8/24: Study Abroad Blog: The 34-hour day AKA the day I woke up in Chicago and fell asleep in England
Editor’s Note: The study abroad program at Eastern has many opportunities, such as studying abroad in England. Doug T. Graham, a sophomore journalism major is currently attending Harlaxton University in England. This is his blog, highlighting his experience.
The O’Hare International Airport is an intimidating place.
The sheer amount of people who travel through there every day should be enough to strike fear in the hearts of any international passenger, but when it is coupled with security lines rumored to require three hours of waiting, it is something a bit more than frightening.
So when my traveling buddy, fellow Harlaxton student and best friend Jack Sramek, and I decided to arrive at O’Hare four hours before our 6 p.m. Virgin Airlines flight was set to leave, we thought nothing of it.
The only consequence of arriving at O’Hare so very early was that I had to wake up at 8 a.m. central time (which is very important for later in the story). Another important detail is that I had a pretty bad head cold, which for most of the day, was flowing regularly.
We arrived, parked the van and got our boarding passes in short order. Before we knew it, we were saying goodbye to our mothers at the main security check point.
My security experience was positive—the only hiccup came when I didn’t take my laptop out of my backpack, which caused the X-Ray camera operator to descend from his perch and deal with it himself. He noticed my Chicago Cubs shirt and said, “You’re a Cubs fan, no wonder you didn’t do it right! Here, I’ll explain it nice and slow for you …”
(Photo courtesy of chicagoairportlimosine.com)
After that, we walked to our gate, which was being used to board the flight ahead of us. After all, we were over two hours early. We whiled away the time by draining the batteries of our Nintendo DS’s in slightly nervous silence which was broken by talks of how relieved we were to finally be leaving the country.
(Courtesy of thesun.co.uk)
At 6 p.m. we boarded the plane and took our seats, which were in the same row, but not the same aisle. It was my first flight in eight years so I was sure to pay careful attention to the security video which was being largely ignored by everyone else who were apparently too busy and cool to watch the images on their individual TV/computer screen.
(Courtesy of aviationexplorer.com)
Shortly after the flight had taken off and I had savagely beaten the airline seat/computer in a rousing game of Pong, our flight attendant, Trevor, sat me next to Jack so my seat could be given to some punk whose airline seat/computer screen wasn’t working. I was more than happy to oblige and Jack and I were soon playing Battleship against each other on our airplane seat’s computer.
We were served dinner at around 7:30 p.m. central time. We both chose the beef stew, which seemed good for airline food. I was sure to drink plenty of water because I was told to do so several times by advice givers (I can’t for the life of me remember why I was supposed to though). I only mention the water because it, and all other drinks on the plane, were free, which is probably not news to most readers but for which I was unprepared.
About an hour after dinner the lights went off in the cabin to indicate it was time to sleep. Jack was unconscious fairly quickly because he had intentionally gotten only four hours of sleep the night before. I tried very hard to sleep - I used my fancy travel pillow, I put on the complimentary sleeping mask, I counted sheep - but nothing was able to overcome my runny nose and the excitement I felt to be suspended 39 thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
Instead of sleeping I challenged the airplane seat computer to chess, but the chair must have heard how badly I defeated his cousin in Pong because he played extra good and used his pieces to take all of my pieces. After that, I got fed up with the chair and shut him off, electing instead to read the subtitles of a foreign film being watched by a Swiss gentleman in the row in front of me. The guy was watching the movie because Jack kicked his chair while sleeping. The guy looked pissed but then he saw that Jack was sleeping and that it was probably an accident.
(Courtesy of shoppingforwhatyouwant.com)
At 11:15 p.m central time, the lights came on and fifteen minutes later breakfast was served to all who were awake and willing to eat a “Jimmy Dean Sausage Cheese & Egg Muffin” (which I expected to be on a cupcake shaped thing but then remembered that “muffin” probably meant “English muffin”). The reason for the 11:30 p.m breakfast was to try to ease us into our new time zone, which stated that the time was 5:30 a.m, a more appropriate time for a heat-and-serve meal.
The plane touched down in Heathrow at 6:45 a.m London time. The pilot told us it was the most beautiful day of the summer and looking out Jack’s window I was in agreement. I only wished that I felt inside as good as the world looked outside. My inability to sleep had not made my cold feel any better, in fact I was much worse than when I started the trip. Not only were my nasal passages reduced to being fleshy faucets for a flow of clear mucus, my sinuses were clogged to hell. This meant that instead of my ears “popping” naturally and gradually over the hour we descended, I had to close my nose and try to force oxygen out of my ears to relieve the unbearable pressure. I wasn’t able to do this for several hours which meant I spent most of my time at Heathrow deaf in my right ear.
(Courtesy of Doug T Graham)
We had been warned by Harlaxton that in order to make it through immigration we would need to be prepared with two forms of I.D and the letter of intention written by the school along with various other documentation. We were expecting a lot harsher of an inquisition than the one we got, which was basically a casual two minute interview in which we explained that we were in England on study abroad and that we were not going to be a cancer on English society or anything like that. I handed in my half completed landing form and handed over my passport before being waved through.
After deftly conquering the immigration line the only obstacles that we needed to vanquish were recovering our checked luggage and finding the terminal. We toppled both tasks easily and were feeling great about ourselves. In only twelve hours we had successfully traversed the globe without messing everything up. Little did we know that in the next twelve hours we would mess everything up, we would mess everything up badly.
Look for that story tommorow in part two of the 34 hour day.
Thanks for reading!
Doug T Graham