They Warned Me About This, But I Didn't Listen

Way back, when I was still at UMW, the international office held a pre-departure orientation for everyone who was going to be studying abroad during the spring semester. It was pretty much required and also pretty much irrelevant to me. I spent the majority of the orientation either skimming through the handbook they gave us or working on a paper I had due the next day. The one thing that was new to me, but I disregarded at the time, was a chart that showed the up and downs of studying abroad. It was a graph that showed the emotional roller coaster you could expect to go through both going to the country of studying and coming back home. The reason I disregarded was because at that point I was super excited about travelling abroad and wasn't expecting any kind of culture shock or anything like that. For some reason I wasn't even expecting to be homesick.
One of the pros of getting here a week before classes start is that I get to work through my jet lag without having to worry about classes. The major con is that no one else seems to understand that concept. I had started feeling incredibly homesick before I went to bed, but was fairly determined to move past that and get some much needed sleep. I put in my ear plugs and fell asleep. Close to 2am some noise filtered through my earplugs and woke me up. After repeated attempts to get the party that was occurring across from my window to quiet down (which included being offered a can of beer which I did not accept) I did the only thing I could think of: call home. It was only 9:30pm at home so I assumed someone would be awake to answer the phone. Of course this was after crying so hard that I started hyperventilating and subsequently guilt-ing the people bellow me into quieting down. It cost me four pounds, but calling home was well worth the cost (and not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be.) By the time I got off the phone and listened to "Bolero" the party had quieted down enough that my earplugs were enough to keep out the rest of the noise. I went back to sleep around 3:30am, but at least I didn't have to be anywhere until noon.
Bottom line: Homesickness happens at the most inopportune times and crying really loudly can do wonders for making people feel guilty about the obscene amount of noise they are making.
In other less depressing news I got a phone, a duvet cover that fits and found the Marks and Spencers closest to me. I also met someone else from the States who's here on her own and who isn't much into parties so things are looking up. Also, I went to file a complaint about my shower working and it turns out that my entire block is being investigated. Yay. I just have to get through the rest of the week and the weekend and then hopefully things will quiet down at least during the week. I'll have more to say after Thursday in all likelihood, so until then.