Salutations from London

Just iSarah here right now. I believe Debs is planning on posting after she gets out of the shower. So we arrived safely in London after a ten hour flight (business class--its uber fancy and tasty *schlurp*). The seats reclined hardcore and there were even convenient foot rests. I didn't sleep very much, so at about noon London time, I started getting really groggy. I lived in that loopy state of sleep-deprived euphoria for all of a half hour before I got really cranky and irritable. My deepest apologies to those who had to put up with me that day. I tried to avoid the worst of it by being a hermit and going to be prior to 7.30. I woke up this morning a quarter till five, feeling rejuvenated and well rested.

Our flat is really awesome (save for the fact that its up six million flights of stairs. On the bright side, at least, we'll all have really trimmed legs by the end of the six weeks). We live in this cool old building across the street from Hyde Park. You can see the trees from our front window. There are six bedrooms in a hall that never seems to end (that is, until it ends at bedroom F). It's windy and has several stairs and you need the stamina of a long distance runner to get from the front lobby one the ground floor to our bedroom (letter E) in the back hallway. It's an adeventure, let me tell you. Debbie and I plan on filming the whole trek for you eventually so you can appreciate it.

Around the corner from our flat is the house where Winston Churchill was born and died, which is across the street from where Virginia Woolf once lived. If we had been here a hundred years ago, we would have been hobnobbing with some pretty cool people.

Down the street from our flat is a place called Goat Tavern, which is just a shop down from Giraffe. I don't know what they have in Giraffe, but I think its a kind of funny name for a place.

Our first day here was devoted to running essential errands, namely getting AC adapters so we could access our beloved interweb. Of course, at first we could only find one kind which had America/Austrailia written at the top, so we figured that was what we needed. Once we got back to the flat (and after I forced the package open with a kitchen knife because I don't think we own scissors) we discovered they were adapters for UK plugs to use outside the UK, not for outside the UK plugs to use in the UK. We treked down to Boots (a walgreens-ish place) and thankfully the kind old lady behind the desk let me exchange my mutilated package for the one I needed. I bet she was probably thinking angry things at me, though.

Today was our first day of classes, which (I think) will go well. After class, though, we had time to do whatever we felt like, so we went and had adventures. Debbie and I parted ways (don't worry Mother Henderson and Mama Talley, we were still in groups with girls in our flat, just no longer together). Debs went down to Picadilie (I think I just butchered that spelling) Circus and I went to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.

Now, if you've ever been to Westminster, you'll know that it's huge. Absolutely, mind-numbling big. And old. I really enjoyed being able to touch all the stone work as I walked by, simply because it's so old. The place where my hand normally ran past on the walls was smoother and worn down, which makes me wonder how many other people throughout the last I-don't-know-how-many-years ran their hand along the same patch of wall. Ariel (one of the girls from bedroom F) and I had fun poking around all the tombs and were both a little disconcerted at the idea of walking on top of dead people. I tried to translate the Latin inscriptions that I saw everywhere (and by everywhere I mean on about half the tomb markers) but studying Latin poetry doesn't really prepare you to translate grave epithets. In some I managed to get the key points, gleening that certain dead people were particularly pious (pietate) or eager/zealous/studious (studii) and there were a lot of 'here lies' (hic jacet), but beyond that, I didn't get much. I would have loved to take pictures, but you're not supposed to take pictures inside the Abbey--which does make sense, considering it is a church. There were a bunch of preists and/or monks walking around in robe like garb, which of course brought to mind Harry Potter. Especially around the courtyard in the cloisters, which looks like a set from the Harry Potter movies.

Speaking of Harry Potter, whilst getting to the tube platforms, I was reminded of dear Harry. I was swiping my travel card (id est tube pass) and it brought images of the fifth Harry Potter movie (Harry and Mr Weasley trying to get on the tube to get to the Ministry and poor Mr Weasley keeps just smacking the thing, not realizing he has to swipe anything etc etc) to mind and needless to say, I find getting on and off the tube a lot more entertaining now. Not to mention, the floor says "mind the gap" which always reminds me of Sister So-and-so's talk from last relief society conference.

I haven't yet gotten the hang of looking the right way before I cross the street, so I usually suffice for looking both ways (even on the one way streets) because I am rather adverse to the idea of being hit by a truck. Or a large red bus. Most of the cross walks are at the middle of streets, rather than at the corners (weird). And I don't often here English being spoken on the streets. I've heard a lot of French, some German, a smattering to slavic languages, and an assortment of Asian languages. I would like to hear more English because those accents are just so darn attractive. Ah well.

Tomorrow we're going to see our first show and on Saturday we're going to see Macbeth at the Globe Theater. We'll be groundlings for this show, which should be . . . interesting.

I'll post some pictures later when I'm not quite so tired.

Love you all.
Kiss Kiss.
(and to Tawny: ELBOWS)