Happy Birthday to me! Big 21! I'm on a bus right now to pick up Monica from Heathrow, and of course things did not go to plan. I thought I planned my trip carefully, but I thought Kingston Church was the church down the street, but of course it wasn't. I made sure to be there early, but then I realized I was wrong, so I basically ran around Kingston at 7:15am looking for Kingston Church or any place I could pick up a bus to go to Heathrow. I finally decided to try Cromwell Bus Station, because the bus stop right outside my dorm goes there, and then you can get a bus to Heathrow. Should I have done that to begin with? Maybe, but I didn't really want to go all the way to Cromwell, when I knew the bus would be going by my dorm. So I went to Cromwell, it's really not that far, it's right next to the train station. So I got on a bus, 10 minutes later than what I had planned, so overall not bad, but those 10 minutes would make all the difference. The bus stopped a hundred and fifty times, and Monica's plane got in early, so yeah she was out of customs just as I was on the bus going by Kingston Bridge House. Just awesome. I was in line for customs for like an hour, and that is what I thought would happen to Monica.

So I picked up Monica, got there at almost 9am, and we got right on a bus to Kingston. I had class at 11am, and the bus would take at least an hour. Of course Monica's bags were sooo heavy, and I took charge of the heaviest one since I could lift it, and I dragged it from Heathrow onto the bus, and then to the dorm. We didn't have any problems getting her into the dorm, I thought there might be one or two because here is this girl with two big things of luggage, and I thought there would be questions... but no, no one noticed or cared. Sweet deal!

Class was interesting, I went to class and Monica walked around Kingston town centre. I had 18th Century Literature, and my teacher was like 25 minutes late... in America, I would have been out of that classroom after 15 minutes, but no they just sit and wait. It's unnerving! I like my teacher a lot, and the class should be interesting. I was amazed though at the lack of knowledge of history by my fellow class mate. They didn't know the Battle of Waterloo (which even I know, because there is always some reference to it), or the last time there was a revolution, which installed the current system of government that England has. The teacher then asked what happened in 1776, and three hands went up at once. I mean you ask an American some history and they might not know it, but we know the big dates, and this isn't the first time I've heard these dates said in class but they don't know them. Maybe I'm amazed because I love history, and I find this stuff fasincating, but they don't know a lot about their history. Maybe I should attend a history class and get beaten down...

After class though, I basically ran back to Monica, who was waiting for me by the dorms. We waited around a little bit, but then my suite mates came back, and we all went out to dinner to celebrate my 21st. We went to this cool little restaurant, Rococo, the owners were amazingly nice to us. Amaya of course informed them that it was my birthday, and on the house they gave us a garlic pizza. We got a bottle of white wine for the occasion, and for dinner I ordered lasagna. It was good, it had mushrooms in it, that of course I took out, and there was some green stuff, most of it I ate, some I ate around, but all of the lasagna was gone by the time I was finished. It looked like I didn't eat a lot of it, because it was baked like in cheese, but I can't eat that much cheese, and as I said there was no more lasagna. I had desert though, it was little pastry things filled with whip cream and vanilla ice cream was in the middle of them. They put a candle in the middle of it, and sang Happy Birthday to me! It was so sweet! The owners kept coming over to make sure everything was alright, and even the cook came out. Granted there was not a lot of people in the place, but they really took care of us. It was good too, it was Monica's first time with all the girls, and everyone got along really well. We all have common interests aka Johnny Depp. We told stories to Monica about what has been going on here, and the interesting events that have taken place. She had heard a lot of them from me, but of course I tell stories differently than Amaya. We were at the restaurant for 2 hours, and then we headed home and watched Dane Cook. He is sooooo funny, and it was awesome. We went to bed about 11pm, Monica and I were both beat!

So that was actually my birthday, and the next post is the continuation of my birthday... London with Monica.