American Journal: The Beginning

I’ve always liked airports. I know most people tend to see them as these kind of bureaucratic purgatories to be suffered through before a holiday can begin; scores of hostile staff, mazes of unclear signposting and perhaps worst of all, barrages of Pret A Mangers. But in what I’m deciding is an uncharacteristically positive slant for me, I’ve always viewed them quite differently.

  One of the biggest things I love about travel is the ability to reduce the world, or rather your version of it, to a completely blank canvas again. You can create these experiences so different from your regular life that it feels completely unconnected to it at all. Travel can be a way to become someone else, whether that’s permanently, or even just for a second. It's an escape from regular life, not a part of it.

  None of that however can really be true for the trip I’m taking currently. This is going to be a significant part of my life that will matter to my future. I will have to be me, more or less, for the entire year.

  So today when I stepped into Manchester airport, instead viewing it as the moment where normalcy disappears and my journey to another reality can officially begin, today I felt what I imagine most people must experience when they step into Manchester airport; soul-crushing despair, as I realised that this and situations like it were going to be my real life for the next 17 straight hours.

  First of all, I had spent so much time with my parents before they left going over every last document I had with me, that by the time I got through security they were about to start boarding and I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet. I hate aeroplane food, and wasn’t going to get anything to eat for another 8 hours if I didn’t get something before I got on the plane. So to remedy this problem I walked into the first restaurant I came across in the departure lounge and demolished a Full-English breakfast titled “The Full Monty” in genuinely less than 5 minutes, before sprinting to the gate to catch the plane.
  I was in boarding group 4, which when I finally got to the gate, I discovered was actually the last and least populous of all the boarding groups; there must have been about 3 people total that ended up getting on after I did in the end. So in the fifteen minutes I ended up waiting for boarding groups 1 through 3 to get on, I was given a good chance to catch my breath and reflect upon the concoction of regret and half-eaten eggs that was threatening to burst from within me.

  I’m terrible at sleeping on planes, it doesn’t really seem to matter how tired I am, I can just never do it. The flight was early in the morning, and I had gotten less than 2 hours sleep the night before. You would have thought that would have done something to help me get my head down while on the plane, and to be fair it did, for a few minutes at a time at any rate.

  As if I wasn't already tired enough, the queue for immigration at Chicago was over an hour long; I was exhausted by the time I reached the front, and the day wasn’t even close to over. To my general bemusement, the woman interviewing me was texting in between checking my documents. Largely by design, immigrations officers are cold, unmoving and generally unimpressed at anything you have to say, but this was a level of indifference thrown over the top of it all that I wasn’t really prepared for. Watching her jump between staring engrossed at whatever text she had just been sent, joking with the guy in the next booth about going out partying, and then disdainfully questioning me about my visa was just bizarre. From what I could gather from her conversation with her colleague, she was tired from having gone out or something the night before. She stared at me clumsily fumbling with my documents and at my red, bloodshot eyes, and wondered aloud which one of the two of us was the more tired at that moment. I mumbled some agreeable response before returning my attention to the fingerprint scanner, which seemed to be taking a very long time to work. I found out after a while that it was in fact already done, and she had been telling me it was already done for a good 10 seconds now, during which I had just stood there, gazing intently at my fingers. I felt pretty sure I’d just answered her question for her.

  After that was all over, it was on to baggage claim. I searched the board for Manchester, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Apparently immigration had taken so long that a bunch of other flights had already come in, and the bags that had been left on the carousels had just been thrown on the floor somewhere in order to make room. It may have taken a good few minutes and lot of cursing out loud to myself about my dispassionate treatment before I found my suitcase, but at the very least by the time I was done, I found that my anger had actually gone a reasonable way to re-energising me.

