england, finally!

I'm here!

After four long (really long) summer months, I have finally arrived in England. It's pretty damn good to be here, I'm not going to lie. The plane ride here was pretty eh. We flew overnight, so at first I was thinking oh, perfect! I always sleep sooo well on planes! Well, no. Barely slept at all. Watched a bit of Brave, was served some questionable pancakes (the wine made up for them), and a few hours and a three and a half hour time change later I was in England! I was pretty surprised how quickly and smoothly we got through security, got our bags and were out of customs. Not sure what gave me the idea that we'd be there for hours but the whole thing probably took less than an hour.

We got on our bus after (which had a picture of a flying nun on it) and cruised to campus on the left side of the road. I swear, the Harlow campus looks like it was taken straight from a picture book. Actually, all of Old Harlow does. The houses and trees all have lush vines crawling up the sides, there's an old graveyard behind our house and the little brick houses have beautiful flower beds in front with tiny iron gates at the end of the gardens. I didn't get many pictures yet but since I'll be here for three more months I figure I might take one or two another day. You know, maybe.

After being shown to our rooms we had a quick campus tour. Like I said, it's beautiful here. We wandered around and then went to Tesco for groceries, where I spent about a half hour looking for oats. They're in the cereal aisle, in case you find yourself in the same predicament I was in.
We got the bus to the mall (basically an outdoor square with a bunch of stores around the edges), where I bought a purse at Primark. Oops. We also found a 99p store and the public library. A successful trip, I'd say.

After returning to the Maltings and unpacking we headed downstairs for dinner. There were a bunch of salads set out, and after a few minutes they opened the door to heaven the kitchen. Hot turkey, potato fries, stuffed peppers, fresh bread, english dressing, cauliflower, carrots, every kind of fruit imaginable, strudels, pastries.. Clearly I won't starve to death here or anything.

Auditions followed dinner in the one room school house just across the road. Let's just say my audition featured me standing on a chair. Not behind the chair like I was instructed. On the chair. I was just a little tired at this point. I went back to my room and promptly fell asleep.

And that was my first day in England.

(For some reason my Rebel won't work, so pictures on this are going to be from my iPhone for the first few days. Just so you know.)