Arrival Update

Getting through the airport was uneventful. I was a little worried about how much my bags weighed, but they were checked through without a hitch.

For the most part, the flight was unmemorable. I did watch part of Hellboy (good) and all of Standing Tall (bad). The English breakfast they served was vast; it included 2 sausages, half a tomato, scrambled eggs, blueberry muffin, fresh fruit and yogurt. Most of it actually tasted good too.

I do have to confess to complete nobbery, however. After being served coffee, I immediately dumped a package of what I thought was sugar into my cup. Instead, it turned out to be pepper. After several agonizing minutes of fishing out the ground pepper with a spoon (and many furtive glances in the dire hopes that no one realized what a dumbass I was), I decided to try the coffee.

Cough, cough – and no, I’m not at the doctor’s office. Obviously, fishing out pepper grains is a lot like fishing out coffee grains – totally fucking useless. I drank half the cup.

After arriving at heathrow, I breezed through immigration, secured a cart, and loaded my bags up. The train ride was easy, a straight shot; but the walk from the Underground almost killed me. I definitely took too much stuff! I must have made 5 stops on the 2.5 block walk. I tried to make a phone call in the nastiest phone booth ever (you don’t even want to know what they were ‘advertising’ on the wall), and failed because the phone either wouldn’t accept my money or I was too incompetent to figure out how to put the damn coin in the slot (I’ll go with the latter). Rashly, I decided to just go to the address and hope that I could sneak in the door and find the person who I was supposed to call.

Long story short, I lucked out and got in the door when some Asian dude was going in. But then, I had to wait at a pay phone while a guy named Joachem (Ted’s gotta love that name) talked and talked only to find out after he got off that it only accepts phone cards – no cash or credit card. Uncertain what to do, I ran into Joachem and he showed me where the woman whom I was supposed to meet lives (and I don’t know her name either because I’m an ugly American who can’t seem to remember foreign names). Fortunately, she was coming from outside. I got my key and finally got squared away.

My room is, frankly, trash. I have the rattiest furniture, the mattress is springy and lumpy, and the room smelled…musty when I got in. However, I have a balcony, which most of these rooms don’t have, and I have the sun side, which I’m told by my Columbian friend (who I shamefully can’t remember his name – even though he’s the nicest person I’ve met so far), is the best side of the house because it gets sun in the winter. Once I get to a store and purchase some air fresheners and figure out what to do with the completely useless piece of furniture that virtually blocks the door, I’ll be fine. I lived in Dobbs hall at Emory with another person for crying out loud. (For those of you who don’t know – the rooms are tiny, it’s in the basement, and if it was a federal penal facility, it would be illegal to have two inmates share that space.)