I've officially been home from an amazing British excursion for almost two weeks. I miss that land of my forefathers so much right now! (Can I please just go back?) I know I need to chronicle the noteworthy events of my time there, so here goes. We'll see how many items I end up listing:
1) Alison's friend back in the States sends her an article. And sure enough, that WAS the exact day that Alison entered the United Kingdom.
2) Alison is trapped inside King's Cross/St. Pancras for plural hours with absolutely no merciful air conditioning, is visibly glistening in great, unfortunate odorousness as she waits at the turnstiles surrounded by the body heat that exudes from the several hundred British humans who are crowding in around her, because they too are desperate to get through the turnstiles and down to the platforms, but sadly the trains are ALL delayed quite badly. But Alison's train is thankfully the first train to finally arrive. This was an adventure, indeed, and a smelly one at that.
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| King's Cross Station on that freaking hot day. St. Pancras was the place across the street that had all the revolting body heat. |
3) Alison completes the 20-hour journey that spanned from her own front door back at home, to the front door of her Cambridge Airbnb. By the time she got to her destination, the record-breaking heat of the day was miraculously dissipating, and sweet, sweet rain started to fall.
4) Alison seeks and finds the headstone of C.E. Brock, the hippest book illustrator during the turn of the 20th century. Look him up, yo.
5) Alison finds the ultimate oldest building in Cambridge: St. Bene't's. It was built exactly at the midpoint between Christ's physical presence on earth and my physical presence on earth. This church building is symbolic of my reaching out to Him, His reaching out to me in return, and Him and me meeting in the middle. Reconciliation.
6) Alison stands outside the very college that Tom Hiddleston attended, daydreaming that he'd actually materialize at her side from right around the corner because he wanted to visit his alma mater, but alas, reality is real. Sadly.
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| Photo of Tom Hiddleston reciting the digits of pi. Look up that YouTube video. You won't be disappointed. Okay fine I'll show it to you myself: |
7) Alison is surprisingly able to find her own secluded spot for some quiet reflection time. Little St. Mary's Church. She sits down on a pew next to a little statue of the Good Shepherd with a lamb. A tiny candle had been lit immediately adjacent to said statue. Alison picks up hymnal and reads through some of the songs. Alison offers a prayer to Heavenly Father, thanking Him for watching over her on this trip and also throughout all her life.
8) Alison is kicked out of Airbnb two full hours before she is allowed to check in at the Summer School, and it's raining and her once-pretty hair is going insane and she's forced to lug her big fat roller-suitcase (with a broken wheel, mind you) around with her to and fro across town for at least a couple of miles. To kill some of the time, she and all her gear sit peacefully inside a bright, quaint coffee shop wherein she bought orange juice and the European version of BLT.
9) Alison not expecting to get hugged so wholeheartedly by King's Singers Pat and Johnny, as the warmest, kindest greeting that anyone could possibly receive when first checking into the Summer School at the beginning of the week. SWEETHEARTS. Each and every one of those King's Singers is an utter, complete sweetheart, and it was proven time and time again throughout the course of the whole week.
10) Alison learns that her individual group's mentor is KS baritone Chris. That was the first day. On that first night, Alison has a dream and Chris is in it. In the dream, Chris tells Alison, in the nicest way possible, that Alison is a horrible sloucher and has the worst stage presence out of anyone in the whole Summer School. THE VERY NEXT MORNING, Alison and MoTab friend Jenny are at the breakfast table in the buttery, and CHRIS (FROM HER DREAM) SITS DOWN NEXT TO THEM, and Alison can't help but confess this dream to him, and he thinks it's super funny.
11) But then Alison proved to obviously NOT have the worst stage presence out of everyone, because the girlfriend of the OTHER KS baritone, Nick, came up to Alison on the last night and told her that she loves watching Alison sing because she has such a pleasant look on her face all the time. WOW! That was so sweet of her to say!
