Departures and Arrivals

My journey began Thursday September 10th at 5 am California time. I woke up and gathered some last minute items to pack before my family, sans my older sister, headed to LAX. The ride to the airport was uneventful and I was tired since I could not fall asleep that night. When we checked my bags in, it really started to set in that I was leaving for 3 months. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone on my flight. I had Sandra Williams, who is also from La Verne, but we’d only met once before. But even having her with me didn’t quell my tears and anxiety. I cried when my parents and sister had to leave me before I went through security, even though I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, seeing my family break down did me in.

After security I met up with Sandy and we got breakfast in the airport before our flight was scheduled to leave in a hour. As we were waiting with our food, we heard that our flight was moved to a different gate, which of course, was on the other side of the American Airlines section. Finally we get there and then we hear that the routine check they do for all planes that stay overnight, is going a little long. Our 9:30 departure is moved to 9:45. No biggie. 9:45 comes and it’s still not ready, so now departure is 10, still not too bad. We have three hours once landing in New York’s JFK before our next flight leaves, we’ll make it. 10 then becomes 10:30, then 10:45 and I’m thinking of calling the chaperone waiting for us at JFK to tell him we’ve been delayed, but we still figured and hour isn’t panic worthy. After even more delays we finally leave LAX at 11, and hour and a half after we were supposed to. Grrr!

We ended up landing in JFK at 8pm New York time for a 9:15 flight. The chaperone guy is like blowing up my phone at this point so we run to the AA check-in counter, where we were told to meet him, but no one is there since we are late. Finally we talk to him on the phone and he says to meet him and everyone else at gate 6. But we left the terminals…so security again it is. Then we sprinted there only to realize that we left the plane at gate 5 and passed them as we ran to go meet up with…no one! We could have avoided security, and a minor heart attack on my part. But of course God gives my ultra-prepared and non spontaneous self a lesson like this. To relax. I’ll let you know how that goes, haha.

The flight to London was LOOONG! I tried to sleep and kind of succeeded but I was not comfortable at all. The good thing about the flight was the free dinner and breakfast, the first real meal I’d eaten in 8 hours, and the free movies (I watched The Proposal-it was cute!). So then we get to London and have to go through customs and that’s when us BCA students (about 40 of us all together, from all over the country) started to bond because the line was super slow. Finally, all of us with our stamped passports, luggage(on carts, free carts!), and tired faces made our way to meet Denise Kendry and Sandy Griffiths, our surrogate “mums” for the trip.
Then off to Cheltenham we went, for an hour and 45 min bus trip. We all wanted to look around for the ride but a half hour into in we all crashed, haha. After we got to the school, we got our room numbers. Mine is by Tia Brandt, another La Verne student I know kind of well, and some other BCA-ers, or the endearing term Denise and Sandy use for us-Yankeedoodles, lol. I then got settled into my dorm room, which is small, but it has its own bathroom and shower, so I could care less the size of it. After a brief information session (longer one tomorrow) we had pizza and finished settling in.

Then a group of us decided to walk into town and explore the super adorable town of Cheltenham. Sandy (from La Verne, not the director) decided to go into a pup with a few others, but I didn’t want to so I went off roaming with some other BCA girls. Cambria, Kristen, Khouri (pronounced Corrie), and Dannielle and I had a chat about how we want to avoid the crazy pub/night life Sandy likes, if we can. Not to say we won’t go to pubs-its cultural, but we aren’t the night life kind of girls. I’m so happy to have found girls similar to myself!

Somehow during our walk, we found the University of Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall Campus (where all my classes will be), and the door was open, so we went in to explore and take pictures. It’s breathtaking!( more pictures to come soon). And the girls were really interested in the Christian Club that I told them meets at this campus and they want to check it out with me. Thank you Lord, for providing these girls. After that we bought some snacks at the grocery store across from the dorms and went back to out rooms.

That’s all for day 1. I’m going to sleep because I am exhausted and the 8 hour time difference is catching up to me!