I arrived in London this morning a little after 6 a.m. London time. The flight was uneventful except for the fact that I couldn't sleep (despite help from my little friend atavan) and my seatmate was a 75 year old widow from the UK who is moving to the states to be closer to her children. She was returning to her home here to close it up and sell it so she can hopefully be in Georgia by Thanksgiving.
The drive in from the airport normally takes just under 1 1/2 hours but was longer today (a little over 2) because there was a "lorry protest" -- truckers making a caravan to protest an extra tax on gas that was just imposed. The price of gas seemed cheap at first -- 1.29 pounds, but that's about 2.50 and it's priced per liter -- so I think the price for a gallon would really be 3x that or so. Yikes. The big news on the radio, besides traffic jams and the lorry protest, was that 3 stabbing deaths have occurred in the last 3 days. Apparently, gun crime here is fairly unusual because of gun control, but the discussion this morning was all about the rise in "knife crime." It's really bizarre to see people driving on the opposite sides of the road. It also makes crossing the street a VERY tricky proposition -- you really have to pay attention to get adjusted to cars coming at you in a different way from what you're used to.
As we drove in, we went through many small villages just outside of London. In some, you could tell that they were lower income by the housing. One unusual thing, though, is that no matter how uncared for the house may look itself, there always seem to be beautiful gardens with flowers and pretty plants outside. I was also surprised to see a trailer park -- who knew they had them in the UK? I wonder if God hates trailer parks here as much as he does in the U.S.
I'm staying at The Rhodes Hotel (http://www.rhodeshotel.com/) , in the area of London known as Sussex Gardens. I'm not far (a few blocks) from Hyde Park, which is a huge park here, kind of like Central Park. The driver told me it takes 3 hours to walk across Hyde Park. We drove by it several different times on the way to the hotel and I saw lots of people walking and with their dogs -- I'm looking forward to going there soon.
The people who own the hotel, Chris & Maria, are Greek although Maria has an Asian face. They are very welcoming and helpful. I only had to wait about 1/2 an hour to get my room; while I was waiting, Maria sent me downstairs to breakfast which was cereal, croissants, toast, oj, ham, cheese, and some fruit.
Afterwards, I huffed my way up 5 flights of narrow, winding stairs to my room. I've stayed in dorm rooms larger than this room, but it's clean and will work just fine for my stay here.
I am unpacked and my stuff all fits in the small closet and cupboards. The good news is that the bathroom has shelving and medicine cabinets which held a bunch of things. My room is super small! It has a twin bed in it, a small desk, and maybe 1 ft of space between the bed and desk. There's a very narrow hallway with a closet and the small bathroom off of it. The closet is decent-sized for the room but the bad news is, the hangers I brought all my things on are a bit too wide for the closet so I can't get the doors closed all the way. Not a big deal for now but might be tricky when I have to get up and pee in the middle of the night!
There is a desk in my room but you can't really get the chair out far enough to sit at the desk properly. I will have to work offline then move over to the desk and sit cockeyed to send emails. LOL. There's also a small refrigerator in the cabinet under the desk; it doesn't get super cold but it will do well for keeping my insulin cold as well as keeping some diet cokes cold enough! ha.
My room is on the 5th floor -- you have to go up 5 flights of very narrow and winding stairs to get up here. It about killed me. Luckily, Chris & Maria's sons brought all of my bags up for me or I probably would have had a heart attack. I was so out of breath on the way up that I figured one good thing about making that climb every day for 6 weeks is that I will be better in shape and hopefully lose some weight!
I ended my evening out in London tonight in a very low-key way -- I walked to a small Italian restaurant about 2 blocks from the hotel and had some extremely tasty risotto with pancetta and asparagus, YUM. I ate at a small table out on the sidewalk; the weather is very cool this evening and there was a small jazz trio playing inside the restaurant. You can see what I was seeing at my table and hear the jazz by watching the movie I've posted on the flickr link. Afterwards, I walked around the neighborhood a bit to find some diet coke, bananas, and just get my bearings a little. I'm really close to Paddington station (maybe 2 blocks) which will be really convenient as it has 4 of the Tube (subway) lines, meaning I can get just about anywhere in London from there. www.flickr.com
I leave for Oxford tomorrow to attend the Oxford Dysfluency Conference, http://www.odc.org.uk/. There are over 100 people registered from 16 different countries. After interacting with the foreign clinicians in the Philadelphia workshop two weeks ago, I'm really looking forward to meeting more foreigners and learning more about how they treat children who stutter in their respective countries.
More pics can be found here: www.flickr.com/groups/lisalondon08/
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