The flight to nowhere, chavs, and my perfect dog

It takes a special kind of person to have as horrific luck with traveling, particularly flights, as I do. If my flight isn’t cancelled, I have the flu. If I don’t have the flu, I get to wait in hours-long queues at passport control in order to declare that no, I don’t have random soil samples stashed among the duty-free crap I’ve bought on an impulse. Two out of the past four long-haul international trips have been flown with a crippling illness. But, Wednesday’s experience somehow puts all of my previous flights to shame.

I was initially supposed to fly back to Miami on 14^th March and spend four weeks in the air conditioning. That changed once I landed a job interview that I really couldn’t refuse, so I stuck it out in London for two weeks further sans money, plans, and sanity. That was fine. I survived.

But yesterday, I was supposed to fly from London to Boston, and then from Boston to Miami. My flight from Heathrow departed an hour and a half late –a delay I had no idea about because I had taken a verifiable cocktail of sleeping pills. Whatever, shit happens. The flight was on a miniscule airplane unsuited to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, but whatever. Shit happens. I was in the middle seat. Again, whatever.

What really gives American Airlines flight 109 the top prize in my 22 years of traveling is the fact that, around Greenland, something malfunctioning with the battery system caused the pilot to turn us around and fly us back to London. So nearly three hours of flying were completely wasted – hence the three-hour return to Great Britain. Then, apparently, we had too much fuel to land safely, so we spent another two and a half hours circling the Irish Sea before Heathrow air traffic control deigned to let us land.

Eight hours in the air, and we wound up back where we started.

Never mind the fact that it was brutally hot on board, or the fact that the plane was full of one of those horrible, raucous school groups en route to some overpriced trip. This group happened to be comprised mostly of smaller members of the cast of Geordie Shore and The Only Way of Essex. This group of chavs seems to have exhausted England’s entire supply of self-tanner and false eyelashes. Though one chavvy girl gave me a bag of potato chips when I went back to the flight attendants to beg for a snack. Props to her.

Of course, because we flew absolutely nowhere, I’m sure it was really necessary to send us through border control again, where they very rudely refused to stamp my passport because “I didn’t arrive from anywhere.” No shit. Give me a stamp.

American Airlines put us up in the Premier Inn by Heathrow. I had a Caesar salad and contemplated my life choices.

Basically sat quietly on my uneventful flight to Chicago, a land of cows and mullets, and had the world’s worst bagel and the world’s greatest coolatta at the O’Hare Dunkin Donuts. Was on a combination flight to Miami/Caracas (can someone explain how this is possible?), full of chongas in cowboy hats, and la reina de las chongas sat next to me, absolutely drenched in perfume. If you smell so rank that you have to use an entire bottle of perfume on yourself, you have problems, boluda.

It took two hours to get home in rush hour; South Florida radio is still as horrible as ever, and Toby, the teeniest of all the dogs in the world, remembered me. She is perfect and lovely and beautiful and wonderful and it’s like nothing ever changed. I sobbed hysterically upon seeing her – like, Kristen Bell and the sloth times about 1,000. It was perfect.

I had Chinese food and forgot to watch 30 Rock. Now I'm awake far to early because I get to do an audition news summary for News International. Murdoch was mostly mentioned in relation to Mad Men. This is going to suck.

I love this shitty place.

Saturdays in London

Well, my body apparently now thinks that 48° is really hot, so London weather is not being kind to me now. I also want someone to smack me (HARD) if I ever decide to go to Oxford Street (a) on a Saturday afternoon, (b) while it's raining, or (c) during London Fashion Week.

I have also lived the dream of many a London resident by yelling at tourists on the Tube to MOVE IT when people have to get off the damn train.

Actually, I'm just living the dream in general.

Five months in

So today happens to be the five-month anniversary of my arrival in London, and I don't think I've written for about the same amount of time - due to my mother bugging me about it during her visit, I feel that I owe the world (or all five of my readers) a post.

Sorry for not updating. Really. I've meant to do it for so long but a confluence of events made it impossible to do so for the longest time. First of all, grad school is hard. Second, working in an internship is hard. The transitive property states that if grad school is hard, and working in an internship is hard, working while studying is hard as shit. That's my math for you.

But that's my life. LSE, truth be told, isn't everything I dreamed it would be. It isn't an bastion of intellectual debate and many of my classes at Miami were much more difficult and demanding than the London School of Economics and Political Science. Kids in grad school are just as stupid as kids in undergrad, only there's less beer pong and more crying about our futures. I only have class on Mondays, a schedule I engineered in order to be able to work in an internship the other days of the week, which now leaves me with a horrible schedule on Mondays and four days a week to cry about my future.

My course, a master's in Political Sociology, is surprisingly good in that while I normally don't understand a word of what we're reading and discussing in my core course, I was able to go into the government and international relations departments and take classes that vaguely interested me. I seem to have forgotten how to write a coherent essay, but whatever. I made some good friends, including a few who enjoy drinking and crying as much as I do.

Working at Demos, a think tank who focuses on the far right, was a dream come true, but it wasn't good for my time management or sanity. Being in the office 10-6 two to three days a week didn't leave me with much energy or will to study when I got home. However, my bosses were great, and I'll miss it a bit, but I love being able to catch up on TV (priorities?) and bum around. Bumming around is nice. I also walk dogs at an animal shelter but I haven't been able to go for a while. I need puppy cuddles. I've also been seeing a ridiculous amount of theatre (but not nearly as much as I COULD be seeing), and I've been slacking on going to the cinema. British English is also essentially a completely different language from American English. I'm now proficient, but I didn't understand a word my fellow Birthrighters said for the first few days of the trip to Israel.

Otherwise, London is lovely, exciting, and horribly depressing most of the time. Seasonal affective disorder hit hard, and the weather sucks. Every time I see the sun I get confused and disoriented. I know they said it would be grey and dark, but this is really ridiculous. It's making me almost miss Miami, which is so unnatural and weird and equally as disorienting.

I haven't been traveling as much as I did when I lived in Prague, which may be shocking to many of you, but I seem to have run out of funds. I went to Israel on Birthright which was lovely and fun and left me with a number of really great friends whom I love dearly (and a boyfriend, which is a better souvenir than another IDF shirt). I became really tan on Birthright, which lasted for about a month, and now I feel mildly albino. I also went to Cardiff, which was surprisingly nice, and then Helsinki, which was dark, cold, rainy, depressing, boring, and expensive (but it was lovely to see Amanda!), and then Tallinn for a day, which was even worse. Joel and I spent two days in Dublin, but we didn't see the National Leprechaun Museum so it was a waste of a trip. I'm desperate to go back to Prague, and I need to go some place warm and sunny, preferably a place with fruity cocktails and a beach. I'll try to update normally about my upcoming trips to Edinburgh and Venice.

Otherwise, not much else is happening. I'm kind of coasting through this term, am in a state of panic about my dissertation, and really need to go home for a little bit. But this is my life. How odd that I want to stay here permanently.

Oh, I also saw David Hasselhoff play Captain Hook in Peter Pan, which was not only a highlight of my time in England, but of my life.

Also, my new obsession in life (besides my own dear Golden Retriever, Lady Toby Ziegler) is Uggie, the undisputed star of The Artist: