Where in the World Wednesday: Study Abroad Wrap-Up

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

Over the past several weeks I've recounted just a few (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of my memories from the study abroad trip I took in 2002.

After our week in Scotland, we returned to London for the last week of the program. And like the Scotland week, I didn't manage to get any pictures taken of myself. Fail!

So instead I'm just going to wrap it all up and tie a bow around it.

I saw six theatre shows in five weeks: Les Misérables, We Will Rock You (for which I got standing room only tickets and danced around in the back of the theatre the whole time), The Vagina Monologues, My Fair Lady, The Phantom of the Opera, and My One and Only. I spent a ton of money on tickets, but what better to spend money on than live theatre? While my classmates were out drinking, I was going on dates with myself.



There were a lot of firsts on this trip: first time getting drunk, for example. My last week in London I had another couple of firsts. July 29 was a really rough day for me. I was terribly homesick and probably overtired, and all of that somehow manifested itself in a panic attack that seemed to last all day, causing me to cry in my room for four hours. Yay me!

By August 2 I was fully recovered and back up to my old tricks, which included a night out at a bar to celebrate the end of our class. While there, I had the Pants Incident of 2002. I can't put details here lest they fall into the wrong hands, but it involved my pants, a Macedonian named Tony, and a public shaming on the streets of London by one of my male classmates. It's one of the funniest and most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. I summed it up in my paper journal by saying, "I wish I were a bad girl."

Alas, I am not. (So stop worrying, Mommy.) No one saw my Britney that day.

A couple of days later I was on my way home, pants and all, waiting for my flight at London Gatwick Airport. A flight that never took off because the luggage handlers backed their truck into the plane and damaged it so much that it wasn't flight-worthy. Bravo, Northwest Airlines!

After much confusion and a long wait to get our bags back, a few of the people from my class were given meal vouchers and free rooms at the Hilton connected to the airport. One more night in London! I spent it using all of the free stuff that Northwest gave me and getting a good night's sleep (no more pants incidents).

The next day we hopped the pond back to Detroit, where I was expecting to find my family waiting anxiously. EXCEPT THAT THEY WEREN'T THERE.

My friends were picked up one by one until I was the only person left. Finally I called home, and found out that no one had come to get me because the flight arrival time listed on the internet was wrong. Northwest was really going for the gold with this one.

After what seemed like FOREVER my mom and dad showed up to take me home. I'll let my words from my paper journal sum it up:

The whole ride I just wanted to see Velv. And I finally did! And it was wonderful, and he still remembered me and loved me. I'm just SO glad to be home. This was an amazing experience, but I love my home.