First Day in London

My flights were surprisingly mild in retrospect. But I would say that the flight from PDX to Detroit was a most unfortunate one. There were multiple crying babies, screaming kids, and a barking dog. In addition to this, I threw up on the plane. I thought it was motion sickness, but i never actually felt dizzy. After talking to mom on the phone in the Detroit airport, we figured out that the reason i threw up was because I ate 2 week old rice milk on my cereal. I ended up watching Devil Wears Prada after trying to watch two new movies. After that I watch Pocahontas and fell asleep. I never realized that Pocahontas really shouldn't have been able to communicate with John Smith because they didn't speak a common language. Apparently if you just listen to your heart the winds will speak for you. If only this could work for me in Austria.
It was raining when I got into London. I rode the tube from Heathrow to King's Cross. I never made it to platform 9 & 3/4, because I didn't know how to get to 9 and 10. It was very busy, I hit morning rush hour. Looking for a more permanent, dry location to meet Eric, I wheeled all of my bags into the British Library. This meant they had to inspect all of my bags, I felt awful holding up the cue.
Eric came not long after I drank some tea in the cafe and mastered a few sudoku's. We walked all the way from King's Cross to Camden Square (the park that the vicarage is on). It was a long way to haul 50+lbs. of luggage. I felt disgusting, not terribly tired, but I took a two hour nap after showering anyway. Still feeling rather out of it I decided to venture down Camden Road. It was pouring down rain, so it was extra ugly. But I was glad to get out and walk around. I found a late lunch at Falafel King or something like that. Camden has been one of the slums of London since the Victorian era until recently its been bringing in a young professional crowd and is being developed. The vicarage sits right between the fancier homes and the busy Camden Road and social housing. By the time I made it back to the vicarage, I was soaked. After changing into my dry pj pants I turned on the tv and found that British TV is just as bad in the daytime as the US. Eric was showing Tim around the new parish. Tim is going to take over Eric's position next year as the pastoral assistant. He was incredibly proper and polite. Eric was saying he's kind of like the standard Englishman. We all had tea and had a very interesting conversation about the differences between English and American social standards. London's a bit more relaxed than the standards we were talking about. Apparently they don't make eye contact with strangers, they don't complain to people not even to family (they have a grin and bear it mentality), and you have to transition into deep conversation topics after much discussion of light material like the weather.
We then had tomato soup and headed off to St. Michael's for the confirmation mass.
At mass, this was an Anglican mass but was exactly like a Roman mass at home, I sang in the choir. It was lots of fun and when Owen (Eric's roommate) introduced me to the choir and said I was from the states they all said "we could tell". This was the largest group of Confirmees that the parish had seen. Confirmation is also first communion in the Anglican church.
I went up for a blessing but the bishop try to give me communion. After the mass I chatted with Liz, one of Eric's old housemates. She's an young opera singer in London and her husband is a jazz violinist, they just moved out of the vicarage and into a flat in Camden. I also met a guy from Estonia and chatted with him for a while. After awhile I headed back by myself. Eric gave me a key so that I could go to and from the vicarage on my own schedule. He had to stay later to clean up after the confirmation reception.
I slept fairly well and didn't feel too jet lagged with the exception that I woke up the next day at 4:45 because the sun was coming out.