back to the hotel and met with one of the directors here for drinks and Q&A about the city, attractions and tomorrow's events. Following that was dinner where me and my roommate in the hotel Megan and another girl Gabrielle went on an adventure to find an Irish pub so we could experience the famous British Fish and Chips. We arrived and ordered and imagined a delicious 2 or 3 strips of fish with fries BUT what I got was a few fries and an entire fried fish...no joke, the entire body of the fish was fried and took up the entire plate!! And then as a side was mashed peas which looked like fake guacamole that we didn't touch. By this time, all of us had been up 36 hours or more and were becoming quite delirious, we started laughing at anything, there even came a point where we would just look at each other and burst out in laughter...it was ridiculous.
As we were walking back to the hotel, still filled with laughter I thought to myself "I'm HERE, I made it!! And in that moment, I knew that this trip would be one of the best adventures of my life.

Tomorrow: Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Gardens, Abbey Road, Shakespeare's open air theatre and Parliament!!