Travel Woes? Try Travel Nightmares.

Again, sorry it has been so long since I last posted something, but in my defense, I've spent my fair share of time stranded in various European airports.

I spent 3 days in Lausanne, Switzerland visting a fellow Hendrix student who is studying abroad there. It was really interesting to see how other study abroad students live. I had a wonderful time thanks to Heather's wonderful hopsitaility. She seems to really be enjoying her experience in Lausanne and I could see why. It's a pretty area with lots of really nice people.

We went to a Christmas Market in Montreux. Heather got to see her Freddie Mercury statue. I think that made her day. I got to drink warm apple cider. That made my day. It's my favorite holiday drink and I couldn't seem to find any in England. There were lots of booths with handmade crafts. It was a really cool experience.

Also while in Lausanne, I went to the Olympic Museum. Lausanne is the Olympic captial of the world and they have a fantastic museum that tells of the history of the Olympic Games. Seriously, I felt like a kid in a candy store. They had exhibits of each sport, plus a timeline of the games. There was also an interactive exhibit where you could test your fitness and see what sport you'd be best at. I didn't actually do the test. I wasn't dressed for it; plus there were a bunch of school students doing it, but based on the brochure and the info within the exhibit, I think it would have told be I would make a good hammer or shot put thrower, or a good weight lifter. Big surprise there. The museum was really cool, so if you're ever in Lausanne, I'd recommend going, even if you're not a sports nut like me.

I took a bus tour of Geneva and got to see the United Nations as well as several of other international buildings. Geneva was nice and there is plenty to see, but I have to say, I think I like Lausanne better.

So before I get to the travel nightmares I experienced as indicated in the subject line of this post. I have some catching up to do from my last entry. I admit I rushed a bit and left some things out.

First of all, I believe I mentioned in my last post that I won the SESSA meet, which seals what I like to call the Beth/Katherine connection. (The following explanation is true, but is not meant to be taken too seriously. I'm not that supersticious.) So, in my first meet I won 2 golds and a silver (in theory, we didn't actually get medals until SESSA.) If I'm not mistaken, Katherine Reutter, a short track speed skater and one of my favortie athletes (I met her back in 2008 and she was super nice) also won 2 golds and a silver at world cup 1. At my next meet, I had 2 second place finishes and a third place finish, so did Katherine. She won a gold at world cup 3, and I won gold at SESSA. Pretty cool, huh? Okay, I'll be the first one to admit that it is probably one big coincidence, but she just one her 4th national championships, so I hope the pattern continues.

Other cool facts...

According to the little TV screen on my IcelandAir flight, over half the population of Iceland believes in elves. My tour guide on my glacier tour read us an Icelandic fable explaining the origin of elves. According to Icelandic tradition, Eve had more children than Cain and Abel. God wanted to see them one day, but only Cain and Abel were clean. The other children were muddy, so Eve hid them because she was ashamed. God knew that she hid them, so He made them invisible. Those children are elves. They cannot be seen by people unless they want to be. I thought it was an interesting fable.

The other cool fact I learned is that the Prime Minister of Iceland is listed in the phonebook.

Iceland is incredibly beautiful in both the winter and the summer. If you ever have the chance to go, take it. While I was there, there was only six hours of daylight and in the summer, the sun shines all day, even at midnight, hence the term midnight sun. It rained both nights while I was there, so I didn't have a chance to see the Northen Lights. You need a clear night for that, but I can't say it enough. Iceland is a great place to visit.

Now back to the travel nightmares...

My flight out of Geneva was canceled. I so could have made an earlier flight to Stockholm, but the guy at the ticket counter told me I wouldn't make it through security in time. For whatever reason, the depatrue of that plane was delayed, so I wish he would have let me try to make it. Instead I had to wait in line for two hours to rebook my flight. During that time, most of my viable options to get to Stockholm had already departed, so I was re-booked on standby for a flight Copenhagen that night and then another stand by flight to Stockholm at midnight. The first flight was delayed and since I was on standby anyway, I opted to be put on a flight the next day. SAS, the airline I was flying with, put me up in a hotel and bumped me up to business class on my flight out the next afternoon. I landed at about 3:30. It was already dark, so my 2 days in Stockholm turned into one night. Oh well, I bought plenty of souvenirs though and I'm sure I'll make it back someday. I was just thankful to be reunited with my luggage. Even though I was assured my luggage would be waiting for me downstairs when I booked my hotel, it wasn't. I went back to the airport early the next morning and it wasn't there. That was scary. Turns out it had been over-nighted to Stockholm. So many flights were canceled that day it was crazy and bags were everywhere. Stacked up on trolleys in both Geneva and Stockholm waiting to be claimed.

