My first days

To whom it may concern:

It seems that blogging about my travels and schooling over here in Europe might be worthwhile, so I've decided to do it. I'll try to be regular about entries, but as I don't have a great record with journaling, we'll see how this pans out.

So I've been in the UK for 4 days and 3 nights now--I think I got that right, I got here on Friday, and it's now Monday. For those who don't know I'm studying abroad for the semester at Glasgow School of Art, in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm in the 2nd year of the Painting and Printmaking department. I'm here from September 10th through December 10th-ish. Anyway. So I left out of Philadelphia on Thursday night, at about 9:30, fly through the night to London Heathrow Airport. To be noted, on the plane I sat next to two real live irishmen with crazy accents, and though I didn't talk to them, listening to them talk to each other was really entertaining. When I got to Heathrow, I had to go to customs to get to the terminal to go to my next flight to Glasgow itself. Heathrow is HUGE, by the way. We had to take a bus from the plane to the terminal. That big. I got through customs just fine, and got my visa, which made me really really happy, because I was really worried about that and having all my paperwork in order. It turns out that the lady didn't even ask for any paperwork. She looked at my passport and my landing information card, asked me a couple questions like, "You studying here?" and "What are you studying?" and that was that. Anyway. I got into the terminal and eventually figured out which gate my flight was leaving out of, and then eventually got myself on the plane. It was a short flight, like an hour or so, and then we landed at Glasgow International Airport, which seems like a pretty small airport. I found a taxi, gave them an address, and got whisked away to Renfrew Street, which is in the city of Glasgow. It was terrifying, by the way, to have the driver on the wrong side of the car and the car on the wrong side of the road. My taximan was nice and asked about Philadelphia and such (which he knew was quaker country, points for him). He was supposed to drop me off at my hotel, but he ended up dropping me off right in front of the main GSA building, which was right down the street from my hotel.
So that was my first look at Glasgow, standing right there in front of the steps of the Mackintosh building, fresh from the airport. Glasgow that day was beautiful, beautiful, like it knew I was coming, and was all blue skies and sunshine and white clouds. There's the city which is beautiful and old like European cities are and American cities never are, and then surrounding the city are beautiful green rolling hills that make me want to go camping and hiking so SO bad. Needless to say, Glasgow made a great first impression on me.
So back to the chronology. I walked down the street to my hotel, the Rennie Mackintosh Art School hotel, that was cute and small. With lots of stairs in front. The lady at the front desk had a great Scottish accent that was mind-boggling for my jet-lagged brain. I got my fare paid and my room key, and hauled those damned suitcases up all those stairs. The hotel room had a little single bed and shower and a window looking out into a garden. Which had cats in it, that made me happy. The hotel is decorated in the Arts and Crafts-y Art Deco-y period, which is really really awesome. I think most of the buildings at GSA and around date from that time, which is awesome, because I love that aesthetic. Anyway. I got to the hotel at about 3 o'clock Glasgow time, and was incredibly exhausted. I got internet, informed people that I was still alive, and put myself to bed at about 5.
I slept till the next morning, at which point I got myself and went downstairs for the complementary Scottish breakfast. I had eggs (which were white and really fluffy?), bacon (which I had forgotten is really weird over here), tomatoes, toast, tea, and orange juice (which was disgusting for some reason. How do you make orange juice taste so weird?). It was really good, to say the least. Then I checked myself out and headed to my dorm which was about a block away and down the hill.
By the way, GSA is on a hill. This fact was very strange to me, as I've been studying the flat map of campus for so long. It's quite a steep hill. I got my key to my dorm, the Margaret Macdonald House--it's not the prettiest building on the block, but the rooms are really nice as dorms go, and there's flowers outside. I'm in the B block, on the 1st floor (which is really the 2nd floor in American), in room 2. There are 5 other people in my flat, all girls (somewhat disappointing, because I signed up for a mixed sex suite. But hey, it's art school, there are waay more girls than boys.). There's Seulah (sp?)--fresher from Scotland who's studying sculpture, Orlagh (pronounced Orla) from Belfast who's a fresher studying textiles, Raamah (pronounced Ream-ah)--fresher from Scotland (I think) who is also studying textiles, Kristi--another study abroad student from New York who is in the 2nd year painting with me, and Ryland who is also a study abroad student from New York who is studying photography. They all seem really nice and I think we'll get along.
Sunday the school took us on a bus to Ikea and we had a great jaunt around Ikea for about 5 hours, buying homey things. I bought bowls and silverware and such. I'm trying to keep the spending down, since I probably can't take most of this home with me.
I've made friends with Kristi and a girl named Ariel, and we went to the pound store and T K Maxx (UK version of T J Maxx, who knows why they felt the need to change one letter) and the grocery store (buying groceries is an experience). We did this all on Sauchiehall Street, which is about 2 blocks away from our dorm and has great shopping and eating and such. We happened to pass O2 ABC, which is as music venue here, and saw the sign for Old Crow Medicine Show. They happened to be playing that night! Kristi and I both knew the band and got really really excited. We bought tickets online for 15 pounds, not bad at all, and at 7 o'clock we were in line to get in. I'll start a new post to describe the concert (which was awesome).