DAY 3

I am officially in Iowa City! After landing at Chicago O’hare Intl, queueing for three hours to get through international border control and boarding the worlds tiniest aeroplane for my connecting flight to Cedar Rapids-Eastern Iowa Airport, I arrived into Iowa City at about Three O’Clock (Iowa-Time) on wednesday afternoon. I can imagine that for anyone who doesn’t love flying quite as much as I do, my trip may well have been a type of hell, but aside from the teary goodbyes with my Mom and Dad at Heathrow, my journey went pretty nicely :)

 In fact, I’d go as far as to say the deity of Transatlantic travel was clearly on my side- a whole row of five seats to myself on my eight hour flight, pancakes for breakfast and pizza for lunch, no problems with visa or customs and all of my luggage exactly where it needed to be at exactly the right times!

Since I’ve been in Iowa City the night-time temperature hasn’t dipped below 25 degrees C- the days have been 35+! I’m once again pretty lucky that my new (HUGE) apartment had air-con and fans in every room, as does the shuttle bus to the Uni. 

On wednesday night my new (very helpful) flatmate drove me to Walmart to grab essential household and food items, I met up with the Bath student whom I’m replacing in the Biophysics Department for a few placement-year tips and unpacked most of my luggage. I spent yesterday attempting to navigate ‘Downtown’, setting up an American bank account and then went for drinks (or a diet coke in my case, since I won’t be 21 until March!!!!) with my really friendly new colleagues at the Lab. Today, my plan is to head into the lab to get my pay-roll all set up and have a look around, followed by a second-time trip to walmart to search for food that looks remotely healthy- not an easy challenge, i’ll tell you! 

It’s been pretty odd getting used to the idea that as I write this, you guys at home have already had lunch and, for my younger Brother and Sister, school has even nearly finished! I already miss being able to talk to people of an evening- particularly the hour-long conversations I’d have with my Mom/flatmate if I was in Bath instead of the US right now- but i guess i’ll adapt pretty quickly!

Good luck to everyone starting placements this coming week and particularly to my top flatmate/course-mate/siamese twin who headed out to Aussie-land from Gatwick this morning, you babe :)

Love Love,

Chloe (Or, Broc, to a few weirdos reading this) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx