Laurie's light travel travel tips

I've been back in the U.S. 10 months and it recently hit me: I am re-assimilating. I had never heard anyone speak of this concept. When I moved to Connecticut in 2001, Mom introduced me to the concept of assimilation in the guise of a printed sheet from some psychological thinktank. According to this, it takes a year to assimilate within a new culture, but some never manage to assimilate at all. Now that I am back in Connecticut, I realize that I was yanked away from London just months after I had assimilated. It wasn't so much about spellings and such - I wrote my dissertation (yah!) in British English! - but the smaller, subtle everyday things. Missing London this morning, I felt I should enumerate: 1. Americans are louder. I don't care what anyone says. It's true. I ride public transpotation, where it appears to be a national disease. I never once heard Londoners shriek on the tube. People quietly study their mobile phones or yes, books, or speak in civil tones wi...

When I arrived at Heathrow in October, I was two weeks late to the start of my course at King's College. Frazzled, cat-in-tow, I was a picture of what a middle-aged woman who thinks she can pull off acting like a 22-year-old again would look like on too little sleep and too much bluster. Luckily, I had and have enough of the latter to propel me along as I maneuver the challenges of London housing, grad school (including the protracted instructors' strike in the UK), and missing friends and family back home. It would have helped if I had understood the following before I arrived: 1. When people tell you it's impossible to find a cat-friendly flat in London , they mean it. If you are planning to bring your cat (as I was), start searching in advance for a place. Put down a deposit before getting on that plane. God, I wish I'd done that. It's been a nightmare and I'm not done yet. Fingers crossed for something to come up in Ealing this April. 2. Everything you...

Most days, I don't feel like a joke. I worked nine years to get here, to my M.A. course in eighteenth-century studies at King's College London . Yet, more often than not, I am reminded that I am an oddball, a blip, a one-off on the sphere of age-appropriate academics plying their talents in these corridors. Take, for example, this bar I'm sitting in. I am taking these nachos home, in no small part because there is no one my age here to socialize with. Ironically, we were told today in class that the eighteenth century was a remarkably social one. And yet, I have been forced to be less social than I was back in my home country. Try hanging out with people young enough to be your children and you look like Woody Allen in any of his movies after 1980. Today, although I look nothing like my convenor on the programme, the museum docent told my group that she'd found our teacher and pointed to me. I am 5'9 and have brown hair. My teacher is about 5'4 with grey hair...

I'm flying back to the U.S. Sunday because I have had a lease in the States that doesn't end til January. I had also flown out there in October during Reading Week, ostensibly to pick up my cat, but I think there was a deeper reason. I think I might have been having trouble Letting Go. When I got to King's College London, excited as I was, I was daunted. As I fumbled to find my way around the city -- somehow not as I remembered it from my last trip, in 2008 -- I dealt with harsh realities regarding the pound-versus-dollar (not as favourable as I'd thought!), lack of pet-friendly properties (bloody hell!), and exhausting trips to the doctor because I arrived with a thyroid condition (and dealt with frustration at having to start everything anew). Those first few weeks, too, were fraught with trying to catch up on reading, getting to know my classmates in my core class and related course on the Great Fire through Great Exhibition (it would have been too tricky in World ...

Here I am again at Terminal 5, and everyone around here thinks it's my home. It might as well be, as I am through here at least twice daily, rushing into the City of London . Today I forgot my student ID (so I could go into the Maughan Library at King's College and borrow a couple books I needed) so decided to think on my feet, or rather in my seat. "Excuse me, sir, but do you know London very well??" He, American accent, smiling: "It's been years since I was here." Me, smiling. "American?" He nodded. So I asked the chap next to me, "Where should I get off if I want to find a great bookstore that might have some classics?" "Piccadillly. W.H. Smith, across from the Meridian Hotel." I thanked him, and got off at Piccadilly (Circus), realizing I was about to disembark into an area that once held great romantic promise for me. A young man had scurried out of work and placed the backpack on my shoulders, wishing me adieu as I h...