From Tipping Point to Tipping Over...

Ah, looking back on my last post I was so excited--I could finally get my photos up (and I'm planning to go back and put up some more photos in the earlier entries as well soon), I had finally taken the time to blog, Spring Break Week was coming up, and best of all, Carrie was soon to arrive. The 'tipping point' was basically that: things are looking up! And then, I basically got completely knocked down, once again.

Because of that stupid Icelandic volcano.

Carrie was due to arrive Friday morning, April 16th...basically 24 hours after ALL the UK airports were closed down indefinitely. Her flight was probably one of the first ones canceled (which was good, I suppose, I'm glad she didn't get trapped in the air, sent back to MN, or flown to Dubai or something) and she was rescheduled for Sunday night/arrive Monday morning. Now, of course, at that time we're thinking, "Hey, no biggie, that sucks, we'll probably miss out on going to Spain, but whatever, we'll just hang in London...surely the ash cloud will go away in the coming hours...RIGHT?" Um, as we all know...NO. IT DID NOT. The UNPRECEDENTED ASH CLOUD OVER ICELAND CLOSED HEATHROW AND ALL UK AIRPORTS FOR ALMOST SIX DAYS. I could not, not believe this. Carrie even tried to re-book once her Sunday night flight got canceled, and Delta basically told her no, they were not rebooking anyone for the UK anytime soon...and could they fly her anywhere else in the world she wants to go? Um, no, Carrie didn't want to go anywhere else in the world besides Europe. So, she took the refund while they were still offering it, and we cried tears of sadness through the computer on Gmail chat.

To say this was a disappointment of a HUGE magnitude for me is the understatement of the year.

I was near catatonic for days, as I was just so depressed. Carrie and I had been talking about her visiting me over here for basically a whole year; plans had been made, we were to go to Spain (a trip that was canceled out as well, but fortunately, I should be getting a full refund from Expedia for it--amazingly lucky), and we were to have a solid week of fun just hanging out and being tourists. Carrie loves English history and medieval stuff more than most people I know (I can't tell you how many times she made me watch that dumb movie 'Ever After' with her in college that's set in the Middle Age England) and we had lots of ideas of what we would check out. While we were both initially bummed at the idea of not getting to Spain (ha! if only that had been the extent of our travel problems!), it didn't really matter as long as she got here. We live way further apart in the USA than we would like anyway, and it's rare to get this much uninterrupted time with her, so to me, that's the real loss here. We yelled at the volcano. We cried over chat. We cursed the air, airlines, our timing (if only she had flown in ONE DAY EARLIER), everything, but it didn't matter. She didn't make it here, and it sucked.

(Needless to say, we will obviously plan some sort of alternative trip ASAP. Going more than six months without getting to see Carrie sort of makes me crazy and feel totally abnormal).

So, that was one issue. Combined with my personal frustration/sadness/total letdown was the frustration/sadness/total letdown/general panic of the majority of MY STUDENTS who, also, were to leave on Spring Break! While a few had train travel only, and got out on their trips, the majority had some sort of flying involved (including four girls who had found this awesome deal for a weeklong cruise in the Canary Islands, set to leave Friday 4/16 also), and that all went into chaos as well. There was a lot of re-booking, lots of tearful calls home to parents asking for help/more money (many are getting refunds, but of course, they take up to 30 days to process, so...), and a total revamping of plans. With all this chaos, Eckerd and I went back and forth and finally decided that keeping the house open as a backup was the right thing to do for the students, since so many had to remake plans or lost them altogether.

I agreed to this thinking there would be only about 3 people here all week. There ended up being about 10 instead. So much for a 'break' for me...

We ended up having a lot more around because of a few issues: A) some students had family arrivals due to come mid-week, and while one girl did get her parents here by Thursday, the rest all eventually had canceled flights; B) many of the students that ended up here really did try to get out to Paris or other places by bus/ferry/train...only to find those modes of transport completely booked solid and/or astronomically expensive now.

SO, yeah. It's been an interesting week. Fortunately, given the fact that several still did get out on trips (I had six take a boat to Amsterdam), and those here did a lot of day trips, it has been quite mellow around the house for me, which was good. I wouldn't say I feel totally revived and refreshed, and I'm still harboring major bitterness toward this stupid volcano and all of Iceland in general (I mean, what does Iceland even offer the world? Bjork and volcanic ash, apparently), it has been a bit of break at least, with no meals to supervise and no teaching this week.

That is the update for now. In the meanwhile, to try to ease the pain, I did go on many daytrips myself this week, and had some lovely times, even though I was traveling on my own and wishing Carrie was around the whole time. My friends Margie and Chris and their cute kids arrived up from Switzerland (we had planned for them to come up when Carrie was here, and they were able to come anyway) so I'm tooling around with them this weekend. At least they were able to come too, and be a bright spot in this whole Spring Break meltdown.

ASAP, I'll post more with my pics of Wimbledon, Windsor Castle, Brighton, and York.

In the meanwhile, I would stay as far away from me as possible--because as this semester has proven, I'm one unlucky gal. :( We have to assume, right, that the bad karma has GOT to be over soon enough, and soon enough, I'll be back on a plane to the USA and happy to be home again?

Unless, of course, that 'other volcano' in Iceland decides to wake up and spew more ash our way...