Night 1, Day 2

I'll start by recounting our first night. Well, everyone helped themselves to some frozen pizzas for dinner, first off, and I realized something: I could either stick to my usual 10 foods or so, and probably starve to death, or just do it and make myself be a less picky eater.

So last night, I ate pizza with sauce. Those of you in the know about my extremely specific dietary preferences will be shocked to hear that, I'm sure. It wasn't great, but I got used to it after awhile. I had two slices. Then today, since there was very little communal food left in the kitchen, I had three more slices.

After eating last night, we went to a pub. Everyone was debating going to bed early or not, because of jet lag, but then we all got disgusted with the idea of spending our first night in ENGLAND not in a pub! So one of the graduate students took us to a fantastic little spot. Most people tried the cider, but seeing as the cider said "Extra strong! 7.5%," I decided against it and got a rum and coke. It was good, except that it clearly had coconut flavored rum, which I specifically asked the bartender NOT to put in. When I say Captain Morgan, not Malibu, I mean it, damn it! Everybody kept it to one drink, which was pleasant.

Then today, we went on our walking tour of the town, which was stupendous. I've got loads of facts to relay from that, which I'll put with the pictures when I do a separate post on it. Then we went grocery shopping - no more communal food, now we're on our own! We found a great little grocery story just about 10 minutes away walking, and it sells free range eggs (yippee!), fruit, bread, etc. The essentials. I got some much-needed hair products, NutriGrain bars, a bunch of grapes, and bread for toast. I had toast for breakfast this morning, actually...whole grain toast. Yeah, it was still communal bread at that point, and thus the only option, so I had to eat it! But it wasn't bad at all, so I decided the go the healthy route when I selected my own supplies today. I also didn't much like grapes before coming here, but here I am at the computer munching on a handful. Necessity drives change, I suppose.

Everyone in the group is really, really lovely. I'm getting along with everyone, and it's just a fantastic trip so far. I'm really looking forward to the next 12 weeks.

Picture post coming shortly!