The Eagle Has Landed

6/25/06, 8:03 pm, University of Sussex, Brighton

All right, this is it. My ultimate destination, the objective of all this planning and stress and activity. It felt great to finally arrive here, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I need to backtrack to this morning.

Despite my reasonable bedtime last night (before midnight, which is almost unheard of for me), I woke up at about 5:00 this morning. Jet lag is partially to blame, of course, but so is the bloody sun, which was up and shining even then (and didn't set until nearly 10:00 last night). I tried desperately to stay in bed until 8:00, but I didn't make it past six. I took the opportunity to shoot a little video of the meandering, claustrophobic hallways that lead from my room to reception. It may make you a little motion sick, now that I think about it. (Also, it's 9 megs, for some reason, so if you can't download it quickly... well, don't bother.)

Later, I took advantage of my coupon for a free £2.20 breakfast in the hostel's restaurant (it's a pretty big hostel). I had my choice of several items, most of which didn't look particularly appealing, including the three I got: hashbrowns, baked beans, and fried bread. Fried bread, not toast. I chose the beans because they're a classic part of the “full British,” and the fried bread because nothing else looked worth the risk. Breakfast is the most dangerous meal of the day.

Always take a camera. That's the lesson I learned after I checked out. Leaving my baggage in storage (£1 per item – cheap!), I headed back to Oxford to see about transport to Brighton. I'd anticipated being able to use the hour of wifi access I'd purchased to do that, see, but because the wifi couldn't be accessed I got my £2 back and moved on. At any rate, I'm walking down Oxford when I hear this rhythmic thumping up ahead, then the faint sound of low brass, and then I see a flag of some kind in the distance on the street itself. It was a Salvation Army brass band, parading down a major London thoroughfare at midmorning on a Sunday. The really amazing thing, though, was that they didn't suck. I'm used to Salvation Army bands in the U.S. being pretty terrible, but not these guys. I would've walked alongside them just to listen if I'd had the time. They were that good. I should've brought my camera.

I managed to put my £2 to good (or fairly good) use at a nice Internet cafe, but couldn't purchase a ticket for the Megabus online. I did get to see the schedule, though, and saw that it left Victoria Station for Brighton only twice today: 12:40 and 10:40. It was 11:00 at the time, so I hoofed it back to the hostel, got my bags, and caught the Tube at Warren Street to Victoria.

I really can't overemphasize how much all my crap weighs. It didn't feel all that heavy from LA to Calgary, but in the UK, when nearly all the walking I've done has meant lugging 50 (?) pounds or more of personal effects, it's been a slog. By the time I followed the “Way Out” signs to Victoria Station, I could feel how red my face must've been and my brow and back were wet with sweat. My shoulders are like two Gordian knots with arms hanging off them, and my lily-white collegiate hands, hands who have never known an honest day's work in their lives, are stiff and sore.

But anyway. I still had a good 20 minutes to catch the Megabus, though, so I wasn't worried... until I couldn't find any sign of it anywhere. Victoria Station, if you don't know, is huge. Trying to find a single bus, even a mega one, is like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. At around 12:35, I stumbled onto Victoria Coach Station, which I knew must be the fabled bus's home, but I was too exhausted to be particular. I got a round-trip ticket on a National Express coach and was happy for it. By 1:15 I was on an air-conditioned bus with nothing to do but watch the scenery go by. It was great.


Apart from my constant and false fear that we were driving into oncoming traffic, of course. It'll take me a while to get used to the left-hand driving thing. My instincts betray me when crossing a street and I invariably end up looking in the wrong direction, and even when someone else is driving (apparently) a voice in my head screams “You fool! You'll kill us all!” At any rate, when I wasn't preoccupied by that, I alternated between checking my registration materials and dozing for the next two hours, but when we arrived in Brighton I paid rapt attention to the city itself in case someone had posted “University of Sussex: This Way” signs. They hadn't. We did pass the Royal Pavilion, which is nothing short of bizarre. Magnificent architecture, but it just doesn't belong in its environment. I'll check it out later. Finally, we arrived at Pool Valley Coach Station, our last stop, right across the street from the ocean and the famed Brighton Pier.

I made it to the University about as elegantly as I'd made it to the International Student House yesterday. In other words, the less said, the better I look. While I sat on the number 25 bus anxiously watching the stops and consulting my schedule to make sure I didn't miss my stop (normally, the 25 stops right at Park Village itself, where I was supposed to go to check in, but currently, of course, due to some construction and my bad luck, it doesn't get so close), we stopped outside a Sainsbury's and about 50 EAP students got on accompanied by a girl in a University of Sussex “International Summer School” shirt who just had to be a guide. At least I didn't have to worry about missing my stop.

“I'm following you guys,” I told her when we got off.
“Are you one of the International Summer School students?”
No, I just like following strangers. “Yep. I just got here.” Everyone else, of course, was loaded down with bags of food. Me, I have 50 pounds of luggage.

Soon I found out her name's Rachel, and she's one of the residential advisors: US (as opposed to “U.S.”) students who stick around during the summer to deal with us ugly Americans. I got around to telling her part of my wacky story about being in transit almost constantly since Thursday, and she was nice enough to take me to get my registration packet and keys and show me to my room here in Park Village. I really appreciated the attention, probably because, I've later realized, I feel like I've been completely on my own since I left LAX. Here, finally, was someone whose job it is to help me. The other RAs I met are cool too, including Jayce, with whom I spoke at UCI a couple months ago. I was very surprised that he remembered me.

I like my room. It comes complete with a bag of “Restmor” bedding (sheet, duvet, duvet cover, pillow) and a towel. The hostel provided a towel, too, which means that I've lugged a towel all the way here for no reason at all. No, that's not entirely true. I did use my towel as a blanket in Calgary. I couldn't bring myself to travel without a towel on hand.

It's been a long time since I experienced dorm living. Each house in Park Village is three stories, with twelve single bedrooms, two kitchens, and hopefully more than one bathroom. I was happy to learn I'm on the ground floor (not to be confused with the first floor, which is on the second floor), since that meant not carrying my bags up a flight of stairs. Internet connectivity will have to wait until tomorrow, unfortunately. I have to go in and see a guy about that. Also, no wireless in the dorms! Lame.

There was a party-thing tonight, and went and ate and drank, but it wasn't really my scene. I did take the opportunity to register for a couple day trips, though. They offer a ton of extracurricular excursions to everywhere from the Royal Pavilion here in town to an overnight trip to Paris. In all the commotion, I neglected to sign up for any of these before my arrival, and as a consequence some of the better ones, such as Stonehenge, were sold out. However, Jill and I talked about seeing Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor when she's here in August, and I know we're going to Oxford (I think), so that narrowed down my choices a bit. On the July 14, I'm taking a river cruise in London (since I saw almost none of it this weekend), and on August 5 I'm making a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Best of all, because they sent us all two £25 trip vouchers, all of this is free. However, as the brochure warns, lunch is not included. They lure us in with the free trip and then jack up the price when it comes to lunch!

My first class starts tomorrow, although I have no idea when or where. We all have a mandatory orientation at 9:00 am, though, so hopefully I'll have a chance to sort things out then. In the meantime, I should probably fall asleep while trying to read something.