The Arrival (part 1)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a college student in possession of good opportunity must be in want of a semester abroad.

I'm sorry, I was trying to be clever. That isn't the case at all. And yet there I was on January 1 at JFK International Airport, sitting on a plane to London via Iceland.

Sitting, yes, because we had not left the gate over an hour after the scheduled departure time. An alleged problem with the baggage loading equipment. What a promising start to the already terrifying prospect of five months abroad.

Originally I had been assigned a window seat; upon boarding, however, the flight attendant asked me if I wouldn't mind moving one row up and to the aisle seat. I don't know why, and nobody ever came to take my abandoned seat. Instead I was placed next to an Icelandic woman and her young daughter. Everyone on the plane was Icelandic; I would guess about two-thirds Icelanders and one-third other travelers using Reykjavik as a connection, like me.

Icelandair is awesome. When we boarded they were playing Christmas carols in Icelandic, all the signage was bilingual and one of the inflight movie options was a documentary about how unique and interesting the country is. We were told the plane was named after a volcano.

Luckily I was scheduled for a 2.5-hour layover, so the delay didn't affect me much. On the flight I watched The Departed (2006), which I had wanted to see for a while. Great movie. Mostly everyone slept around me; I didn't sleep in any significant amount, if at all. Nor did I eat or drink, because I didn't know what was free and I was too scared to ask.

Transferring in Reykjavik was as simple as it could have been; a nice small airport, easy to navigate. I arrived at my gate with time to spare. While boarding, I was once again presented with a plane named for a volcano, this one somewhat more famous.

Again, there was a problem with my seating assignment--this time, the seat was apparently broken and unable to be sat in. So I stood off to the side as everyone else boarded, and was placed in an empty seat, which happened to be in first class. Or, as it's known on Icelandair, "Saga" class.

It even came with breakfast!

What a country.

Leaving Iceland, it was 9AM and the sky was just barely beginning to lighten. The flight to Heathrow was uneventful; once again I got no sleep. We landed on schedule at noon, local time; it was now 7AM in my head. Seated as I was, I got off the plane very quickly and made my way to Immigration.