Cheers! from Brighton

Hello, mates. Cheers from a place where their beaches have rocks instead of sand, they drive on the wrong side of the road, sit on the wrong side of the car, have way too many coins for their currency, and where the people have the strangest spoken version of English ever.

I arrived at Heathrow yesterday morning totally unprepared for the wrath of public transportation. Okay fine, it's not that bad. But when you're travelling by yourself, you're a little asian girl in a crowd of white people, and the combination of all your luggage bigger than you--public transportation is not your friend. But back to my adventures! I got to Heathrow Airport, which is in London, went through customs and all that and found my way to the NationalExpress central bus station, where I purchased a coach ticket down to the vacation/seaport town of Brighton.

When I got here, I climbed onto the local double decker bus and went about 10 miles down the opposite way that I was supposed to be going. I reached some town that reminded me of The Shire. I started sweating a bit, and so I asked someone sitting next to me--he confirmed that I had gone the wrong way. So, I ended up staying on the bus and going back around... not knowing which stop to get off at. Once we got towards the seafront, I walked up to the busdriver and asked him if he knew where my street was, and just my luck, he said no. I decided to get off and walk right there, and I found my way to the hostel (that doesn't even look like a hostel) by asking people, and inevitably looking like a stupid American tourist.

I walked in thinking that it was going to be some scary, old, rickety place, but it's not like that at all. The walls of the entrance hall were yellow, the kitchen is like a maroon (as is the common room) and my room is lavender! The people aren't shady either, although some of them are quite douche-y... must be a European thing. I've already been called Chinese. Haha. But my roommates were three other girls, one from Canada, one from England, and one from Australia. I went on a walk through Brighton with a guy from Spain: I got to walk through little alley ways with restaurants and pubs everywhere-it was way too cute for words. And a used book store!! I'm definitely hitting that up before I head off to Sussex for school tomorrow.

Food has been terrible. I haven't found anything good, but maybe that's also because I'm trying to save as much money as possible. The GBP is seriously killing me already. BUT I just bought a bottle of white wine today that I plan on drinking whilst watching more episodes of FRIENDS thanks to the lovely Princess.

Tomorrow will be a long day of moving into the dorms at school, but I'm excited! Hopefully, my internet will work there; otherwise, I'm going to have an aneurysm. Everyone at the hostel gets wifi except for me, and the internet cafe is like a hike from the hostel. But it's worth it because I honestly miss you guys.

off to decipher what's under the Brit accent,
captain at sea.