Ready for takeoff

The day of my flight was exactly as terrible as I thought it was. It was horrible waiting around all day for the taxi to pick us up at 2:30. I had such conflicting emotions. I was so excited to finally get to go to England. I have been dreaming about it since I found out I got accepted back in February.  On the other hand I was leaving my family, my friends and the only life I had ever known.

 We got to the airport around 3 and checked all my baggage. I am happy to announce that both my bags were both under 50 pounds. We sat around the airport and got something to eat. At 4 I had to go to security so I had to say my goodbyes. I was doing okay and then my dad gave me a big hug and I lost it. I balled my eyes out. The people around us probably thought I  was crazy. My brother hugged me and told me corny words of wisdom like “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll end up among the stars”. Thanks Jack really appreciate it. My mom was the worst. I’ve always had an amazing relationship with my mom. She is very much my best friend and having to say good bye was awful.  I was still crying a but while I went through security. As I went through I could see my family watching me, I couldn’t look at them because if I did the tears would come again.

I found my gate and then walked around the terminal for a bit. I went and got my favorite celebrity gossip magazines for the flight. I also went into the duty free shops and tried out a bunch of makeup.  My flight boarded at 4:50 and I found my seat and settled in.

I have come leaps and bounds with my fear of flying. After having to fly so much in the past few years I think I’ve just gotten used to it. The flight went by pretty quickly. Half way through the sound on the tv on the back of the seats went out, so I just listened to music and read some of my magazines. 

I got to Dublin and immediately realized that my phone wasn’t getting any reception. I have international calling so theoretically it should work. I called my parents on pay phone to tell them I’ve arrived safely and that my phone wasn’t working. My flight to Manchester took off at 6:30 and I was finally making it the England! Woo hoo! Nothing notable on that flight since it was rather short. But of course being me it wasn’t all that uneventful. There was a bus that took us from the plane to the terminal to get my luggage. It was pretty packed so I didn’t have any place to sit or to hold on to. The bus started moving and as it turned the first corner I immediately fell into three British old business men. My first introduction to British people and I fall. Also, because my backpack was so large ,I smacked another man in the face with it. Awesome.

I got my luggage no problem and made my way to the arrivals area. What surprised me was that I didn’t have to go through customs or border patrol or anything. I just grabbed my luggage and walked out.

I met the people from Sheffield that were picking me up. They had big signs that said University of Sheffield on them so they were hard to miss. After waiting about 2 hours for everyone else to arrive  we boarded the bus and made our way to Sheffield. It’s about an hour and half drive to Sheffield from Manchester. At first England didn’t look much different than Rochester, but as we got into the country side it really began to hit me that I was in fact aboard.  This country is beautiful,  all rolling hills and stone walls. I saw a ton of sheep and little cobble stone houses.

We arrived in Sheffield and started to go through registration. I got my room keys and all my information packets.  It turns out that I can actually open a bank account here pretty easily which I didn’t think I could. They had a bunch of local banks there to talk to us about signing up for an account.

After eating my bagged lunch, and the driest chicken sandwich I have ever had, I grabbed my bags and moved into my room for the week. I spent a good hour in my room kind of decompressing. I read through all the information they gave me and washed up a bit. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put on a fresh face of makeup and felt 10x better.

I went back to the main hall and started to meet and hang out with people.  The amount of countries represented here is astounding. I met a ton of people from China, Japan, all around Europe and South East Asia. I have yet to meet another American but I am told there are about 7 or 8 of us. I think I’ve answered the question “ Where are you from?” about a million times.  After dinner, and really delicious cheese cake, a few people and I walked around the area for a bit. The houses here are so cute, stone with little walls and ivy, some even have little towers.  I want to live in one, they’re adorable. We returned to the main hall and I just sat and talked with a bunch of people.

At around 9 I got really tiered and went back to my room. I took a much needed shower and plugged in my computer to check my email. To my surprise I couldn’t get the internet to work. Turns out I had never done a part of my pre-registation stuff that would give me acess to the internet. So I have to go to what’s called the Information commons and register. I went to bed around 10pm.