  Next I had a 5 hour layover, although an hour of that had already been eaten by immigration. I had planned to find myself somewhere to have a big meal, and this time actually spend longer than 5 minutes eating it. I ended up in a place called Chili’s; it’s a burger place, because of course it is. The first thing I noticed upon arrival was the service; I had picked a spot and sat down, and by the time I had turned around there was already a menu in front of me. I had a drink on the table in less than a minute, and a meal on it within three. I guess waiters over here tend to work a bit harder for it, because their tips are such a big percentage of their wage. I’ve been to the US before, so when the time came I was ready for the insanity that is the American tipping system. The bill was around $15, I had been impressed by his service though, so I threw down a $20. He comes up, collects he bill and says, “Thank you sir, I’ll just go get your change”. Before I even had time to try and tell him it was all a tip, he was gone. He came back a few moments later with exact change, no tip deducted. I had thought I was familiar with how things worked over here, but this experience ran contrary to everything I thought I knew. He forcefully pressed the money into my hand and stood in front of me; I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. After a few moments of awkwardly staring at each other, I just kind of slunk off; I didn’t know if he wanted me to refuse the change, but I was too confused and afraid to even try it. As I walked out, I was fairly sure I could see him glaring at me.

  It was another 3 hours of waiting in the terminal before I could board the next plane, I guess the one downside of such efficient service at the restaurant was that it really hadn’t taken up that much of my layover time. Even when we finally were let on the plane, we were stuck on the tarmac for another hour due to weather. In the meantime though, I had plenty of time to think over and over again about what had gone wrong with the waiter. I decided that giving him a straight $20 note probably wasn’t a good idea, because the distinction between tip and not having correct change on hand isn’t immediately obvious. Of course, there was also the fact that I didn’t speak up and make my intentions clear when I should have done, but that part of the problem didn’t seem so easily rectifiable.

 

  The second plane was incredibly small, it must have held about 50 of us. I wanted to take a picture to accompany this, but it was so small in fact, that they had stored all our hand luggage, including my camera, in a separate area, because there wasn’t any room for it in the cabin. So if you do want visual representation, I’m afraid you’ll have to imagine your own.

  As if to make up for some for the delays that had befallen me that day, the final plane ride was literally about 20 minutes; we must have been at altitude for a matter of seconds. Within an hour of taking off, I was in a taxi on the way to my hotel, where the day could finally end.

  The taxi driver was awesome, he gave me a cursory tour of the area as we passed by on the way to the hotel, and he was suitably impressed when I told him I was from the UK. I gave him a large tip, making sure this time to throw some change in there, so he knew I was deliberately paying extra; he promptly gave me his business card in return.

  As tired as I was, it was only 7:00pm, and I didn’t want to go to sleep straight away and set a bad sleep schedule for the future. At least part of the exhaustion I had experienced over the past day had been deliberate so that when I did finally go to sleep, I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking it was time to get up or anything like that. This is a great plan in theory, but it requires the resilience to actually stay awake for long enough for it to actually work. With another 5 hours of staying awake planned, I had to find something to fill my time. Naturally, I went to another restaurant.

  Predictably, about a minute after I sat down I was presented with an ocean of Coca Cola. By this point, I was quickly beginning to understand the obesity rate in this country. Not only was the omelette I ordered huge, but it came with a mountain of potatoes and a giant stack of fried bread that had been lathered in butter. Looking at it actually made me feel a little sick, although truthfully I think I was still suffering from the morning’s Full English disaster. I made a valiant attempt at finishing it, fighting off constant invitations for free refills as I went, but I couldn’t finish it. So far I was 0/2 for completing American meals. After leaving an uneven amount of change on the table, I stumbled back to the hotel, lay flat on my bed, and awaited the development of life long cardiovascular issues.

  I’m lying here now, trying to stave off sleep for another few minutes, trying to think of a way to end this. Trying to find something punchy or climactic, but I’m coming up with nothing. Today, whilst interesting, has just been the beginning; not even that really, more like the lead up to the beginning. I move onto campus tomorrow, so that’s where the real experience will begin. I’ll let you know all about it.

  Until tomorrow.