Scott and I spent 30 hours traveling from San Fran to London starting on Wednesday the 28th and ending on Thursday the 29th.  As a cool side note, the airport architecture made me feel like we were traveling as James Bond and his Bond girl.  There was even an iris recognition system!!! Anyway, we arrived in Heathrow at 7:30 AM, Thursday morning and made our way to South Kensington where we will live for 6 weeks for our study abroad.  We hoped that we could maybe meet with the building keepers and leave our baggage with them so we could kill some time and explore a bit.  So, we walked from the South Kensington tube station to Hyde Park Gate...quite the treck with all our baggage...only to discover that they were cleaning out the flats from the previous occupants and there weren't any official looking land lords or study abroad officials around.  We hadn't even made contact with Janice, a family friend who lives in Wimbledon and the place we are actually staying for the next week.  At that point neither of us wanted to make any phone calls or pay for expensive internet cafes.  We poked around for a bit at the flats and found a maintenance man who gave us the code for the internet there.  We connected to the internet and managed to pull up a map of where Jan lives.  We pulled that map up just in time for the internet to go out again.  It was about 10:30 AM or so and we decided to head to the underground and for Wimbledon since we told Jan we would be there around noon. Scott and I had some fun figuring out the tube.  During the culture class that we took at BYU in preparation for our study a broad we were given very exact directions from Heathrow to South Kensington but it was surprising difficult to find street names. They don't post them at every intersection and they don't label the windows of businesses here.  The street name usually appears in one place.  The upper edge of buildings at intersections. We got back to the tube and headed for the Wimbledon train. 

      We didn't even know which Wimbledon station to get off at but we just gave it a try and happened to pick the right one.  haha.  We luckily decided to wait until the end of the line and walked for about 25 minutes to get to Jan and Albert's home. We relied on the google map for the first ten minutes of our journey and as we passed a library, Scott had the genius idea to head inside and ask around for directions. whooo...that was another treck! It helps that streets are more well labeled here in Wimbledon! We made it, exhausted, and Jan welcomed us in warmly, fed us pizza, and showed us to our rooms.  We sat down for tea (couldn't see that coming!) and met her daughter-in-law Tu (from Thailand).

       Scott and I were fighting jet lag pretty badly so we decided to go for a walk around town and maybe get our bearings for the city we'd be living in for the first week of this journey. There is lots of shopping, narrow roads, and busy bodies everywhere. I found the most amazing vintage store.  Scott humored me and we took a look inside.  I wanted every clothing item in that store. :) Fluffy and frilly dresses all done up with bows and pearls.  I am an old soul.  What can I say.  I had visions of Scott and I walking around the pond in Wimbledon...all dressed up like we came straight out of a 1950's television show (In England they call the TV the "telly", kinda fun). We walked around some more looking for the tennis museum and found a park instead.          

Wimbledon is so green and quaint.  Lovely brick houses sandwiched side by side with itty bitty front gardens. When we were sitting for tea with Janice she went on and on about how big American houses are, making mention of Roy's home (Roy is her brother, the family friend who connected us with her).  I said Roy just has the benefit of a property to expand to and the know how of a builder man.  Well, anyhow, we made our way to the tennis courts, you know the world famous ones where all the big shots compete...and it was CLOSED...at 5:20 PM...what closes that early back home? banks...thats it.  Well, I was dead tired at that point.  We just sat at the outside wall and rested.  The reality hit us then that we were actually in England!  We headed back and went pretty much straight to bed.  It was 9:30 PM.  yea, I know, laugh it up.