Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Traveler Returns

Nearly twenty four hours passed between the time I awoke in my wee wheeled bed at the Hotel Tavistock and the hour when at last I collapsed in my own creaky bed with whining cat and grateful husband at about one am (6am GMT); far too long for a mere cross-Atlantic voyage. The time span was due to delays at Heathrow (our plane bound for Philly had been filled with cargo for Pittsburgh which required turning back from the runway to the gate, waiting, waiting, unloading and loading again) as well as at Philadelphia (we missed our original connecting flight, and later flights to Albania were delayed by planes not coming in from the Midwest, thus we waited about 6 hours for a 40 minute flight). As expected, we were surrounded by lots of other very cross, very tired people and one monster child -- who of course ended up sitting in front of me with his monster mother, but as I promptly fell asleep upon takeoff, it was not as bad as in the terminal.

Then there was the snow globe incident, which required one student to be detained by security for a time in Philadelphia. More on that later, too.

US Airways is evil. Just thought you'd like confirmation of that.

So you'll have to wait a bit longer for a thrilling account of my adventures in London (part deux) because now I'm going to have a bath and then I suspect I will be whisked off to the movies because I don't think Gene can wait another day to see Ironman. If you want pictures, see the students' posts on the class blog.

Missing all my London friends -- be back soon. Many schemes afoot to manage it...

2 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Welcome back! And home, however temporarily...which seems like a temporary thing for me, too, as I seek new digs.

Now to summon the enargy to move the books, the records, the shelves...

C. Margery Kempe said...

Thanks for the welcome back.

My sympathies to you, too. Moving is hell. Where will the energy come from? I have none. It just seems endless. Why do I have so many books? Oh, yeah, that's right.