Time For Goodbyes

I’m sitting in my tiny box of a hotel room in Reykjavik, watching the sun finally begin to set around 11 PM, and feeling the cold air leak through the small window above the heater.  I've been here in Iceland for about three days now, and I still can’t believe that I’m here, in Iceland of all places.  But even more so, I can’t believe that in a few hours, it will all be over.  I will get off the plane, face the intimidating US customs officials, get my final passport stamp, and then collapse into the arms of my waiting family members.  I can’t believe that after five months abroad, five months of living on my own in my own house, far away from anything I’d previously known, I was going to be back in my hometown, in my cozy blue room, eating my mother’s home-cooked meals, walking my family’s four dogs around the neighborhood, driving a car on the left side of the road, and paying with money that has come to resemble monopoly bills.

It’s crazy to think that the food that I have grown to know and love is either not available in the US or too pricey—i.e. hobnobs and other biscuits, strong British tea (the American version is little more than hot, brown water in comparison), brie and pesto on crackers (about the most expensive US snack you can imagine), Cadbury eggs, fish and chips in every pub on street.  In the US, hopping on the train to go anywhere and everywhere is practically impossible, nowhere can you find a £20 Ryanair or Easyjet flight, heading down to the pub to hang out with friends doesn’t carry the same weight.  American suburbs aren’t nearly as quaint as the British version (except they call them “villages”).  I've lost that independence that I've gained.  I am going to miss the fact that I can’t get to five grocery stores, six churches, four bookshops, nine cafés, fourteen pubs, one train station, one bus station, one spa, and countless souvenir shops within a fifteen-minute walk. 

In short, I am going to miss Europe.  I am going to miss the two opera singing buskers outside the Roman Baths, the homeless man selling the local newspaper in a Scooby-Doo outfit, the girl at my local pasty shop (a pasty is an enclosed sandwich with vegetables, meat, and potatoes from Cornwall) who always says hi to me, the local University students who were nice enough to invite me into their group.  I’ll miss my internship, with my mentor, Cleo, who might be the most cheerful and happy and excited and charming person I've ever met.  I’ll miss the babies and kids who I’ve taught during the workshops.  I’ll miss the building itself, with its brand-new extension that carefully blends the old and the new.  I’ll miss being able to learn about both obvious and obscure Briticisms from my many British acquaintances.  I will miss my volunteer work at Bath Abbey, guiding people up the tower, giving them a history of the Abbey and of Bath.  I will miss being able to meet people from all over the country as well as from faraway countries every corner I turn on. 

I am excited to be back though.  I can’t wait for the semester to start, and I am already making plans to visit friends this summer.  I am happy that I can jump into my car and drive someplace instead of relying on a bus or my own feet.  I am excited to visit my family, my friends, my dogs.  I have my own room now.  I can go back to reading for pleasure now that I am done with classes.  I can spend the weekend at my family’s tiny cabin in West Virginia, I can take day and weekend trips around Maryland and Virginia.  I can metro into DC as many times as I like. 

But I know that I will be back.  I know that after I graduate, I am going to try as hard as I can to get back to Europe.  If not to England, than to the rest of the Continent.  Before I studied abroad, I didn’t know what I wanted.  I had vague ideas, but nothing set.  I’d like to think that I’ve changed a lot in the past five months, that I’ve matured and grown and learned a lot.  I have goals now.  I want to be an English teacher using the TEFL degree that I completed in Barcelona in January.  I don't really care where I teach, so long as it is in a new, exciting and different place.  I want do this for a few years, then perhaps go to grad school in England, and try to get a visa to stay in the UK permanently. 

Going back won’t be the same.  I’ve spent the last five months living in cities, in the city, not in the suburbs.  And I’ve had such a great experience.  Not every moment was one of utter happiness; I had hard times in England too.  It isn’t perfect—no place can ever be perfect.  But I’ve fallen in love with living abroad.  It suits me, this kind of lifestyle.  I have itchy feet, I am not ready to settle down.  I want to see more of the world, I want to meet new people, do crazy things, learn new languages, try new foods, live new lives.  I love America, or at least, I love my family, my friends, my school, my cabin, etc.  But it won’t be the same now that I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit.  I’m not afraid of learning how to take a bus on my own; living in a country where I know nobody and I don't speak the language doesn’t scare me.  Going home tomorrow is both good and bad.  I can’t wait to hug my mum and my sister and my brothers and my dad.  But at the same, I know that this euphoria will only last for a little while.  Before long, I will miss England.  I will miss Bath, the train, the countryside, the culture. I will miss my classes and my tutors, I will miss my internship employers, the ASE staff, the tower tour staff, my new American friends, and my new British friends. I love that I am slowly building up a friend base that includes people from over ten countries.  

I know that things will change.  You can plan and plan, but, as Robert Burns said, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.  And I know this is true.  Yet—it’s good to have these goals, to know where you want to go.  And living in Europe has helped me do this.  It has helped me to recognize my dreams, and realize that I can live the life that I want to live, with hard work, patience, charm, and good luck. Europe has turned me into a more confident, assertive, hard-working, happy, and adventurous person, and I am glad that England has made me realize this.  I just hope that someday in the near future they will kindly issue me a visa.

Standing over King Arthur's Grave

Procrastinating doesn’t work.  Even when you try to escape doing work for school, it just comes back to haunt you. 

