i wish i went to hogwarts

So before I start, I'm just going to apologize now for the length of these posts. I don't want to forget any of the details myself, so there's just going to be a lot shared.


Anyways, on to the good stuff. I was sitting on my flight from Dallas to London when the desire to be like Harry Potter overwhelmed me once again. Now, I have some pretty legitimate reasons for wanted to be like Harry Potter, not just because he's awesome.


Reason 1: Apparation. Do you realize how much easier travel would be if we could apparate? Or even use the floo network or a portkey. All the magical ways of transportation, maybe with the exception of flying a broomstick, are faster than stupid muggle travel. I really was just not a fan of sitting in airports or airplanes all day.
Also, with apparation, there's no chance of delays or missed flights. Our flight out of SLC was an hour late, putting us in Dallas 15 minutes before our connecting flight departed. 5 of us decided to take our chances and try to make the flight, figuring that even if we did miss it, we could still be put on the later flight the rest of the people had switched to. Our flight out of Dallas was in a different terminal than the one our SLC flight landed in, so we had to literally run to the other terminal and find out gate. One of the girls had stopped at a gate and asked them to hold the plane but the lady told her the plane had already left. So now we're super freaking out. When we got there, there were like five people at the gate waiting for us and the plane was still sitting there. They let us on the plane and we rejoiced greatly. Especially when we later found out the other flight out of Dallas had been delayed another 2 hours. So glad I got on the flight I did. Minus the other part about how because I was so late, some lady had taken my window seat (cuz they were assigned seats) and I was stuck in the middle. Too bad I also didn't even realize that she was in my seat until an hour before our flight landed. Cool part though it our plane was giant. There were ten seats across. That's a lot of people. Also cool part, there was a soccer team from South Africa and one from England. Way nice to look at. =] Also one more cool part, they had a bajillion movies you could watch so I spent a good part of the flight wanted Burlesque and Megamind.


Reason 2: Your luggage can fit inside one small bag, as long as your super smart like Hermione and can extend your small bag. This would be absolutely fabulous. Especially when you almost miss your connecting flight so that your baggage doesn't make the flight. All 5 of us made the flight with no baggage. I really can't complain though because I was the only one of the 5 who had brought a carry on with a couple changes of clothes and toiletries. We're hoping they have our bags to us by tomorrow. We would really prefer not to be stuck without them longer than that.


Reason 3: You get to live in London aka my new favorite place in the whole world. Literally. I love it.


Reason 4: Come on, it would just be really cool to have magical powers and get to go to Hogwarts and all that stuff. =]


Random other non-Harry Potter related things about London so far.
--I have been up for the past 32.5 hours. I only slept for 2, maybe 3, of those hours. If I sound crazy, I blame it on my lack of sleep.
--I am having mixed feelings about the food here. For lunch, some of us went to this Indian place down the street and it was way good. For dinner, they made us pea soup. It's about as good as it sounds. And it looks like baby food. or maybe baby poop. Not so much a fan. Hopefully the food situation improves.
--I bought a pair of shoes for 5 pounds. I know, I know, I've only been here for one day and I've already bought a pair of shoes. I'm crazy. But really I'm not. I was intending on buying a pair of black flats when I arrived here anyways and then we stumbled upon this store where everything was 5 pounds. That's like $7 folks. I'd say it was a steal and a very smart buy.
--I am so glad I brought all my toiletries with me. There are a lot of other people who decided just to buy it here and it is not cheap. Because I don't have one of my bags, I was missing my contact solution and I'd forgotten to stick a travel one in my carry on. That was all I forgot luckily because one travel size thing of contact solution cost me 4 pounds. That's almost as much as my pair of shoes! Ridiculous.
--I know Kensington Park better than some Londoners probably do. One of the classes that we all have to take this semester is called London Walks and we have assigned walks we have to do around London. We had one of these walks once we arrived at the London Centre because they wanted to distract us from taking naps and increasing our problems with jet lag. We all assumed the walk was laid out in order of where things were geographically, but soon realized we were sadly mistaken as, time and time again, we backtracked to get to some other place. We saw a lot of cools things and I really enjoyed it but it was like a 4 hour walk, most of which was in Kensington Park where were kept getting lost.
--If there's more to say, I can't remember it anymore because I'm so brain dead. Maybe I'll remember something later...

I don't have a lot of pictures that I am in yet. But here's on at the Albert Memorial. Queen Victoria had it put up after her husband Albert died. It's giant and covered in gold. Super cool looking.