We are here! All in one piece! We arrived safe and sound in Manchester, picked up our luggage (my one suitcase 'died' on the plane and will need to be replaced asap) and found my cousin Andrew and his son waiting for us. Andrew miraculously packed our massive amount of luggage into his car and we set off, bulging at the seams! Andrew had wonderfully researched the best mobile (listen to me, British already!!) plans so we both got that set, got some other necessities then crashed back at cousins. At that point I had been wearing the same clothes for something around 39 hours, slept like an hour and a half on the plane and skipped ahead 5 hours. We also had only eaten the sandwiches we had gotten on the plane. So we were tired, hungry and didn't exactly smell like a garden of roses haha. We gulped down supper (otherwise known as 'tea') and then reorganized our luggage so that we only had to deal with one big suitcase and our big backpacks. Thank GOODNESS we did that as had a rather large hill to schlep our suitcases up to get to the train to Manchester where we got on the bus to Birmingham....
Side note: last night was the first time I have spent time with first cousins in my entire life. I am happy to report that it was quite wonderful, I couldn't ask for a better family!!! Without them this trip would be MUCH more difficult and much less exciting! I can't wait to spend more time with them all!!
I have now acquired a very new, and rather intense, hatred for the bus. It was very possibly the WORST 5 hours of my life. What was supposed to be 2 hours ended up 5 because of an accident on the motor-way. There was a baby crying in the back of the bus and a child in front of us who was playing her gameboy the entire time. I also now hate mario. Something some of you may know about me is my ability to feel sick, very quickly, in situations which involve poor drivers. I thought my father was bad, well Dad I am sorry for all those years 'critiquing' your driving. You put my bus driver to absolute and complete same. He had two speeds: 1. Slam the gas. 2. Slam the brakes. Also, I had somehow envisioned that drive would be like on the highways back at home....SOO WRONG!!!! We drove through every tiny town possible, at either break-neck speed or dead stopped. I was so sick. I had to keep my eyes shut as tight as possible and focus on breathing for every second of that 5 hours to avoid treating all the other passengers to an Alicia puke show. We had planned on taking the same bus to Manchester on Wednesday, so I will need to take precautionary measures so that the 5 hours of dead do not repeat themselves!
Because of the totally terrific bus ride to Birmingham we missed our appointment with our agency to get our bank accounts open and to look at flats so we have rearranged and are now doing that tomorrow morning...the rest of our night will consist of laying in bed and watching tv. Need to recollect ourselves before another big day!!
Tomorrow will be our first real day here...no bussing around, no planes, just checking out our new city! Can't wait!!
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