My last night in Brentwood I was, of course, doing mad packing. I tend to procrastinate to the extreme, so I had the beginning of some piles but nothing was actually in a suitcase until later in the evening. What I've found about packing for England however is it's much easier than packing for LA. All you have to worry about is clothes, shoes, adapters, toiletries, and cords for everything. Those are the main items. Plus any information your college has sent you, passport, visa, some currency, etc. Anyway, Nicole came to keep me company as I packed, which made it go by quicker. I finally reached the point where you just can't pack any more because you still need the stuff for the next day, so we chilled (aka Nicole shows me the pilot of Point Pleasant and I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of it) and then she left me around 1ish, and I fell asleep around 1:30 am.
Wednesday, my last day, was going to be full of packing and errands--which I knew ahead of time, so I woke up at 7:30 to accomplish everything. A very bleary-eyed me stumbled downstairs and dragged her mother for a last cup of Brentwood Starbucks, then resumed packing. After packing was done came cleaning. Part of my Sussex wardrobe includes fuzzy sweaters which shed. A ton. So, needless to say, the carpet needed to be vacuumed. And if that was going to be vacuumed, why not the bathroom floor too? And then the clean bathroom floor didn't gel with the not-so-clean counter top and mirror, so those had to get cleaned too. Then came organizing all my Sussex documentation, finalizing packing, running errands to REI and the bank, then back home to leave for the airport.
Me and all my luggage at the airport!
It's not really that much for 6 months...
Flight 1 departed at 3:20 pm for Baltimore. Which meant we left the house around 1:50. The parentals (side note: met someone today who also calls them "parental units!") were kind enough to let Andrew skip the end of school, so the whole family saw me off at the airport! Security was uneventful, waiting for the plane was uneventful, boarding the full plane was uneventful. What was eventful, you might ask? The descent to Baltimore. I don't know what kind of weather patterns the Baltimore area was having Wednesday night, but it was the worst flying conditions. We had turbulence. Major turbulence. If you've ever been in this kind of turbulence, you would never ever call those small bumps on a flight "turbulence." Or maybe this just went so far beyond turbulence. In one word: a rollercoaster. It felt like being on a rollercoaster. More specifically, the Mulholland Drive rollercoaster at Disneyland. For anyone who hasn't been on it, it's sudden turns, sharp rises and drops...basically a nightmare. So imagine that without a track, so you can't anticipate when the plane with jar left, jar right, suddenly dip up or down. My head got slammed into the window, my butt left the seat, many hands were gripping the headrests in front of them. My favorite, however, was the black church meeting going on in the back rows. The whole episode sounded like a revivalist meeting. One black woman is screaming and shrieking the whole time, yelling, "Oh please Lord Jesus, help us Lord Jesus!" and other such things. Then a black man chimes in, exclaiming, "Everyone on this plane knows who Jesus is. Save 'em Lord, save 'em!" So. Wonderful. That plus the plane feeling like a rollercoaster sufficiently distracted me from concentrating too much on the fact that we were pitching around in an airplane 35,000 feet up in the air. Not good.
But we finally landed in Baltimore relatively unscathed. Peoples' nerves were rather shot I'm sure. Our flight concluded with the aforementioned black man saying, "Jesus did a pretty good job of landing the plane," which was followed by applause from some passengers. 6 pm I depart the plane.
Next is claiming baggage because I have to transfer my luggage to British Airways. Baltimore airport has a similar setup to LAX in that they have many separate terminals...and of course Southwest is at the opposite end from international flights. So here I go, trudging through the airport with my large backpack and two large suitcases. Quite a sight.
The international terminal is relatively empty. Mostly military personnel departing overseas and people on my flight. Passports and flight tickets are checked. And checked. And checked again. And again. Good luck to anyone who tries to smuggle themselves onto a flight to England through British Airways.
Anyway, got myself settled on the plane. Not too bad. I've had better seats, but these were serviceable. We got into the air and I fell asleep, forcing myself to get some sleep during the flight. Unfortunately that was not to be. I woke up an hour later to the sound of two children screaming. One was a toddler and clearly knew better, then he got a small girl child screaming because he was screaming. Oh the cacophony. Then they started serving dinner, so I decided to eat instead of try to get back to sleep with these screaming kids all around. After being fed and watered, I finally fell back asleep, although it took quite awhile. I then slept until about an hour before we landed, so all in all I ended up with almost 5ish hours of sleep. Not too bad!
