We have arrived on the motherland!

Cheers! We have safely arrived in London. Our 8-hour airplane consisted of a crying baby, lots of yummy food, and an amazing flight attendant named Simon. We shall miss him. The first day was pretty...long. We were sleep deprived and hungry and pretty depressed with our hostel style dorms. The bathrooms are super creepy and it looks like someone was murdered in them. However we took an adventure to the renovated bathroom on the floor above us only to discover they were worse. On Saturday, we spent the day seeing some of the sights of the city such as Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, and the Thames River. It was amazing! The best part was seeing a bunch of people with creepy masks on protesting Scientology. We also became expert riders of the tube after spending all day on it. I think we could convince some we live here. Everyone on the trip thinks Courtney is from London because she dresses like all the people on the streets. She was very excited about this. People here however think that wearing tights with cut-off denim shorts is fashionable. We ended the day by taking the tube to Kings Cross so we could see platform 9 3/4. It was just as wonderful as we had imagined. Erica was as happy as a little kid. Sunday, we headed out to Surrey to see Hampton Court where Henry VIII lived with his six different wives. It was humongous! A little girl told her mother that Anne Boleyn had a mustache and we died laughing. We explored the grounds and sat on a bench enjoying the most beautiful rose garden before going through a maze much like in The Shinning. Afterward, we went to Windsor Castle where the Queen and royal family like to stay on weekends. It was the size of a city. We explored the town around it and people watched from a bench. We definitely saw quite a bunch of unique characters. Today we had classes, tomorrow field trips, and then Paris on Friday. We'll update with more excitement soon!