but i suppose some of you were wondering what i did in england. here’s the story:
first, dan drove me to the airport last wednesday morning. i checked in, then hung around the terminal listening to over the rhine. my parents arrived from orlando (via dallas), and i met them at their gate. (they flew from orlando to san jose to pick up a buttload of extra mileage). we then went to board our flight to st. louis. of course, it was delayed, and then cancelled. this was no good, because david and rachel were flying from orlando to st. louis, and emily was flying from indianapolis to st. louis. we were all going to meet there and fly to london on the same plane. but, our flight to st. louis being cancelled, there was no way we would all be able to get out of the country until the next day. thinking it important to a) leave that day, and b) fly all together on the same flight, we had to be a little creative.
eventually my dad got us on a flight to chicago, and had boarding passes readied for david, rachel, and emily at the admiral’s club in st. louis (where they were supposed to wait for us). they were going to fly to chicago to meet us, and we were all going to leave from there for london (albeit heathrow, not gatwick). this type of maneuver is generally either impossible or expensive ($100 for a ticket change like that), but because of my dad’s good relationship with american airlines, being platinum, a member of the admiral’s club, etc…, we were able to have it done for us quickly and for free. at that point i was very glad my parents had decided to fly to san jose, for if not, i wouldn’t have had the clout to get even myself to chicago, and everyone else would have been in the air on the way to st. louis.
still, it was hard, because we were forced into the worse seats on our way across the atlantic. also, the flight to london was emotionally trying, because of emily. there’s too much to go into, but the short of it is that i didn’t really know what kind of relationship we were going to have after this trip, if one at all. my heart had been so hardened towards emily over winter quarter that, despite her willingness to make things work, i wasn’t sure if i wasn’t just going to pull out. as for why my heart was not particularly congenial to her, i’m still trying to figure out, so don’t expect any explanations. so the air between us was very tense on that first flight, as we knew we had to work things out if we didn’t want the trip to be a complete horror.
ultimately i had to make the decision right there in the plane whether or not emily and i were going to stay together. my mind was so confused and my heart so hidden that it was a very difficult decision. making any decision had become so difficult for me–it was as if my will had completely atrophied. it was also as if god was saying “look i’m not going to spoon-feed you. you’ve spent the last few years of your life asking me to give you strength and legs to stand on. well, now’s your chance. stand.” and i’m not sure if that’s accurate, or how far i can take the analogy, but it did feel as if god had vacated and left me to make up my mind on my own on this one. and that sucked hardcore.
so i took the red flight blanket, put it over my head, and prayed. i also cried. either path ahead of me seemed to plunge into darkness, for different reasons. murky, unclear, diffuse and disorienting darkness. and i knew that the minute i picked one path and started on it, the other would seem to brighten, tempting and taunting my decision. having nothing more to go on but my own sorry wisdom, i had no assurance that this false clearing/brightening would really be false. i was paralyzed. but in the end, my own sorry wisdom gathered up its flabby hide and started on the road of its choosing - emily and i would stay together and try to work out whatever was wrong.
then i got sick from the stress of the decision and went to sleep. not entirely happy, but with a lighter heart.
we landed in heathrow at 10am london time (1am body time), and went through customs (where my bag broke, and ceased to be a rolling suitcase). then there was a dilemma–we had planned on landing at gatwick, and so at gatwick was the car we had reserved to rent. we attempted to get a van at heathrow for the same price (absurdly cheap, relatively speaking), but to no avail. so we had american airlines buy us bus passes so that we could be shuttled to gatwick to pick up our vehicle. it was about an hour’s trip. we wandered through gatwick to the rental agency there, and took yet another shuttle to the off-airport Sixt car rental facility. after all that riding around i thought it couldn’t get worse, and i was right. they actually gave us a much nicer van than the tiny one we had rented.
thus armed, we began our mad rush to see the country. we drove straight from the rental place to Cambridge, which was at least 3 hours from gatwick, stopping only to get a few snacks at a gas station, including the requisite mcvitties. we got to cambridge around twilight and walked around for about an hour. the campus was amazingly beautiful, and instilled in me again the desire to go to school at oxford or cambridge. but, we were all jet-lagged and starving, and it had gotten dark, so we didn’t do much touring before we stopped in at a pub for dinner. the pub was called the Eagle, and it is the oldest operating pub in england. (ironic–i’ve now been to the oldest operating pubs in both england and ireland). the fish and chips were marvelous.
full, yet still tired, we left to go home. home was the wycliffe uk headquarters, located outside of high wycombe (my dad is wycliffe bible translator’s legal counsel). we stayed in converted army barracks in three rooms–my brother and i in one, emily and rachel in another, and my mom and dad in a third. the remaining three rooms of the little hostel had other more long-term guests. we took our echinacea and melatonin and gradually fell asleep. i stayed up a little later with emily talking and reading the books i had brought. when i finally got into bed i was asleep before i closed my eyes. i don’t think i dreamed, but if i did it would have been of the ultra-stratified city-state of Dome on Empyrion. i think i would have been a Rumon.