I am currently taking “Myths and Legends of the UK.” It's nothing like what I expected, and for many reasons, it’s certainly lacking.  The class could have been a lot better—I expected us to read myths, compare and contrast them, and then relate them to society and culture, explaining why these particular stories have survived and how they have impacted society.  Instead, we do a lot of summarizing, which is unfortunate, because the class had so much potential. 

Besides reading a Welsh epic and an Irish epic, we mainly focused on two very famous myths: Robin Hood and King Arthur.  I liked Robin Hood (I ended up writing two papers on it!).  I didn’t know much about King Arthur.  I knew a few of the names, and that was it.  Guinevere, Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Galahad, Morgan le Faye, Mordred, Merlin…the list goes on and on.  Not only did we discuss the stories and the themes they bring up—chivalry, heroism, adventure, honor, love, war—but we talked about King Arthur the man.  We looked at the various characterizations and changes he went through in the different versions.  And finally, we explored the idea that King Arthur may have been a real man: a great king who fought off the Romans and helped establish England as its own country with its own rules and its own society.  There are some sources to prove this—accounts of men bearing a similar name, rumors of his tomb, of Camelot, of the Round Table and the Holy Grail. 

All of my other classes went on study trips, but Myths and Legends never got the chance.  That was a little sad, for I love being able to relate theory with the practical, like I did in Dublin for my Irish Literature study trip where I got walk the town that practically worshipped Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, Swift, Wilde, etc.  So I was a little disappointed that we weren’t going to “find Camelot.”

The last weekend before I was set to depart, I decided that I really wanted to do a day trip in southwestern England.  I was worried that I’d spent too much time outside of the place that I’ve called home for four months. So I talked to Su and Emma (ASE staff) and asked for some recommendations.  They pointed me in the direction of Wells and Glastonbury.  I’d heard of them through my guidebook reading, so I decided to go.  Wells was a short stop on the way (just a peek in the Cathedral) to Glastonbury.  Glastonbury was a cute English town, and already, I was glad I came despite the obscenely long bus ride (close to two hours to travel about 35 miles….I am looking forward to American highways!). I first hiked up the Tor, which is basically a giant hill in an otherwise flat region, to get splendid views, and learn about how it used to be a place of execution.

I then headed to the ruined Abbey because it looked neat. I didn’t find out until I was inside that Glastonbury Abbey is the main place Kind Arthur is supposedly buried!   I couldn’t believe that out of all the places I could have gone, I ended up at his tomb.  He was supposedly discovered in simple coffin, buries with his queen, in an old graveyard a few meters from the Abbey in the late 1100s, and was moved to a marble tomb in 1278.  People flocked to the Abbey—because King Arthur was a figure of worship. Everyone knew who he was; he was a hero. 

Unfortunately, during Henry VIII’s attack on the Catholic church, he destroyed many places of worship in the early 1500s.  Sir Dustan, the owner, tried to hold out, but he failed, and the Abbey was burned down.  Everything was lost—including the tomb.

Was it really Arthur and Guinevere? Could the legends have been based on real people? We may never know.  But standing over the “grave” of the king in possible sight of “Avalon,” I realized that it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if they were real or fictional or anywhere in between.  It is the legend that matters, the themes, symbols, messages it still sends.  A 1000 years later, people are still reading, studying and making pilgrimages to King Arthur and Guinevere. Loyalty to land, to your partner, to your countrymen—this is still relevant to today’s society.  Men still sing up for war to “honor their country.”  Chivalry, honor and love are still practiced towards others out of respect and admiration and loyalty.  King Arthur is still affecting society a thousand years after he (or at least his character) died.  Isn’t that amazing?

Macbeth: Blood, guts, gore, and wierd...children?

You don't go to Stratford and not see play.  We were scheduled to see two: one by Shakespeare, and one by a contemporary of his.  I was really worried that we were going to see Romeo and Juliet—one of my least favorite plays, and probably the most overdone of any Shakespearean play—so I was excited to hear that we were seeing Macbeth.

I’ve read Macbeth twice; once as a mere high-schooler, and the other, as a university student.  The second time around I picked up one a lot of things that I hadn’t really thought about before, especially relating to the portrayal of the witches and of women.  The witches are always shown a little bit different—from pretty young women, to disgusting hags, from clairvoyant but fairly harmless to aggressive and rather scary.  But they were always adults—and I think always women.

The director of the play went a little overboard with the special affects—he lowers Macbeth from the ceiling on a throne, he has a child run across the stage to scream the “shriek of the owl,” a ladder extends from the floor for Macbeth to climb during his “tomorrow” speech.  But the strangest thing that the director did was he changed the “weird sisters” into “weird children”!   The first appearance of the witches was literally hung (the looked dead) from the ceiling and later lowered.  There were two boys and one girl, not more than ten years old, making prophesies about death and destruction, carrying around creepy dolls (as the severed head, bloody child, etc).  They were creepy, that I can say.  But it didn’t work with the play!  It was a strange interpretation, and I don't think it added anything to the play.

When I read the play for class, there was a huge emphasis on the witches and Ldy Macbeth; Macbeth himself was sort of an afterthought, a villain, a corrupt man in the way that must be overcome.  Yet in this play, it was Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth.  The witches only appeared in two scenes (the famous “double double” scene was removed, as was all the other scenes but the first and last), and even worse, the actors later become Macduff’s murdered children, just to add to the confusion.  The ”evil” witches suddenly become innocent children? It seems as though this sends very mixed message, one that goes against the original play. 

