BSSP Day Two: Arrival

In my last post I said that I tried to get a good rest. Key word: TRIED. I had my eyes closed for four to five hours on the flight but I barely got an ounce of sleep. When I "woke up" right before breakfast was being served, I knew that I was in for a long and tiresome day. The breakfast on the plane was good and once I finished it, I was fixated on the flight tracker as we flew over Ireland and then descended into England. I was excited when we landed as I was in a new country and there was so much that I wanted to see. Going through customs was effortless and we got our bags quickly. When we got to the main arrivals hall, however, we realized that the representative for ACS Cobham, the school we are staying a for the whole trip, was stuck in traffic. We ended up waiting in that main hall for two hours which got pretty boring. When we began our forty minute ride to the school, I stared out the window of the van the whole time trying to pick out any differences that I noticed. The obvious one was driving on the left side of the road, something I had never experienced before. We were on the M25 motorway for most of the ride. The motorway itself is a large freeway loop around London (fortunately the school is conveniently on the same side of town as London-Heathrow). There wasn't much to see from the road, mainly forest. What I did take an interest in was the roadway signs which were very different from the United States in respect to the shape, color, and text on the signs. When we finally got to the school we met more adults who help out with the program and then we got to settle into our rooms. The whole facility is very nice and my room looked almost brand new (I believe the boarding house was renovated in the past few years).

My room

For most of the day we chilled out and explored the grounds. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the school's cafeteria. For breakfast (which was my second of the day), I tried some "English" breakfast foods such as baked beans and porridge. I enjoyed both but I still think that baked beans for breakfast is a little weird. As more people arrived from the airport we began to make more friends and we did a small orientation after dinner. After that, we learned how to play croquet which I really enjoyed. I was unsure of it at first but it turned out to be really fun and my team ended up winning the game. By the end of the day, I became really tired from the jet lag and began to wind down and write the blog post for the previous day. All in all, Monday was a nice introduction to England.