Day One: Alex Needs Assistance

Greetings from Bri'ain! I can't fully convey the wonderful glottal stop that one hear when a Bri'ish person says their nationality but it is truly delightful! The past few hours have been absolute madness - I honestly can't figure out how long I've been up, what meal I need to eat, and what friggin time it is. Here's how I broke it down - right now, it's about 12 noon from the place I left from, but it's 6pm here in London, and it feels about midnight. Plus, I never really slept on the plane, so it still feels like Tuesday and not Wednesday, but I digress. So far, London is incredible. Besides the lack of sleep, flying over was great - I watched Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which is cloudy with a chance of maybe becoming my favorite movie ever. Also watched Zombieland, a personal favorite.

So we land in the middle of some snow in London, which meant that we hovered around the airport for an extra hour and then had to wait for planes to get de-iced in order to get off at our gate. We were a bit late, but excited enough that it didn't matter. A big group of people I knew (and people they knew, etc.) gathered our luggage and got on the shuttle to take us to NYU London, which lasted about an hour. The road signs here are AMAZING.

-Yield = Give Way
-Merge = Rejoin the Carriageway
-Detour = Alternate Route Due to Refurbishment

We arrived at NIDO, our dorm, and went through a ridiculously long sign in process that didn't include lunch. Morgan and I moved into our room that was rather small but cozy, I think it'll be nice. We unpacked and then I took a much-neeeded shower - I had about as much grease in my hair as Pauly D. Shower felt great, we then met back up with the group and did some walking around the area.

First off, the obligatory photo of London's infamous Underground aka "The Tube". Every tourist is required to take one, and I hold tightly to my tourist cliches. Then, we went to King's Cross Station and St. Pancras Terminal, two massive train stations that were absolutely incredible to see.

Of course, anyone with a heart and two eyes knows that King's Cross Station is the home of Platform Nine and Three Quarters, which we of course took a disgusting amount of pictures of. Morgan took the one of me in front of it, so expect it later once he uploads his - here is a perfectly decent picture of it without me however, you could probably search for "Platform 9 and 3/4" on Google Image and get the exact same picture, but screw it, I'm in London dammit!

After that we went and got international cell phones, I have a sweet ass Nokia phone that, yes, 2003 called and wants back, but whatevs, it has TEXT MESSAGING! And FM RADIO! And (get this omg omg omg) A FLASHLIGHT! Damn technology, why you so good to me? If you want to text me sweet nothings, I receive them for free, so just hit up 0044-7900-230845. Please kiss me thru the phone regularly, my peoples. After that, we went to a grocery store to buy some wine, where I needed ... assistance. Self-check outs in Britain aren't cool like they are back home, they're confusing and have too many slots for credit cards and make weird beeping noises and I had to have the guy help me like 5 times. I'm also semi-delirious from lack of sleep, so even simple activities are a bit taxing on the ole brain. Tonight we are going to enjoy some wine, then head out to our first pub for dinner and our Quest for the Best Beer in Britain. Then.... sleeeeeeeeeeep. See you all in my dreams kiddos - expect more updates tomorrow =D