In England

I made it! Unfortunately, my access to Internet is currently very limited, so I'll be unable to post often until Regent's Park College (that's where I'm going to school, by the way) figures something out for us. On the bright side, longer posts I get to write! On the downside...longer posts for you to read!

We left Kansas City on Wednesday, stopped in Chicago, and then flew a very long way into Heathrow, London. I couldn't sleep on the plane, so I watched a few movies and allowed my thoughts to drift to such important considerations as, "Greenland is really big, and it has a lot of ice," "I like alliteration!" and "On Ugly Betty, how do they do America Ferrera's braces?" It was a very long flight. Of course, I had the lovely Robyn (from Jewell) to keep me company (although she slept, jammy her (jammy is a Britishism I learned. It means "lucky," but only in the sense that "I wanted that but she got it.")).

Upon our arrival in Heathrow, we collected our 111ish pounds worth of luggage, and tried to walk with it. Then, an airport worker came up and was like, “You should put those on a trolley.” Except his accent was so thick, Robyn and I heard “You mpadgshpasdngipontolley.” Or something like that. He had to say it three times before we understood him. Once we figured it out, we got trolleys for our luggage. Have you ever pushed an airport trolley? It's kind of like trying to drive a Greyhound bus using only your nose. Or like playing MarioKart. Robyn and I nearly ran down at least eight people, and I definitely ran over my foot. Then this Scottish man showed us that the trolleys had brakes!

And then, yada yada yada, we ended up at Regent's in Oxford (by yada yada yada, I mean long queues, bus drive, taxi ride, crazy attack pigeons...). There, we joined Erin (also from Jewell), and we met David Harper, the bursar at Regent's. He is very nice and smiles a lot, especially for a British person.

More yada yada yada of food and driving and talking, and there we were at our house! We are on the first floor. Our second floor housemates are Hannah and Andy (married, Andy's a M.Th/pastoral student at Regent's), and we got to have tea with them on Thursday night. Turns out I like tea, who knew? Our third floor housemates are Martin and Bobbie (married with two girls, Martin's in the same program as Andy), and they have invited us for lunch tomorrow. They all seem quite nice.

In two days, I have learned that the British say literally a lot. Except it's "litrelly" and they never mean it. As in, "Joy and Robyn and Erin litrelly got here just this minute," when, in fact, we arrived six hours ago. Americans do this, too (Biden, anyone?), just not as often as the British. The British also don't smile much, with the exception of David Harper and some other Regent's people. Since I am a nice Mid-Westerner, I smile at everyone I meet on the street. The few Bristish people that accidentally smile back at me immediately get this look on their face that says, "Disregard that!! I didn't mean to be friendly!!" Which makes me want to smile at them even more.

So far culture shock hasn't set in, except for the fact that there are no clothing hangers to be found in the UK. Also, I've walked more in two days than I have in the past two years. I thought Jewell was good exercise, but that's nothing compared to here.

I get to talk to my family in ten minutes (yay!), so I'll end this post here. Tune in next time to hear stories of shopping, church, pubs, the Song Game, libraries, and more!