Immigration was a breeze, got a bus for Brighton and started off! I found out the guy sitting behind me was also going to Sussex, so we struck up a conversation. The bus dropped us off near the pier in Brighton (I saw the ocean!) and I met up with these other two students who were also attending Sussex and we split a taxi to the school. Which made it only £5/person! Very excellent.
Brighton is a cute town from what I saw of it when we took the bus through. It has some very quaint old cottages and street houses, as well as lovely parks at the city's center. And many little shops for clothes, antiques, odds-n-ends, etc. The campus leaves something to be desired, but I knew that coming over here. It was built in the 70s with the architecture of the period (re: ugly). But the area is gorgeous. Lots of greeeeeen. A very nice change of pace from LA.
So I got to my room, which is a single study bedroom on a floor with a layout similar to dorms. Each person has their own bedroom with bed/desk/chair/sink/wardrobe/etc. and 12 of us share a kitchen and 4 bathrooms and showers. I hope it all works out okay. At the very least I'll relish living without a roommate for the first time since high school. Anyway, I got settled in and immediately set up the computer and internet to Skype the parentals. Then came getting information packets and just meander around campus. At 3:30 we had a supermarket tour in which a Sussex student took us from campus to a nearby supermarket, showing us which bus to take, how to navigate everything, and then how to return to campus. It also allowed for us all to do some preliminary shopping, since we have no meal plan and are required to provide our own food.
Speaking of food, I still hadn't eaten all day. Since the dinner on the plane, all I'd had were OJ and coffee on the plane the next morning. I just wasn't feeling hungry all day and also didn't have the opportunity to eat. Which may have been why I was so desperate for dinner and agreed to eat fish-n-chips. Or maybe I felt I needed to eat authentic fish-n-chips while in England. Either way, we had--you guessed it--fish-n-chips for dinner. And it was actually quite good! Fish wasn't too...fishy, which is usually my problem with it. Or maybe I was just so hungry I would have eaten almost anything.
People dispersed about an hour after dinner to go to their respective rooms...and, I'm assuming, to sleep. Oddly enough, I have not one inkling of jetlag, and I accredit it to the following plan:
Sara's Guide to No Jetlag
1. Book a flight that leaves the United States at 9 pm or later. The flight should get into London or any other European city some time after 8:30 am the following day.
2. The day before you depart, stay up late. You can stay up late packing, talking, wasting time...doesn't matter. Just stay up late. 1:30 am should suffice.
3. Wake up the next morning really early. 7 or 7:30 am is an ideal time.
4. Set your watch to the time zone you will be in later. This is imperative! It will get you thinking like you're on the time zone already. Jetlag is all mental, so if you start playing mind games with yourself early, you can avoid the nastiness of jetlag. To help you remember, you might want to set the watch the night before. Wear the watch the whole day. Look at it and note the time. Do not automatically subtract hours to figure out your current time. Just look at the time and accept it.
5. Spend your day finishing packing, cleaning, running errands, exercising, whatever. Do something to get you up and going...and most importantly, tired for later.
6. Get yourself to the airport! Don't miss that first flight. And don't sleep through it either. No napping!
7. Chill at the airport during your layover. Keep looking at that watch. Remember, you're not leaving at 9 pm, you're leaving at 2 am...or so your watch tells you. This way, you can get in the mindset of it being 2 am, you're ready for sleep, and you will sleep on the plane. If you think it's 9 pm, you won't be tired and thus won't sleep. Bad idea. Don't do it.
8. Board your flight to leave the country. Immediately when you get on the plane, get comfortable, close your eyes, and try to sleep as much as you can.
9. Wake up before you land. If you're lucky, you've gotten about 7 hours of sleep! Which, if you followed my directions, is more than you got the previous night!
10. Eat meals according to your new time zone. Drink plenty of water. Stay up until you normally would...12 am or so.
And presto! No jetlag! Which allows me to write this extremely long post. I don't think this will be a regular occurrence, posts of this length, but I needed at least one.
More soon! And, hopefully, with pictures!
