Arriving in London!

I landed in London after a 7 1/2 hour flight from Chicago. The flight was quite long and I only slept about an hour of it, but I did watch 3 good movies. It was fairly easy to claim our luggage and go through customs. Then we (my friend Chelsea and I) withdrew money. I got 100 pounds of UK money and it cost me $170 US dollars. Then we found our shuttle. I was surprised at all the different people in the air port; there are so many different ethnic groups living in London. I was also surprised to see and smell all the smoke. It seems like everyone smokes here, however it is typically only allowed outside. As soon as we stepped outside we could see that the cars really were driving on the oppostie side of the road and the steering wheel in the shuttle was on the opposite side too. The people here will tell you that they drive on the "correct" side of the road. ha ha. Then I arrived at Vandon House Hotel, my residence for the next 4 months. It is in the middele of the Victoria district. The shuttle driver told us that a 2 bedroom flat (which is what they call an apartment)in this neighborhood costs around 1 million pounds! wow. Our house is nice, but on the inside it is basically like a dorm only we have a kitchen and a lobby with a receptionist. I live on the 1st floor, which here actually is the 2nd because of the ground floor. My room is pretty spacious for a dorm room. I have a full bath in the room, but it only has a tub, however there are public showering places right down the hall. My roomate arrived shortly after me and we got things settled. Afterwards I went for a walking adventure with some of the girls. I soon found out that I live only a few blocks from Buckingham Palace, which of course is where the queen lives. So you could say I live in the queen's neighborhood! I find this to be fantastic. We even saw the guards outside the palace. We walked through St. James Park, across River Thames, and by the Houses of Parliment. All of this was so impressive. The buildings are so unique and intricate. There is so much to see here. I don't think I will ever get bored! However, just by walking around and glancing at a few restaraunts and shops, we quickly understood how expensive everything is. Later that day we had our meeting with our Program Director and all the students. There are 54 of us studying over here. There is a lot of diversity between us as well, although most of us are from the midwest. We had Domino's Pizza for supper. It was interesting to see that all the supreme pizzas had corn on them. I was not very fond of this in particular. After pizza the director, Mark, showed us around our neighborhood a bit. Some interesting things I found out was that Health Care, even for me, is free. Prescriptions also. Indian food is very popular here right now. The difference between a bar and a pub here is what you go there for. Typically one would go to a pub to just have a drink after work and socialize, but one would go to a bar to dance and pick up a date. Then our director took us all to a local pub for a drink. By the way, there are pubs every where here, probably at least 1-2 on every block. He gave us some rules for the pub such as: no tipping, no being rowdy, and explained how to order. Although the legal drinking age is only 18, we all found it surprising that the bartender didn't ID us at all. So I ordered my first legal drink (they call it a pint). One pint cost about $7 and I was not particularly fond of the drink, but it was definitely an experience. After my pub adventure I returned back to the house as I was pretty tired from a long days travel.