Touchdown in Londontown!

So, it's been a couple weeks since I've updated this and I guess now is as good a time as ever coz this will be the last time I'll have regular free wireless internet this semester. I flew to London a bit earlier to stay with my cousin for a few days, which meant that I had to make my transatlantic journey entire alone. And wow, what an experience! My flight was prolly as good as it could be - Virgin Atlantic is a great airline and if it weren't for the food and the old Egyptian lady who stole my seat and needed help with something just about every hour, it would have been near perfect.

Of course, the flight was the easy part - after landing in London I still needed to make my way from Heathrow to my cousin's apartment without a phone or very clear directions. But wonder by wonder I made it to the station I was supposed to be for her to pick me up and show me to her apartment - and the Underground is highly overrated, in case anyone was wondering: very convenient, but I really don't know what the hype is...anyway, I had a phone number to call my cousin but since I got it off my cell phone, it had a bunch of unnecessary numbers. The only problem was, I had no idea which ones were unnecessary. So, after trying a few different combinations on the payphone, I gave up, decided to swallow my pride and ask for help at the bus info booth. I went up to the booth and explained that I didn't know which numbers to dial because I was from America and the old man behind the counter kinda laughs and goes, "Really? I would never have guessed!" I didn't know if I should laugh or be offended. All I knew was that I wanted to explain that I'm not American, but a South African with a Dutch passport, who's been living in America for 7 years and yet within minutes of landing in London, I was thinking in a British accent! Man, if anyone ever suffered from an identity crisis, it's me!

The rest of the weekend consisted of hanging out with my cousin and her friends - all from South Africa. It's almost difficult to believe I'm in England - I've been speaking Afrikaans for the past week straight now! We went to go see a SA singer Robbie Wessels at a SA bar called Aardvark and I am completely convinced that South Africans are the Irish of the southern hemisphere! The show was great and even though I didn't know any of the words, I loved being with people my age and from the same culture as I grew up in. This is becoming more and more of a challenge to my identity though, because as much as I'm South African and as much as I've assimilated into the American culture, I'm really not from either anymore...

I've spent some time walking around the neighborhoods of London and if you check out my album, you'll get a peak of what it's been like - I'm not gonna repeat any of the little stories that I added with the pictures, but feel free to check out the album! All I can say is that I'm loving not being a tourist yet. I love seeing how and where regular people live...

That's it for me now - I really haven't done or seen a whole lot (oh, I actually went to Greenwich - such a cute little area of London with a cool market, no pics though...) since I've been waiting to do all that with the Europe group instead of repeating all the tourist attractions. Next time I'm online though, it's sure to be a much longer and much more touristy post - so if that's your thing, then be excited! and if not, well then, we'll see what I can do :)