12) Alison's first real conversation with KS bass Johnny was comprised of him quizzing her on all the presidents' faces on the American dollar bills. An unexpectedly challenging exercise! But she did stump him on the $50 bill. He didn't think it was Ulysses S. Grant, but it totally was. But Alison didn't remember whose face was on the $2 bill, so Johnny whipped out the $2 bill he keeps in his wallet at all times and excitedly showed her while they were standing in line for lunch down in the buttery.
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13) The fact that the college I lived in for seven days straight was so gorgeously ancient and looked like Hogwarts everywhere.
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| There's me. |
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| There's Jenny. |
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| There's where Hagrid, Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Gryffindors, Slytherins, etc. sit. |
14) The fact that, after four (going on five) big trips to Europe, I am still culturally ignorant enough to not understand the point of having two flusher buttons for each toilet instead of just one. Is the smaller one for wimpier strength of water?
15) Since we're talking about bathrooms... I looooved how the showers I showered in for two weeks were so so so so tiny and since I am so so so NOT quite as tiny (tall girls ftw), washing hair was interesting with my long, gangly, protruding arms (talk about cramped) and I even shaved my legs once in one of the showers and it was like oh my gosh.
16) Since we're STILL talking about bathrooms... There was that one time when we were on a 15-minute break between classes at the Summer School and I had just done my business with the toilet whose double-buttons you see pictured two listed items ago, and I was attempting to get my hands washed, but I was just standing there at the sink with my hands under the faucet and nothing was happening. Nothing kept on happening. No water was coming out. I had been standing there for probably 15 literal seconds. Then another girl (I think it was Ciara?) enters the bathroom and turns the handle for me and water appears and I suddenly realize that I had been standing there for 15 seconds without ever grasping the concept that the faucet was not automatic. Ay-chi-baba.
17) Gonna get a little bit real here (see below picture below):
For the first couple of days of the Summer School, I really wondered whether people liked me or not. I'm not usually a very outspoken person in classroom settings, or in many settings in general. I get nervous when teachers call my name and ask me to answer a question they asked. I don't often raise my hand to offer an answer to a question. Although it does happen occasionally, I typically don't vocally contribute much to a group academic discussion. I'm largely a strict listener. But this time, during this week, I spoke up and contributed a whole lot more than I ever normally do, because I guess I just had a lot to say about the music topics that got brought up. And so maybe that made it so I didn't feel like my regular self. It may have made me feel unsure as to how people perceived what I was saying. Did people think I was annoying? When I lightly joked or laughed about something, did people "get" me, because much of the time it just seemed like I got a bunch of blank stares and people weren't chuckling at the same things I was. But then maybe a lot of us secretly felt the same way. We were all from different cultures, spoke different languages, and maybe there were some fairly significant unseen barriers there, who knows.
BUT, read on:
18) I think a turning point was the pub quiz night we had in the middle of the week. So much fun. I'd say most of the 100 Summer School participants were down there that night in that cellar which lay underground beneath the college. We all split up into happy, goofy little teams who worked together to try to come up with answers to all the crazy questions that were asked at the front of the room by the King's Singers (I think Nick was the main facilitator?). Anyway. Just being able to let my hair down alongside all these good people and just laugh with them about lighthearted things was healing and patched up lots of the holes I was feeling regarding "do I fit in here or don't I." Friendships were forged here and they became more and more solid from then on.
20) Punting on the River Cam was a grand ol' time with even MORE new friends (who apparently thought I was hilarious (haha um what!?))! Oh and also it rained suddenly with much force from the sky at one point... immediately after our guide accidentally (or "accidentally"?) dropped his oar and we had begun drifting majorly off-course bahaha.
