The Adventures of Middle Earth
So last weekend, we all hopped on the train as soon as class was out, to head toward the Isle of Wight, which is off the English Channel. Well. That was quite an adventure. The original route we were taking got muddled because one of the trains was cancelled, so we had to take a more complicated path that included the Underground System. So there we were at the train station in London buying out stupid tube passes, and I turn around, realize I'm one of the last in line and everyone is wandering off around the corner. I say, "is anyone gonna wait for us?" and luckily Leann heard me and waited for me. By the time the machine spit out my ticket, everyone had disappeared around the corner. Ok. So we follow suite and reach the platform just in time to see our tube go whizzing off. Great. Not only do we not know how to navigate London Underground, we're not even sure what we need to do next. Luckily Leann kept a MUCH cooler head than me. (I was quite bitter and disshevelled for most of the afternoon.) But we figured out what tube we needed to get on, and then we spent a VERY LONG TIME at the next train station trying to figure out what came next. Neither of us had Dr. Frost's emergency number on us, and neither of us remembered what our ultimate destination was. So, after leaving 2 heart-attack-caliber messages on her parents' answering machine (read: "MOM. This is Leann. I NEED to talk to someone at home. Are ya there? Pick up. Pick up. Ok. Stick by the phone til I call you back.")- she asks me if there's anyone I could call that might help us. I try a friend's cell phone to see if she might hack into my email account and get Frost's number for me, but there seems to be problems with calling US cell phones from the station phones. So I call Nana, at what would've been about 8am in the States, she gets Claire Bear on the phone, and Claire gets into my account and starts opening one email after another until she finds Frost's number for us. VICTORY!!! So we thank them profusely, get off the phone, and discover that Frost's cell phone is apparently OFF. So. We pull out the emergency # card we were given, and call the Foreign Studies office at SWT, and get them to get Dr. Frost on the phone. (Apparently he'd realized we were MIA about 5 seconds after we tried to call him.) So he tells the secretary what we need to do, she then tells us, and we're off. We stop at a couple of stores in the station and buy commemoratory scarves (which I then lost on the train) and a well-deserved bottle of wine for the final trainride. We finally meet up with the group not long after they arrived at the ferry station to the Isle, because apparently we took a fast train and they took a slow one. Perfect. Not too far off schedule.
So then, reunited, we all set out on the ferry ride to island and set up our camping gear when we get there. When that was done, a few of us scrambled down the "cliffs" to the beach to see what it was about. It was ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. I rolled up my pants and climbed out on a rock and lifted my arms in homage to the Life Force of the ocean (for which I gained the nickname of Pixie from Dr. Frost. Funny, I've had that nickname before...) The sea was ABSOLUTELY CALLING MY SOUL, so I immediately went and put my suit on to go for a swim right after dinner, but it was way too dark by the time we got back to the campsight. But let me tell you. A group of us just sat out there, near the edge of the cliff, and chatted and listened to the ocean and gazed at the night sky for like HOURS that night. It was JUST. ABSOLUTELY. INCREDIBLE. You hear this flowing ROAR in the not-so-distance, and you think, "that's NOT traffic! That is...that is...the ocean!!" And there was this enormous half-full orange harvest moon climbing up the sky and absolutely haunting the clouds it passed behind. And the STARS. We all know what the stars look like when you can actually see them. We had a couple of forced moments of silence which were magical (and the longer one ultimately interrupted by someone readjusting their velco sneakers, which resulted in bursts of involuntary giggling, but that's how it goes). Man...just ridicuously, disgustingly romantic. We all loved it. About 8 of us slept right out under the stars even though it was chilly and there was a huge tent about 10 feet away. We didn't care.
The next morning we all woke up really early and had breakfast and pretty much milled around the beach and the campsite all day. I, of course, went right down to the water as soon as possible, and absolutely immersed myself in the energy of the waves. I just sat about 1 1/2 feet into the tide and let the waves crash into me. It was surreal, spiritual, perfect, solitary, cleansing, exactly what I needed. I loved it.
Then we were all pretty much on our own to get to Salisbury in time to check into the youth hostile that evening. I went with Kiyomi and Leann and we had a nice dinner in Salisbury and checked out their cathedral (which was FULL of really great stained glass and sarcophaguses--sarcophogi--??) -OH, and the reason this was the Adventures of Middle Earth, is because that's exactly what it looked like on our busride to Salisbury. The Isle of Wight was absolutely untouched--just ancient, pristine, rolling hills full of sheep and goats and green green grass, with lines of trees separating the land, and it was just absolutely picturesque. Right out of Tolkien, baby.
Ok, I'm gonna stop here and tell about Stonehenge in the next one.
Whew! *deep breath*
So then, reunited, we all set out on the ferry ride to island and set up our camping gear when we get there. When that was done, a few of us scrambled down the "cliffs" to the beach to see what it was about. It was ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. I rolled up my pants and climbed out on a rock and lifted my arms in homage to the Life Force of the ocean (for which I gained the nickname of Pixie from Dr. Frost. Funny, I've had that nickname before...) The sea was ABSOLUTELY CALLING MY SOUL, so I immediately went and put my suit on to go for a swim right after dinner, but it was way too dark by the time we got back to the campsight. But let me tell you. A group of us just sat out there, near the edge of the cliff, and chatted and listened to the ocean and gazed at the night sky for like HOURS that night. It was JUST. ABSOLUTELY. INCREDIBLE. You hear this flowing ROAR in the not-so-distance, and you think, "that's NOT traffic! That is...that is...the ocean!!" And there was this enormous half-full orange harvest moon climbing up the sky and absolutely haunting the clouds it passed behind. And the STARS. We all know what the stars look like when you can actually see them. We had a couple of forced moments of silence which were magical (and the longer one ultimately interrupted by someone readjusting their velco sneakers, which resulted in bursts of involuntary giggling, but that's how it goes). Man...just ridicuously, disgustingly romantic. We all loved it. About 8 of us slept right out under the stars even though it was chilly and there was a huge tent about 10 feet away. We didn't care.
The next morning we all woke up really early and had breakfast and pretty much milled around the beach and the campsite all day. I, of course, went right down to the water as soon as possible, and absolutely immersed myself in the energy of the waves. I just sat about 1 1/2 feet into the tide and let the waves crash into me. It was surreal, spiritual, perfect, solitary, cleansing, exactly what I needed. I loved it.
Then we were all pretty much on our own to get to Salisbury in time to check into the youth hostile that evening. I went with Kiyomi and Leann and we had a nice dinner in Salisbury and checked out their cathedral (which was FULL of really great stained glass and sarcophaguses--sarcophogi--??) -OH, and the reason this was the Adventures of Middle Earth, is because that's exactly what it looked like on our busride to Salisbury. The Isle of Wight was absolutely untouched--just ancient, pristine, rolling hills full of sheep and goats and green green grass, with lines of trees separating the land, and it was just absolutely picturesque. Right out of Tolkien, baby.
Ok, I'm gonna stop here and tell about Stonehenge in the next one.
Whew! *deep breath*