Lady Macbeth, in this version, also seemed somewhat an after thought.  Even before she helps murder the king, she seems insane.  There was no slow progression to insanity—she already seemed insane from the beginning, not that we meet her for long. She is barely in the play before she becomes a murderer; they removed at leaset one opening scene with her in it. Even Macbeth himself—where this director put the emphasis on—seems crazed from the very beginning.  Banquo, a large passionate man with a commanding voice and style, was one of the few instances where it seemed like the original play shined through.

The play itself was decently well done—the set and costumes were all good.  The actors were decent (if somewhat “crazed”), there was blood everywhere (which made it exciting!) and some of the special effects (like water coming down from the ceiling when the king was crowned), where nicely done.  If you did no know the play, it probably would have been fine.  

But for somebody who has studied the play twice before, the changes seemed to really hurt the original play, twisting some of the messages around, like confusing good and evil, as with the witches, or placing emphasis on certain characters and not on others—before she died, Lady Macduff was only in one scene (thten she died and proceeded to follow Maduff around.) Macduff too had no role until the very end; before that he was in the shadows.

Stepping into the world of Austen, Edgeworth, Burney, and Wharton for a night out at the Theater

Ever since I started reading 19^th century fiction, there are some things that I have always wanted to do.  I’ve had this vision of what people used to do in the 1800s and early 1900s.  Because of my fascination with works from that era, I’ve always been interested in the things that men and women from the 1800s did for entertainment.

I really enjoy seeing plays, concerts, and dances—I love watching the performers on stage because to me, it seems more real than going to the cinema to watch a film.  There is something about entering a theater with plush red seats and individual boxes for those willing to pay more, dressed up in a fancy outfit, sipping wine and chatting with those around you that just drags me straight back to the someone in a Jane Austen novel, or maybe a scene from a Frances Burney novel or perhaps even the more recent Edith Wharton.  At any rate, to me, spending a night out at the theater feels like something that only the aristocracy would do.

This is just how I felt on Florence.  Over my easter holidays, my mother decided to come with me to explore northern Italy.  Partly because we wer both very busy, but mostly because we both despise planning, we decided that instead of making extensive plans, we would just buy the flight there and back to Milan, and then we would go from there wherever we decided.  In the end, it was an adventure trip, which ended up being really great.  But this also meant that we were deciding want we wanted to do the night before.  Sitting in our suite in Florence, I mentioned that I was interested in maybe seeing a show or concert.  Of course, I don’t speak Italian, so a play was out. I did a little research, and discovered that the Russian ballet was stopping in Teatro Verdi for one night on their way to Rome.  I was excited—they were performing the classic Swan Lake, and I had never seen it.  Suddenly, I was intrigued. I felt a shiver of excitement run down my spine—and later that afternoon, I was the proud owner of two tickets to see Swan Lake the next evening.

The theater was just what I was hoping it would be.  We were on the very top floor—but we had our own box. Sitting in those plush seats, I settled down to wait for the start of the ballet.  Wearing a flowing dress and heels and waiting for the curtain to raise, I immediately felt like I had been transported to the 18^th or 19^th century. They didn’t have a TV or the internet that they could easily turn on and use at any moment of the day.  Instead, going to see a ballet would have been something they did only when they went to town, and for most (except for the very rich), it would have been something very special, just like it was for me.

Two weeks later, I visited Vienna, city of music.  I had a friend, a music major, who was studying there, that I was excited to visit.  We did the usual tourist things—visiting museums, churches, palaces, the Danube, and we did a lot of walking, including down the famous Ringstrausse.  But she also decided to take me to the opera.  I was more exited for that than anything I had been for awhile.  The Opera—that was even classier than a concert or a ballet.  The only time I’d ever heard of anyone going to an opera was in films and books written during or about the 18^th or 19^th (maybe into the early 20^th) centuries—and now I was going!  The ballet had been like a fairy tale—it had been so quintessentially Jane Austen or Frances Burney or Maria Edgeworth that I had felt like one of their characters.  I thought that the opera was going to be the same way.

However, as students, we were short on cash, so instead of buying a box, we spent €4 to stand.  I wasn’t really sure what that entailed—but you couldn’t beat €4!  It turned out that you walked into the theater from the back to the area directly behind the orchestra seats—seats that cost about €100 where there was the occasional woman in a long, very formal dress and (in the winter) poufy fur coats.  There were about eight to ten rows of these metal barriers, each about half a meter apart.  A woman ushered us into one of these rows, jamming people where only four were meant to stand.  When everyone was pushed in, we tied scarves to the banister (following the tradition to save our place), and headed out to grab a quick sandwich for dinner.  Back in our places, we squished into our places.

The warm air was filled with sounds of different languages, people of all kinds of cultures who had all come here because of an appreciation of fine arts.  We may not have been in a roomy box like a character from Edgeworth’s novels, we may not be wearing silk gowns—but everyone there was united in their interest in opera.  €4 or €100, we all got to see the same beautiful opera—Aida, an older opera about a young princess turned slavegirl’s love for the leader of her enemy’s army—listen to the same wonderful voices. It may not have been as glamorous as Evelina’s visit to the opera in Burney’s novel, but it was still magical.  It is one of my favorite memories from this trip so far—because it made me fall in love with going to theaters and ballets—and now operas.  It made me appreciate performance arts, and it let me connect with characters from novels that I love through the arts. 

Is Massachusetts a city? Or is it the 53rd state?

