oh.. this place is amazing.

I am in complete love with this town and I have hardly been here any time at all! I must admit that my travel experience here was not the best and that I had several times of complete panic in the Heathrow airport. It was difficult cause my travel instructions told me to take the "Airbus" which is a busline that would take me directly to where I needed to go. However, I got to the info desk and the lady just tells me simply that it doesn't exist anymore. Oh.. I freaked out. I made my way over to a pay phone an tied to get out my information for my calling card that my mom gave me but then realized that there was no international number to use.. only an 800 number to use within the states. At this point, I suppose I looked rather distressed as my face was starting to feel flushed and hot, so this lady stopped and asked me if I was alright. At that point, I basically melted down and started crying. Here I am in a completely new country, exhausted from a sleepless night of travel, and carrying way too much luggage.. and I have no way of getting to my accomodations. It was also about 7:00am England time which I wasn't used to so the office of my program wasn't open yet. I finally was able to get someone to help me and I was able to find a cab, which was crazy expensive at 40 pounds (almost like $75) for the journey to my new home, but by that point, I just wanted to get to where I was going, without having to navigate or worry about all my luggage staying with me.
Once I got to the house, I was informed that my room was on the very top of the building since I had been given a single room and that there was no elevator (or lift as they call it over here). I proceeded to carry my three suitcases and my duffel bag up what seemed like a million and a half stairs before reaching the fourth floor of the building and crashing onto my unmade bed for the next several hours.
We were escorted later in the evening to this local restaurant where we were all served a traditional English dinner. I am not sure exactly what it was called, but it was like an English version of a chicken pot pie or something. I wasn't the biggest fan of the sauce that was used in it.. but overall it was alright. For dessert, we had a spongecake with raisins in it and a custard on top.. it was amazing. I was glad because it wasn't too incredibly sweet but it was enough of a sweet taste for me to be satisfied after dinner. We then made our way back to the house to cras for the night.

Today, we had lots of orientation meetings at the house throughout the day, beginning with a meeting about the basic differences between America and the UK. We had a short break before having another meeting where we were given a talk by this woman who was dressed in a black suit that was completely covered in pearly buttons and other "flare-like" buttons. She was called a pearly queen and is someone who goes around and makes money for all sorts of charities. It was neat to get to hear about her and her work, but it also seemed like she took more pride in all of the pictures she had with celebrities to show us than the actual work she did. After we met with her, we recessed for lunch and then we came back to have a personal safety meeting with a former London police officer. He was quite amusing and enjoyed getting us all involved by doing little acting parts and asking us questions about safety.
After all the talks were over, I came back up to room to change and to freshen up a bit, and then two of the other dancers, Sara and Emily, and I went to eat dinner. We were originally looking for this well-known place that serves fish'n'chips but it ended up being closed so we went to this highly recommended pizza place. I got the American pizza which comes with pepperoni on it. One word.. amazing. It was seriously so fabulous and I enjoyed it so much. Even more than the pizza, though, were the other items I ordered there, which included the Bruschetta and the Gelato. The Bruschetta was this piece of wam, baked bread which had fresh pesto, onions and tomatoes on top. It was nothing short of fabulous. Then, after pizza, I got a chocolate gelato which was equally as good. I ended up having to share that, though as I was getting rather full from all the other food!

That's it for now - more later! Cheers :) mk