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Prologue

Most of the following was written in retrospect, but there are a few times in which I write in present tense. Sorry if this is annoying, but I’m the furthest thing you could possibly get from a good writer. After all… I did study electrical engineering. Another note, all that you're reading are my actual notes that I took during my trip on the day that it happened. I didn’t add any extra commentary unless duly noted (red text). Everything else is what I was thinking, when I was thinking it. No doctoring has taken place (adds a little more to everyones understanding of me). One more thing, why am I doing all this? Simple, cause Love is a complicated thing, you can't keep it inside you, or else you'd explode, and I feel like sharing ;)

Day 1: Somewhere over the Atlantic

Well if plane trips to the destination are any indication as to how the trip is going to go... then this one isn’t going to be too bad! I remember last September when I flew to Michigan… the plane ride was horrible! Stinky Hairy Fat guy who throughout the entire flight, kept rubbing his arm up against me… and I was stuck in my window seat too. Good thing the flight was only five hours long, but the trip… it was a complete disappointment!

Anyways, back to the here and now. The plane left San Diego at around 4:30pm and even before it started I had a pretty scary incident with my razor. It turns out I forgot to check it! But I got through security in both San Diego and Los Angeles so all my worrying was for nothing. Getting into LA, I had four hours to kill. I ended up grabbing an expensive meal (turns out all my meals on this trip would be just as expensive) and watched the Lakers lose game five (the final one) of the NBA finals. Stupid Pistons were supposed to suck! LAX is huge! It took me a bit to get to my terminal, but once I did… boy was I rewarded! So many cute girls! I couldn’t wait to see if any sat next to me. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. I was stuck next to a little boy (6) and he keeps prodding me, talking to me, and overall just plain bothering me. He keeps grabbing my video game controller too! I’m trying to be nice, but I’ve just about had it with him.

Virgin Atlantic is the best airline I’ve ever flown. Everyone gets their own tv, and can choose which movies they want to watch, and get to play video games which were loaded into the system. The girl sitting to my right’s pretty cute… not my type though. The dinner we were served was pretty nasty though, chicken with rice… ewwww, but at least the kid’s finally asleep. I only had to put up with him for 3 hours.

A few hours later…

He’s waking up now… and there’s only an hour left till we get into London. Europe, here I come! I think this trip is going be pretty good, I mean nothing has gone wrong yet has it? The little kid's up, got to turn on Mario for him (keeps him distracted until he decides he wants a new game). His name’s Sammy, he actually autographed my journal for me, he talks way too much though. He gave me a good laugh earlier though cause he wanted to feel my muscles. And at work today, a guy asked if I worked out much… I guess I should thank Vick, Shell and Stef for helping me get these shirts.

Getting ready to land now… and I’m not feeling too good anymore. I think I might be getting sick! How incredibly sucky would that be… the day before the tour starts, and me getting sick. To top it off… we hit a bit of turbulence before we landed, and so I’m feeling a bit nauseated.

First impressions of London

Wow, there’s a big mix of nationalities here. Everyone all mingling together… don’t really see that happening in the states. There’s way too much cigarette smoke though, one thing that I sorely miss about my beloved San Diego (America’s finest non-smoking city). The underground, aka tube, aka subway was also extremely clean, unlike ones that I’ve been on before. There’s no graffiti and the seats are all nice and cushy too. Hopping off the tube at Russell Square, I was pointed in the direction of the Royal National, and headed over to check in.

10:40pm London Time

Day 1 complete! Met Kelley my roomie from TN, and he gave me some good tips. Earlier, I went to check my email in the Contiki basement, and guess who I found at the computer next to me, Gaby! Me and Gaby had met on the Contiki message boards, and had been discussing the trip over email for a while… what a coincidence meeting her. We went for a little walk, and found a nice Italian place that we came back to later for dinner. We sat, and just people watched, and talked, getting to know each other better. At 7pm we went to the London Café and did a little intro/info session. We met Stacey, a South African chick who lives in Toronto… pretty cute :). Going into depth about the “meeting of Stacey,” me and Gaby were standing in line waiting to turn in our paperwork, and I turned around and spotted this really cute redhead behind us. I turned back to Gaby and asked her whether or not we should be introducing ourselves to other people, and she told me that she didn’t know. She thought that we would be doing it the next day on the bus, so there wasn’t any need to do it now. For some odd reason I accepted that for a few minutes, but upon turning around again, and seeing that the redhead wasn’t really talking to anyone, I introduced myself. Go me! After the meeting, all 3 of us went to the Italian place that we found earlier, cost me 8 pounds for dinner (about 16 bucks) but it was good and filling. Stupid stale bread cost us money! We then explored, and got kind of lost. I swear Stacey hated me! She walked with Gaby 5 feet in front of me the whole time! It was as if she wanted to be as far away from me as possible cause I was the one getting us lost. She didn’t even say anything to me! Gheesh, I went through all the trouble of introducing myself and now she won’t even talk to me! Oh well, she was way out of my league anyways. We saw a dog poop mailbox, an umbrella shop, a double decker bus, and lots of cool buildings. Time for bed now though… even though I’m not really tired.