All things considered, the trip has gone great thus far. As my mom already said, encountered some bad weather outside of JFK airport in NYC...they had us in a holding pattern for long enough that the plane had to stop at an airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania to get gas, THEN transfer over to JFK. Got to my terminal there about 5 minutes before they started boarding...
Ended up sitting next to a Persian girl for the flight from Indy to NYC who spoke like 7 languages (no really...Persian, Arabic, Korean, French, English, some others I don't even remember) and was actually on her way to Paris as well. We exchanged phone numbers but I know I won't have any time to hang out with her haha
Flight from NYC to London Heathrow was a piece of cake, ended up sitting next to a girl who was born in Pakistan and moved to America when she was 5 or so. Said she was on her way to Cambridge for a research project for a few months, she asked all about Japanese language, culture, etc haha...we talked for the first hour or so of the flight, then both pulled out our laptops and did our own things. Wished each other luck as we left the plane :)
Customs in London was interesting, the person at the counter wasn't exactly pleased with me as I didn't have the address for where I was staying available...had to call my friend and get his address, then the customs person asked me a bunch of odd questions and unhappily handed me my passport lol...oh well, just another stupid American :P
Said friend, Paul, then picked me up from the airport and we went to his house in Chigwell, Essex for a bit...I took a quick shower, then we watched an episode or two of The Mighty Boosh. STRANGE stuff, he obviously picked the most off-the-wall British comedy he had to expose me to. I liked it though :P Also had my first taste of English beer, can't remember the name but I thought it was quite good.
From there we picked up Paul's friend Chris and went to a place called Julie's Cafe in Ilford, Essex (the area it was in was called Seven Kings? I think?) to meet up with Ed and Carlos, who I'd be rooming with. Paul had been insisting for weeks that I get a full English breakfast ("bacon" - more like country ham, toast, sausage, an egg, beans, bubble & squeak - basically fried potatoes greens and peas I think, black pudding - you don't want to know, hash browns and tea x.x) so I did...but nervousness/excitement prevented me from eating most of it >.< Sorry Paul...
After that, Paul drove us all to Ed's house since I'd be riding to Paris with Ed and Carlos and they still needed to pack, plus Carlos has been staying with Ed. Paul and Chris hung around for bit, then left for work...and from there Ed, Carlos and I just sat around while they packed and we all watched j-pop videos haha
Later on that night (around 8:00), Ed's mom drove us to Barking station and we took the train to Victoria station. Switched over to our coach to Paris, which left at maybe 10:45PM...we ended up going through the chunnel, but we were on a bus and they just loaded us into a HUGE train-like thing for the trip, and all we saw was the inside of that (more boring than it sounds). They turned off the engine too, so it got quite hot quite fast...kinda sucked honestly -___-
I rested my eyes for most of the ride between London and Paris, it's going to be a busy few days...
Arrived safely in Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport around six this morning, that was about 5 hours ago. From there we met a friend of ours from Canada named Jimbo/Jaime (I'm not sure which lol, people call him both :P) who arrived in Paris yesterday, had something to eat, exchanged currency and made our way to check in at the hotel...which, by the way, has no air conditioning -___-
Relaxing in the room atm, in a few hours we'll head back to Charles de Gaulle airport to meet our Chinese friend who's rooming with us (the other guys I'm staying with are, as you may have already noticed, Mexican, English and Canadian - no two people of the same nationality :o), then hopefully greeting Morning Musume when they arrive at the airport.
Also, British people drive like MANIACS and I'm dealing with the jet-lag surprisingly well. Felt absolutely awful most of yesterday, but am pretty much back up to speed as of today. We'll see how it goes after the events of tonight/tomorrow though...the insanity begins at 3:00AM tonight...lining up for the first autograph session...
I'll do my best to put together another post tomorrow sometime :P
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