Part 3: I was composed by the time I got to London's Heathrow Airport. I'd listened to Macy Gray the whole trip over and I'd resigned myself to my fate for the next four months. There was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well find a way to enjoy it.
Waiting for my luggage, I encounter a couple of students I recognize from the study abroad classes I took the previous semester. One of them is Erin, who turns out to be my roommate. She’s also a senior and this is her second time studying abroad. Last time, she went to Nice. She’s from Annapolis and her parents have a house on the water, which I deduct means they are loaded. She’s nice enough and in time I’ll find out she’s pretty normal, despite an obsession with getting wrinkles (during the trip she’ll shell out the equivalent of $80 on a thimble full of face cream that promises to delay aging.) Oh, and she can drink a bottle of any overproof liquor and be fine to operate heavy machinery, but two glasses of wine and she’s literally falling down drunk. (I discovered this when the two us and her sister went to some chic Italian restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner –which I knew was a uniquely American tradition, but had never really thought about what it's like to not celebrate en masse. Long, long night. ) She seems to have a sense of purpose to everything she does and when I'm bored, she lets me use her face as a canvas to do make-up. Months later, we take a trip to Rome and Venice.
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