My flight the next day back to England was cancelled. Heathrow was completely shut down due to the snow. I was supposed to fly to Heathrow, then fly out of Gatwick the next day so I could go home. That was not going to happen. The problem was England wasn't the only place affected by the snow. Paris CDG had many cancellations, so did Amsterdam, and Frankfort. Translation, if I couldn't leave Europe, I couldn't get home. The line to rebook would take about 4 hours. Any possible flights going straight to the US were full and chances were that all other options would either leave before I got to the front of the line or would be full by the time I could be rebooked. What's a girl stranded in the Stockholm airport to do? Call home...at like 2 a.m. US central time. At that pont, I was tired. I could have stayed an extra day in Stockholm and actually get to see it, but let's face it, when you've spent as much time in airports as I did during those last few days, all you want is to get home.

I swear, for the first couple nights after I got home, I woke up and it took me a minute to figure where I was. I guess that happens when you spend one night in Geneva, the next in Stockholm, and the third in Lisbon, yes Lisbon, we'll get to that in a second. Anyway, it took me a minute to realize I was in Arkansas those first couple mornings.

So Lisbon, Portugal. I hear it's nice, but I really can't say. The five minute ride from the airport to the hotel at 11 p.m. was nice, as was the five minute ride from the hotel to the airport at 8 a.m. the next morning. That was the extent of my stay in Lisbon.

Getting to Lisbon proved a bit more difficult than I had imagined. I thought I was in the clear once I found a flight that would eventually get me to Little Rock, but I was wrong. The travel nightmare still had one last trick up its sleeve. The flight was delayed out of Stockholm. It was supposed to depart at 3:15. We didn't begin boarding until 3:30. Not so bad, right? Yeah, that what I thought and then we were told the plane had a mechanical problem and it would take 20 minutes to fix. Twenty minutes later, the problem would take another 45 minutes to fix and once those 45 minutes were up, well it would be another 45 more. Sometime during the wait, they served us dinner. We didn't depart until after 7. Yeah, the 4 hour flight from Stockholm to Lisbon, plus the 3 hour wait ON THE PLANE... the flight to America takes about 8 hours, which is what I've have to do the next day.

Anyway, I'm home now. I got in around 11 p.m. on the 20th. Just in time for the holidays.

Speaking of the holidays, Merry Chirstmas everyone. Enjoy it!

If only the British Isles were tropical...

I can only think of a few things that would make Oxford better and right now tropical weather has moved up to number one on the list. It's been about 50 degrees all week, which the Connecticut native in me says is really not that cold, but when you've lived in a place that gets to be 100 plus degrees in the summer, anything less than 60 seems like you're in the Arctic. Worse yet is the realization that it will only get colder. Nevertheless, I still plan to travel to the various Scandinavian capital cities after terms ends. Under Armour should do the trick.

The other thing that would make Oxford better would be if they actually sold long sleeve t-shirts that said Oxford on them. You can buy Oxford tees or sweatshirts, but no long sleeve shirts. I've only seen one so far and it was ugly. I really want a long sleeve t-shirt though because, as anyone who has seen the inside of my closet can attest to, I have plenty of t-shirts and hoodies, but very few long sleeve shirts. I asked one of my teammates here about it and her response was that people don't wear them here, which is why she stocked up on them the last time she visited the States. If I can't find one soon, I guess I'll go back and buy the ugly one. Maybe it will keep me warm when I go to Sweden.

It's been a pretty full week this week. I had my first French tutorial on Friday night. Basically every Friday night for the rest of term while most people my age are getting ready to go to the pub or go clubbing, I'll be walking to French class. It went well. My essay was well recieved, so on the way home I treated myself to a "Texican Sweet Chili Wrap" from Burger King. Yes, you read that correctly "Texican." I'm not sure whether or not that is the British term for Tex-Mex, but it sounds kind of catchy and it tasted really good.

I went to Robert Muchamore's presentation at the Cheltenham Literary Fesitval on Saturday. I've never actually been to a literary festival before, but it was a really fun atmosphere and I'd love to be invited to speak at one someday. For those who don't know, Robert Muchamore is a famous British YA author. His Cherub series is incredibly popular with teen boys. I think the part of his speech I enjoyed the most was that he saw a need--books that would appeal to teen boys--and he tried to fill it. Though I have not yet reached his level of fame, I understand the senitment. He explained that he once offered to buy his nephew a book and his nephew informed him that there were no good books out there. In an attempt to prove his nephew wrong, they went to the bookstore, but as it turned out, all the books were either for a younger audience, for girls, or fantasy based. This inspired the creation of the Cherub series, which to put it very simply is about orphan spies. I can kind of relate to this because growing up I always wrote books that I thought kids like me would want to read. I was bored with what was out there, so I wrote my own stories. I think that's why Picking up the Pieces is so special to me. I was a sporty girl growing up and there really weren't any books about sporty girls. It seemed like all YA sports fiction was for boys, so I'm my own way, I saw a need and tried to fill it.

