London Calling

As an American girl taking a flight from San Francisco to London solo, I had a good idea of how my life would play out: exactly like Amanda Bynes’ did in What A Girl Wants. According to this movie, all you have to do is hop on the first double decker bus you see and, voila, you’ve arrived at some chic hipster hostel for the price of… like, £5 a night. Oh and there you’ll meet some cute British guitarist to fall in love with. Also your dad is loaded and running for Prime Minister. It’s just that easy.

Yet for some reason or another, my England experience hasn’t been quite like Amanda’s. She came across the pond to hunt down her mysterious birth father; I showed up because I missed eavesdropping on other people’s conversations (that means you, Spain). My fears probably weren’t as complex either – mostly it came down to, “How on earth am I going to pack all of my clothes into one suitcase?” Fitting an entire Urban Outfitters into your carryon isn’t as easy as it sounds, trust me. However, any worries I had pretty much evaporated when I stepped off the university shuttle (no double decker, but it gets the job done) onto campus and realized that it looked enough like Hogwarts to make all of my childhood dreams come true. Gray skies stretch overhead, the buildings are brick and layered with ivy, and although I can’t say for certain if any rooms are haunted, I can tell you there’s a Jewish graveyard adjacent to the library. Seriously though.

Things started as they normally do: I was running late. Thirty minutes late, to be more precise. Earlier in the morning, we had a seminar for all of the study abroad students and afterward they allowed us time to bombard them with questions. Being the giver that I am, I did my fellow Americans a favor and asked what was really on everyone’s mind:

“How do we get WiFi?”

It’s a legitimate concern. The instructor, Harry – whom I’ll make a note of talking shit about later – explained that we won’t be able to access our Queen Mary accounts until Monday and if our parents really want to know if we’re alive there’s an office we can go to and blah blah blah. I stopped listening at this point. I was more preoccupied with the fact that he expected a hundred or so college students to go four full days without Internet or phone access. If I waited another four minutes without texting my mom there was a 90% chance she was going to send out a search party looking for me. Possibly an international Amber Alert.

Which brings me back to the running late part. During our lunch break, instead of actually, you know, eating lunch, Brett, Mason, and I tracked down the computer lab where we could collect our student usernames and passwords for WiFi access. Why this is something the school needed a whole weekend to prep for, don’t ask me. Either way, all was right in the world once again and I reassured Marti that I had survived the 11-hour flight and wasn’t homeless. Then we chose to go out for food as well… and so, next thing I know we’re tiptoeing back into the auditorium and of course Harry spots us in the act. There had been a little tension between us (via email, nonetheless) because apparently I had completely butchered the whole registration process. In my defense, it was because the USD study abroad office literally sent me the wrong information about pretty much everything.

So, long story short, Harry hates me. He sounds just like the Geico lizard as he says to us, “How nice of you to join.” Well, a really pissed off Geico lizard. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wrote me off as the typical disorganized American who would need to self-medicate with Xanax to get through 24 hours of being phoneless. Which is exactly what I am, but still. Overall, orientation started off on an awkward note and suddenly I knew how Mitt Romney must have felt when he went to speak at the NAACP. But at least I had WiFi!