I Survived

Ok, so flying wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. First of all, security was really simple. I thought I was gonna get interrogated and physically abused and such, but none of that happened. It was smooth and orderly and everything checked out alright. Saying good-bye to everyone that was there was the hardest part. It went in succession: first my Grandpa and Grandma McKnight; then Olivia, Angela, and Katie; then last of all my mom and dad. That was all hard enough, and then I had to get on a plane, when I've never been up in the air. It ended up being good though, I sat next to a guy from Indiana who was an opera singer and so had traveled a lot internationally. So we talked before take-off and he gave me some tips. That kinda took my mind off of the actual take-off, which was very easy. It was just like a climbing roller-coaster without the inevitable drop. The flight to Detroit only lasted for about 40 minutes, and was a really good way to get rid of my flight-jitters. I got off the plane alright and then had to walk roughly 10 miles to my next gate (ok, it wasn't 10 miles, but it was a long way). I then sat and waited for Lisa who I was supposed to meet up with. She didn't show and I kept looking, but then they started boarding about 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave, which was odd because in Indy we boarded about 20 minutes before we were supposed to leave. I was worried that I had missed her, but she's flown a lot before so I thought that she would be ok. The flight boarded and we had to wait for the 45 minutes until take-off. We left and it was dark so even though I was beside a window, I really couldn't see anything, which was a shame. It was a little different since the plane was bigger, but for the most part it was just as smooth. During the flight, I did some of my Greek homework while waiting for my meal and then afterwards too for a little while. Speaking of meal, I was so starved by the time my meal came around that I ate the salad that came with it. I never eat salad; too much leafiness. But I ate it because I was that hungry. After I had done some more of my homework, I decided that I would try the bathroom, which was one of the more amazing experiences I've had in my life; watching the water get sucked down in a faster-than-normal rate of speed. Then I thought I would try to sleep a little, which really didn't work. I slept for maybe an hour at most, and fast-forwarding a little I really don't feel that bad. I'm sure I'll sleep alright tonight though. When I woke up it was light out and so I decided to watch our progress on the video screen in the headrest in front of me. It had a sattelite image of the earth and our plane's position. It was cool to see on the map that we should be over Ireland and I looked out the window and there was land. We landed and I was glad that we didn't recreate the airplane scene from Superman Returns, but I was apprehensive about the whole customs-business. It took me about an hour to get through the line to show my passport to get in. I then found my luggage merry-go-round-thing and got my luggage right away. I then thought that I was supposed to wait for Brandon, Dani and Shannon, 3 of my friends who I was gonna meet up with. I waited at their baggage claim for probably 45 minutes before I asked someone if their flight had come in yet. I found out that it already had, so I went out into the greeting area and immediately saw Brandon. We all met up and I explained that I hadn't met up with Lisa and that I didn't know where she was. They said that another early-arrival Harlaxton student had said that she had seen me on the plane but she didn't see Lisa. So we figured that her flight had been delayed so that we went ahead and left the airport. We called a small local hotel and got two rooms for the 4 of us. Our rooms are roughly the size of large closets, so that is fun. We dropped all of our stuff of in our rooms and then went out to explore the town that we were close to. We walked around for a while and then decided that we were thirsty so we stopped into a restaurant to get Cokes. That was interesting becuase Brandon found out the hard way that British money changes fairly often and they won't take the old stuff. They will exchange it at the banks for the new form, but they will not take the old stuff as real currency. Pretty messed up. After walking around a little while longer, we decided to stop at an old church that we had seen on our way to the hotel. It was really cool because not only was the church old but it had an old cemetary around it. After checking that out for a while we decided to go back to our rooms. At that point we basically just vegged out and watched TV. Turns out that the British have really funny commercials; I'm not sure if they have this in the States but we saw a commercial for a Barbie that had a dog the had poop drop out when you lifted its' tail. I couldn't get good signal for the wireless-internet in my room, so just a little while ago I decided to come down to the lobby to check the wireless connection, which turned out to work, which is how I typed this. I also found out that Lisa had been delayed in Michigan so that she won't be joining us unitl tomorrow. Well, my battery is going dead as I have no adapter for the different electrical system over here (although I will get one soon). I'll try to figure out a way to post the pictures that I took today. Well, so far so good, and there's more yet to come.