I got dropped off at Logan by my beloved elder sibling on the 6th and discovered that my flight had been delayed for two hours. Ah well, the hazards of traveling in the winter I suppose. I found some kids from school who were on the same flight, and we joked about being plane cursed. We did manage to get on the plane (eventually) and had a pretty smooth flight to Keflavik. I got a raging migraine that none of my drugs could do much more than dent, so I was headachy and dizzy and nauseous by the time we landed and trying to beat our way through customs. I spent a lot of the customs line wondering if they could deport me for throwing up in the customs line (menace to society? just generally unwanted?). But we got through unscathed, and the students were very gracious about going slowly for me to be dizzy and stopping when I did end up throwing up in a bathroom.

After a long and hysterical comedy of errors involving far too many buses (I should just never ever buy bus tickets in advance. It never ends up going well for me. My bus curse is alive and well and has a puckish sense of humor) we made it to the domestic airport. Yet more students from my program floated in throughout the morning, until they told us the flight was canceled due to weather. They gave us vouchers for taxis and a nearby hotel for the inconvenience and my god taxis make the airport experience so much easier to deal with than goddamn buses.

I spent the rest of the day holed up in a very quiet hotel room, slowly crunching goldfish crackers and watching Fraggle Rock hoping both the headache and the nausea would get better soon. Sometimes the best thing that can be said about a day is that the people were gracious, that you didn’t actually throw up on a bus, and that you never have to do that day again.

The flight was also canceled on Sunday; it was still snowing in the tiny town in the middle of nowhere Iceland in January. Who would have guessed. Also my head finally stopped hurting, and it felt like such a luxury to drink water without carefully dripping it in to avoid upsetting my stomach. My flight got rescheduled to Monday, and I spent another peaceful day curled up reading and folding some origami fish.

We all took a caravan of taxis to the airport this morning, whereupon the flight was canceled due to weather. We all got vouchers for the same hotel and got shuffled back. I’m having dreams about this one stretch of road between downtown Reykjavik and the airport, I’ve been on it far too many times. There are about 16 or 17 students from the program stuck in this same hotel, as more people have been piling in on various international flights for the last few days, and no one can get out to the tiny town. But aside from weird scenic detour to the airport in the midday, I’ve had another peaceful day in a different but nearly identical hotel room. It really could be much worse. Class got canceled for today too, and delayed to the afternoon for tomorrow.

The flight has been rescheduled yet again for tomorrow, and the weather is looking slightly better. Here’s hoping. And last ditch, the weather on Wednesday looks actually good (sunny, even!).

Mostly what I’ve learned is that it’s just not worth it to try and fly in the winter. Just don’t go places.