We're In England!!!!

We’re here! We were supposed to fly Wednesday, but our flight from Evansville got cancelled because the plane was leaking fuel!!!! We ended up flying Thursday, but our flights were all fine so we certainly can’t complain!!! It sure was hard to leave our parents though. I absolutely hate that part!! :-(

We arrived Friday morning at 12:30am, which is 6:30am in England!!!!! We each had a little nap, but that was it!!! We were able to put our luggage on push carts, exchange our money for Pounds, find a pay phone, call a taxi, and find the right spot to wait outside for the taxi. We walked outside into freezing cold and a few snow flurries!!! Yikes, it’s cold here!!! The taxi driver showed up in a van since we said we had lots of luggage! That was nice. The taxi ride was fun! It’s so weird that they drive on the wrong side of the road here! We enjoyed looking around at all the different buildings. We saw tons of daffodils blooming, which made me extremely happy…that’s my favorite flower!!!!

The taxi driver drove us to the hospital and dropped us off at the accommodation office, where we were supposed to check in. It was 8:15am. They didn’t open till 9:00am! So we had to wait in the cold for 45 minutes, but oh well…we survived! ;-)

We paid for our apartment, they gave us keys, we rolled what luggage we could to our apartment, and they brought the rest of the luggage in their car about half an hour later. That was awesome of them!!!!!! We were pleasantly surprised when we checked out our apartment…I mean our “flat.” I can’t get used to saying the word flat instead of apartment yet! Anyway, it’s a 2 bedroom flat. Our bedroom has a full size bed and there’s a twin bed in the other. We have dorm style furniture. They bought us new pots and pans, silverware, toaster, and dishes! They even ordered a new love seat and 2 chairs for us!!!! Those haven’t arrived yet, but hopefully will on Monday.

We unpacked most of our stuff (we were sooooo thankful that all of our luggage arrived!!!) and it was all we could do to stay awake. Ricky, one of our good friends from St. Maarten, arrived here for clinicals 5 weeks before us. He offered to give us a tour yesterday afternoon, so we wanted to stay awake for that! He met up with us and showed us around the hospital and then we took a bus into Slough, the city we’re almost in. (We’re actually in Wexham Park, a tiny little place with the hospital and that’s about it.) In Slough, we had lunch at a Pizza Hut buffet. I had a piece of pizza with corn on it! How weird! I’m really excited about trying all of their weird foods here! Hehehe! We bought sim cards for our cell phones. We each got a pay as you go plan that costs 10 Pounds a month for unlimited texts and 100 minutes. Not bad! Neither one of us has ever had texting before, so that will be weird to get used to!!! Then we walked up and down the street looking at all the little shops. We also went to Tesco…we were really hoping Ricky would take us there! Tesco is like a super walmart, only maybe it has even more than walmart! This place was crazy…it has everything!!!!! We got some basic foods and a few things we needed for the apartment. We knew we’d need more soon, but could only bring what we could carry on the bus! That was not easy!!! It was our first time carrying bags of stuff on a bus! Quite the experience…guess we better get used to that! Lol!

We got home, put the groceries away, chatted with our parents for a few minutes and headed to bed soon! We were soooooo worn out! We slept about 13 hours!