I’m not exactly a stranger to flights of the domestic variety; as a highly antisocial person, most of my most compelling, deep, and trusted friendships are with people who live halfway or more across the country, and with family that has moved to warmer, wetter pastures in the soggy south of Georgia, I make infrequent trips to see both.

Flying outside the country, however, is another matter. This trip to London is my first time ever leaving the United States, and while thus far traveling internationally has been a vastly different experience from traveling domestically – for one, a vast array of entertainment was provided for free as part of the flight, as well as a blanket and pillow, a three course dinner, and coffee (so much coffee, of which I regrettably drank none with the foolish idea that I would actually sleep on a flying metal death trap several thousand feet in the air) – the most stunning, mind-boggling, and truly upsetting difference has been the fact I can’t hear out of my left ear.

Despite the usual routine of obsessive gum-chewing in flight, and consuming a meal, the pressure change has clogged my left ear to the point of near absolute deafness – which is a bummer, when you’re trying to pay attention to and take direction from professors and many accented strangers. Thus far, all attempts to remove the clog and normal pressure inside my skull have resulted in failure – no amount of no blowing, mouth-gaping, yawning or hiccuping has proven effective in clearing out my ears.

Given that jet lag, or perhaps the fact that I’ve been awake for near 20 hours at this point, is ravaging both my mind and my body, I’m going to end todays post with a haphazard – I mean, carefully selected – regurgitation of the photos I took while traveling from Heathrow Airport to our hotel, the Apex of London.