Arriving

Here I am in England! I just woke up from what must be the longest amount of time I have ever slept in my life.  I had a flight from Syracuse to Atlanta, a ten hour layover, then a flight from Atlanta to Manchester--where we proceeded to take three trains and a taxi to finally reach our destination.  Needless to say, I was a little exhausted. Note to self: there is neverrr a need for a ten hour layover. Ever. It is a long time, especially when you're by yourself almost the whole time.  I was exhausted then, and had to keep myself awake to make sure nothing happened to my things--though there was absolutely no one in my terminal anyway for a solid seven of those ten hours. Then there was the eight hour flight to Manchester.  I was seated next to an old lady from Yorkshire who was leaving from visiting her daughter in Pawley's Island.  She was very nice, but also very old and I didn't want to make her move if I needed to get up for some reason. Thank goodness I didn't.  We went through a line showing our passports (and apparently getting our Visas, though I didn't need to show the person any proof of my student status, she just stamped my passport) and then proceeded to grab our luggage and book it towards the 'station' where we got railcards and our train tickets to Telford.  We took a first train to a place called Crewe, then another to Shrewsbury, then yet another to Telford Central. From Telford, we took a taxi to the school.  We met with our contact who showed us our rooms. After freshening up and getting a little food, we met with her again and got some paperwork out of the way.  Another one of our contacts met with us afterwards to look over our schedules for classes and to take us to the grocery store to get some food.  Several comments on this: 1) Driving on the wrong side of the road is super strange, no matter how much you think you're prepared for it.  Not only does it seem that the driver is in the passenger seat all the time, but it always seems as if you're going to run into oncoming cars, because you think they're in the same lane as you.  2) No french/catalina dressing in the supermarket I went to. This is the only type of dressing I like on salad, so there will be something done about that. 3) English coins are confusing, but amazing. It makes me wish we had more coins in America.  I have so far collected the two pence, five pence, twenty pence, one pound, and two pound coins. And they are all sorts of beautiful.
That is all I have to report on so far. Classes start Monday.