I'm finally here!

hey!
Yesterday felt like the longest day of my life! My mom left at about 4:30 am and it was really strange to really be all alone of all a sudden. I was on my own now. Ahh! It’s a strange feeling for sure. I have never been a place where I don’t know a soul so it’s a new experience for me. I went back to sleep until about 9:30, where I woke up, took a shower and went downstairs to catch the shuttle to take me to the University. Now, I left my room at 10:50. The shuttle was supposed to get there at 11. I came down and he was just getting in the shuttle to leave! Thank goodness I just caught him. He said he asked the hotel if there was a “Johnson” here and they said no, but that was because my mom had checked out earlier that morning! That would’ve been bad and an unlucky start to the day. Thankfully I made it on and there was no turning back now…I was heading to Canterbury.
Of course the road was closed because they are doing construction on the street where my apartment is, so he had to drop me off and I had to walk with all my luggage down the road which was kind of hard haha I’m really not that strong! I checked in and Amy, and RA here, brought me to my room and showed me around my “flat”. My room is on the end of the flat which is kind of nice because it’s a little bigger of a room and it’s the farthest from the common room so it’ll maybe be a little quieter. The window looks almost right out on to the street where all the construction workers are so hopefully they’ll be gone soon. Amy said they were having a barbeque at 12:30, which was about an hour from when I got there and to come on by. So, I unpacked all my stuff (it looks like I have nothing in this room since I couldn’t bring that much clothing due to the weight limit on luggage) and tried to set up my internet. You have to set up an account, and then top up by putting in money per GB through you credit card. Sounds easy. I have had so much back luck with this thing. It did not work. Something about authentication failed. That is not good. I’ll touch more on that pain in my side LATER. So I decided to leave it and come back after the barbeque. The barbeque consisted of huge sausages being put in a piece of bread with ketchup haha But, after walking up kind of awkwardly by myself to big groups of people talking, I luckily got in line to the sausages behind three really nice girls. I stuck with them and a few other people that I met through out the whole rest of the barbeque. There was Sondra from Egypt, Chloe from Tahiti and Adriana from the North Island of New Zealand. I also met Arelli from Indonesia, two girls from South Africa, one girl from Germany, a guy from Pakistan and another boy from New Zealand. People come from everywhere around here! It was so cool to meet so many people from all over. Everyone was so nice as well. People here are very open and willing to meet people….it’s great.
I came back from the barbeque at like 2:30 because I had orientation starting with IES Abroad at 3 o’clock. I decided to check my Internet…still not working. I typed in my password and username to check my account and it said I had the wrong password. I did NOT have the wrong password. I wrote it down and I made sure no caps were on. I was so confused. I was getting really REALLY frustrated so I went to the office and asked about and they said I had to call Snap prepay, which is the company our internet goes through. I had to go to orientation so I hoped that would still be open when I got back (when I called later they weren’t of course).
Orientation was alright. There are some really nice people in my IES group but of course all the activities we were doing were the getting to know you, speed friending kind of stuff, which is good but gets kind of boring. After that we went to a buffet restaurant and stuffed our faces basically. A lot of them had just flown in today and had not had a lot to eat so people were starving. It was really good food actually…it filled me up! It was kind of neat talking with Americans in a place where there aren’t a lot of us. Apparently there are 200 Americans studying here this semester, which is more than I thought.
I got back at around 8 o’clock and realized I had no bedding. I called the RA on duty and she said there were others who didn’t have it and to go to the office. So, I go there and they ran out of bedding! Of course that would happen to me. So, they said they would drop it off later. I figured I would just be chilling in my room all night since none of my flat mates had come today (or so I had thought). I was waiting around trying to figure out my internet (I made another account and password, put MORE money on and it still didn’t work. I have no idea why and it aggravated me A LOT), when I heard a knock at my door. Assuming it was people with my bedding, I opened up the door and there was a girl standing there. She introduced herself as Angie and told me that one of my roommates moved in and is over next door if I want to come over and meet her! Angie is so nice and friendly and is from Canada (yet another place people are from). I said that I was waiting for my bedding but I will come over as soon as it arrives. I was really anxious to meet my new flat mate. As I was waiting for my bedding, a girl opens the door and comes walking down the hallway yelling “Hi! My name is Ali!” haha Ali is from Kentucky and is really sweet! It’s really nice to have another American to connect with. I hung out with her and a girl named Bridget who lives above us for a lot of the night (they waited for my bedding with me which was so sweet). Bridget is a kiwi, which is a great friend to have to get to know the culture and everything. She is very friendly and outgoing.
I can’t believe I’m finally here…it’s quite surreal! Everyone is quite friendly here so it’s easy to adjust :) I’ll be keeping you updated!