The England Traveler: One Month(ish) Later

I know the question of me returning home safely has been plaguing you all, so here it is: I returned home safely.  And advice to those with large suitcases attempting to reach London Heathrow, don't take the tube, just don't.

I got off the plane from Chicago to Columbus and saw sparkly red, white, and blue balloons, two giant signs, my parents, and Boyfriend in his Santa hat (the Victory Burrito was waiting for me at home).  The jet lag did not slow me down, I was far too excited to be on my American soil.

Now, I'm back at Wooster, soaking up all the things I have missed:

1. The people, obviously.  You know who you are.
2. The classes, including the eccentric yet brilliant professors and the piles of homework
3. Lower Two, the basement-basement of the library, creepy, old, and dusty
4. Our super awesome newish chairs in Lowry Pit that are comfy and have a built in tray and have wheels
5. Kauke Arch, day or night
6. Flex dollars and using them to buy everyone mozzarella sticks and ramen
7. Lowry dinners, lunches, (but not breakfasts, duh).  Complaining about Lowry (but secretly thanking the heavens we don't have to cook our own food)
8. Keystone, Woo Wednesday, Westie parties, girls' nights
9. The Grounds Crew, and obnoxiously waving at them as they pretend they don't know who I am
10. Literally everything else about the COW not on the list

And now I will continue to be better than everyone else because I did a semester abroad and therefore am better versed and cultured than the rest of you!  Alas, I will look forward to the day I return to the UK, give Ireland a second chance, and see the rest of Europe.

Cheers!

Thanksgiving: Several Hours in a Lobby Eating Fruit Rollups (aka Winning)

Okay, no more teapot posts, however, as a quick preface...  I'd like to inform my dear readers that I just made the purchase of black currant, ginseng and vanilla tea.  Not that you all care.

I pick Boyfriend up from our wee Lancaster train station midday, just in time to drop him off at my flat so I could go to my British Romanticism class, where my old British professor challenged my third-wave feminist attitudes on writing. HAH, picked the wrong girl for that!

I race back to the flat, Boyfriend had insisted we fly to Ireland the same day he arrived ("Oh, might as well get all the flying out of the way, even though you are probably one hundred percent right about flying the next day, but whatever!"  Okay, fine he didn't say the last part), so we had a small window of time to catch a train in order to check in for the flight.

Needless to say, there was a lot of running through the airport, and me saying, "Hey, we should totally sign up for the Amazing Race!" and immediately retracting that statement after sprinting up a flight of stairs.
As you can imagine, because it is my life, we missed the flight.  And all the hotels were booked... Except Travel Lodge: the cheapest, ugliest looking accommodation we've ever seen.

At the crack of dawn on Wednesday, we awake, and get on the 8 AM flight to Ireland!

"You both look so happy!" Happy, mom, yes, we are happy.  Also delirious from sleep exhaustion and just relieved we managed to not screw up this flight

Dublin Town Center: you can also see the Spire Monument in this picture (the giant spike)

Dublin was a pretty cool city.  We did a lot of shopping and I even got to author-stalk James Joyce!  Boyfriend humored me and got me a few trinkets from the James Joyce Center!  I think Larry Stewart and Mazen Naous from the COW would applaud me.

That night, we walked to the Guinness Factory, where Boyfriend took some excellent pictures from the Gravity bar after we had our free pints of Ireland's greatest beer.  Afterwards, we stayed out fairly late (I know his post says 3 AM, but we were definitely in bed by eleven...latest) taking pictures of the lit up city and eating Irish McDonald's chicken nuggets on the bench overlooking River Liffey.

Boyfriend in Merchant's Arch

Photographer in action

And what good would one of my stories be if yet another thing didn't go wrong?

Stupid Dublin ATMs ate my money and left me with 20 worthless American dollars.  So the next morning, I had to call AAA back in America to sort it all out (I was surprised Mom hadn't all made them want to quit their jobs by then).  Boyfriend and I, completely exhausted from running around Dublin, decided to head back to Lancaster.  But first, we needed to get to the ferry.

Boyfriend: "Oh, it's no problem, my super awesome iPhone says that it's just past the river by the Dublin Docks.  We can walk that.  My iPhone hasn't been wrong about anything either."

So I prepared myself for a very long journey:

Yes, I am a dork, thanks for noticing.  And yes, water does come in that ridiculously sized bottle here.

US TWO HOURS LATER

"Boyfriend, we're idiots."

"Yup."

