In the beginning...

Welcome to my travel blog! My name's Emily, and even though I'm a student at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, I'm spending the Winter 2009 semester in London with BYU's study abroad program.

I left Los Angeles at 6 o'clock Tuesday evening and spent the next eleven+ hours in a plane without entertainment, not even a book. The "in-flight entertainment system" broke, despite several efforts to reboot it, making an already long flight that much more tedious. Still, we made fairly good time over the Atlantic and landed in Heathrow at 1 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon--right on schedule. After that, it didn't take very long to clear Immigration (I'm on a "student visitor" visa), get my bags, and buy a ticket for the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. One short cab ride later, I was at the BYU London Centre: my new home for the next four months. My room has thirteen other girls in it, meaning seven bunk beds. It'll be an...adventure, that's for sure.


After dinner, a group of very jetlagged girls (myself included) decided to brave the cold and the exhaustion and take the Underground to Kings Cross Station and Piccadilly Circus. Pictures are coming later. :D

The jetlag has been lethal. I woke up at around 3 this morning and wasn't able to get back to sleep. I'm still exhausted, but hopefully that means I'll sleep through the night tonight.

Today, we took a walk around our immediate neighborhood, stopping to pick up supplies at Boots and eat delicious Indian food. Unfortunately, the vindaloo curry that I ordered defeated me. It was too spicy even for my tastes.