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Published: October 1st 2007
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My Room
I'm standing with my back against the door, so what you see is what you get. That's the tiny wardrobe on the right-all my clothes somehow fit in there, but there's only two drawers, so I'm not sure how well the shelves are going to work. Well, here I am, arrived at my dorm all safe and sound (although a little worse for the wear). I spent Friday night at my dance teacher's house, which was aboslutely wonderful, and it made me feel much better that Brian wouldn't be able to see me off. Saturday, my teacher and I spent quite a bit of time chatting, doing a little dance, and generally just trying to relax before my long flight. Her husband dropped me off at the train station, where I caught the New Jersey transit train to Newark. It is a miracle that, with the amount of stuff I had, I managed to get through the airport and to my plane just fine. I have:
1. a 50+ lb. rolling bag
2. a 25 lb. touring backpack
3. a 20 lb. laptop bag (which also played host to several pairs of shoes, and some of the literally hundreds of pages of reading I have to start)
4. a (comparatively light) camera bag, and
5. my overstuffed purse that is so full it will no longer close.
So Dad splurged with his frequent flier miles when he bought my ticket and I got to ride in
My Bed
I love my bedding-and they provided the pillow and duvet! BusinessFirst. It was AMAAAAAAAZING! I even got one of those chic little toiletry kits, and the seat lay down to almost fully flat. It was absolutely lovely.
When I got to the UK airport to go through immigration, I was asked if I had chest X-Rays. It may seem like an odd request, but as I'm here on a student visa, I get access to the free National Health System, and they wanted to make sure I didn't have TB. So they sent me down the hall to have an interview with the NHS airport representative, who (luckily) told me that as I was from the US, they were quite sure I did not have TB, and that I could proceed through immigration. I snagged my bags (which were the first out since I got to have the luggage priorty tag on them), grabbed a trolley and began to make my way into central London.
Here is where the troubles began. It was almost comical. Almost.
I mangaged to grab the only trolly in the entire bunch that refused to go forward. It only wanted to go sideways, and if you tried to push it forward it
My Window
It was a beautiful, uncharactaristic day for London. Today, the city has returned to its usual self, and it is raining. veered off to the left, and invariably careened toward the most delicate thing within smashing distance (including a nice old lady). Finally I figured out that if you pointed the front toward the right at an angle, it went more or less straight, but that meant that I had to side step my way through the entire airport. While I was on the interterminal transfer train I accidentally let go of the brake, ran the trolley into someone, and knocked off half my stuff. I did manage to get on the train, however, for the 45 minute ride into central London, where I was able to plop down and relax for a bit.
So I thought I was all clever finding a train that went from Gatwick directly to King's Cross Station, which is quite close to my dorm, but it turned out that it did not go to the regular King's Cross, but rather to King's Cross Thameslink, which is a considerably smaller station. With no elevator. Or escalator. And three flights of stairs. Luckily an older American guy took pity on my and hauled my 50 lb. giant up the stairs for me. From there, pausing every
My sink
Though I have to go down the hall for the toilet and shower, every room in Passfield has their own sink! In the first picture, it's hidden behind the wardrobe. few steps because I had so much stuff, I found the King's Cross taxi rank, and took one of those lovely black cabs (all my stuff fit so easily because they're so roomy in the back) directly to the front door of Passfield Hall, where I arrived at approximately 9 a.m.
Unfortunately, Passfield operates as a bed-and-breakfast when it's not term time, so some one was occupying my room, and it wouldn't be available until 2 p.m. I left my luggage in a spare room, and ran into another General Course (the term for those of us studying abroad at LSE) student just outside the dorm. She and I went for breakfast, and when we got back we registered for our rooms and got our respective keys. They had also told her she couldn't move in until 2 p.m., but the cleaning staff was already done with her room, so she was able to put her stuff in. Then she and I and a friend of hers from Vassar (both girls' home school is Vassar) went shopping on Oxford St. I don't think they were quite prepared for all the walking, and I think they weren't too fond of me for not making it clearer how much walking there would be. However, in the end I got all my bedding and towels and some hangers, and I've only got a few more things to get for the room (like, say, a laundry hamper).
Which brings me to my room. It's incredibly small, and on the top floor (4th floor by the American way of reckoning, 3rd floor British) and the lift only comes to one floor below mine, as the building is on the historical register and putting the lift all the way to the top would have changed the exterior of the building, which isn't allowed. I had to wrangle two guys on my hall to help me get the giant up the last flight of stairs. One room down from me is a lovely girl from Mumbai named Shweta, who just finished her Masters in Mathematics from Cambridge (holy crap!) and is getting a second Masters in Decision Theory. In the other direction is a nice Chinese-British guy who is also getting a Masters in some math-related field who went to the University of Bath for undergrad, and even further down the hall is another General Course student originally from China, but going to school in Los Angeles.
Well, as I was fast asleep I missed dinner last night, and having not eaten since the morning before on the plane, I woke up this morning feeling a little peaked, so I went to scope out the vending machine situation. It was mostly empty, but what I did see was that the vending machine calls itself a corner store and sells everything from the usual candy to pints of milk to microwaveable hamburgers! I didn't have enough change for the burger though (and since everything else was sold out but none of the burgers had sold yet I guessed they probably weren't too appetizing), I headed over to our local grocery store, which one of the girls from Vassar and I had discovered yesterday morning. It seems that regular grocery stores here are more like Central Market than they are standard US grocery stores (and that includes the prices!). There were lots of delicious looking prepared foods, and gorgeous veggies, a huge wine selection (which I can legally avail myself of--though I don't drink very often as it is), and tons and tons of incredible looking frozen meals and fresh pastas and sauces. I bought some pasta and a cheap saucepan and once I finish with this entry I'm going to try out the kitchen for my floor, which happens to be right across the hall, less than two steps from my door. Also nearby are the showers/toilets, which are coed by have lockable stalls with full-length doors, offering plenty of privacy. The dorm was also recently renovated (last year was the year it reopened), so everything is clean and modern. I actually really like it, other than the smallness of my room. That isn't even so bad, really (it's cozy!), but there is very little storage space, and as we all know, I have a lot of clothes.
Today is my first official LSE thing-undergraduate induction to the school! So I'm going to pop over to the campus in a few (it's about a 20 minute walk), and I'll report back on how things are going in the next day or two. Until then, enjoy the pictures of my dorm. This is before I unpacked...so it's still quite clean. Really, it's quite clean now too, but I'm not sure how long it will stay that way.
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mina
non-member comment
Congrats!
Actually, Jen--if you weren't the person going through the experience and just reading about it, it is QUITE comical. Glad you made it! M