FML

Short Version
   I'm currently sitting in a hotel next to the Newark International Airport (look, there it is!). 24 hours ago I was in London, Heathrow expecting to relaxingly hang out in my London flat (the one with this view) by afternoon. Now I'm pouring through UK immigration information and forms trying to figure out how to get back there.

Long Version
    Over Christmas, my family flew over to meet me in London so that we could go on vacation to continental Europe. It was a good vacation; we spent a couple more days in London, took the Chunnel train to Paris, spent a day or so there, trained over to Interlaken, Switzerland to ski on the Swiss Alps, and then popped over to Zurich for new year's eve. It was a good time spent with family. My parents had never been to France or Switzerland, so it was fun to be there with them, and it gave my brother and I a chance to hang out.
    7 AM on the first day of the New Year, I flew from Zurich into Heathrow where I had, of course, to go through border control. Having been in a big European city the night before, I was running on extremely little sleep and not thinking very well. The immigration officer wasn't happy with the fact that my visit to the UK was going to be lasting for 4 months and started questioning me on the specifics. This is about the moment that I realized that I forgot to have Earlham's letter, stating why I was going to be in the UK, on my person. They weren't happy about that either.
    Multiple interviews later, where they spun my words into phrases they thought sounded better, they decided that the information I had given and the manner in which it was given "casts doubts on [my] credibility" and ordered my immediate removal from the country. Despite what I was told, and thought, apparently I actually do need to have a visa to be in the UK. At 5:00 PM GMT, eight and a half hours after I landed in London, I was placed on a plane bound for the USA.
   Now I'm sitting in my hotel in Newark alternately trying not to think about where I should be and trying to figure out how I can get there ASAP; the students start arriving on Tuesday, the program orientation starts Thursday, and classes starts Monday. The UK embassy in NY doesn't open until this Tuesday, and it looks like it takes 2 days minimum to get the appropriate Visa, assuming I can get all the right documents together by the time I head to the office.

So yeah. FML. Hopefully it won't be more than a week before I'm back, safely and legally, in London.

If nothing else, I left a significant amount of my possessions in the London flat that would be good to have back. ;)