For the first time in a three weeks, I was finally able to go back to work.  With the visa I have, I can’t actually get paid—but that doesn’t stop me from volunteering. The central point of Bath is the Gothic cathedral, Bath Abbey.  On a whim the first week of class, I signed up to take a free tower tour and see if I liked the job. After climbing 212 steps to the top—making various educational stops along the way—we reached the top.  Gazing down at the rooftops, I was in love. 

Every Monday, I make the trek two or three times up the stairs, lecturing people on bells, bell ringers, the clock, fan vaulting (a style of ceiling), and finally at the top, general information about Bath.  I love my job, I love the feeling that I am doing something for others, that there isn’t anything in the job for me other than doing something for the community I’m now a part of.

This week, we had 8 people sign up for a tour, meaning we needed two people.  The other guide let me do most the talking, which was sweet of her, since she had been doing the job much longer than I had.  Leading the group up the spiral staircase, I chatted with the woman behind me, an older woman in group of six ladies who had all come together.  It was just the usual—where are you from? How long are you in Bath? Etc.  Inevitably, she started asking about America. People always love to ask me questions about America. 

Supposedly, only 33% of Americans own passports—and I get that waved in my face all the time by the Brits.  Yet, as much as we don’t travel, the Brits aren’t that much better.  I have British friends who have never been to Scotland (side note: Edinburgh is about a 6.5 hour train ride from Bath. So not that far.) They also have a terrible grip on American geography.  Americans are supposed to be the ones who can’t find Iraq on a map and yet, I’ve got some pretty strange answers when I’ve asked questions about America.  For example, how many states are there? I thought that’d be an easy one, as there are the same number of stars on the flag, and it’s a nice, even number. Yet, I’ve gotten 52, 53, 54, and 56.  One of those was my teacher while I was in Spain.  I’ve seen people place Boston somewhere in the south, I’ve heard both Massachusetts and Virginia labeled as cities. 

This would not bother me so much if there wasn’t such a stereotype on Americans that WE know nothing about geography.  When I first arrived, I had to pass little “tests” by my British friends (how many countries make up the UK? What are their capitals? Name 5 cities in Ireland.  What’s the capital of Germany?) I passed them easily enough.

In the end, I guess it all matters on perspective.  What’s important to know in one country may not have the same importance to know in another.  I’m glad that I was able to leave the States and see how another country views my home country, I’m glad that I was able to enter a new perspective.  I love the experience of seeing something the way another culture sees it, I love the ability to—at least for the time being—join in to that way of thought. 

I later found out that later that the group of older ladies on the tour asking me questions were on a university reunion—40 years ago, they had all gone to university at St Andrews, Scotland, and they were all still friends going on a trip to Bath together.  That was heartwarming.

In A World of Ghosts

I’ve just gotten back from spring break—and it was amazing.  The week began in Italy—Milan, Florence, Fiosole, and Lake Como, where I spent 5 days wandering the Italian countryside with my mother, my favorite person in the world.  After that, I headed back to London to meet up with some friends that I met while I was volunteering in Costa Rica last May. 

On the train to London, nestled in my barely-cushioned seat, I was obsessively reading my current school assignment, The Woman in White, a gothic novel by Wilkie Collins.  The novel is a (somewhat long-winded) account of the mysterious pasts of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco, following several cryptic warnings about them by a strange Woman in White. At one point in the story, Sir Percival, angry that his new wife will not trust him enough to sign an unknown document without any explanations, he angrily storms off to London. As I was sitting there, absorbed in my book, it suddenly dawned on me—I was there.  I was on the train riding through London, much like Percival—and a few chapters later, much like his wife and her sister after they go down to catch a train into the city.  I was there.  Looking out the window, I was seeing the landscape that these characters would have seen, riding trains that ran along the same tracks as they would have ridden.  Its always interesting to experience first-hand the influences and inspirations that made a writer inclined to write about any given topic.   

In the beginning of the book, the hero is walking along a lonely road to London late at night when he feels a ghost-like hand on his shoulder.  It turns out to be the woman in white, a lost soul searching for an escape, both a mental one and a physical one. She was just a lonely woman who was falsely imprisoned in a mental hospital because of her knowledge of a Secret that would jeopardize the freedom of the two villains.  As I looked out the window at the setting sun, I shivered.  The train was fairly quiet, and I had the row to myself.  The more I thought about the story, the more it got to me.  The text itself wasn’t necessarily scary—but the ideas that it presented, ideas of imprisonment, ideas of ways to “treat” mental illness that were but suggested in the book, ideas left up to interpretation—it was scary to think that people, people here, mere miles from where my train was barreling off towards, would lock a young woman up for the crime of knowing a secret, calling her mad.

I know that this was 150 years ago.  I know that horror stories like this still exist today.  But still—it was nerve-wracking to think about.  You try to distance yourself from atrocities by time, by distance, by place.  You try to say to yourself that it won’t, it can’t, happen to you, to the people around you.  And when you suddenly find yourself walking alone through the streets of London as the sun sets, trying in vain to find the street that you are looking for—the plight of this young woman suddenly hits you.  Not only was she unfairly forced to live in this asylum, not only did she survive there under unimaginable events, but she was forced to run for her life to escape, stumbling through the streets of London on her own. 

Suddenly, I started to realize how that would feel.  As I got off my train, I realized that I had no map, there were no taxis at this small station, and the friend I was staying with didn’t answer their phone.  And of course the sun was setting.

