London and First Day

Alright, so I left Rochester on the 31st, flew to Washington where I met Jess, another girl from Geneseo who is also going to Rhodes. From there we flew to London. We had a 15 hour layover there, so we checked our baggage into a storage center and were able to get around London for several hours. We hit up all of the basics like Big Ben, Westminster, Tower of London, London Eye. And we also got to do a few things that I never got to over spring break - like platform 9 and 3/4, Tate, and Shakespeare's Globe. It was a bit rough walking around with my full backpack and laptop, but definitely worth it.

So Friday we had an 11 hour flight down to Johannesburg and we landed Saturday morning. I sat next to a guy from Norway who was going to South Africa for a week to practice for hang gliding competitions. We then had a flight to Port Elizabeth. Unfortunately, it was this flight that some of our luggage didn't make it on. Both Jess and I were missing one of our bags. Luckily, my more important suitcase made it, so I've been doing ok without half of my stuff. I should be getting my other one back today finally.

We got picked up from the airport by a shuttle bus from the school. There were about 15 of us students on it for the hour and half bus ride to Rhodes. I sat next to a kid from Zimbabwe who was pretty cool. I might have annoyed him with all my questions haha. We passed a ton of hitchikers along the highway, and he told me it was a pretty common thing to do here. We also passed ostriches! A mom and three babies. And I am loving all of the plants here. I'm trying to find a botany student so that they can teach me about them all.

Once we got to the school, the shuttle driver dropped us off in a back alley of campus, unloaded our suitcases, and drove off. So the couple of us new students were pretty lost and confused. We asked around and were able to find out the place we had to go to registration, so we headed there. But when we got to the building, we found out registration had ended half hour earlier. The girl there then asked us if we had a place to stay for the night!! Luckily Jess and I both knew what houses we were supposed to be living in, so we found our way to those and could stay there even without registering. A couple of the boys though didn't know their houses, so I don't know what happened to them!

My dorm, or res as they call them here, is Milner House. On the outside it looks a lot nicer then Geneseo dorms, but on the inside its pretty much the same. Most everyone here has single rooms, and there are sinks in each room which is pretty nice. I live on the second floor and we have a huge balcony out the front with an awesome view. The girls here are all really nice; there's a girl from France doing an exchange, but since its orientation week the rest are all first year students so far. So its a little weird being with all freshmen, but I don't notice the age difference too much since everything and everyone is so new to me.

Yesterday I was able to do my registration. And we had the "don't do drugs" lecture from the house comm, or RAs. I was also able to get into town and buy a blow dryer and hair straightener. I have been introduced to some of the crazy traditions here, but I have to go take a tour of campus now so I'll get to those in the next entry.

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