first day...

woke up at 5am... could not sleep much last night and the "call to prayer" of the mosque across the street from the hotel seemed to go on every hour all night long... I was able to sleep a lot on the plane ride over, so that did help a bit... the hotel has a wonderful breakfast buffet and I went to try just about every item starting right at 6am... after I came back to my room though, I felt rather ill and immediately fell asleep... woke up around 1pm when the maids arrived to clean... the Internet is still not working in my room, so checked it on the lobby computer... walked over to AUK... and found out that I had just missed three days of orientation for new arrivals put on by AUK's HR department... I went back and checked all of my emails to see if I missed something... no, and even a number of my emails to AUK specifically asked what date would be best for me to arrive and that I did not want to miss anything... everyone I talked to in HR simply put the blame on someone else, and later, the Americans that I met that work at AUK said this was pretty typical and that I should expect more of the same...

It was now only about 3pm, but HR said that it was too late to do any of my paperwork today, I should come back tomorrow early... I did go over to the Humanities and Arts building and got my office key, but it was also too late to have my computer set up... at this point I was hungry so walked down the street to a sort of strip mall area... I was too exhausted and discouraged to try exploring any exotic local cuisine so I settled on Johnny Rockets (at least it was not McDonald's and I have never been to a Johnny Rockets in the States)... it was about $14.65 US Dollars for a strawberry malt and a "Rocket Double" hamburger! Then I had a Dunkin' Donuts large ice coffee for about $4.88 USD! ...at least with this I got a coupon for 3 hours on the Internet but I still feel like a fool... came home disappointed and tired, fell asleep early...