I've never heard more about Iceland in my entire life...

...I'm experiencing mixed feelings about the whole Iceland exploding thing.  The timing could not have been more spot on.  The volcano decided to erupt the weekend that I needed to fly places, closing all air space.
My question is: how can you CLOSE air?  I know they mean air travel, but the way everyone's saying it makes it seem like space is a convenience store or something. 
Here's the sitch: I've been studying in London for the past 3.5 months with very little complications or issues. The weekend that we're scheduled to fly out of London, the fault running through Iceland moves, setting off a big volcano that's spewing ash into the sky.  This ash gets into the plane engines and hardens, breaking the engine.  Not good. So. All air space is closed and flights are cancelled.  I got an email this morning saying something that I never in a million years thought that I would hear:
We are very sorry but your flights shown below have had to be cancelled due to the risk from volcanic ash in the atmosphere.
Wait, what?!
My prayers have been half answered.  We were saying how awesome it would be that we got a week in London after finals where we don't have to worry about homework and we can just play and play.  Check, thanks to Iceland.  The other half of my prayers were please let me get to Rome without any problems.  Not check, thanks to Iceland.  So my priority right now is to enjoy the time I have left in London, but to get to Rome as soon as I can.
Yesterday was a weird day.  I had braced myself for having to say goodbye to London and having to do everything that I wanted before I leave.  But, awkward, I said goodbye prematurely.  We tried going to Borough, but it took us over 30 minutes to get there because a person was under the train.  How sad!  So I'm not leaving London, I have to change my plans, I don't have homework to do, and there's a volcano erupting.
For now, we're stuck and I'm going to go to a tulip festival that I wold have missed if my flight had left this morning.  I love London.  The jury's still out about Iceland.