There and Back Again; A Girl’s Tale

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I am currently sitting on a plane, desperately and painfully trying to pressurize my left ear. It makes a squeaking noise before painful remaining at the same painful pressure level. It’s aggravating, but hopefully not fatal. I’ll keep you updated.



Yeah, it has done nothing.



Several hours, one airport, a taxi ride, and an unfortunate reunion later, it still hurts.



I’m deaf in one ear. Oh great.



Three days. Limited change. I’m going to the doctor.



I was prescribed some antibiotics and I’m on the mend now. That was hell.



So this blog has been weeks in the making, and I have many decent stories to tell.



I mean, not right now, because I have an essay due in two days and this is just procrastination, but you won’t really know.



I have another essay due tomorrow. Apparently I am only motivated to blog when I really shouldn’t be.



So, let’s begin.



I left Canada with limited problems. I lost a headphone cushion, but beyond that it was pretty painless. Actually, it was pretty cool because the airport computers were down so I got away with checking an enormously heavy bag without paying the fine because they couldn’t charge me. This computer thing would come around to bite me later, but for now all was hunky dory. And then it came to my actual flight. I was woefully ill with a cough/flu combo. So I had a window seat, next to some poor university TA who was very kind but slightly uncomfortable with my illness, which is completely understandable. I was a mess of snot, tears, and coughs. Think slime monster meets banshee. It was thoroughly unpleasant, but not difficult. Unfortunately, this meant that I had very little to no sleep during the six-hour flight from Toronto to London. Which didn’t help when it came to landing and (due to delay caused by Pearson’s computers being down) I had thirty minutes to get through customs, go through security again, get across the terminal to get to the bus to take me to a different terminal from which my plane to Edinburgh would be taking off.



When the plane began to descend into Heathrow, the airline staff came around saying that if we had a connecting flight that was leaving shortly after we touched down, we didn’t have to fill out customs forms. Trusting the information given to me by figures of authority, I didn’t fill one out. So we landed, I joined the ridiculously long queue for connections before getting fast tracked to domestic check in and customs. The woman who checked me in was very nice but didn’t help me feel any better about my chances of making my flight by expressing concern about how little time I had. So anyway, I rush to the front of the customs queue just in time for the guy to inform me that the stewardess had lied and I actually did have to fill out the form. So I left the line (bear in mind that I’m sleep deprived and ill) in a rush and frantically filled out the necessary sheet before being waved in the general direction of what I was told was the ‘fast lane’ for getting through security. It was an elevator. A slow elevator. That was the fast lane. I was quite frustrated. So I wait and wait and frantically (and politely) try to push through the searching and whatnot as efficiently as possible. The second I got in the line, I had my boots off and laptop out. After that, I had five minutes to run (please remember that I was fairly certain that I was going to die at this point) from the security thing to the complete other side of the long terminal to get to the bus. I had to sprint, dragging my carry on behind me because the wheels kept flipping and I could barely carry it. To add insult to illness, I also had the scramble down two flights of stairs to make it. I was the second last person on the bus and I was the only one coughing and wheezing and looking like death personified. The people behind me looked like they stepped off a magazine. I hated them on principle.



The blessed silver lining was that I had an entire row of seats to myself for the hour and a half trip from London to Edinburgh. The grey side of that lining was that I still couldn’t sleep because pretty much the minute we stopped taking off, we began our descent and I had to sit up. Also, it was during this leg of my journey that I messed up my ear.



I got into Edinburgh and got through customs with no difficulties whatsoever. Which was a blessing that came too late in my sleep deprived stupor of existence. After that, I waited for my luggage. For an hour.



After ages of waiting for a case that I knew wasn’t going to show up, because I was having one of those types of days, I went to the lost luggage people and asked what happened. As it turns out, even though I managed to get through and make my flight, my bag was not so lucky. I gave my details and was told that they would deliver my luggage at some point that day, after it arrived. Which meant I really couldn’t do anything other than sit in my room until they called me and told me that my stuff was on its way. At this point, I believe I had been without sleep for around 32 hours and I gave up.



I was finally on my way to Halls and the comfy, clean bed I knew was waiting for me. But that wasn’t before I had to make polite chit chat with my cabbie about the weather and Canada and whatnot. Which meant I still couldn’t nap in the cab. More importantly however, the guy took the long way round to halls, costing me at least three extra pounds that I shouldn’t have had to pay. But whatever, I’m not bitter. So I went to pay for the cab only to have my card rejected. There was no winning.



I got to my room, dumped my stuff, then went to visit my friend to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I was told that everyone was going to brunch at noon so I had an hour nap before dragging my sleepy butt out of bed to eat with friends.



They were not at brunch. The shock and betrayal hit me hard. I couldn’t eat anything. But that might be the feeling of queasiness that was beginning to creep up on me.



I hurried back to my room after eating half an apple and some cranberry juice. I was promptly sick. Luckily I made it to the toilet, but it was vastly unpleasant. Also bright pink, which I blame on the cranberry juice.



So after the dramatics, I went to sleep only to be woken up by someone calling to tell me my baggage was ready for collection at reception. In between these two points in time, I managed about four hours of sleep. Those were possibly the best four hours of my life and I can’t remember a moment of them.



I’m gonna skip over reuniting with my friends because while it was a lovely time and we had all missed each other very much, it isn’t that great of a story. Just know that there was a great deal of hugs and giggling by all. Including my guy friends.



School started the next day and I quickly fell into a routine that bore a large resemblance to the one I had last semester, which was super handy.



At the end of the week, two of my friends celebrated their birthdays by going out to a bar and drinking heavily, as is tradition in this country. Unfortunately, I had a miserable time due to the fact that I couldn’t drink because it would conflict with my antibiotics. So that was a thing.



The next big night was Burns Night (Robbie Burns; Scottish poet extraordinaire. He gets his own night). By this time, I was almost healed so I went out with my friends to a pub that was supposed to be quite good. Unfortunately we got there too late and they were about to close for the night. All was not lost, as a gentleman outside the pub gave us £20 for no apparent reasons other than that we were students. Which was awesome, but one of my friends tried to reject the money. Silly girl. In the end, we lived it up by splitting that money between us so we ended up with £3 each. We all felt rich.



Over the next few weeks, I made some friends, got accosted by a sixty year old man in a paisley suit with a flower brooch and twirly moustache in a bar who asked me about my favourite Christmas cracker joke (which was a bizarre experience to say the least), went to Portobello beach (which was lovely and damp) and had a hot chocolate in a lovely pub that overlooked the sea (or whatever body of water Edinburgh is next to ), went to a concert in Glasgow with a friend of mine and nearly died because it was excellent and I love the band intensely but also because we had to sprint to make the last train home, and attended the House Ball.



The ball was excellent and I have attached some photos. Every formal event seems to come with a ceilidh involved, which is always good fun but I have yet to get through one without being injured. In this one, I had my foot stomped on by a friend of mine who was overzealous in his polka-ing. There was blood. It was a good time.



School has been one deadline after another and it’s stressful but I really like all my tutorials and I have a few friends so it’s not too bad. We just had a week off, in which I did none of the work I planned to, but whatever.



During that week I went up to Beauly to visit family, which was lovely and a welcome change from life in Halls. For instance, I could sleep before 3 AM because no one was screaming through doors at each other. It was so great.





Life is good. Life is busy, and I’m sure I’m forgetting important events in my life, but it’s good.

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Photos

Mayday Parade
The guitar player from the band I saw

Some terracotta lanterns
They were put into Old College for Chinese New Year