London Called ... Katie Went: Saying goodbye and saying hello

Now we are to Friday the 26th, which was the day I was both dreading and looking forward to. This was the day that I had to take mom to the airport and watch her walk away to fly home. Probably #2 on my list of toughest things I've had to do in my life. I know I'm an adult, but she's still my mom and I see her pretty much everyday. Getting her to the airport was fairly easy with the exception of having to change lines on the Tube to get to Heathrow. Once we got to the Piccadilly line, it was a straight shot. They have recently added 'Terminal 5' and it's been taken over by British Airways. As far as I know, that's the only airline that you can get from there. Check in was pretty easy and we hugged and cried, then she had to get in a line, to get in another line for security and we hugged and cried some more. I stood and watched and cried for as long as I could, then she had to go behind a wall and when I couldn't see her anymore, it hit me: for the next hour and a half or so, I'm alone... or as Journey so nicely put it, I was 'just a small town girl, living in a lonely world.'

I knew I would be fine because I just had to ride the Piccadilly line straight up to the school, which we'd found earlier in the week. Unfortunately we hadn't walked to it from the stop on this line, so I was sort of clueless when I came out of the stop. I found it fairly easily though and went and got my info packet and Oyster (Tube card with pre-paid money) Card and got back on the tube and headed to Dee's house. Once I got to the station by her house, I called her and she came with Ann to pick me up.

Ann was feeling pretty homesick when I got there and I told her I knew how she felt since I'd just left Mom at the airport. Not to mention the fact that all the other people in the group had just gotten there that day and I'd already been gone from home for almost two weeks. Dee was really nice and made us dinner and the rest of the night was spent unpacking and for Ann going to bed early since they had them on a flight out of Portland at like 10am Thursday that arrived in London at 8am Friday morning after a layover in Chicago. I'm pretty sure that is basically the same flight Debbie and I did when we came and I'm sure she would agree with me when I say that it sucked! I would much rather do what Mom and I did, even though it was a long flight it was fairly easy to acclimate to the time change.

Saturday morning we had orientation at the school with everyone in the group. Almost all of us are friends on Facebook, but had really only met each other once with the exception of the people from our own schools, so we were pretty excited to start our new adventure and meet up with everyone. We had a safety briefing from a local policeman and we all got personal alarms to use if we were ever attacked that are now commonly referred to as our 'rape alarms'. Next, the homestay coordinator came and talked to us and went over the rules. At this point Ann and I decided that Dee is pretty much the best host mom we could have asked for because everything on the list we were told was not ok, she'd already to us was fine at her house. (We told Dee about this and she said the girls who were here last term told her the same thing. She said she doesn't understand why she should be stuffy because we are here to have fun and go to school so we should be as comfortable as possible). Then our AIFS coordinators talked to us for a little bit, then it was time for lunch. A few of us girls walked up the street and went to a sandwich shop. We all pretty much got the same thing, a panini and a drink and the lady charged me an extra 30p for eating in the restaurant, but didn't charge anyone else. Lame sauce! It wasn't even that good and no, I won't be going back.

After lunch, the rest of the day we had a sightseeing tour. Most of the places we went to I'd seen before, but it was fun to watch all the rest of the group seeing all this stuff for the first time. Here are some of the pictures from our tour that day.

I love the lamp posts here, it reminds me of Mary Poppins!