a quick note before I crash for the night…

The plane ride was shorter than expected, thanks to a helpful tailwind. Got to Heathrow at around 6:20am, local time, and took a train to central london. Made the mistake of paying 10 extra pounds for a non-stop train when there was a slower, but much cheaper one. Oh well. I had a fun time (by fun, i actually mean quite painful, literally) getting all my luggage around the train station. Had the misfortune of getting a grumpy, ill-humoured old man as my taxi driver. The ride from the station to my dorm took another 10 pounds. 

Commonwealth Hall, where I’m staying, is a decent looking dorm. Better than most of the old west campus dorms, but certainly not as nice as Keohane. My room is…the size of your typical claustrophic single rooms in jarvis, or at Few. But it’s a single, so that’s good. So far the worst thing I’ve encountered here, aside from the not so appetizing English food, is the utterly inexplicable shower system. So basically it’s a little nob that you have to press every minute to keep the water flowing, I’m not exagerrating. Either I’m really stupid and haven’t figured out a better way to work this thing, or whoever designed this piece of shit should have been hit over the head. 

In any case, I’m half unpacked because I’m in desperate need of hangers. So shopping tomorrow morning, and then I’m heading to LSE in the afternoon for our exciting induction. Not really. The important part is I’ll finally see the school. The rest of my week consists of more meetings, inductions, parties, basically a repeat of freshman orientation. Woohoo.

Oh, I also met some craaaazy people here. Just imagine…a dorm with a larger percentage of asians than Duke. Scary, I know.