21) Yeah, so I have realized that I stopped referring to myself in the third person quite a number of listed items ago. That's because I was in a weird mood on whatever day I started writing this. Or maybe today is the day that I'm in the weird mood. What's my true norm? Anyway, so here's this: The Chapel at King's College is one of the holiest-feeling edifices I've ever set foot in. We sang a private evening service there, mostly in plainchant (um, excuse me? can you say "HEART EYES"???), only for ourselves and nobody from the outside world was admitted to come in and listen. It was even a level beyond "once in a lifetime," because who even gets to do that? It was magical. Everything about that place, inside and out, was magical. Such a special place with all sorts of awesome history. Sat/stood/sang in wooden stalls that were the originals from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. After the service was done, we could stay for however long we wanted and just sit and reflect in silence. I stayed for a pretty long time. I think I was one of the last four people to leave, and I think we all left together. But walked out very, very, very slowly. I didn't want to leave. I wanted someone to retrieve my bedding for me so I could just sleep in there for the night. Would that have been so much to ask? ;)
22) While still on the subject of that night at King's College Chapel... I left the chapel at the same time as my new friend Elena from Spain. She and I walked the brief journey back home together. Still in reverence and awe of what we had just experienced, we discussed it with each other in soft tones, as though we thought that talking about it loudly was going to cause the reverently powerful feeling lingering in our hearts to flee away.
23) Just wanted to bring up a neat KS-baritone Chris memory real quick (my group's mentor). Also has to do with the night at King's College Chapel. I was impressed that he made it a point to stay the entire time, until the very last Summer School participant left the building. Perhaps it was out of duty on his part — mandatory that a designated leader of the group be present until the very end, to help "close up shop." But I was still impressed, the entire week, by how nurturing of a soul he is. A loving human who genuinely cares about everyone and anyone.
24) Okay and can we talk about how much I love John Rutter real quick? He shared a cool presentation with us and even led us in a few of his compositions. Did you know that he is fabulously animated in his speech and hardly ever takes a breath when speaking? What a fun guy! (Not fungi.)
26) The life-size statue of Confucius I walked by 20 times a day, 7 days in a week.
27) That one time at the gala dinner on our very last night of the Summer School when not only did I eat sushi (that never happens), but also CAVIAR on top of that sushi (NEH-VURRRRRR HAPPENSSSSS). Yep. Caviar went down my throat. Likely the most momentous moment of the whole week for me. Talk about once in a lifetime. No, like literally — that's not going to happen again. (P.S. I'm sad that Tyler's face is not very visible in this pic!)
32) And then I had to share a room with a complete stranger in the temple patron housing, but she turned out to be a very kind, dear person, and she shared oats+raspberries with me in the morning, before we both had to leave on our separate, merry ways.
33) Okay, so in the temple (SUCH a wonderful time inside there btw), I came in behind a bunch of people whom I think were from Spain. For several minutes I hadn't said a word. By the time I got to the desk to rent temple clothes, the worker asked, "Preferred language? Spanish?" HAHA NOPE! But wait, there's more... a couple minutes after that, another worker came up to me with language-translation headphones and asked, "Preferred language? Spanish?" Which begs the question, Do I look Spanish to you? I'll let you decide:
35) Helena? Crispin? U been here?
37) Proof that I saw the famous "221B Baker Street" from the Benedict Cumberbatch hit television series.
39) Proof that I saw this...
BUT, read on:
18) I think a turning point was the pub quiz night we had in the middle of the week. So much fun. I'd say most of the 100 Summer School participants were down there that night in that cellar which lay underground beneath the college. We all split up into happy, goofy little teams who worked together to try to come up with answers to all the crazy questions that were asked at the front of the room by the King's Singers (I think Nick was the main facilitator?). Anyway. Just being able to let my hair down alongside all these good people and just laugh with them about lighthearted things was healing and patched up lots of the holes I was feeling regarding "do I fit in here or don't I." Friendships were forged here and they became more and more solid from then on.
19) Speaking of friends, I now have friends from a TON of different countries around the world! Brenda from Singapore was one my very first that I met!