Luckily, there was a map at the station, and the house was only a few blocks away, but the whole 10 minutes that it took me to locate the right house, all I could think about was the woman in white wandering through the streets of London after dark—much like I was doing—to enter a new phase of her life.  I was glad when I got to the right door. 

Caerdydd: The Welsh for Cardiff.

The day started off in madness. 

I went for a run, totally forgetting that the Bath Half was today, so as I popped out from the canal and onto the road, I was thoroughly surprised to see throngs of people standing in lines that literally went on for ten streets, all clutching their numbers.  After breakfast, Sophia and I headed out to the train station to catch the 11:25 train to Wales.  Unfortunately, we forgot about the marathoners.  We spent the next ten minutes shouting things like “another banana!” and “look, a clownface!” and “Yeah, man-in-dog-suit!” to the various costumed runners. There were also an awful lot of people running for charities, which meant they had to wear really strange outfits.  Like the breast cancer runners—they each literally wore a single giant stuffed boob strapped to their chest (or back…).  It was strange.

After about an hour and a half, we arrived in Cardiff.  It wasn’t a terribly huge, impressive place—in fact, it was rather modern, even plain.  At least, until we got to the Castle.  The Castle was easily my favorite part of the whole trip.  It was so interesting!  The outer wall was impressive enough, but inside it, it was just gorgeous.  There was a huge open space, all green and wonderful.  Plopped in the middle was a still-standing medieval castle.  Off to the side, there was the more modern castle that the Victorians used to live in.

The whole thing started off with a bizarre movie set in modern Cardiff but with “history coming to life” through the centuries.  The modern girl was running around fighting football players turned to medieval soldiers…odd.

The Victorian castle was pretty nice, mostly because it was really pretty, without being over the top.  The rooms were done up nicely, there was an octagon stairwell (that we couldn’t use), the dining room had a huge table, there was suits of armor in the halls.  My favorite was the library though.  So many books, of course I’d like it!  It was decorated with hand-painted banners bearing the names of the duke’s favorite writers.  The only ones I can still remember are Aristotle, Pluto, and Dante.  I guess he was a fan of the classics. 

The medieval part of the castle was really great though.  You had to climb a host of stairs to get to the top, but the view was worth it!  Cardiff may not be the most glamorous city, but it certainly looked nice from above.  The stairs got steeper and steeper as you go through the stone rooms.  They weren’t much to look at now, but Hugh, the audio-guide man, told me all about the lives of the families that used to live in these tiny rooms with walls as thick as a bank vault.  He also informed me to look at the medieval graffiti and the small hole in the lowest apartment that was apparently the toilet. 

After a delicious little lunch at a local sandwich shop, we headed over to the National Museum via the shopping district.  The shopping district was modern and placeless, but the National History Museum, alongside the courts and the town hall, were very grand and gorgeous.  We went inside the National Museum—but we couldn’t get through it all!  Cardiff isn’t big enough to have separate museums; so there was a whole art section, which included neo-classical, impressionism, sculpture, modernism, and even an exhibit on Buddhism, which I loved because it made me think about my (hopefully) future Himalayan trek next summer.  I was excited about seeing some Van Gough pieces there until I leaned in closer and saw that had painted that same view 37 times, so its no wonder they have one.  But the museum closed at 4:45, and after spending an hour and a half upstairs, we realized that we only had 20 minutes to see the science stuff.  Sometimes that gets really boring, and it was at first until we turned the corner and entered the dinosaur room.  I wish I got to see more of it, but the guards were literally herding us through the halls to get us out and the only exhibit that I truly remember seeing clearly was the one on prehistoric bugs—including a clump of giant cockroaches and a gigantic spider.  I was so traumatized that my heart didn’t slow down until after we sped through the rest of the dinosaurs, went outside, through the reception of an Indian wedding and were back in the center of town. 

So begins the bad part.  Kristyn really wanted to see a hockey game, so we bought tickets to see the Cardiff Devils—which is way more exciting than it sounds. It was pretty cool, even though I know nothing about hockey.  It’s a pretty fast-paced game and really easy to lose track of the puck.  The Devils won, which was good.  The Devils fans also liked to do this thing where they took off their shoes and held them in the air whenever something happened (I was never clear exactly what that something entailed…) But the game itself was fine. Rowdy, loud, obnoxious (then again, the team mascot is named Lucy Furr, so what can you expect?), but fine.  It was what happened before we arrived that was the bad part.

We had to take a bus there.  And the bus, being a typical city bus, took us all over the place, meandering here and there through first nice, and then slowly grittier and grimier neighborhoods as the bus slowly ambled outside of the city.  We came up to a three-way intersection and saw a stopped red car off to the right side (i.e. the wrong side of the road here) and, thinking it hit another car, I looked at my seatmate and said, ‘Oh, that sucks.’  The bus slowed down to swerve around the car and as we passed it, we realized there was a man lying face-down in the road, halfway under the red car.  His jeans were torn, exposing the flesh underneath, and his arms were above his head as if he had tried to brace himself before he fell.  By his side, about two meters away, lay a bent, damaged motorcycle.  He wasn’t moving, and a little circle of people had gathered around him in a semicircle.

On the bus, there was a collective gasp as people stared at the man, unable to look away. There weren’t any police there, no ambulances or stretchers or people of any kind who were helping him.  No one was doing anything.  And we just sat there on the bus, watching the scene outside.  The three rowdy men in the back actually stopped the bus and jumped off to ‘see what was happening’…pretty sick, right? And then the bus turned the corner and he was gone. 

