So, no boring lists of activities for you, dear reader! Nay; instead, I'm going to take this first post to talk about the only two things my brain can comprehend at the moment, at 6:30 PM after a near-three hour nap: groceries and jetlag.
Today (yes, only today; yes, I know we've been here since Thursday morning), my flatmates and I finally went on our first grocery run. Given my fondness for food, I figured it would be hard for me too mess up this task too severely. Wrong. After this morning's trip to the Museum of London, the five of us took the tube over to one of the area's biggest (read: cheapest) grocery stores, located in Piccadilly Circus. My philosophy here was basically...
Now, I wasn't stupid about it. I checked and re-checked the expiration dates on everything I picked up to ensure I wasn't buying more of anything than I could eat before it went bad. (Cue your "way to go Sarah, you're so smart!"s, friends.) Beyond that, though, my only grocery criteria were 1) does it look tasty?, 2) is it Aldi-level cheap?, and 3) can I prepare it without burning down my building? Pretty much any item that earned a "yes" to all three of those questions went into my cart. With these criteria and the number of items I bought according to them, I'm set on eating for a good week or two. These un-picky criteria, however, left me driving the struggle bus when it came to dragging everything home. I ended up with four extremely full grocery bags, and, as I mentioned, this store was in Piccadilly Circus. Our flats are in a great location, close to lots of things. But you know what they're not close to? Piccadilly Circus. After shopping, I carried my four giant bags through the UK's answer to Times Square, down to the tube station, on a several-stop tube ride, back up to the street, and across several lanes of traffic to our building. By the time we arrived, each bag strap had been stretched tight to a width of about a millimeter, and I could barely feel my wrists - but not a single bag broke, suckas.
Regarding the taste of my purchases, I've decided a couple of important things. First of all, anyone who said that peanut butter is expensive or weird-tasting in the UK is a filthy liar. My jar of Tesco-brand peanut butter cost me a whopping one pound and forty-one pence, and it tastes LIKE PERFECTION. Have I been eating it straight from the jar? I mean, maybe. Have I been doing the same thing with my new, strongly-reminiscent-of-a-candle Nutella jar? Maybe. So fear not, Americans in London, peanut butter is not a problem. The only noticeable difference so far is that the jar is glass. That's a little weird. Here's hoping I manage to remember that when I inevitably almost drop the jar while making breakfast. My other main observation so far is that I'm going to be eating a lot of apples this semester.
And then there's the other thing on my mind in the early days of study abroad: jetlag. I am usually one of those lucky people who is largely undeterred by the substantial time change of international travel. It doesn't take me too long to readjust to my new time zone, and I usually even come pretty close to sleeping clear through the first night. This has continued to hold true for this trip. I had no real trouble figuring out what time it was or thinking it was hours earlier than it was. And on the first night, I slept the whole night with no issues, waking up only when my alarm went off and I dragged myself out of bed to reset it for two hours later. Three days in, though, I am still verging on too tired to function at all times. That obnoxious alarm on the first morning? It only went off after I'd been asleep for 11 hours. I slept for 13 hours on the first night and a good 7 or 8 on the second. I have had a pretty nice sleep schedule so far. Yet, when we returned from our grocery adventure this afternoon, the only thing I could do after unpacking everything and eating a quick, weird lunch was take a nap. I slept for 2 1/2 hours. I'm not proud of it...whatever.
In the next few days, I hope to become a bit more interesting than the Nutella-eating sleep monster I am right now. Until then, I'll keep basking in the Vision-filled glory of my desk decor (one of the few categories where I was really on top of things) and the London-y glory of the views outside my door.
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