Living in Newcastle: Day 1

So it’s about 10:30 PM right now. Despite having gone through a long day of sleeping on planes, reading in Heathrow, eating mediocre airplane food, and running around trying to get a working Internet connection, I seem to have somehow found myself sitting in a bar watching Real Madrid and Barcelona run around kicking a ball. But I’m getting ahead of myself now. I should start from the beginning.
So the day (or rather last night) started with me going to the airport to get on the plane to Heathrow, where I would then sit for about 5 hours before getting another plane to Newcastle. Even after I got to the gate, I was trading jokes with Michael through text messages, though I suspect that he took me seriously when I said that I wouldn’t help him with his video game class after he joked about erasing my Xbox game saves. Then I got on the plane. Last time I flew to London, I spent the flight watching episodes of Doctor Who on my iPod and didn’t bother sleeping at all. That didn’t happen this time, mostly because I didn’t have Doctor Who episodes with me this time. Instead, I just crashed until they began serving dinner, then went back to sleep until breakfast.
When I got to Heathrow, I had to go through the part of the trip that I dreaded the most: Immigration. I felt ready, though, since I had prepared the reams of paper I needed for entry. I felt somewhat disappointed when I was just asked a few token questions, then had my passport stamped. This meant that I had a boatload of free time, which I then proceeded to waste by rewatching Star Wars Episode III on my iPad and laughing at how bad the dialogue was, then starting on that biography of Steve Jobs (spoilers: he was totally nuts). I got on the flight to Newcastle around 1, and proceeded to take a nap again. When I landed, I was lucky enough to get my luggage instead of having it lost (again).
After I picked up my bags, I was greeted by Newcastle University’s Meet and Greet service, who called taxis to the residences for me and a few other international students. I got to my room (which is kind of small, but I expected that) and unpacked, then tried to connect to the internet, with no success. I spent most of the afternoon running around trying to get this fixed, eventually being told by the security guy at reception that they had tech support at the library where I had to go get my smart card. This meant I could kill two birds with one stone… After I had supper, which included rice pudding (which Dad didn’t eat before I could have some, for once). I then walked to the library, which was all the way across the campus, got my Internet fixed, picked up my smart card, and then proceeded to find out that most of my games don’t work when there’s a VPN connection. So I decided to blog instead.

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