Planes, Trains, and Freakin' Automobiles!

I have arrived! After many long hours of travel, my host parents picked me up from the train station, and after a short drive, we pulled up to a lovely brownstone house that is about 300 yards from the oceanfront! My place of living for the next 10 weeks. The neighbors have palm trees in their front yard, how bizarre and lovely. But more about that later. After a slight "miscommunication" at the Manchester airport, my large suitcase has gone m.i.a. Well, the airline has it, in fact, but it is currently coming to the house via some delivery service. Thank goodness it will be here soon!

The Manchester airport was nice, but a bit confusing. I didn't know the gate of my flight until ten minutes before we were supposed to leave, but it in fact ended up being not ten feet out of the "lounge" area and all the shops/restaurants. There was a large area with duty-free merchandise that more or less sold liquor and perfume. I wonder what that says about tourists... Any who, the flight was relatively non-eventful. The plane was just as big as the plane I came on from Chicago, except it was probably only about one-fourth of the way full!! I thought that was quite interesting, as I've never seen such an empty flight in the US. I was very happy to have a window seat, but then rather disappointed because we were above clouds the whole way which blocked my view from all of the scenery. Oh well. The bit I could see, I noticed, had a much more varying and odd-shaped patchwork of fields compared the the rectangular farm fields in Wisconsin and Illinois.

Aerial view of just outside Manchester

I got the bad news about my luggage not long after my arrival at Gatwick, but trekked onward to locate the train station. I must say, I love trains. I can't believe we don't have more passenger trains in the US. I suppose we are trying, but certain politicians have other agendas. I missed my first train because I thought it was a different train but in fact it was just my trian being early! So I caught the next one that was about half an hour later and met a nice local from Dorking who tried to help me work my cell phone. That is still a work in progress. The train ride itself was about half an hour, and I saw some nice fields full of sheep and small towns on the way in. It was also pretty affordable, my one-way ticket was about $20, but of course if you buy a return as well there is a discount. I will be looking into the train more as I hope to take it into London at least a few times on the weekends. The Bognor Regis station is only about a 10-minute walk away, which is excellent.

Time to research the train and whatnot. Cheers to public transportation!