No other major plans for the week ahead. The Cuppers track meet is next Sunday. Hopefully everything will go smoothly with that. I also really want to go to the movie theater this week to see Life As We Now It. It's funny because some of the movies come out here the same week they do in America, like Life As We Know It, but others are a couple months behind. I'm pretty sure Dispicable Me premiered here sometime within the past couple weeks here and I'm pretty sure it came out a couple months ago in the States.

Also, if anyone wants a glimpse of British television, I'd recommend 8 out of 10 Cats. Karina and I first watched it at the B&B last weekend in Scotland and it was really funny. We looked it up on Youtube tonight and watched some more episodes. It's hard to explain the premise because I can't think of any American shows like it other than the The Soup or Chelsea Lately, but even those don't fit it exactly. It's a late night program with two teams, the captains are the same each episode, but the other panel members are guests and change each time. They basically guess the most talked about topics in the UK for that week, but the commentary is usually pretty funny. I think Jay Leno would make a good guest.

I think that's about it for now. I'll check back in later in the week. Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

I went to Hogwarts today!

Tonight our group went to see a production of T.S. Eliot's play "Murder in the Cathedral". It was quite good. Not to give anything away, but the play itself is about the murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury and is meant to be authentic to the time. However, there's a twist at the end. The knights who killed the Archbishop come out in modern-day suits and plead their case to the audience that it was not murder, but rather suicide, because Beckett let them in--a comedic twist to an otherwise very serious play. As I'm sure you can imagine, watching "Murder in the Cathedral" in an actual cathedral was very impressive. The architecture of Christ Church is simply astounding, and for all you Harry Potter fans, Christ Church was the original filming location for the Hogwarts scenes, but they later moved it, as it was imposing on the learning process for the Christ Church University students. Long story short, I went to Hogwarts tonight and the creepy part about it was that as we were walking to the play there was an ambulance pulled up by the curb and quite an extensive blood trail on the sidewalk. We're still not sure what happened. No one appeared to be badly hurt, but it certainly set the tone for the play.

I had my meeting with my creative writing tutor and we agreed that I should continue work on my ghost story piece. I've had the idea for a long time and had some inspiration about make a unique narrative style while here. I'm not sure when I will finish it, but I'm glad to start putting pen to paper, well, okay, fingers to keys. Same difference. The idea I mentioned having in my last post was to write a nonfiction piece centered around my brother Danny, who is autistic. I still intend to write this piece, but in order to give it its due diligence, I need to finish two YA fiction pieces I've started, one of them being the ghost story piece. (It's not a scary story, but there is a ghost, and a murder, oh yeah and cheerleading.)

Other exciting news on the writing front is that my short story "Far From Home" is now available on Amazon Kindle UK. In order to have it sold in the UK Kindle store, I had to raise the price a tad, but it is still reasonable. If you have a kindle or kindle for PC, check it out. I wrote orginally wrote it junior year of high school and it probably remains one of my best works.

I had two track practices this week. I had to miss tonight's because of the play. I've been able to keep up well, but as far as I can tell I'm the only female "fresher" thrower. We haven't really started specific throwing drills yet. I've mostly been with the runners and jumpers, but I'm looking forward to getting back in the circle. My first meet will be Sunday October 24th. This meet is Oxford only and is open to all Oxford students, I believe. The meet on November 7th is Oxford freshers versus Cambridge freshers. In order to compete in that one you must be selected by the captain.

Well that's all for now. I intend to post again on Sunday after I have time to recover from the literary festival I'm going to on Saturday. There's also plans in the works for me to try Indian food for the first time. I had my first Thai food experience a couple weeks ago and loved it.

No cool new British phrases to report other than while walking to the track a man rode past me on a bicycle (with a beer can in his hand) and as he passed he yelled "You're all spies." On the same day, also on the way to track practice, I saw a very small dog carrying a very large tree branch in its mouth. The branch took up nearly the whole sidewalk. So as there are really no new phrases to report, I'll stick to my usual...

CHEERS :)