I know this post comes a little later than I had originally planned. But, I think after three weeks, I'm now sufficiently settled that I can take a moment to update you all on how things have been going. This will have to be short, I'm afraid, since I have to go to dinner in the next 45 minutes, so I'll try my best to be brief. No promises.
In terms of the flight home, it was certainly eventful. My flight from Denver departed on schedule, and I was fairly productive on the plane. I almost finished Stephen King's The Stand (which was surprisingly good and somewhat reawakened a latent interest in dystopia and post-apocalyptic literature) as well as shifting through the first 150 pages of Graham Swift's Waterland for my second paper for HUM310. I didn't sleep at all, mostly because by the time that I finally bored of reading, we were about two hours out from Heathrow and I didn't dare pop a NyQuil then since I don't think the UK customs officers would much appreciate it if I introduced them to "Drugged-Up Chad."
In addition, there were the usual fussy infants and bratty grade schoolers. I was seated to one of the latter, and she insisted on periodically pummeling me with her feet throughout the flight. I wouldn't have minded really except that the mother insisted on apologising for her every time she did it, like I was going suddenly to snap and turn her daughter into a human pretzel. It's a long time for any child to sit still, and when you're trying to sleep, I understand that you tend to thrash about. I've put up with a lot worse.
For the final hour of our flight, a powerful southwesterly gale turned our Boeing 777 into an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster. I was seated in the penultimate row of the plane, so I could feel every time the wind hit the tailfin or the pilot tried to make an adjustment to keep the plane level. At times, it was rather frightening, not the least because you could hear a quake in the steward's voice when he announced that there were cancelling the breakfast service. (You could also hear him trying to choke back the vomit. A little girl behind me and a married woman who was farther up from me didn't have his self-control.) Fortunately, once we descended below 20,000 feet, things became more settled. I was relieved. I think I may have reached for the ibuprofen at that point, because it was too early for a stiff drink and they weren't serving beverages anymore.
I landed at Heathrow a little after nine in the morning. We didn't pull up to Terminal 5, so we had to disembark into the open air and then board a bus which carried us to the terminal. Naturally, the bus only came two at a time (like Noah would have wanted it), so I didn't pass through customs till half-nine or so. I bought a ticket for the Underground and then boarded a train on the Piccadilly Line and headed for the city. I wasn't happy to see London shrouded in a light-gray and white mist and, more infuriatingly, covered in a light dusting of snow. I guess that I just can't get away from the stuff. Not unless I moved to somewhere in the Tropics, but knowing how my luck goes, I'd probably die of malaria, yellow fever, or any of those other lovely diseases for which Europeans and their descendants seem to have no natural immunity. Anyway, I got on the 11.30 train for Norwich at London Liverpool Street. Two and a half hours later, I was home. Tired, a little sore, and feeling like I had bathed in a tub of sweat.
Later that night, I met up with Dan, who was among those who'd also returned, and we headed down to the Union Bar to grab a pint and unwind. It was pretty crowded and noisy, but Dan and I managed to find a corner which was not so crowded and also pretty close to the bar. I had a pint of Guinness to honor my return to English soil, and a pint of Carlsberg. They weren't too bad, but I could tell that it'd been a while since I'd consumed alcohol in any great quantity because I got a little light-headed and my blood pressure actually rose a few ticks. To take a page of Denis Leary, beer--with its delightful composition of hops, barley, and protein--may be a meal, but it's more like a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese in terms of its repercussions for one's cardiovascular health. Dan and I also ran into a number of Dickinson people who had also returned: Rob, Greg, Sarah Salisbury (with her boyfriend Jesse in tow), Casey Michalski, Liza, and others. It was great seeing everyone again and hearing how their holidays back home or spent crossing the Continent had been. I retired to my room that night very satisfied, and I slept very well.
The next morning, I woke up and set to the practical business of living: preparing for classes, researching a little more for my HUM310 paper, buying food, laundry. I won't bore you with those details. My continued presence is sign enough that I've managed pretty well so far. Classes started that Monday, and to this point, they haven't been too bad at all. I'm taking three modules at UEA this semester: (1) Napoleon to Stalin: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe; (2) Empires of Nature: The Environment in Europe and its Empires 1500-1945; and (3) Romanticism 1780-1840. They are all have been wonderful so far. Good reading. Reasonably engaging lectures. Seminars where more people talk besides the seminar leader and me. My only complaint is that I have an exam in each course, but since examinations all tend to be of the Blue Book variety, I'm not too worried. It'll be something of a relief after last semester where, for the last three or four weeks, I seemed perpetually to be working on this or that paper. Now I have only three essays to write, three exams to prepare for, the odd in-class presentation or document analysis, and an independent research project for Rudy to fret over. It's not the greatest (by which I mean the "lightest") workload, but it's not too bad, either. Enough to keep me on the go, and I suppose that's all I can ask for.
Well, I fear that I've runout of time. I fail at being brief, but it's been a while since I just sat down and shared with anyone besides my folks on Skype, or my friends around the dinner table or through AIM, how things had been going. I'll let you know as soon as I can about what else has been going on these past three weeks. But I suppose before I go, I could mention two approaching events that should be pretty cool: (1) Shannyn and I are going to Malaga and Morocco from February 25th to March 2nd, which is going to be friggin' awesome; and (2) my sister Chelsea will be visiting me in England from March 16th to the 22nd. I can hardly wait! Anyway, I hope everything has been going well with you wherever you might find yourself and I'll talk to you later.
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