Now That I'm All Settled . . .

I’m writing my first blog post from Egham, England, where I’m studying at Royal Holloway. This is especially exciting for me because this means that I finally have internet in my room. The lack of internet is one of the many things that formed the series of unfortunate events that has constituted my trip to England. But don’t have the wrong impression: I’ve been enjoying myself and am very glad that I decided to come.
There is a whole story about our trip from Houston to Heathrow, but it was so frustrating I don’t know that I want to type it because I’ve told it many times already. Suffice it to say that we missed the group flight from JFK, had to spend the night in Charlotte, NC, and arrived in Heathrow the day after we were supposed to.
Royal Holloway has been great so far. I have few complaints, which I will describe in a future post. Almost none of the British students are here yet, so I’ve been sticking with the Americans from my program: Rebecca Dietz, Charles, Leah, and Kevin.
This post is long already, so I will post what I typed out yesterday and fill in all the previous stuff later.

Royal Holloway, Day 1, January 8, 2009
This morning we had breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and boarded a bus that drove us to Royal Holloway. The campus is just minutes from downtown Egham, which sits at the bottom of the hill. The first thing one sees upon entering is the Founder’s Building, which is the most beautiful building on campus. It is made of red brick and is accented with gray stone, exactly in the type of style that an American such as myself would expect of an English university.
We had some difficulty checking in (paperwork), especially Charles, but we were soon headed to our rooms. I have a temporary swipe card until I receive my student ID. As Jessica, one of the IFSA-Butler girls, was helping me to my room, my next door neighbor, an American girl, came out to say hello.
I really like my room: I have a double bed, a bathroom to myself, and plenty of storage space with a set of shelves, a closet unit with shelves and space for hanging clothes, and space under the bed (for this, there are squarish panels under the mattress that you pull up). I was unpacked in under an hour, I believe, and I arranged to meet everyone to find some lunch and go shopping in Egham. We ended up eating in the Founder’s building and then we eventually found the bus stop just outside the campus. It was £1.30 to ride into Egham. After some wandering (this happens quite a lot, actually) we found Tesco’s, which is a smallish grocery store. I looked for the bare essentials: soap, shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, bread, jam, Nutella, and other sundry items. You might laugh at the Nutella, but peanut butter is expensive and I needed some kind of spread to go on the bread. I plan to go back for detergent and things like that. Only Charles and I needed bed sheets, so the others went back on the bus while he and I hunted for a store that sold them. After asking for directions twice (the first time we went into a neat resale shop that I would like to visit again), we found the M&Co, which looked like just a clothing store from the street. I bought a towel, hand cloth, wash cloth, a “fitted sheet” and a pillowcase.
Then Charles and I had the fun task of finding the bus stop. We walked down one part of the street, asked for directions, searched some more and finally found it across a busy street. This whole process took about 20 minutes. We ended up missing a bus because I thought that it was the wrong one. In consequence, we stood there for about 45 minutes as the sun was setting and as it was getting colder. We made it back without incident.
I partially unpacked groceries, looked for a pair of scissors from my American neighbor, and explored the kitchen. It is spacious and stocked with food from the other flat residents. There is a slight smell as you walk in, and I discovered that this probably came from the refrigerators (there are two) because they are dirty. I really want to clean them.