Hello Nomads! I'm back to griping about airports and glorifying my otherworldly experiences. I am currently on my way to the land of the Tudors, tea, and Big Ben. London has certainly been calling (jokes) my name for a while, but I am finally embarking on a four-month sojourn to study in this city of kings. But all great adventures have to start somewhere. Enter the Syracuse Airport.
The airport - and the uncomfortable, window-side chair I'm currently sitting in - have gotten very comfortable the past couple days. Too comfortable. The plan was to fly out of Syracuse, meet my fellow study-abroud folk at JFK, and take a flight AS A GROUP to Heathrow. There, a bus would so nicely meet us to drive us to a meeting place where our host families would act thrilled to see us and transport our weary, unclean bodies to their homes. Yeah, it was a beautiful dream.
Instead, I got spend all day sitting in the airport where they kept pushing my 3 o'clock flight back... and back... and back. With the new departure time schedule for 6:30, I knew that I would barely make it to my 9:22 flight in JFK. But I still had hope! That is, until they announced that the plane that we were supposed to take had yet to take off in Detroit. Damn polar vortex.
Then, the unthinkable happened. After hours of waiting, anxiety, and daydreaming of that little bag of in-flight pretzals, my flight was cancelled. No flight, no JFK. No JFK, no flight to London. No group flight, no one to meet me at the airport. I was screwed. Panicked and alone, I tried to reschedule my flight for as soon as possible. But of course, I was done. The London flight was going to leave without me, while I was holed up in the Syracuse Airport Hotel. A room they almost made me pay for, I might add, since the flight was cancelled due to "weather."
Although, my world - less dramatically, my plans, my sense of sanity, and my self control - had come crashing down, there was light at the end of the tunnel. I ended up getting my hotel room for free. Probably because I looked like I was going to break down and sob all over the counter. I found a vending machine and drowned my sorrows in pretzals and Cheez-its. The hot water machine was still on at the hotel, so I was able to make myself a cup of green tea with pomegranate. Free Wi-Fi meant that I could distract myself from my black hole of despair with the trials of Stefan, Damon, and Elena. And so passed my first night alone in a hotel.
This morning I awoke refreshed and ready to take on the day. I had a battle plan. Nothing could get me down today. Not even the woman at breakfast who told me that she couldn't eat waffles because the bread affected her menopausal symptoms. Operation: Get Caroline to London was in full swing. I looked up tube routes, bus prices, cab companies. I was determined to make it alone in the big city. My fear of getting around in the city had made itself known in a big way. But now I was ready. As I've been telling myself, if I could do it in Nairobi, I could do it in London.
So, with that dramatic start to my journey, here I am. Back in the same airport, in the same gate, in the same chair. But I think now I'm ready. Come at me London! But preferably slowly, as seen from the controlled descent of a plane. One step at a time.
