Welcome to Nottingham!

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Hello Everyone!
I'm writing to you from the Nottingham flat, it's about 9:35 London time so it's been a long day (several days.) For those of you unaware here's the scoop. After packing up my stuff and forgetting things (oh, mom--I found those quarters) my parents drove me to the cities to meet up with Erin M, a fellow Notter. We had a huge breakfast at Baker's Square then we went to the Lindberg terminal by way of Humphrey. Baggage check and all the check points went just fine, even with the highened security. Erin and I said good-bye to our folks and went to wait for our 2:55 plane. Loading and take off were right on time, however landing in O'Hare was different. we were about twenty minutes behind, circling the airport when we finally landed at 4:50. Our connecting flight was at K16, we were at H3 and it was on time, meaning it still left at 5. We made it across the airport in 3 mintues (a miracle) and they were thankfully holding the plane for us. After the plane ride went smoothly, Erin and I were able to sit next to each other thanks to a very sweet couple from India. Unfortunately it placed me in the center of the five person row, making getting up fairly difficult.

The flight went well, and we arrived 30 minutes early, we landed at 6:20am on the 12th. When we landed we spent about an hour in "queue" (line) waiting to be let through immigration. Once we were through, we retrived our luggage without problems, and found the Meeting point where we proceeded to sit for the duration of our wait in Heathrow. Once our director found us at about 11, everyone else trickled in shortly after. We found our coach and packed our luggaged in, we were off to Nottingham. I was struck by the uncanny similarity of our drive to our flat with that of the drive from Minneapolis to Decorah, it was very crazy. Granted I only saw about 15 minutes of the drive, I fell asleep almost immediately.

When we arrived at our flat, our tiredness was soon forgotten and we eagerly spread out to explore all the rooms and to unpack. There are five bedrooms upstairs; 3 doubles and 2 triples. There are two bathrooms, a shower room, a guest room that doubles as a music room, a kitchen and pantry, a spacious living and dinning area. Downstairs we have a computer room as well as a comfortable library. It is much better than I was expecting, it's feeling very comfortable. I'm in a double room with Abbi, she's from Iowa. Once we unpacked we went for a short walk around the area as we waited for dinner. Dinner was prepared by Erin, our director's wife, and it was homemade chicken noodle soup, it was just delicious.

After dinner, we went on another walk and we decided that since it was our first night we should all go out for a pint. There are several pubs near us, we decided on the Whitemoor. Since we were all exhausted we went to bed fairly early, the six hour time difference takes a little adjustment period. And thus ended our first evening in Nottingham.

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Photos

A gathering
Here we are getting all our stuff together into our coach

Our drive
The landscape was very similar

Our flat
This is an outside photo of our flat.

My Room
This is before we unpacked everything

Library
A well-stocked library

The Whitemoor
Loving the green lights on the top.

First Night Pint
That's all of us at the Whitemoor. It was a fantastic way to unwind and finish off our day.