How a stolen laptop, health problem, unsuccessful flat search, teachers' strike, and missed ride from Paris haven't squelched my passion for this programme

'You're living the dream,' Dad said over tuna sandwiches in Pt. Pleasant, New Jersey, at his recent birthday-cum-Father's Day bash. I explained it wasn't really a dream, but thank you; he pointed out that I had a goal, a dream, and I had made it happen; I thanked him. I am here in London reading for my M.A. in Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Yet, this dream hasn't come without a price. Besides my huge tuition cost (a number that pains me to write here), I started my programme late at King's College London. I'd been on a job in Arlington, Va., and couldn't get out of my lease. I began approximately two weeks late, bringing as much of my stuff with me as I could, along with a cat. I was also bringing some mysterious health disorder(s), some difficulty swallowing and a thyroid nodule deemed 'indeterminate'. Mom accused me of caring more for my education than my health. She wasn't wrong. However, I knew that I'd be on the NHS and in good hands. Was also betting I would live, and live better in London. I was right.

Even though I've searched high and low for a flat, only to arrive where I am now, a lodge in West London where I've negotiated down a rate that is still far higher than I should pay for an apartment, and sometimes miss my beautiful Falls Church studio and ability to wake up and cook an omelette or go swimming, I tear up when I look outside. From the window of this Victorian, in my favourite neighborhood in the world, Ealing, I see roses of every colour, including some I didn't know existed such as violet-blue and yellow-gold-pink. I'm at the end of the tube line, Ealing Broadway, where a mix of cultures clash loudly and colourfully: Polish, Iranian, Russian, Afghani, French, you name it. I don't meet many Americans here or see tourists, which I l-o-v-e. It's a neighbourhood, and one I am not keen to give up any time soon. I will have to do just that, though, if I don't find a job in London once I graduate in September (officially January.)

Whilst here (yes, I'm talking a bit British), I've learned about Hogarth, Hume, and Hamilton; and read fiction from Japan, Germany, and Russia. I've seen King George III's coins and medals at the British Museum, where I spent hours in the Coins & Medals Room examining ancient Roman denarii. I've doubled over in laughter when my young partner Carlos and I've shared an inside joke, or when I've misunderstood a perfectly well pronounced word in English from one of the curators. I've spent too much money on museum food, gotten lost trying to find a special room for our class to look at prints or hear a lecture in, and I've taken more than a hundred Instagram shots of the atrium at the British Museum. I also missed my ride out of Paris when, after filing the last of my first-semester essays, walked to the ATM at 4 a.m. only to have my card sucked back into the machine (because it was not removed quickly enough).

When our instructors--here called 'tutors' -- went on strike a few months ago over a pension dispute, I supported them, whilst also expecting I'd be compensated for my financial losses. I will never get back the lost hours, the brilliance of the minds who taught me in this past semester. I took Public History of Science/Technology/Medicine in the History department, a Hume to Darwin course, and my Representing the Eighteenth Century 'module' (as they are called here in the UK). Eventually we went back to class, but this meant a speed-dating version of the philosophers we'd missed in H to D, with my wondering why Malthus never established why we are still able to eat.

If I live to be 100, I'll never regret,though, the timing of all of this -- and this is coming from someone who is still being seen at Guy's Hospital for a GI issue that sometimes means I can only eat soup (which I don't like too much here) or don't feel well enough to jump on the tube quite so quickly as my 25-year-old classmates. This love of my time here in London is in spite of a laptop that went missing at Russell Square, a Mac Air that I cannot afford to replace and which seems to only be of importance to me. That's life, though, isn't it - those big things that happen to us don't really matter to others unless it affects them. If everyone lost his or her laptop tomorrow he or she would understand. I also lost my King George III dissertation notes, meaning I had to 'wing it' and recite from memory what I recalled from two-plus months of research. I did it, though! Very proud of myself.

If London is a bit too busy for my taste at times, it's never boring, always energizing, always intriguing. I've learnt that America is just one of hundreds of countries. Its only 'superpower' is that it thinks more highly of itself than many other countries do, humbler countries who deserve a more prominent position on the world stage! London offers up Borough Market and its bounty of strawberries, fresh fish, perfect grilled cheese sandwiches and goat's milk ice cream in the way New York says, 'hey, eat our hot dogs!' There's no comparison. I went back to America hankering for an American burger and was bitterly disappointed. My dream of running to the Taco Bell border evaporated in the disgust at eating too-salty, too-sweet chili and shake at Wendy's (sorry!)

My journey is not yet complete. I have a dissertation to write. I have to pore over every item of King George III's life and those of his fellows, both in the monarchy and the Royal Society. I am eager to get to Windsor to the Royal Archives, a trip which should thrill me much in the way a diamond would another girl. See, I never really did dream of a big wedding for myself but, yeah, Dad is right: I am living the dream.

PHOTOS: LAURIE WIEGLER; TOP - The Apollo Belvedere, Musei Vaticani; British Museum; Buckingham Palace; last two Maughan Library, King's College London.

Author's note, the title should read EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES and not 18th Century Studies.