 Oh, and our backpacks weighed like thirty pounds from our Christmas shopping (yes, families, we love you just that much).  We finally made it and then proceeded to spend approximately six hours in the lobby of the ferry waiting room, and mind you, this was on Real Thanksgiving.  But that's okay, because it was pretty hysterical and we were too thrilled to have found the ferry to care.  Also, I made him play ISpy with me as well as micro-manage his game of Solitaire.

But we made it onto the ferry, and the stormy sea made us both a bit motion sick.

Spirits still high despite wanting to throw up

At midnight, we were in Holyhead, Northern Wales!  I've never been to Wales, and even at night it was absolutely beautiful.  I'd live there if it had a Chipotle and didn't have such chilled winds.

I believe this was our favorite part: Holyhead.  It was beyond any beautiful words:

Boyfriend photobombing my lovely picture

Sooner or later, we found ourselves back in Lancaster!  Which everyone will have to wait for that post, so there.

Cheers!

And Then, Everything that Went Wrong, Did, but it All Had a Happy Ending (So Far)

Once upon a time, there was an unfortunate girl who had the very fortunate experience of traveling to the UK.  This girl, usually organized under most conditions, found herself to be particularly flighty under these stressful circumstances.

Let me begin with the Flight from Hell.  Okay, so it wasn't that bad but the almost-but-not-really sinus infection I accumulated two days prior to adventuring to London didn't fair well on the acceding and descending flights.  By the time I arrived at Toronto, I was too sick and confused to know right from left and the Canadians I surely thought to be friendly were the most unhelpful bunch of tourist-craved nimrods I'd ever come across.  I was so stressed out that I managed to realize I was no longer carrying my coat.  Yes, I lost my beloved AE coat.

London was far worse.  By then, my ears were so pressurized it felt like someone had released me into Outer Space with no fish bowl full of air over my head.  I thought I was going to implode.  I sucked it up, found the Arcadia group at the airport, and we headed to the hotel.

The next few days were a high-speed flash of various tourist activities through the eyes of the aforementioned unfortunate girl who was drugged on Sudafed the entire time.  But, I had a blast (see examples below):

The view from my hotel window (Kensington Gardens)

 

 

My first ever Guinness (I was unable to hear the whole night so I kept shouting at people to speak up)

And then, I won.  Won what, you ask?  I won Rachel.  That's right, I found Rachel! 

Don't worry, it's still the first Guinness and Rachel's first apple juice

 After the first night of the Arcadia orientation (majority Oxford students, one going to York, and three of us off to Lancaster), I put on the puppy-eyes and begged for a doctor.  After two hours of getting lost in West London (quite frightening when you don't know where you are going and have to pretend that you aren't lost), I finally got to see the doctor.  After an interesting appointment with Dr. Stereotypical Old British Man, I got my meds and was good to go.

As an English major, I fulfilled my life duty by traveling to the Globe and seeing a play preformed called Mysteries.  It was an amazing experience, being a groundling and all.  It was everything that Maria Teresa Prendergast had drilled into my head back at Wooster.

We received flowers because we are so beautifully awesome

Introducing the then-future students of Oxford...And me.

After a three hour train ride in which I realized I left my wallet at the hotel, I finally got to Lancaster!  But that's a different story, one that is still working on an ending.

Cheers!

Let There Be Flight!

And so in the last for days I (and by I, I mean Dad more or less) sent in my deposit and booked a round trip flight!  I suppose I should thank Mom for folding my "Intent to Enroll" form, no one else can fold a piece of paper in three perfectly equivalent quadrants to fit inside an envelope better than she can.

On September 28, 2011 after what I assume will be a huge feast in my honor with all my family, friends, and loved ones, I will be taking off at precisely 4:30 PM from Port Columbus and arriving at.....

Canada!

Canada: Also known as America's hat.

Where I only assume I will make super friendly Canadian friends who will, according to The Simpsons, end their sentences in "eh?"

And then I go to England, a drastic change from maple syrup to lots and lots of ale.

My returning flight is something much more exciting, I get to fly to the airport in Washington D.C. where I expect Obama to greet me personally and escort me directly to my plane to Columbus.

"No thank YOU for coming back to Amurica"

My next step is waiting to hear from good ole Jacki from Arcadia to confirm she got my stuffs and then I'm guessing she'll continue to ask me for a creative fiction portfolio in which I do not have.  It's not MY fault Wooster smothers my creative facets with boring old "real world" research papers.

Cheers!