Yet I couldn’t get him out of my mind.  That picture of the man, just lying there, unmoving, with the group just standing around him was burned into my eyes.  It really disturbed me, that feeling of helplessness; that I didn’t—couldn’t—do anything.  For days, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, instead, sharing it with anyone who’d listen.  What did they tell his family? What was he doing there anyway? Why didn’t the two drivers pay better attention? Why do people ride motorcycles anyway, as dangerous as they are? I’m pretty sure that this experience, this image, as fleeting as it was, changed something in me.  I’m not sure what, but things suddenly seemed a little different, life suddenly seemed a more important. 

Thanks to some Google research, I later found out he died right there on the scene.  When that bus drove by, when I looked out that window—he was already gone. 

Entering...Scotland. St Andrews--the most posh uni in the North.

Edinburgh, Scotland

One thing about Britain is that it does NOT know how to make food. Excepting the wonderful fish and chips, pretty much all traditional British meals vary from weird to unsavory to plain disgusting—and the Scots do it the best.  First off, the Brits do not understand the concept of pudding.  Pudding is supposed to be light and fluffy and chocolaty, but the Brits just add the name “pudding” to any less-delicious dish to make it sound more than merely edible. They seem to think that adding a desert type to a meal makes it yummy! Yorkshire Pudding is a splendid example; since when has pudding involved meat anyway? Pie, too, goes the same way, like Shepherd’s Pie or Steak-and-Ale Pie.  But the grossest of all is Black Pudding (otherwise known as Blood Pudding). Ingredients: congealed sheep’s blood which ends up looking like dead worms.  Yuuuum.  Haggis, too is disgusting.  It’s pretty much the Scottish version of the hotdog: sheep liver, lungs, and heart all mixed together (with oatmeal and veggies) to make a dark-colored mush that they expect you to eat.  Good thing I’m on a tight budget and can’t afford to eat out!

But anyway, Scotland itself.  It only took a 6.5 hour train ride (which was, in fact, 3 train rides.  Trains are usually awesome because you don't have to drive, you can just sit back and sleep or read and not worry about TSA agents, but here, it was pretty hectic.  They don't tell you which train is yours, they don't number them, and they only put the end station on the departures board. Confusing.) But then there I was, in Edinburgh!  I was only there two hours, but it was enough to see that it was a truly beautiful city—it was so blatantly old, but it was all meshed up with the new too, and it worked really well.  And it was so blatantly Scottish—they definitely played on stereotypes, bagpipes, kilts, tartan, and of course, the accents!  The streets were lined with cafés, shops, and people.  Lunch too was well worth the wait, a delicious mixed vegetable Panini (including avocados, something very difficult to find here!) and a gooey, yummy brownie.  And it was sooo great to see my little sister so unexpectedly!  It was such a shock when my mother called me up to tell me hat in less than a week’s time, Tori would in Scotland, a stone’s throw away from Bath. She is so lucky to be shopping for colleges in SCOTLAND, of all places.  I am so jealous. 

Onto St Andrews (otherwisw known as the school where Cate and Wiliam met...)

We took a two-hour (48 mile) bus ride to St Andrews—probably the smallest town I have ever seen a university in!  It was literally four streets long, butted on one end by this picturesque, rugged, rough Scottish coast, complete with, wait for it, cliffs and a medieval castle!  The university buildings were so old they had that tarnished look to them, dark and forbidding.  And then the quad was straight out of Harry Potter…The town itself was pretty cute. Small, mostly dead, quiet, peaceful, friendly. I liked it—but I could never live in a place that small, just another reason why Bath is o perfect for me.  Not too huge, but it still has some life, some varied character.  I don't really like people that much, and I dislike leaving my comfort zone (even though I do, all the time) but I still crave big cities, places with randomness, and long dark streets, able to walk for an hour and a half and still not reach the other side of town.  I like the feeling knowing that no matter how long I live there, I may never know all there is to know, may never see all the sights, which is how I felt during my month in both Barcelona and San Jose.  I love that.  And that’s not something St Andrews could ever give me.

But that doesn’t matter.  It only matters what Tori likes, and she loved it!  I am 99% sure will go there, which is cool yet frustrating (I never gave myself the option to leave the States, and I wish now that I did!).

It was dark when we got there, and we had no map, so we were a bit clueless as to where to go.  But we just ended up asking for directions and found our hotel a few minutes later. After refreshing as best we could (because the French Airline forgot the champagne back in DC, they had to delay the flight and Tori only had 10 minutes to make her connection.  She did, but her luggage didn’t, so all her stuff was lost in France and it took until the next afternoon to arrive) we headed out to find dinner.  We chose a place that was a restaurant/pub, but it was late (ish—about 8) and I kept forgetting that places close realllly early here, so it was already drinking time, and Tori freaked out about the whole pub setup.  So we ended up wandering around until we found a place called Tailend where they sold you two fish and chips dinners for 6 pounds—a pretty great deal if I do say so myself!  We carted it off back to the hotel and ate the entire thing with our fingers straight out of the greasy box, loving every minute of it!  Afterwards, we went to the Vic (short for Victoria—Tori’s favourite) and I bought Tori her first beer, which she hated.  But hey, it’s an acquired taste, right?  So then I got her mixed drink which she managed to drink without grimacing.   Although, she has not gotten the concept that one is supposed to drink alcohol slowly, to savor it. I think she just wanted to get it all over with, like taking Nyquil or something!

