Outnumbered & Abroad: Making it through Customs (Part 3)
London, UK (Tuesday, September 26, 2018) - It was as we stepped off the plane and I realized it was mid-morning Tuesday, in London, that I had the sinking realization that my sixty minute power nap on the plane and the subsequent lack of sleep were goin to catch up with me. Nicole’s health and mental state were still failing her from her horrendous bout of sickness that announced our arrival in this foreign country, and, when all of this was combined, I was very worried that our great game of “not knowing the trip” was about to backfire within moment of being in Great Britain.
You see, for a bit of a backstory, when my sister first asked Randi and myself if we wanted to go on this trip to the UK, both Randi and I proved to be poor correspondents and lackluster in enthusiasm. For me, I was in the middle of a whistle-blower policy, leaving my high-powered job at the capitol. In fact, heading out on the trip, I had been jobless for just over eight months - barely surviving on just a few hundred dollars a month in whatever freelance work I could find. I felt guilty about going on the trip, but grateful to my parents who spotted me a little extra cash as they pitied my situation.
As a result of our lack of assistance, Nicole became jaded and stubborn which manifested itself in the form of building high-humor around a “prank.” How fun would it be if we were kept completely in the dark? And turning on all the powers of her creative and artistic brain, combined with, I’m assuming, some inspiration from the television show The Amazing Race, she began to build our very own UK Amazing Race.
As a part of our very own UK Amazing Race, we got our first challenge card upon arriving in London: to get through custom. As we were traveling in a group, they allowed all four of us to head to a tall and formidable gentleman whose cool accent I couldn’t place besides potentially Scottish or Irish.
“Randi,” he said out loud, peering at all of us over his spectacles.
“Ummm…. me?” Randi replied and I had a sudden flashback to looking back over my shoulder as we prepped to go through security and, out of nowhere, Randi started visibly shaking from a combination of fear and nerves.
“That is a terrible name - you should change it,” he said frankly. I couldn’t help but laugh as did the rest of the group. I presumed he meant that bold statement because it is typically a boys name - but I will argue the “i” at the end changes it up nicely.
“Does it mean the same thing in America that it means here?” He asked next.
Plot Twist.
Randi, sheepishly, shrugged and said, drawing the word out, “nooo?”
To which the customs clerk pursed his lips with a smile, “you’re in London now, you should still change it.”
Randi would later tell us that “randy” is a term in Europe that is synonym to “horny.” Oh boy, how exciting was this trip setting up to be? What good fun this potentially could be at the decision of her parents two and a half decades ago!
Our customs clerk continued to tease each of us accordingly…. wait, no! In hindsight, he really just picked on Randi and myself! He had asked us where we were going and Nicole potentially could have put us in a bad way if we had not built such a humorous report with him when she replied, “Why? It’s a secret.”
We all dutifully pretended to plug our ears as Nicole told him just the general geography of our trip while here in London. When we all “re-surfaced” he goes, “It’s a terrible trip, don’t get your hopes up.”
The teasing that he gave me was when he requested that I take my hat and glasses off. Immediately, I felt self-conscious, but not because of my lack of make-up or potential hat hair, it was because I felt vulnerable as I could no longer see without the aid of my glasses. I have 138/5 vision. I’m a sitting duck without any optical aides.
If only a class clown of a customs agent was going to be our only adverse encounter in our first few hours of London - it wasn’t. Unfortunately, we were moments away from meeting the absolute nemesis and recurring evil of the first leg of our trip just moments after leaving our customs clerk: Public Transportation.
I am sure that the Johnson’s are the same as myself when I say that my first ever ride, that I can recall at least, on public transportation was in a country that was on the other side of the world from home. We were supposed to take a train but, poor Nicole, still so sick and obviously on the brink of throwing up again, that I feared we would NEVER be able to either a.) keep her conscious or b.) find our apartment.
In our attempt to find the train… we failed. HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO MISS A TRAIN?! We didn’t find tracks, signs - NOTHING. Like a typical airport, everyone we tried to ask for help, if they even spoke English, had not idea what we were looking for!
Nicole called an audible and decided that we cut our losses and grab a taxi. Out we went on what felt like the craziest Dr. Suess adventure. Cars were going the wrong way, they were all so tiny, and we were seated FACING EACH OTHER in the back. Being my typical self, I tried to start small talk with our taxi driver, to learn a little bit more about the infamous city of London.
He never, not once, not even a sign of recognition or ANYTHING, made a movement that he even heard my two attempts. I thought that maybe he had his speaker to us off but when he piped in to answer a question spoken in the middle of our private dialogue, did I realize that that wasn’t the case. I tried to shake the strange, unfriendly feeling that it left me with and, unsettled, I took to peering out the window at London absolutely NOT feeling the same euphoric musical score that the Hallie Parker felt when she looked out HER taxi cab window en route to meet her mom for the first time undercover as her twin sister Annie (Parent Trap, Lindsay Lohan reference).
The taxi cab driver told us roughly which direction our apartment was going to be so we loaded up our bags and headed off. It wasn’t until we started walking that I made the realization that there was an amazingly high number of middle Eastern and African descended people. Remembering the conversation that Randi & Warren Clayton had had with us heading to PDX, I suspiciously started to wonder if we were on a sanctuary street.
When I made my second realization, that all of the shops on the street were Iranian, Afghani, etc. this made me relax a little bit as I realized that this was the neighborhood that we were in and began to look with interest upon shops and grocery stores filled with a culture I never see at home. Nicole was definitely still feeling under he weather and told us to go look around and she would wait outside of the restaurants that the door to the apartment sat between.
Although I was curious to look around, I was halted by three things:
No cell phone in a strange areas as I had not had the funds to get an international plan added.
I had worn every heavy item I had brought in an attempt to save space in my backpack. It was a very hot afternoon and I was dying in the afternoon sun. I didn’t want to have to keep walking around.
The look of absolute fear at the culturally diverse place that showed no familiar signs of America or the English-speaking people on Randi & Warren Clayton’s faces answered any question of anyone going with me meaning that I would be left to wander with the haunt of #1 on this list by myself.
There wasn’t much reason to even think about it another second longer, however, as at the very moment I was trying to figure out what to do, the lady with the key to our apartment showed up.
The apartment hallway was sketchier than a $2 steak and I was concerned as to what kind of place Nicole was going to have us stay at. The stairs were uneven in height, each step a little different than the one before it, and the ceilings - don’t even get me started! There was a decent fear in two locations on the staircase of at least one of us hitting our heads on the jagged corners that made zero sense in the ceiling.
Opening the door to the apartment, I wanted to give a sigh of relief. It was clean! And, seemingly, normal, which - at this point - I was willingly going to take. Peeping into the bathroom, I was shocked to see the likes of a brand new standing shower: I would work with this! Without wasting any further time, we decided to go off on our next clue: A selfie challenge based on objects around London.