24th Monday

I arrived at the airport and made it though the American security check just fine, but after I had gotten off the plane in Canada they thought I was suspicious (Because I was bringing two things of luggage for a one week flight) and so they put me in a different area and started to interrogate me. They asked me stuff about where I lived, who I was meeting, what I was going to do in London, had I been out of the country before, et cetera. They were really quite mean about it and after nearly everything I said the staff member said "You know, for some reason I don't believe you."

They told me to write down the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone I was going to meet, of my landlord, of Arlene who I visited in Canada a few weeks ago, and of my parents. They asked if my parents knew I was going on this trip (despite me being a legal adult and having already told the staff I didn't live with my parents) and after I gave them my dad's number they left, so I assume they called him. I hadn't memorized numbers or addresses for anyone because I had the important ones written down and all the unimportant ones are in my phone, which doesn't work anywhere outside of the US (not even in Canada), so I hadn't brought my phone. They couldn't believe that I hadn't memorized all of these numbers or that I hadn't brought my phone despite me telling them where all my friends were from (various countries in Europe, hence never memorizing their numbers because I won't need to call for help or call them at all because of the expenses) and telling them my phone doesn't work in Europe or Canada. They kept asking me tons and tons of questions and I had looked down to turn off my ipod because I had been listening to it while I was waiting for them to finish doing something in another room, and they got mad at me for not looking them in the eye when I was turning it off (because I was looking at the ipod itself to make sure it turned off).

They found three things suspicious. One, that I was bringing two bags and that one of those was a bag filled with gifts for friends. Two, that I was bringing so little money (they asked me how much I was bringing and when I told them, they said "You can barely survive one day on that amount" despite it being a lot more than that would take, and I told them I was staying with a friend, eating their food, and not planning to go out and do expensive things and they acted like that was unheard of). Three, that I was meeting up with friends because apparently... friends don't meet up together in Canada. I had a subway map with directions on how to get to the meeting place where Snorri would be waiting and they kept folding and unfolding it, looking at the back as if it would magically hold some clue as to what I was doing wrong despite it having nothing but meeting instructions on it.

After about two hours of this, they went to actually rummage through my suitcases to check and make sure I wasn't packing anything contraband. I had been doodling some pictures about the volcano and how it was disrupting flights, and once they saw that they asked me if I was "going to go to any protests" and if I had "very strong opinions". I told them I wasn't and that I had opinions but they weren't strong and I wasn't going to act on them. Finally they let me go, but I still had to go to the ticket counter and everything to pick up the tickets for my connecting flight... which was arriving in ten minutes by then. I ran through the airport and got to the security check where I was stuck in a line that was going slowly, except most of the people in it were all from Scotland and all friends of each other, and when they found out when my airplane was supposed to leave they all let me cut ahead of them. I kept running because the security check was at about the middle of the airport while the gate for my flight was at the very end, and when I got there they said it hadn't even started boarding yet because the plane had been late.

I went through the English customs just fine, but at baggage claim I found out my baggage hadn't arrived. So I had to file a missing baggage form and use Gunnar's (Snorri's uncle, the one we're staying with) address and phone number so they could drop it off.

I met Erin at the airport, she's from Ohio and she's visited Washington before. From Heathrow we traveled by train and eventually got to Victoria station where we met Snorri. We had a bit of trouble finding out exactly where to go because I mistook a store name in the directions as a street name, but a man who was probably homeless saw that we were lost and helped us out.

From there we wandered around until we settled at Piccadilly, where we were meeting the other Icelanders who were also going to be staying at Gunnar's place. For the rest of the day we basically wandered around some more.