The next morning, we went out exploring. (At least, after we overslept.  At least Tori had the jet-lag excuse—I was just tired). We had the hotel breakfast scraps, and then headed out into the freezing cold Scottish weather.  The town was still pretty cute in the daylight, and now we could see the medieval-ness of it.  Tori wanted to go shopping, but I said no, we had to see the town. So we went to the St Andrews museum , which was pretty nice. It was dead quiet in there, and for such a little place, pretty interesting.  My favourites were a casting of a giant water scorpion that was found just off the coast, and an oddities exhibit that used to be owned by the university.  (These used to be rather popular in the 1800s when travelers would bring back artifacts from all over the world that was beyond imagination to the local British people).  After that, we headed out to a lunch date with a current student, but Tori felt unwell and practically ran off back to the hotel to lie down.  Instead, Chelsea and I chatted about living abroad and sipped tea and ate Panini’s.  It was delightful. 

After a nap and some ibuprofen, Tori felt better, and we met up with another student, Meg, at a local coffee shop, where she and her Swiss friend answered all of my sister’s questions, and I focused on eating a delicious almond tart.  Meg then gave us an extensive tour of the area, including making us aware of the strange (but interesting) superstitions on campus (which was to avoid walking on a certain carved block on the ground…) She then pointed us to a little Thai place, which was featured on a Gordon Ramsey show—and he even liked it!  The food there was pretty good—though I’ll admit, I got the most unoriginal thing on the menu, Pad Thai, as it’s one of my all-time favourites.  But it was worth it! 

My day of traveling started at 5:20 AM (splendid…) and lasted right up until 30 minutes before my class started at 4.  Long day!  It took four trains, a bus, and a nice little walk with my obscenely loud wheeled suitcase, but I made it back in time for class.  Barely.  Anyway, the best part about the whole day was probably the group of drunk men sipping beers out of pitchers that crowded the little hallway by the bathroom who I let convince me that the button-activated bathroom door was broken.  The station man then came over, did the complicated measure of pressing the button labeled “open” and then looked at me as of to say, “jeez, look how dumb these foreigners are…”  It was a good day.

Trip by Doubledecker bus to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock

Our first weekend in England, our program took us on a trip to some landmark places—Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock.  I was terribly excited to see “Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock” labeled on our week schedule—we were already going on a trip!  So wonderful, especially because I do not quite understand the train schedules yet. 

To keep stereotypes alive, we traveled in a double-decker bus—and it had its merits, for it gave us terrific views of Bath as we traveled down London Road (literally, the road to London), past fields of grazing sheep, and into the green countryside. 

Our first destination was the world-famous Stonehenge.  I had been forwarded by my British friends that is literally a pile of rocks in a field.  And the Brits weren’t kidding when they made that statement—because that’s exactly what it was!  The bus ride was a short trip (about an hour) and I was just sitting there reading  excerpts of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolfo when all of a sudden, Jonathon (the director)crackled on to the intercom, jerking me out of my concentration by syaing, “Annnd there it is, just out the window!” And there it was. The fields were so green (all that rain!) and the stone were so…not that big.  Surprisingly, despite what I’d been told by so many somewhat-reliable sources, I thought they’d be massive.  Football field massive. They were a lot smaller and less impressive than all the storybooks made them out to be.  But still—it was Stonehenge.  How many times had I seen the pictures, watched the movies, heard them referenced in pop culture and literature combined?

It looked so (almost) cheery outside, and I practically danced out of the bus, before wham!  The wind smacked me in the face, and it was just freezing!  Seriously, the wind was strong enough to suck up a small child!  As we made our way over to the Stones, we passed a sign that said “Caution: High Winds” that had been bolted down, and it gave us a chuckle.

Up closer, the Stones were a lot bigger.  Suddenly, I began to appreciate the amount of sheer effort it took some pretty determined ancients to chisel and move those stones so many miles away with minimal technologies. 

Andrew Butterworth (an eccentric but awesome history buff who is also the internship coordinator…) gave us a quick history of the place but owing to the cold, the really loud winds, and just distraction in general, this is what I remember:

-the smaller stones were from Wales, 250 miles away, the bigger stones added hundreds of years later from 20 miles away

-Julius Caesar thought it was built by druids

-scientists recently found a wooden henge buried a few miles away

-over the years, stones have gone missing because people stole them to use in various buildings

-the first Stonehenge tourist came from Switzerland 300+ years ago

Salisbury:

I don’t know what I was expecting, but every time I thought about Salisbury, I thought of Salisbury, Maryland.  Salisbury, England was a lot prettier than the American version!  The city was quite nice, and pretty and everything.  We were quite captivated with the canal cutting through the city—it was filled with swans (actually native to here!) and so everyone whipped out their cameras.  My friends and I were also somewhat fascinated with a submerged shopping cart that was in the middle of the canal with a bird perched on the handle.  Strange, but interesting.

The Cathedral was gorgeous—of course!  It would have been nice enough alone, but Andrew Butterworth’s talk again made it more meaningful!  We even saw the Magna Carta and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of the history on the English language learned from linguistics class last year, as well as history of the time it was written, especially about King John and his family. 

Lacock, our last destination, is an adorable English village in which Harry Potter, Jane Austen, and several other famous and not so famous movies have been filmed. 

