London is now a real place - it's no longer they fairy land of faraway dreams and fruitless hopes. London is real. I'm in it. How couldn't it be real? It's tangible. I can feel things, I can touch things, I can hear, smell, taste it. My hair knows it's real - the humidity has made it comically large. My body knows it's real - my legs are already sore from all the activity they've gotten across and around this fair city. My living space feels real; it's a mess already - typical. But it feels so much like a dream. Like I'm going to wake up and I'll have never been here at all, just living in the most vivid of imaginings. It's an outstanding city replete with wonder.

I hear London before I've left New Jersey - I guess I'm pretty sensitive to accents, and any American can identify a Brit from a mile away. My plane is filled with everyday British people (probably mostly English) chattering away, probably extremely excited to just get home and be familiar with everything again, while I'm doing exactly the opposite. The accent gets me, every time. Maybe I'll get used to it, but it's been a little less than four days and the cut is just as sharp. I hear a person talk and immediately become excited - I'm in England! I'm in England! - and feel like a giddy 13 year old girl. Of course, those in London are already so familiar with tourists that my "American accent" (what a way to consider it) takes no one by surprise - it's irregular at best. Whenever someone British addresses me I still lose my mind, even if it is a little less than I would've a week ago, back home. I've been waiting for this for so long, and it seems like reality is so skewed in my mind that it's somehow transplanted itself into life. I love the accents, I really do. The accents and the slang constantly take me by surprise - and one thing I didn't expect? The packaging on something as basic as food. The food here is so different! The packaged food is labeled differently, the prices are all different, the nutrition information is even different. I'm learning new things about food here, which just supplements everything I'm learning about British history and the local sights. Kensington is such a wonderful place to live - I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to live somewhere more beautiful.