the next morning we had breakfast at 7am–a bowl of meusli accompanied by toast and jam. we scraped the ice off the windows of the van and started out for the day, heading north to Warwick castle. driving over 100mph on the M, we got there in roughly an hour–just about opening time for the castle. warwick castle is just exactly what you would imagine a medieval castle looking like - towers, ramparts, dungeons, cobblestone streets, a huge double-entrance gatehouse…the whole bit. we wandered around and looked at the various things there were to look at until lunchtime. it was quite fantastic–slightly commercialized/tourist-ized, but real and compelling in spite of that. this was no disney castle.
they did, however, have a bowman demonstrating longbow techniques and etc. my dad (’bob the american tourist’ according to the bowman) was of course the volunteer (’victim’) for the interactive part of the show. and i had tried all morning to not be noticed as a tourist. sigh.
at lunchtime our stomachs signalled the retreat and we walked into the town of warwick to get baguettes at a little bakery for lunch. then we reclaimed our vehicle and headed back down towards the area where we were staying. not quite home, we began the second segment of the day and visited oxford. we walked the streets, looked at the colleges, and it felt good to be back there. i even stopped by the stanford house to see if any of the few people that i knew were in. they weren’t, so i left a message and we continued walking. the countryside and architecture were so beautiful–it was hard to believe that, depending on where i was, a street or two over was a busy shopping district.
after a few hours it was dinnertime and we stopped in at the Eagle and Child pub. this pub’s claim to fame is that it was the home of the inklings, which members include c.s. lewis and j.r.r. tolkien. in a place like that you can’t help but feel the history–”i’m sitting in the same room that c.s. lewis had ideas for the narnia chronicles in”. my dad and brother and i got drinks, and waited for the ladies, who had gone off shopping for a moment. they arrived, but sadly we had to inform them that the pub didn’t serve meals on weekdays.
so eventually we left and went back to horsley’s green (where the wycliffe center was located), and ate at a small local pub called the Studley Arms. (no pun intended–the neighborhood was called Studley Green). we got home, and that night was a replay of the previous.
for the third day, we did the same morning routine, then drove out to a train station in wycombe. we bought train/underground/metro passes and caught a train in to london, which was about a 35 minute ride. arriving in london before noon, we spent the next 6 hours or so on a whirlwind tour. we took the underground all over town, and saw such famous and interesting sites such as trafalgar square, the national gallery of art, big ben, westminster abbey, parliament house, the thames river, the tower of london, the tower bridge, the london bridge, the globe theater, the tate museum of modern art, harrod’s knightsbridge, buckingham palace, and more. needless to say, it was completely awesome, as well as completely exhausting, owing to the speed at which we walked here and there. finally we ate dinner at a pub near harrod’s called the Tea Clipper, and i had the british version of the bacon cheeseburger. i had forgotten that bacon doesn’t mean bacon so much as it means a thick piece of ham. but it was quite good.
i slept on the train ride back, then read a bit at home, then fell right asleep again. beware of international travel–if you’re only there for a few days, you will be very tired.
for the last day, we did very little walking and mostly driving style sight-seeing. first we drove east out to stonehenge. ironically, it’s just sort of on the side of a highway. so we got out, snapped a few photos, got back in, and went on our way. half an hour later we arrived at bath. it is so named because it contains an ancient roman bathhouse built over a natural hot spring. they’ve excavated the roman architecture and it’s now a tourist attraction. it was pretty sweet (and by sweet i mean totally awesome, of course), and it was once again one of those places where you just feel the history overwhelming you. so many lives so many years ago. so different, and yet indubitably human. cool. we ordered some baguettes at another small bakery and then we were on our way!
the rest of the day was spent driving around the cotswolds–the quaint, countryside district of england that brings to mind places like the setting of watership down, the world of brian jacques, the home of shakespeare among others, etc… we had high tea in a beautiful little village and wandered around until dark. sightseeing being rather hard in the dark, we stopped off at our last pub of the trip, the Bell, near bourghton-on-water. we had a quiet meal and then i slept on the drive back to our barracks.
and that concluded our visit! it was sad the next morning to pack up and leave (and because it was 6am). we left out of gatwick close to noon and had a smooth 9-hour flight back to st. louis. i spent the whole time talking with emily. during the course of the trip our relationship had gone through a fairly complete transformation, and i was once again excited about the prospect of us and the hopefulness of the future. i still am, and i hope i stay that way!
so i was sad that at st. louis we’d have to part, and possibly not see each other for two more months. the sadness multiplied when eventually we did part, and i got on my plane for san jose while she watched me leave, standing in the terminal. it felt kind of unfair, that just when i felt most loving towards her again, after my heart being dragged through hell, and dragging hers with it, we had to be separated. that feeling settled in, and i slept.
thus, i have come home, and am back at work, trying to rev up my life here to peak efficiency once more. i only hope that the subtle changes in my heart would crystallize and stay firm, and not disappear.
which brings us to today. i got up absurdly early due to jet lag, so i caught up on some work that was due at 11. i went to class, lunch, and now i’m at work. the boring monotony begins. but at least it was suspended for the last 5 days!
anyway i have got to run. if you’re still reading, where is your life? on another note, leave me a comment if you’d like me to put up links to a few of the better pictures that i took on digital camera during my trip!
disc on spin: none