The reason for this is because not much has changed since medieval times.  They paved the roads, they added cars, they put up some aluminum signs (enough to count on two hands…), and they people there got over their intense fear of bathing at some point a couple hundred years ago.  Other than that, it was practically medieval, and in literally 10 minutes, you could turn this place into a Medieval village lookalike. 

Some of the features of Lacock are:

-A small brig for putting excessively drunk people into until they sober up

-Genuine, thatched roofs

-a ford (road that goes through a river) about 30 meters long that cars have to drive through to get to the other side of the village

-Adorable, medieval cottages lining the narrow, cobblestoned streets

-Authentic medieval smells, including authentic horse poop on the streets

…and lots more .

We finished up the evening at the George Inn—the oldest working pub in England.  The food was great, (I had a veggie pie-type meal) which was accompanied by a pub quiz, something the Brits are rather fond of.  Our team only missed one question—and it was math related.  Oh well. 

Goodbye Barcelona, welcome to England...

London, Heathrow-->Bristol Airport--Bath, England

So my plane has landed in the British Isles. I am in the land of people who drive on the wrong side of the road, the wrong side of the car.  The place where everyone is way too polite, where they use “lifts” instead of “elevators,” drink 12 cups of tea a day, and say “whilst” instead of “while.”

I heard once that London had the most languages spoken within the city than other city. I don't know if that is true, but as I sit here in the airport, I can definitely see that.  So far, I have heard Spanish, French, English, German, several different Indian languages, one that could be Dutch or something similar, one that has to be something Scandinavian, plus others that I can’t quite identify.  I’ve been trying to determine what language the people behind me are using, but I have no idea; I could be a lot of things.  I wish I spoke 2 or 3 other languages, but I don't. I guess I’ll have to content myself with my school French, and my Costa Rican Spanish.  I’m not that great at either language, but I love that my Spanish has improved during my stay in Barcelona. My Spanish is still pretty rusty, and wasn’t that great to begin with (an A in Span 105 only means so much—there’s a pretty big difference between the classroom and the actual world!) But I did buy La Sombra de Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) a very large Spanish bestseller.  I don't know what I was thinking—I guess that it would motivate me to keep in touch with my Spanish while I am in England and later America?

I know that I am supposed to have culture shock.  And I did, in fact, have culture shock.  I just had culture shock a month ago, when my plane landed in Barcelona.

I have kind of a unique situation here because even though I’ve just arrived in England, I’ve been on the continent for over a month now.  I’ve just arrived from the beautiful, magnificent city of Barcelona.  I loved it so much—I don't actually know how to write about it, because I know that no matter what I say, I cannot completely convey the city’s charm, its splendor, its brilliance. It was a perfect meld of the old and the new, a city with a vibrant life that never goes to bed, where stores close around 9, dinner is taken at 10, social drinking until 1 or so and then the party starts, lasting until 6 or 7 AM (so I’ve been told, I never managed that late!).  I love walking, and I learned to appreciate it even more in Barcelona—I only took the metro three or four times in my entire stay. I taught myself rudimentary google maps to calculate my milage—some days, I’d walk as much as ten miles! Basically….I loved it.  Good bye Spain.  I’ll be coming back someday…

As a sophomore, I toyed with the idea of going into the education department, and I ultimately decided not to.  But I love children, and I love education and teaching and reading and all of the above.  Last May, frustrated with an ordinary routine, I realized I needed to actually do something.  I needed adventure, I needed independence.  I dedicated many hours of google searches, calculations and currency conversions, and several long, detailed emails before I found Costa Rica.

I lived in San José, its bustling, loud, and over-excited capitol city, working with this volunteer program called Maximo Nivel as a teacher’s aide twice a week, and the leading teacher the other three days a week.  It was at a school/orpahanage for kids from infancy to 13 years old.  It was eye-opening.  It was utterly amazing and utterly horrible at the same time.  I formed so many connections with the children and I cried when I left.  There’s your culture shock for you.

But I loved it—my work, the children, the country, its people, my host family, my new friends.  It was just so wonderfully amazing—I still have friends from all over the globe because of this program! 

I heard of a certification program there, called TEFL or Teaching English as a Foreign Language to non-native speakers.  Within days of arrival in CR, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.  Others did the program so that they could travel cheaply, lay on exotic beaches, etc.  And that was part of it for me.  But I really did the program because I was interested in the work.  And I quickly found out that the work was so rewarding that I knew this is what I wanted to do.  So the first chance I got, I found a month-long program in Barcelona to get my own certification.

I love the idea of living on my own.  It doesn’t scare me like it does to most people. I cant wait until I graduate and I can move out of the DC metro area—until I can move out of the country, hopefully.   I love culture—I just love to learn about different cultural practices and foods and languages and customs.  So many little things are different when you move to another country—things you wouldn’t even realize.  For example, a staple ingredient like peanut butter (or mantequilla de cacahuete) is an exotic food in Barcelona, a jar fetching about 5 or 6 USD.  In Costa Rica, it is perfectly allowable to drive through a red light if no one is coming, and stop signs are put there merely for decoration.

Britain will be different still.  Sure, they speak English (sort of…) but there are so many different things about this country already, and it’s been four days. For example, my program manager has been trying to teach me Cockney slang.  I now know that if someone is “cream crackered” they are very tired (it rhymes with “knackered”) or of someone compliments your “whistle and toot” they like your outfit (or your “suit”). Its all very exciting and I can’t wait to immerse myself more—and I can’t wait to get started on learning Briticisms in the historic city of Bath.