Hello, all! It’s Grace again, writing to let you know that we have safely arrived at our next location in Stratford for the next 3 days.

In our posts thus far, I’m sure you’ve gotten the sense that we’ve been having a wonderful and flawless time in England. Although it has indeed been wonderful, rest assured, it has not been flawless. Since today has just been a day of travel, I thought I would use this post to highlight some of the mishaps and faux pas we’ve experienced in our time so far.

*This list will be anonymous to avoid embarrassment unless the subject has given me permission to use their name.

Along with the typical forgetting to look RIGHT before crossing a street, and forgetting to keep left when going up or down stairs, we’ve had some more specific incidents abroad to note.

1. I’ll start with the inspiration for the title of today’s post. When we were waiting to get on the tube from the airport (as described in the “Mind the Gap” post) we were standing in a large mass which likely blocked any movement to or from the area. Sleep deprived, jet lagged, and hungry, a man aggressively pushed his way through us lovingly muttering “Bloody idiots.”

2. Also at the airport, various people realized that they had brought the wrong plug adaptors. We’ve all been learning to share.

3. Immediately upon arrival at the Minneapolis airport, Michael realized he had lost his phone. Fortunately, the airport had a lost and found, and “Find my iPhone” assured us that the phone was in there! Unfortunately, lost and found is closed after noon on Sundays. After being told there was “no one in the airport with the key,” we sent our trusted leader Nancy to pull some strings. We ended up getting someone from downstairs who did have the key to unlock it.

4. We say “dollars” or even “euros” and are politely (or aggressively) corrected to say “pounds.”

5. When they got our tickets months ago, Nancy and Bobby had to split our group into 2 chunks in order to see the play “Fairview.” My group had opted to go to the evening showing at 7:30 in order to go to the Tower of London during the day along with a few others, and the other students went to the matinee at 2:30. At 1:40, Clare miraculously received a text from Bobby that the tickets had all been purchased for 2:30 by mistake and to make it there as quickly as possible. We ran/walked/jogged roughly 2 miles to the theatre and made it there at 2:22 pm for the show.

6. On the way to the train today, one student mistook a post office box for a trash can...

7. The second show we saw was “The Play that goes Wrong” on the West End. Fortunately, we were all at the theatre nice and early to get our tickets. Unfortunately, Bobby (who was supposed to have our tickets) was nowhere to be found. At 15 till start, Clare Rolinger took it upon herself to get our tickets and get into the show. Bobby showed up roughly 5 minutes before the show began.

8. We’ve all had various tube troubles: deactivated tube cards from keeping them near phones, lost tube cards, taking tube trains the wrong direction, holding the doors open and getting yelled at for doing so.

9. Bobby during class discussion tried to relate our topic to a French phrase, "L'appel du vide” which he pronounced “lah-pull day vee”...Monica corrected him, and he confessed that he frequently goes to a crepe restaurant and is now realizing they must laugh at him whenever he tries to order his food.  

10. On our first day, we were told to be at breakfast at the Meininger PROMPTLY at 8 am. There were various groups staying who all had different breakfast times, and we needed to make sure we didn’t get in their way. By the end of our stay, the 11 girls in one room had shifted to turning the lights on around 7:50 and getting to breakfast between 8:15 and 9am.

11. We’ve been yelled at for feeding pigeons.

12. On our train ride today into Stratford, we had a pretty quick switch which required getting all of our luggage off the train and onto the platform. Noah, Morgan Fanning, and I had been sitting together, so we quickly grabbed our things, went to the luggage area, and barely made it off before the train departed. After checking that we had all made it, we got to the other side of the platform. Just as Nancy complimented us on being such good travelers, Noah realized he had left his backpack on the first train. Nancy and Noah have now sent an email to ensure that the bag is found and returned, and luckily none of his valuables were in it so no need to worry.  

I’m sure there are many others I’ve forgotten, but for now I hope these have been entertaining. I can’t wait to continue having more adventures, both wonderful and embarrassing in our days to come.