Journeys

The thing that needs to be emphasized the most about studying abroad is that there's studying involved. I am taking advantage of my only opportunity to blog in a while because all of my homework for this week is now done (yay). There are not weeks on end of running around taking photos, and I think I prefer it this way. I love the experience of learning in a new country, even though it is sometimes scary. I have realized that I am much more social than I originally conceived myself to be, and also that I'm a nerd--which isn't a surprise. I live in a room next to the rooms of two other girls I'm friends with whose fathers have died in the past five years, which is spooky and smacks of the "meant to be". One of my English major friends and I spent last night cleaning the ridiculously dirty communal kitchen while other people went out for major partying. We had fun, somehow. I've found that the fellow Holden Caulfields of the world ultimately have a better time watching everyone else make an idiot of themselves while we sit back and sneer.

So how do I summarize the weeks that I have been here? I have indeed been amazed to see historical sites, but still, there's often very little to say about them. Warwick Castle felt predictably cool and medieval, Lanhydrock House was gloriously Victorian. Land's End on the coast was incredible, and the English countryside did take my breath away when it looked just like all of my novelistic fantasies. A favorite destination was Gloucester Cathedral, which evoked an interesting feeling of death (from the hundreds of people entombed there, doubtlessly) and medieval/religious grandeur. By far I have decided through this experience that magic and the feeling of history are both states that are highly personal and must be conjured in your mind and imagination alone. I came to this country because I was looking for a sense of suspended reality, but in order to suspend reality you need to open yourself to the unreal.

I don't want to say that I've been disappointed, but this city honestly ain't a thatched roof paradise. The hobbits have taken their hairy little feet and wandered back to the shire. Every day I have to get used to living in a city and living in a dorm with boozy teenagers. It is sometimes difficult and often wonderful in surprising ways. You can't find magic, it has to find you. Magic first found me when I was 15 and living in Dillsburg, PA--so far away from anywhere I had ever fantasized about, and now I am building new scenarios for my fantasy life. I found magic again here when I realized that I'm in one course about 19th century women traveling to unfamiliar countries, and another about mythology and the theme of journeys. This place isn't the last frontier, either. It's only the beginning.