May 18

Currently May 18, Midnight (London Flat)

I woke up today at 7am.  Sleep was... not so good.  It's a very rickety bunk-bed, and whenever I moved, it rocked and shaked.  So much for top-bunk advantage.  I went over to the common room, and found that Hannah was already up.  Apparently she had woken up at 3am, and never gotten back to sleep.  She had just finished showering when I got up.  We drank water, and I lightly exercised in a side-room while she studied her Italian.

She explained to me that her phone wasn't charging so I fiddled with it and plugged it in.  Message on phone came up as "Could not charge" - this was the one she had been getting.  I was in the other room warming up when I heard a loud pop, like a balloon bursting.  I popped in, and we find that the sound was her cell-phone charger.  The charger had partly exploded, blowing itself into two charred chunks.  I used a plastic spatula to pull off the end that was still plugged into power strip.  She also blew the fuse, which panicked me a bit when I found that I could not charge my computer no matter where I plugged it in...

After that mess, I took a shower.  Water was... very low pressure.  But it could do any temperature, so it was nice and hot.  I washed off all the airplane shit from me, and scrubbed cleaner with the loofah I brought.  Soap and shampoo and conditioner all worked out.  Still don't like shower gel, though.  Might get some soap one of these days.

After the shower the guys were up.  I sat and used my computer, chatting with my girlfriend, who was still on at that hour - 8am here is midnight where she is.

My flat-mates kept saying they were going to starbucks, but they took the better part of a hour before going.  We went to Starbucks, which I thought was a pity, considering that there were quite a number of other coffee-shops around.  I got hot chocolate, while the other folks got their caffeine fix to varying degrees.

After that we headed over to the EUSA building for our orientation at 10am.  We checked in, and were the first ones there.  We sat around and waited, and the rest of the Manson Place people arrived.  But while it should have started at 10am, it had to wait because all the people living in the far-away housing couldn't make it on time.  Apparently what happened was that the Kings Crossing station got overcrowded and had to be emptied for a bit so that people could get off of trains and subways, rather than facing a solid wall of people wanting to get on.

They got there a bit later, and there was the EUSA presentation, which was quite good.  I was, however, very tired, and I wound up falling asleep during the very last bit of it.  Woke up entirely dis-oriented when everyone started getting up to leave.  As I left I got a paper for the scavenger hunt we were supposed to go on, and found my flat-mates.  We decided to be a group for the Scavenger hunt.

First, however, we had to get groceries.  We went to the South Kensington Underground Station, and I ran ahead to give me time to buy a four-week pass on my Oyster card - a single payment for unlimited usage of the Underground during that time (within zones 1 and 2).  I got a 20% discount from having a student Oyster card.

We took the tube over to High Kensington, got hairdryers, got lots of groceries, and took the tube back (Circle line) to South Kensington to drop them off.  One of the guys took a picture of himself with my camera and uploaded it to EUSA's website so he could get a student Oyster car  We then walked up to Hyde Park for some bits of the scavenger hunt.  My camera was acting weird, and I realised that I had never put the memory card back into the camera.  I was without pictures for the entire day.

We took pictures with the status of King George, supported by commerce, engineering, agriculture, and manufactures, in turn supported by Asia, Africa, America, and Europe.  Very imperialistic statue, perhaps a bit self-aware.  We took pictures with the statue of physical energy, and then trooped over to the lake.  Nice swans.  We found the statue of Peter Pan (Hannah was very excited), and then headed up to another tube station.  We took the tube from there up to King's Crossing.

We looked around for platform 9 3/4s, but found that platforms 9 through 11 required a ticket to enter.  We then continued on to find the pub we were meeting everyone else at for the conclusion of the scavenger hunt at 5pm.  We found it, and sat down there.  The pub stunk, so we went up to the terrace.  Eventually everyone else arrived, including the EUSA people, and we sat around on the Terrace.  The ASU folks went down to the pub proper to get beers, some sort of cocktail, and presumably later some food.  I got a ginger beer, but went back upstairs.  I talked with people and I wound up falling in with a group of folks mostly from Flat 20 (highest up, on the 4th floor... all stairs, those poor folks).  We left the pub without further eating and went to the Kings Crossing station, and found where the segment of wall formerly between platforms 9 and 10 had been placed as a memorial (it's actually off of platform 8, in partly walled-off hallway (now dead-end).  We took pictures there.

Then we headed over to find someone's internship interview place, so that she wouldn't get lost the next day when she tried to find it.  This was smart thinking on her part, as after we took the tube down to London Bridge station, we utterly failed at finding the interview office.  What should have been a 5 minute walk from the station took the better part of half and hour.  We then went to the London Bridge, which caused some confusion - for whatever reason, we had all mixed up London Bridge and Tower Bridge, and gotten to the bridge with totally incorrect pre-conceptions.

After taking photos there, we took the tube up to Piccadilly, and found some place to eat - an italian restuarant.  It was a chain, seeing as there was another one across the street and one near home in South Kensington, and was... pretty decent.  The waiter was very helpful and experienced in helping our group choose a wine, and got me plenty of water to drink.  I ate lasagna again, but this time it was good.  I then ate about half of the dish of one friend, and half of another friend's dish.  100% more food!  I was too stuffed to eat ice-cream afterwards.

We took the tube back to South Kensington, and I led them over to the flats.  I got into my flat, went and changed into my PJs, then took out my computer to write these two posts, inadvertently snubbing my girlfriend.

General notes:  I don't really feel that much kinship with my fellow ASU students.  They are nice people, and I like Hannah in particular, but their interests are so different from mine, and the drinking thing is a bit of a bore.  Drinking and telling stories of stupid things people did while drunk.  I suppose it's my non-beer-goggled perspective?  Hanging out with the blokes from flat 20 was a lot of fun, and I felt a lot more comfortable with them.

I am also worried about how I'm going to fit keeping in touch with my girlfriend during this trip.  My night is her afternoon, which is a perfect time to talk, but I am trying to write daily blog posts... which is also at night.  I'm doing so much stuff there doesn't seem to be enough hours in a day to go do things, write about them, and sleep them off.

Speaking of which, I have been walking a lot.  Regularly foot-sore.  This also means I have been eating way, way more than I normally eat.  Also, sleep is kind of important.  I wonder if I could take the matress off of the bunk and sleep on it on the ground.  Let's see how I sleep on the bunk bed tonight.

Ask questions if you're curious about anything,

-- Wilford