A return to the fog is a return to the blog. London Foggin' Bloggin Part II April 23, 2012 We arrived in England at about noon today. I must say that I was absolutely exhausted. Even though I took Sister Hall's advice about staying awake during the first flight and taking a sleeping pill for the second, I got absolutely no sleep. In fact, I even took a little more than the suggested dosage to ensure a good sleep. Finding comfort on that plane was absolutely impossible. I barely got a wink. So I knew I was really for a treat.  After arriving, we spent some time making our arrangements with our coach to head off to our hotel. It became clear from the start that the was a bit of a learning curve before this choir becomes a well-oiled machine. Getting everyone accounted for and getting luggage on the coach was a bit chaotic.  Sister Hall's biggest priority was to keep everyone awake the whole day so that we can overcome jet lag as quickly as possible. So ten minutes after checking in, we were off to make the necessary purchases in a foreign country (getting money exchanged, international cell phones, etc.). We only had a short while before meeting up again so that we could go into the main part of London. We broke into several groups of about 6, each headed by an expert Londoner. These of course were the people who had studied abroad here two years ago. Since Matt had another commitment, Michelle and I had to split up and each head our own separate group, even thought I had specifically put us together. Seriously, we would make the best tour guides ever. Oh well. I took my group on a big long walk to make sure they wouldn't fall asleep. We walked to Trafalgar Square, saw Big Ben, toured the National Gallery, went to Covent Garden and to Picadilly Circus. I let my group split up for about ten minutes at each location so that they could experience London independently and so that I could have little bits of time to take photographs with my new camera. What surprised me the most was how much energy I felt just being in Londontown. It was incredible being back. At nearly every turn I saw something that reminded me of my time here two years ago. Some memories were quite poignant. I passed a pub on the corner and as soon as I saw it, I recognized it as a pub where Michelle and I had snuck in the back door to use the toilet without having to buy anything at the pub. That's just one example. After a few hours of walking around, we met up at the bus and headed back to Bayswater, which is the area around our hotel. On the way, Michelle noticed one of our favorite London restaurants and realized how close it was to our hotel. So we got to go back to Masala Zone for the wonderful favors of India. We splurged a little bit since we had eaten lunch the day before at the airport with the Biggs' instead of using our per diem. So it was in the budget. After a wonderful meal, we went back to the hotel and absolutely crashed. It was the best night of sleep even though we were in the tiniest hotel ever. Seriously, everything was so tiny. Seriously. I woke up only once at about 4:00 am. I was really worried because I knew I needed to get a real night of sleep. I quickly told myself to relax, not freak out and just sleep. It worked and I didn't wake up again until my second alarm went off.