Monday Evening

So, my wrap-up for the day:

In the morning, we took a bus tour of the city. It seems pretty wasteful that they use a huge coach for just the 16 of us, but I can't complain too much. It seems like the only roomy place in the city.

Speaking of complaining, yeah, I found out that they put us all together because they just don't have any other rooms available. *sigh* At least my two roomies will be travelling on the weekends, so I'll be able to have the place to myself whenever they're out and I'm in. Only 27 more days, right? So, I take out the 6 days they'll be travlling and we're looking at only 21 more days. I can deal with that! :)

Anyhow, after the bus tour we had lunchtime to ourselves, so I went to some oddly-named place for lunch (Pret A Manger, I think) which was pretty tasty. We had our orientation meeting at the FIE place, then we went to Imperial College to go work with the travel agency to plan our weekend trips. (Whoo, more on that another time.) A few of us stopped in for a quick drink, then I took a walk in Hyde Park. I came home, putzed on the computer (oh, how I miss you, fiber-optic connection at home!), then attempted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe. Oh, that turned out interesting. Long story short, people should not doubt me when I say "You need to hurry up, quick, quick" when I'm telling them to get on the tube. Our group got split up, and Hard Rock had a 1.5 hour wait. This is at 9:30 at night on a Monday. Good god. Anyhow, I ended up just walking home because... well, because I'm an idiot. I know that I'll get familiar with the neighborhood and stop ending up on these long excursions, but in the meantime, I'm freakin' beat.

So, my fun story of the day was on my way home. I didn't have dinner, and I hadn't eaten a thing since lunchtime, so I was hungry and tired. I stopped into a Marks and Spencer fancy-pants grocery/snack place, and picked up a *tiny* thing of grapes (maybe about 3/4 of a cup... 130 grams is you want to do the math: $2.10), a 4-pack of chocolate mousse ($3.58) and box of 80 teabags ($4.18). Yeah, everything is definitely more expensive here (except the tea!), but I was just scandalized by the price of fruit. Anyhow, I was about to go check out, and I realized that I forgot to get teabags, but I hadn't seen them. So here's my conversation with the girl who was stocking the stuff in the back:

Me: Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but do you carry tea?
Her: Carry tea? No, but we certainly have tea. You're so fancy!

So yeah. I was called "fancy" by a Londoner. Worship me! Actually, she was really funny, and pretty amused with my valley girl impression, ohmygawd! So my day has ended on an up-note, and I'm going to go take a nice shower and try to fall alseep before my roomies get in. We'll see how that goes.