I'm Innocent

May 12, 2009

It’s been a good day. I started today traveling by myself and I’ve finished today traveling with two friends. People I’ve known for longer than four months. There is something so different yet still so very much the same about traveling with friends compared to traveling alone. I have been waiting to share my time with Lydia and Lori out here in the great big world for about two months. And today was glorious.

I did face trials and tribulations, though. Let me remind you that when I got to England in January I had a bit of a run in with the immigration officials. They didn’t much like that I was studying in England and didn’t have a student visa and that I was allegedly going to study in France but had no paperwork to prove it as of then. He intimidatingly stamped my passport and wrote in SIX MONTHS. This, I found out today, was a bit unusual and a signal to all of England that I needed to be watched.

I flew to Ireland for a day and they gave me no fuss when trying to reenter. I left for Holland and England might have thought they saw the last of me, but England was wrong. I needed to pick up Lydia and Lori and show them Oxford and hang out in London! For less than a week.

So last night I got on a ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich, they didn’t get me with any crafty schemes this time and I even saved 10 euros on my ticket because of my Eurail pass. This morning I arrived at the UK boarder in Harwich and the gentleman looked through my passport. Asked me about my reasons for coming to England. How long I’d be. What’d I’d been doing there before. Studying? Why didn’t I have a student Visa? I explained about my studying at Oxford and then traveling till then studying in France. I’d be in the UK for less than six months. I had the paperwork and acceptance letters; did he want to see them?

They detained me. A severe woman came over to me and started asking me more questions. Where would I be staying in England? With friends at Harris Manchester. Two friends are flying into Heathrow from the States today; I’ll meet up with them, come back to the Netherlands and travel around before studying in France.

“You’re a student,” she asked. I confirmed. I had acceptance letters from Both Oxford and Aix on me. She required them.

When did I plan on returning to the States? July 28, after my summer term in France, I’ve got my flight booked from Heathrow home and everything.

“If you’re a student and not working, how are you living?” What the hell? She wanted to know how I was sitting there breathing and processing information and feeling humiliated and doing it all simultaneously while consciously making an effort to control the volume and tone of my voice (something my father’s suggested to me many times) while she sits there living too?

“How are you paying for this?”

And the indignation took a severe hold of my throat. And brow. And lips. And of course the solution protecting my eyes.

My husband is in the Army. He’s stationed in Iraq until September.

The solution submerged my eyeballs and my eyelashes directed the dangerous excess liquid down the crease of my nose.

Ugh, I’m positively volatile.

At this point there was no use in pretending I wasn’t upset and shaken. I spilled detail after unrequested detail about my scholarship to England. Paid for. About not being able to get Aix paper work until recently and how hard it was to obtain it. I think she did ask for my plans with Lydia and Lori and I said they’d just graduated college and we were going to travel some for fun: London to Oxford where we would stay with my friends who are still studying at Harris Manchester College, get a ferry to Amsterdam, 2-3 days in Germany, stay with the mother of an Austrian friend (whom I met at HMC) in Innsbruck, be in Rome for the game, get a ferry to Greece to spend about a week traveling around, maybe meeting up with a friend I studied with in high school who’s from Serbia but studying in (Thessaloniki) then planning, though the flight’s not been booked yet, of flying from Greece to Paris where we’ll spend about a week before then go back to England to fly back to the States and I go to Aix-en-Provence, which was paid for with a student loan.

Leslie was called away for something and I sat there trying not to look too lame. Leslie came back and said, in an intentionally non-comforting tone that if she’d been trying to get into the States the way I was trying to get into England, she wouldn’t have even made it as far as I had.

Who knows how many underlying meanings she was hinting at with a statement like that.

I showed her my flight itinerary. Those were covered in the scholarship, I over informed her with a needle or two in my voice.

She left again and spoke loudly to the man across the room from me, even though he was face to face with her. She sounded down right cold and mean. Mean and cold. Heart made of stone. Ice covered stone.

They called me over. They gave me six more months because I had my flight booked for the States already. They advised me to keep my paper work readily accessible for when I come back to fly home in July.

I asked them if I’d done something wrong. Partly because I Knew I’d done nothing wrong and wanted them to say it to me. They kind of did. They said it wasn’t about having done anything right or wrong, but putting together what I say with what I show them. They wanted to make sure I wasn’t just trying to keep reentering the country every six months.

But basically that I’d done nothing wrong.

And partly because I didn’t understand how it all worked. I didn’t realize the six months started over when you left. I thought I had six from the time it was first stamped until it expired. Then I’d have to get a new one just to fly home.
Negatron.

I wished them a pleasant day and even Thanked them. I thanked them first and then wished them a good day. I almost wish I’d left them with a “Right, later.” or something equally as non polite and slightly undermining. But as it were, I thanked them for questioning me and delaying my journey. I think they caught the vibe the “Thank you” was on, though, cuz it clearly wasn’t a grateful one.

I understand it’s not their job to be nice, quite the opposite in fact. But I still can’t be a little begrudging towards them after detaining me twice in four months. It makes me wonder how many ne're do wells they actually do catch. There honestly can’t be that many out there compared to the number of people who just wanna live and not be asked “How are you living?”

I’m living! Are You living, Leslie? Are you catching people who Aren’t living? People who Aren’t living the way You’ve been told they need to live or not live? I’m living and I love living and I hope you do try to go to the States and I hope the States let you live without too much fuss.

Despite those two border incidences, I love England a lot. And my first day with Lydia and Lori was magical.