The Arrival (part 2)

Our intrepid heroine made it through Immigration without a hitch; I presented my papers, told them the details of my study program, and was stamped through. The luggage was among the first to come out; at this point I realized I had been deceived. We were told to meet the group in Terminal 3 and I was in Terminal 1, but we had been given the impression that it was a quick and easy walk. It wasn't, it was a long meandering walk through hallways and up ramps and I had my luggage. Ugh.

Anyway, the group was found, the bus was boarded, the drive was made. It was a scenic drive through Central London along the river. We are not in Central London, however, we are in the East End.

The East End is traditionally the arrival point for immigration in London. Also, one of the poorer parts of the city, although we're constantly told it's on the up and up.

Queen Mary is one of the very few campus-based universities of London. I live in Pooley House, the largest residence hall and I think one of the newer ones.

I'm at the far end of the building from that picture, though. They don't take pictures of that end because it doesn't look as cool.

There's a story behind the bedding. Okay, so when we were getting set up with registration, one of the girls working was like "oh, go to this store, it has good supplies for cheap" and I promptly forgot the name of the place, but figured it couldn't be that far and I knew what street it was on. Come nightfall and I go on my expedition, but I don't know the place, so I walked about twenty minutes in one direction and couldn't find it. Walked back, went the other way, still couldn't find it. By this point it's raining. And I couldn't look it up, because there was no wi-fi, because companies still want you to sign up with them if you want their wi-fi even though it's 2014 and why is that still a thing.

The only place I did have internet was on campus, so I looped back, looked up 'places to get bedding' on my phone, and recognized the name of the place the girl had mentioned--Argos. It was twice as far as I'd gone originally. So I went off once more, found the damn place, bought the bedding, caught a bus back to campus and finally, 30 hours after waking up in NY on Wednesday morning, I went to bed at 9PM Thursday night.