All Packed!

Everything's nearly ready to go apart from some daily things. Even though all my stuff is in a suitcase it still doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere. I figure it'll hit me once we've been there a week or two. Yikes!

Tomorrow I'll head down to Ames to pick up Steph. Then we're staying at Megan's in DMS while we visit Simpson and Steph spends some time with her bro and sis-in-law in Grimes. Then Megan has lovingly agreed to take us to the airport! Thank you!!

I've been a first-class nerd (a good thing!) and I'm almost finished with our first week's reading so I have plenty of time to fall behind for the rest of our group tutorials. For those of you who don't know, Professor Gammon is teaching us in groups of 3-4 while we're over there. I'm hoping that leads to some good chats and even more free time to explore and travel.

If anyone is curious--and again, doesn't already know--our whole group is staying in a row house at 270 Earl's Court Road (SW of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, all W of Central London). Here's a link if you want to check it out here. It looks pretty cool and is really close to the Earl's Court Tube Station.

We arrive in London at 7:10am on Thursday Sept 3. I'm thinking I'll be too worn out to want to blog right away so I'll tell you now: We plan on just moving in, exploring the neighborhood, geting our Oyster cards (For discounted travel on the Tube and buses--and maybe trains? That'd be nice!). I think we're going to a market and having a group meeting, too. We'll definitely go grocery shopping--I'll need some bread and jelly to go with the peanut butter I'm smuggling!) Basically, getting situated and maybe doing some quick site-seeing.

Monday we're meeting at the Tower of London (getting there and back all by ourselves--I'm super excited!!) and then doing some of our own touring in the surrounding neighborhood and I've already got lists going of stuff to do. The rest of the week will be the same thing: Tues@Westminster Abbey, Wed@St. Paul's Cathedral, Thurs@Windsor Castle, and Fri@The Globe Theatre plus a show there later in the evening. It will be a busy week!