21) Yeah, so I have realized that I stopped referring to myself in the third person quite a number of listed items ago. That's because I was in a weird mood on whatever day I started writing this. Or maybe today is the day that I'm in the weird mood. What's my true norm? Anyway, so here's this: The Chapel at King's College is one of the holiest-feeling edifices I've ever set foot in. We sang a private evening service there, mostly in plainchant (um, excuse me? can you say "HEART EYES"???), only for ourselves and nobody from the outside world was admitted to come in and listen. It was even a level beyond "once in a lifetime," because who even gets to do that? It was magical. Everything about that place, inside and out, was magical. Such a special place with all sorts of awesome history. Sat/stood/sang in wooden stalls that were the originals from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. After the service was done, we could stay for however long we wanted and just sit and reflect in silence. I stayed for a pretty long time. I think I was one of the last four people to leave, and I think we all left together. But walked out very, very, very slowly. I didn't want to leave. I wanted someone to retrieve my bedding for me so I could just sleep in there for the night. Would that have been so much to ask? ;)
22) While still on the subject of that night at King's College Chapel... I left the chapel at the same time as my new friend Elena from Spain. She and I walked the brief journey back home together. Still in reverence and awe of what we had just experienced, we discussed it with each other in soft tones, as though we thought that talking about it loudly was going to cause the reverently powerful feeling lingering in our hearts to flee away.
23) Just wanted to bring up a neat KS-baritone Chris memory real quick (my group's mentor). Also has to do with the night at King's College Chapel. I was impressed that he made it a point to stay the entire time, until the very last Summer School participant left the building. Perhaps it was out of duty on his part — mandatory that a designated leader of the group be present until the very end, to help "close up shop." But I was still impressed, the entire week, by how nurturing of a soul he is. A loving human who genuinely cares about everyone and anyone.
24) Okay and can we talk about how much I love John Rutter real quick? He shared a cool presentation with us and even led us in a few of his compositions. Did you know that he is fabulously animated in his speech and hardly ever takes a breath when speaking? What a fun guy! (Not fungi.)
25) That one time I FaceTimed my friends who were all on a cruise together somewhere down in the Caribbean (oh how I wish I could've been on BOTH trips at the same time!), and talked to Mark for a minute, then Mark handed the phone to Kerstin and she talked with me for a minute, and didn't want to hang up yet when it came time for them to get back onto the boat, so she put Mark's phone face-up through the security scanner, and the security guard manning the equipment saw my face (and I saw just a vague, faded light) and he laughed and his day was made!
26) The life-size statue of Confucius I walked by 20 times a day, 7 days in a week.
27) That one time at the gala dinner on our very last night of the Summer School when not only did I eat sushi (that never happens), but also CAVIAR on top of that sushi (NEH-VURRRRRR HAPPENSSSSS). Yep. Caviar went down my throat. Likely the most momentous moment of the whole week for me. Talk about once in a lifetime. No, like literally — that's not going to happen again. (P.S. I'm sad that Tyler's face is not very visible in this pic!)
28) Speaking of "gala," that one time at the lunch table (or breakfast table? the meals blur together for me) when KS Nick and KS Eddie were arguing with me over how to pronounce "gala." Sorry guys, I will never know anybody on my vast American continent who will ever seriously call it a "gall-uh apple."
29) LAST STOP IN CAMBRIDGE: The Perse School, where members of Pink Floyd attended when they were in their youth.
30) Final meaningful moments in Cambridge actually didn't stop at the Perse School, like I thought they would. When I was at the Cambridge train station to head back down to London, I ran into KS tenor Julian and my new friends Michael, Belle, and Tyler, and got to chat with them for a few seconds more, before we all went along on our way down the railroad track. Tyler (a fellow American) and I sat by each other on the train and had a good, in-depth life chat. She's such a treasure and I feel so blessed to have had the privilege to become friends with her.
AND NOW IT'S TIIIIIIIME FOR LONDON STUFF!!!!
31) Remember that one time that I missed my bus that turned out to be not my bus, and then I missed the bus that was supposed to be my bus, and so I had to wait a billion minutes more to finally catch that proper bus? Shambles. But then a pleasant little miracle happened. I got onto the bus, asked if it headed to the stop I needed it to head to, then the driver said, "You mean the London Temple?" and I said yes, and then I whipped out my debit card to pay the fee and then he said, "Contactless?" and I said nope and then he just smiled and said, "Don't worry about it. Have a seat." Free ride allllll the way down to the temple!
