Exhausted

You know that feeling you get as you're going up the first climb of the biggest drop on a roller coaster? That fluttery feeling in the pit of your stomach that's a mixture of excitement, fear, adrenaline, and regret? That was the feeling I had almost all day yesterday. And most of today, really. But you probably guessed it, I'm officially in the United Kingdom! It was a pretty crazy ride getting here too, I must say. It seems that flying to another country can never really be straightforward.

My flights were originally scheduled perfectly, so that I would have four and a half hours in Chicago between my flights. My first flight out of Grand Rapids, which was supposed to be at 11:30 yesterday morning, was canceled due to storms in Chicago. United booked my on two completely new flights, but with only an hour and twenty minutes between flights. I don't know how many of you have been to the Chicago airport, but it takes a long time to walk between terminals because the airport itself is so enormous. Naturally, due to the already high amount of stress I was in, it was a pretty big setback to start the trip with.

Luckily, I managed to get an earlier flight to Chicago through American Airlines, and was spared too much hassle in Chicago. Besides the walking what felt like five miles to get to my next gate.

After that I hoped nothing else could go that wrong on the trip. But something much worse happened when I boarded the flight to London - I was sitting next to a baby. Not a baby-sitting-on-mom's-lap baby, but a single baby in a carrier (with mom next to baby). For those who have never had the pleasure of flying with an infant in the same plane, babies do not do well on planes. Specifically eight hour flights across the Atlantic. There's nothing better than being stuck in a metal tube hurtling 600 miles per hour through the stratosphere for eight hours with a screaming child. Naturally I was bracing myself for the worst, preparing to turn my iPod up to earsplitting volumes, when a flight attendant came and told mom and baby that they could move up closer to the rest of her kids (yes, she had two other small children with her who were originally sitting alone). At that point, I knew the travel gods were going to be on my side for the rest of the trip.

While it doesn't make for particularly interesting stories, the rest of my trip to Leicester went so smoothly that I didn't really have to try hard to do anything. I was worried about getting my three suitcases and backpack that collectively weighed over 100 pounds across London to the train station, but even that proved to be much easier than I expected. Turns out when people see a young girl struggling to get massive suitcases loaded on to a train before the doors close on her, they really step up.

I did hit a slight hiccup when I actually got to Leicester. Turns out the building that is shown on Google maps as my apartment building is not 100% accurate in real life. And when you don't have access to any internet or data services, you end up wandering in circles past the same street corner with your 100 pounds of luggage until you conveniently run into the manager of your very apartment complex just as you're about to cry tears of frustration. What serendipity.

After a slight delay in my room being ready for me due to an email error on the part of the renting agency, I am finally there. I did it. I made it. The room is, as expected, almost hilariously tiny, but I think it will be more than enough for what I will require during the next year. I'm sure after this first week of getting settled, I'll be spending more time outside of my room than in it anyway.

All that being said, it was almost exactly 24 hours of travel time, with about three hours of sleep (more than I've ever gotten on an international flight, though). So you could say I'm pretty much exhausted. But I managed not to take a nap, and I'm staying up until 9 tonight to adjust to the time change quicker. All in all the trip ended up being much less stressful than I had originally anticipated. And that crazy, nervous, fluttery feeling? Gone. But then again, it could be that I'm just too tired to notice.