Oh, fire alarms.

A story I forgot about from yesterday:
We were waiting at the tube station for our train, and this guy was not looking too hot- eyes really blood shot and eating a bag of crisps and sort've glaring evilly and standing awkwardly close to us on a very empty platform. All us girls pulled our bags in closer and the guys tried to shift round a bit to be closer to him. He gets on the train and again stays awkwardly close to our group, and when he finishes his crisps, pulls out some charcoal and writes "NO SURRENDER UVF 1690." I guess UVF is some sort of Irish terrorist group? He got off at the next station anyways, and that was the end of that sketchy encounter.

So last night this British girl was having a meltdown for about three hours outside my window, so I fell asleep well after three AM, with my alarm set for nine. Let's just say I was not a happy camper when we had a fire DRILL at eight AM. Yeah, not even someone accidentally setting off the alarm, it was a drill. And they were trying to lecture us on fire safety and we're all out in our pajamas in the cold glaring blankly, if you can do that. I guess it was still better than the time they forgot the key to turn off the alarm in Edmond's so it went off for an hour and a half.

I ended up getting up at 9:50 for my 10AM class. I was somehow still the first one there. Though it was weird, I guess tutorials in the maths department are more like the math lab, there were four tutors there and you work on problems and they come help you do them if you need it. Pretty nice, actually, though I'm probably going to start going to the Thursday one next week so I have Wednesday mornings off.

I went back and took a two hour nap, ate and worked on my homework more... class makes me feel smart and the homework makes me feel dumb. How on Earth do the others manage?

I had my first meeting for my volunteer group today, there were two British people- Ray and Erica- an Albanian girl who's lived in like fifty countries (Lauren), a Canadian (Amanda) and a girl from Iran (Shidvash). The two coordinators of the program were very nice as well, it seems like it'll be fun. Next week we get to meet with the people from the nursing home who are participating, and ask them about themselves and whatnot.

After that I went to buy my books for Grand Tours, so I took the tube to the DLR (it's the "light railway," an above-ground train) and found a Waterstones at Canary Warf. No luck. So I went to the other Waterstones- again no luck. So I had to go back home and will now order my books online. That was a waste of a good few pounds of tube fare. ...not a complete waste, actually, I did get a British copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard.

I took another nap after since I was arbitrarily exhausted, and worked on some more homework, and then Vanessa, Caitlin, Hilary and I went to Drapers since it was free admission before ten. We decided to go ask to sit at a table with these two guys watching a football match, and talked for a couple hours. We're going to all get in touch again, so huzzah! I might've made British friends.

So Drapers is a really cool club on our campus. They have some big screen tvs in the walls and a huge bar and some pooltables and fun lights, and then you go down this little hallway and there's a huge dance floor with a mini bar area and a comfy bench seating all along the wall, it was really fun! They played a ton of techno, though. We missed the Jackson 5 song they played, which was unfortunate.