Living in a Shoebox--at first

I thought blogs were supposed to be “web logs” like “Captain’s Log—Stardate: 7.8!” This has been such a week that I haven’t had the energy to share a bit. So here’s a quick hit, typed as I sit in a coffee house near the hotel. My goal is to devote 10 minutes to each day and catch this up, go back to the hotel, upload it, and then fill in some details as time allows.

Saturday 4 July—I did something unusual for me that morning after my meager breakfast in the café downstairs: I saw the maid cleaning the room next door to mine, saw that it looked like a single, and then asked whether it was; turned out it was. The unusual thing? I went downstairs and asked if I could change rooms from my glorified closet to this comparatively spacious squarish layout, where I could actually not touch two walls from my desk chair. Amazing how that improved my mood!

The first students (and Andrew) started arriving around 9, dumping their luggage and going off for adventures despite their exhaustion, as they couldn’t check in til 2 PM. The routine of the day became established: I’d be tapping away on my computer in my 3rd-floor room, get a call from the desk that another arrival was waiting, I’d walk down, introduce myself (trying desperately to match face to name to photograph on the mug shot I’d been given), briefly orient them to the various streets and shopping possibilities, given them their 7-day transit cards, and tell them to come back later. The luggage room became ridiculously cramped and I stored several suitcases in my room; as the afternoon wore on they were checking into their rooms, becoming roommates pretty randomly, and getting roughly settled in.

By 7 PM all my ducklings had landed and we had our brief orientation in the far end of the café, and I passed out directions for getting to the Waterloo campus of King’s College for the first class next morning, as well as the roughed-in schedule for readings and activities that I had been cobbling together all day. After that, I elected to light out for a long late-evening run around Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, threading through the mass of humanity gathered for the outdoor concert (who the hell is “Blur,” anyway? Loud, that’s for sure. Bruce Springsteen had been there the week before, and Neil Young…). Strange to see the mini-shrine along the fence of K. palace, where Lady Di had lived “in happier times.”