Finally!

Well, we've finally gotten on the internet in our flat so we can begin detailing everything we've done for the past few days... actually, not quite everything. I don't think anyone wants to read about our trip to the grocery store or about what we had for breakfast today.

I'm going to start at the beginning...

Monday September 14, 2009

We caught the bus from Portland to Logan with time to spare. I must admit to feeling fairly down about the whole thing--it's difficult to get up and leave for a whole year. Dragging our huge bags through Logan was a bit tricky, but fortunately we dropped them all off without a hassle and made our way through security, also without hassle. We didn't have to wait long before boarding our plane. It was a monstrous, two-level behemoth with room for who knows how many people. Looking with envy at the first class sleeper seats, we made our way to row 47--not quite as spacious. However, we did discover the perks of riding British Airways. We each got free toothbrushes, socks, and eye masks, along with a mini-TV in the seat in front of us complete with a wide selection of feature films, TV shows, music, news broadcasts, flight information, etc. We both watched an episode of Flight of the Concords, then Luke watched Angels and Demons while I tried to sleep. They fed us fairly yummy food (pasta, chicken, etc) and we took advantage of complimentary drinks (not too much advantage, though...).

Arriving in London was very unique. Heathrow's terminal 5 is not a typical terminal--no big lists of arrivals and departures, no collection of chairs clustered around gates, just hordes of people being herded onto escalators and into rapid transit to and from gates. We made our way through immigration without mishap, although it was very annoying to watch British citizens get rushed through their own special line while the rest of us had to wait for quite a long while. Pleasantly, we did not have to take our shoes off at the security scanners.

It was a good thing that we hadn't bothered to dawdle about the big lounge-like area at the center of terminal 5 because we made it to our flight only 5 minutes before boarding began. Once again demonstrating the unconventional nature of the terminal, we had to wait in a seating area a ways from the gate until a big screen announced that our flight was boarding and we were allowed to proceed to a set of busses which drove us to our flight. The flight was thankfully only half full, so we had a row to ourselves and could watch the countryside as we flew over--even though there were clouds in the way for most of the time!

We landed in Newcastle, which has a pretty tiny airport, and met up with the University welcome team who gave us some snacks and loaded the collection of international students onto busses and drove us into the city. Unfortunately, neither the bus driver nor the student guides were really sure where some of the accommodation buildings were, so we circled around for a while. At two stops, Luke and I had to get out of the bus and reload our luggage (which the driver had unloaded) to save it from being left behind! We finally got to our building, checked in, and--with the help of a friendly student--got all our bags into our room. We are in room 204, which is actually on the third floor. The room is TINY, no doubt about that. At first we were both very... disappointed with the size of the room, but now that we've been here a few days, we're very happy with it. We've got a few problems (a broken window latch, one of the burners on our stove doesn't work, the provided toaster short circuits our apartment when turned on--we don't use it any more), but mostly it's very suitable for our needs. The best thing is that it's very conveniently located. It's a five minute walk to our academic building, there is a grocery store right downstairs, the shopping district is a block a way, our bank is a quick walk down the road, etc. Never having really lived in a city before, we're really enjoying the convenience of everything!

Speaking of walking, we're about to go walk down to the Quayside to check it out and look around, so I'm going to end this for now. Later on, we'll add some info about the rest of what we've been doing lately!

Above are some pictures from our first wanders about the Toon...