Post Landing

As soon as we landed I turned my phone on, I have an international plan, and it should of connected...but wouldn't. So I was starting to slightly panic. Once I got into the airport I tried to connect to wifi to get a message to my  mom to let her know I at least made it, but that wouldn't work either. At this point I was more worried about getting my phone to work than going through immigration. Luckily landing at 5:30am meant no one else was really there and ended going through immigration in about 10 minutes, which apparently is quite quickly because my director told me to allow about an hour to make it through the line. So I make through immigration and get to the terminal where I'm supposed to meet the director and I can't see anyone and start to panic a little more. I ended up finding a pay phone where I was able to call my mom, after figuring out how to use it of course, and I was able to contact her and told her about the phone situation but since it was only about 11pm back home she wasn't able to do anything until 6am so I was phoneless and I couldn't get wifi to work still. And based on all my calls I will probably end up paying a quite a bit, but in that kind of situation that was the least of my worries. After talking to mom I called the director and turns out she wasn't going to be there until 8:30am so I at least wasn't lost in London. But I did have some time to kill.

I ended up sitting on a bench and people watching. There were some interesting people who came out to arrivals. Then I was able to find my director and we looked for the other 3 who were supposed to come out of the same terminal before 9 but they never did and so we ended up heading to the hotel and they had to go to the next meet up time at 11:30 and luckily then ended up calling and we figured everything out. Also, before we were going to leave I went to use the pay phone again and found out my debit card ended up getting locked so then I also didn't have access to money. So I was just on a downward spiral and had only been in London about 3 hours. Once we left it was about an hour ride to the hotel and I ended up falling asleep. Then after getting to the hotel I was able to check into my room right away which was nice. Then the director and I went and got some Mexican food down the street, she bought me lunch because of my rough day and not having any money. When we got back I used her phone to call mom and then was on the phone with Verizon Global Support for about 40 minutes. For some reason my did not get activated correctly but mom was able to fix it and then it just started working so I was a little happier. Then I was able to call and unlock my debit card, I was on a roll at this point, and I was able to double check that my converter would work with the plug ins. Luckily, I was then able to take a nap before everyone else arrived.

Then when everyone else arrived we took a walking tour and then had some free time, but had to get up early the next morning.

So it was a pretty stressful first day but it luckily has went uphill.