Well, it’s official, I have now been in London for just over 24 hours. And I have to say it’s not what I was expecting. My first day was a bit rough. I landed in London at 11:30 a.m., and after navigating the huge airport, I found the carousel my luggage was supposed to be on, however, after standing and watching the same pieces of luggage come around three times, I finally accepted that mine was not here. So, I made my way to the line, or queue as they say here, and proceeded to wait and hour and a half to speak to the attendant, and of course once it was finally my turn it took about five minutes to file my claim.
Once that was done, I made my way to the pickup location for the University arranged bus and was so relieved when I finally saw the smiling staff in the blue t-shirts, just as promised. However, bad news quickly followed, the bus had just left so I would have to wait about another hour for the next one. So I sat down and began browsing facebook to kill time, soon, another student had arrived, an equally looking frazzled girl who was introduced to me by the staff. She sat down beside me and we began chatting, as it turned out, her luggage had been lost as well and we began discussing how strange that was because we were coming from completely different places on entirely different airlines, but what can I say some coincidences have good cause.
Once we finally got to the university (nearly four hours later), I was starving and tired. After checking in to my room, my newfound friend and I went to the cafeteria to get dinner (which was completely awful) and then returned to our rooms to rest. As it turned out, I was much too excited and cold to sleep and I didn’t currently have any bedding so I decided to venture to the nearby mall. On my way there, I ran into another acquaintance from the bus and we went together. At the mall, we found a store, Primark, to buy bedding at and, my naïve self thought “oh it’s not that cold, you don’t need a duvet, this soft fuzzy blanket will be just fine”, oh how wrong I was. That night was the coldest night I’ve ever spent, I ended up moving my mattress to the floor, half under my desk so that I could lay by the radiator (the only source of heat in my room). Needless to say, I ventured back to the mall this afternoon to buy a duvet as well as a couple of shirts, as my luggage still has not arrived.
Despite the unfortunate circumstances of my arrival, I have been able to make a few friends and I am remaining optimistic that tomorrow will go more smoothly and tonight will be much warmer with my new duvet.