Scotland for a Day

Quite literally. So -after- having my flight not only delayed for 5 hours but eventually cancelled and rebooked to two days later, I finally get to Scotland and find out I don't have the proper visa to enter the country. You know, the visa IIP was explicit in telling me I didn't need. So now I'm sitting in the airport waiting to be shipped back to the US. Needless to say I am quite miffed with IIP and unhappy that 1) I have no idea whether I'll be allowed to obtain a visa now that I've been refused entry, 2) I don't know how long obtaining a visa, if possible, will take, and I'd be losing a lot of lab time as well as time exploring Edinburgh/UK/Europe and 3) I'll have to have multiple more 7-hour plane rides assuming I can even get back to this country.

This is absolutely ridiculous and I have no idea what IIP was thinking, trying to get us to trick customs into letting us in when they knew we needed a visa...

On the other hand, I had a lovely day - my flatmate Luke and Sarah, one of the other interns, took me around Edinburgh a bit and we grabbed dinner and everything. I'm bummed to be going back but I guess it'll give me a little more time with friends (and potentially family as I'll fly back to California if the visa is predicted to take a while) and spare time to study for the GRE...