Alright, sorry about the delay for getting this blog up.  I was pretty much without internet while we were at the hotel in london.  So this is what I wrote up so I would remember and to keep you guys in check with what's going on with me.  There's two posts.  

Showed up at the airport at around 4 and sat around waiting for my flight.  Jen found me and then we found Imena.  We weren’t on the flight together but it was fun and restful.  I was able to sleep for about an hour, which is better than I was expecting.  When we arrived in Heathrow we had to wait in line in Customs and it took forever, like more than an hour, it was crazy.  So we went through customs and next thing was picking up our baggage.  Imena, Jen and I were together so we went to the belt where our baggage was supposed to come out and it never did.  Of course we all started panicking and were like how is this possible.  We actually went up to the baggage service and asked them about our baggage and he said ours was on a different belt, for some reason.  So we just walked over to the other belt and picked up our luggage, thank God it was there, that would have been so sad.  We exited the airport and found out AIFS guy and met up with the other three girls that came on a flight from Chicago.  They arrived like 2 hours before us though so were just hanging out and waiting for us.  We went to the hotel, checked in and freshened up.  We met up with the other three girls after we settled and set out to explore London.  That’s when we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was actually pretty cool.  We also went into Harrods, which is insane.  Harrods is so huge I can’t even believe it.  There are a million stores in it and we gave ourselves about an hour to explore Harrods.  Pretty much every name brand you can think of is sold there, there were cars, million dollar pictures, signatures, jerseys, purses, food, everything.  There was also an HP room, which was pretty cool.  Oh, we also ate lunch at a nice restaurant pretty close to our hotel, which was very good food. After Harrods we just went back to the room, because we were exhausted.  I went to a pub with two girls trying to fight the jet lag and not sleep, but after one glass of wine I was so tired I went back to the room and crashed.  I only slept for about an hour because we had a meeting for all the AIFS kids.  We met and just chatted, and James told us about the tube, local bars, food, buses routes, and just general things about London.  After that we met up with a bunch of people and went down to a pub called Stanhope Arm.  We got drinks and an excellent dinner.  Kendall started chatting up with another table about a place to go after the bar closed, at like 11, and they talked with her and us for the rest of the night.  A few of the guys came over and talked with us for most of the night and bought us drinks and such.  Then when the bar closed we went to a club called Havana.  It was a lot of fun, one of the guys bought us all shots, which was funny, and then at around 12:30 I left the club with Jen, Shelby, Kelsey, and Ruth.  We took the bus back which was a comical situation because we didn’t really understand how it worked, nor did we really know where we were, we just followed the directions the girl gave us.  We wound up going in the wrong direction and had to get off and get back on.  Then we ended up just getting off anyways and walked to our hotel because we didn’t know where it would stop next.  By that time it was like 1:30 and we were exhausted and just hit the hay.  I had a ton of fun though, and it was an excellent first day abroad.

            Overall I’m so pleased with my decision to study abroad.  The first day is undoubtly going to be good and it’s not going to sink in that I’m abroad for 5 months until much later, and when I arrive in Granada it’s going to be complete culture shock and I think it’s really going to hit me then.  For now I’m so happy and can’t believe people would want to do this.  The only stinky thing about London right now is that our hotel does not have free wifi so I’ve found myself trying to pick up wifi at random places, museums or anywhere there is a public place.  I managed to finally get an email out though and talk to my sister and dad to let them know I’m okay and in London.