Naturally, Philadelphia broke an all-time rainfall record on Sunday night with 8+ inches of rain in a span of four hours (yes, the four hours we sat at the gate waiting for our plane to make an emergency landing in Newark before returning to Philly) ...but after sitting at the gate forever and then sitting in a long line of planes on the runway for about an hour, we finally took off in this beautiful lightning storm.
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| Lightning strikes as we take off |
The flight itself was relatively painless. We sat behind some group of French teenagers who "didn't understand" pretty much anything about night flight etiquette, but after I accepted the fact that I wasn't going to sleep their strobe-light reading lights became relatively amusing...well either that or I was completely delirious. So we landed in London, and literally ran to catch our connecting flight to Edinburgh.
We were doing great with time until we hit boarder control and the woman ahead of us in line somehow got that far without her passport, and the one agent on the non-EU passports stood talking to her for a good 20 minutes before calling someone over to keep the line moving. So I got to the front of the line, spoke to the boarder agent, gave him my signed study abroad letter and he literally (and I quote) told me that "your reason for entering the UK is BS."
Um...what? So that took some time. And a lot of patience and smiling.
It was pretty smooth sailing from there, the bag metal detector sent my bag to the secondary inspection (another hour long line--our flight was leaving in 25 minutes) but then they said it was a mistake and moved it through to the regular line. Sigh.
As if that wasn't quite enough, my fall class registration time ticket was quickly approaching, and my confidence that I'd be at the flat with and set up with wifi in time to register was quickly declining. Luckily I was able to find wifi in the airport, and though the stupid time ticket wasn't open yet, I was able to call home and ask my brother to log on for me. I definitely have the best brother out there because by 10:02 I was registered for all of the classes that I wanted.
We landed in Edinburgh about 90 minutes later, got our bags with no problem and hopped on the Airlink bus to Waverly Station where we met Kate and Amy. Piling five people and six huge bags in the taxi was quite the sight, but within a few minutes we arrived at our beautiful flat in George Square right across the street from many of the biggest Fringe venues.
I felt like I was on one of those reality TV shows where people arrive at the house one by one meeting their roommates and picking rooms--only everyone here is a lot nicer! After brief intros and slight unpacking we all went to the local grocery store to stock the refrigerator. We made a group dinner and met up with our professor before heading off on a local tour of our area.
We concluded the night at Summerhall, a Fringe venue right down the street from our flat. We met the curator of one of the art exhibitions, and he welcomed all of us to the UK the way he felt most appropriate...
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Free drinks!  |
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