33) Okay, so in the temple (SUCH a wonderful time inside there btw), I came in behind a bunch of people whom I think were from Spain. For several minutes I hadn't said a word. By the time I got to the desk to rent temple clothes, the worker asked, "Preferred language? Spanish?" HAHA NOPE! But wait, there's more... a couple minutes after that, another worker came up to me with language-translation headphones and asked, "Preferred language? Spanish?" Which begs the question, Do I look Spanish to you? I'll let you decide:
34) London Temple is actually quite south of actual London. I did just a few small things in actual London before I met up with friends and went to Canterbury. First off, fish-&-chips in the restaurant that sits in the upper, UPPER level of King's Cross Station. I got an ENTIRE beauuuuuutiful HUGE room ALL to myself (I caps-lock many words here to emphasize how rad this was), and I ate marvelous fish-&-chips all by my blissful lonesome. People don't believe me when I say this, but I'm highly introverted, and just thinking about my miraculous feat of finding a TOTALLY quiet spot devoid of all other human lifeforms IN THE MIDDLE OF LONDON, and being able to purchase and devour very tasty food there just sends super-pleasant shivers up my spine.
36) The sights and sounds of public transportation. Spent more time using it than I ever had previously in all my lifetime thus far.
37) Proof that I saw the famous "221B Baker Street" from the Benedict Cumberbatch hit television series.
38) Proof that I saw the Globe (Shakespeare is my 1st cousin 12 times removed).
40) Proof that I saw... this... ???
41) Playing in Canterbury with these two sweet sisters for two solid days. They are both 100% delightful, and I'm so deeply grateful that they let me crash with them in their lovely little flat!
42) This very, very, very old tree fascinated me big-time and I wonder how old it really is. (In Westgate Gardens.)
43) Canterbury Cathedral is stunning. Anytime there's an establishment I can be at that is 1,000 years old is a super great time to me. Interesting go into the same room (not pictured) where Thomas Becket was assassinated. He was a beloved man of faith and is a venerated martyr.
44) Alison is able to see an actual family history site that's specifically significant to her heritage. (Yup, it's a different day again, so she feels like switching back to third person.) This clock tower was once attached to a many-centuries-old church that was bombed by German forces during World War II. The clock tower was all that could be saved. My direct ancestors were baptized and buried at that church. So yeah, in this picture, I am standing extremely close to where my family members' bodies are resting underground.
42) This very, very, very old tree fascinated me big-time and I wonder how old it really is. (In Westgate Gardens.)
43) Canterbury Cathedral is stunning. Anytime there's an establishment I can be at that is 1,000 years old is a super great time to me. Interesting go into the same room (not pictured) where Thomas Becket was assassinated. He was a beloved man of faith and is a venerated martyr.
44) Alison is able to see an actual family history site that's specifically significant to her heritage. (Yup, it's a different day again, so she feels like switching back to third person.) This clock tower was once attached to a many-centuries-old church that was bombed by German forces during World War II. The clock tower was all that could be saved. My direct ancestors were baptized and buried at that church. So yeah, in this picture, I am standing extremely close to where my family members' bodies are resting underground.
45) Always riding around town in the top-front section of a double-decker bus. Best way to get to your Sunday services. Attending church in Canterbury was a sweet experience. The darling little granny lady who wanted to hug me and my friends every five minutes after church was the cutest human I may have ever seen. Also I shared my testimony of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost at the pulpit during sacrament meeting.
46) Watching "The Aristocats" with my flatmates in our teeny-tiny shared bedroom. This is those sisters' favorite few seconds of the film:
47) Having an FHE with single people my age from the Canterbury Ward. We ate at an Indian restaurant together and talked about holy things (nod to "Nacho Libre").
48) Going to the North Sea on my last day!
49) Getting a GLOWING review written about me by my Cambridge Airbnb host.
50) THAT WAS ONE OF THE ULTIMATE BEST ADVENTURES OF THE FULLNESS OF MY EXISTENCE THUS FAR!
