Apparently I have been in London for a week already. It feels both like I have just arrived, but also that I've been here a while. Everything is still very fresh and new, but at the same time I have gotten a lot of stuff accomplished:
Apartment is pretty much home now. It's decorated and stuff and I feel at home here. All of my school paperwork is out of the way.
I am completely finished my part of the process for both Canada Student Loan and Manitoba Arts Council Grant; now, I just wait for the money to come flooding in.
I have met with both of my profs for this term and received my initial assignments.
I'm getting to know the geography of the city. When people mention areas of the city and street names, I have a pretty solid understanding of where they are talking about. I'm starting to get acquainted with the bus system and I've walked home a few times from school.

Now, some more detail and perspective:
School - Initial meetings with my composition prof were both intimidating and exciting. We're basically going to ignore anything I've done before and start afresh. This is very exciting for me, although a large undertaking, but that's what grad school is supposed to be. Between comp course and orchestration, I get to have a chamber piece and a short orchestral piece performed, without any organizational effort of my own; I just write the piece and they play it! My first meeting for Electroacoustics was overwhelming... I have no experience at all. There was a stack of 8-12 electronic machines which I need to become familiar - and that's the starting point for where I can begin the course. First assignment was/is to read the manual and learn how to use the basic functions of the 32-channel digital mixing board. There is so much to learn, but I guess I've avoided the high-tech side of music for long enough. Now that I actually saw the studio and got the tour of what kind of magic I can make happen, I'm really interested to learn as much as I can.

Social - The other grad students in the music department are great; so friendly and nice! The MMus in Composition is small, only 5 of us so I was hoping that I would get along with them... I just came from a barbecue at the house where a few of them live (that's right, there is actually house with 3 composers living in it). I've also been invited out a few times with some of the masters voice students. My roommate is great, social enough, but we both know that we're here to learn and be serious students.

The moral is that, after the first week, things are going just fine! I can tell already that school is going to keep me quite busy, but I know I won't be at a loss if I feel I need to take a night to be social.
Phone and internet of our own are en route, so once I have it all set up, I will know what my phone number is and then I will send out my new contact information to all my friends and family back in Winnipeg.

Anyway, I'm going to bed, I'll sleep most of tomorrow away and then on monday, the madness begins - I teach my first class of sight singing!