I sure do love me some backlit photos.
The kindness I received, the love I experienced, and the knowledge I gained simply move me. I keep saying this, but I literally can’t imagine a better summer. And what a treat that it is my last summer as a proper student!
I am afraid I may have to barrage you with photos, dear readers. I will try and find the words, even 36000ft high as I am!
I believe we left off blogs with my visit to my Uncle Neil’s house… Well, it was a treat to stay there for that weekend. Coming out of easily the most stressful week at the Oxford program, having the opportunity to play out in the yard, go bowling, help cook and wash up, and spend quality time with my cousins who I so rarely see was exactly what I needed. In the mornings, they even let me do my homework quietly!
The most bizarre thing to me is how much my cousins grow every time I see them. Every time, I exclaim, “My how you’ve grown!” and give them the, “You’re so tall! Look how tall you are!” hug. And though I still remember exactly how annoying that is, I can’t help but enjoy it. I had to endure it – it’s sort of like revenge, except much more subtle. I truly wish that I would be able to see them more often, to really get to know them as the little people they are becoming. I was “assaulted” by five cousins at once, and, in my opinion, nothing could be more delightful.
My Auntie Kara and her family stopped by that weekend to see me, too, and we had a lovely, large family dinner – Grandad, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins. It is so rare that I experience that, I had to soak it in while I could! The next afternoon, I even got to visit Brighton for a few hours with Kara & Co, where they were nice enough to buy me some ice cream and put me on a train back “home” to Oxford.
The following week at Oxford was an opportunity to go visit another English garden, which, before this summer, sounded like something dreadfully dull, if pretty.
Well, really it was rather dull, except that I got to stomp around all over an English garden with my friends. It provided many a picturesque view.
At one end of it was a Temple of Apollo, where a scene from the latest Pride and Prejudice was filmed (the scene where Darcy proposes for the first time). We all had fun proposing to each other (and rejecting their proposals!) and I even pretended to be a statue on one of the empty plinths.
The gardens themselves were absolutely stunning, and provided plenty of great landscapes for great photos.
The following weekend, I went to Cheshire to visit my cousin Josh, who is the cousin I have spent the most time with in the past. He’s come out to Texas a number of times to stay with us for a few weeks, and spending time with him was lovely.
He showed me Chester, the city near which he lives, and I didn’t waste any opportunity I had to take pictures of lovely old buildings.
Chester Cathedral in particular was absolutely magical – something about the light coming in through the clerestory and illuminating the very dark stone from which the cathedral was built.
I didn’t think I could love a cathedral more than I love Canterbury Cathedral, but this one certainly came close.
(Although I won’t post this until probably later this week when I have both internet AND time to add photos, I would like it known that I’ve just entered the United States again! We’re just flying over Vermont! Two hours to go on this flight, seven hours have passed! Woohoo!)
Josh and I took his dog Skye for a walk through the countryside,
...and WOW. I can’t BELIEVE the views that I had from up there! I could see to Wales – literally!
It was something like walking the Moors in Yorkshire – I didn’t think that I could properly explain the feeling from way up high looking down across the English hills, knowing full well that this is what people see every day when they walk their dogs.
God bless Austin, but Austin can’t compare. I came away from that walk totally reinvigorated, ready to tackle the rest of my time in England. I also came from that walk asking, “Is this real life?”
My last week at Oxford was, well, bittersweet. There was a lot of talk of lasts – last milkshake at Shakespeare’s, last trip to Oxfam, last tea in Blackwell’s – and for me it was no different to anyone else. We went to see Kenilworth Castle, where we climbed all over the ruins, pretty sure that we were going to be picked up and blown away by the wind!
My friend Jeanine and I found a tree – which we fondly named Dudley, after one of the people tied to the castle (Builder? Owner? Lived there? Can’t remember!) and had some of the most relaxing, quiet moments of the entire program.
(There's Jeanine, shaded by Dudley. :) )
We just laid in the grass, listening to the wind blow the trees this way and that… I love that the trees seemed to be whispering Shhh… Stefanie, be still, be quiet, enjoy your last moments while you can...
After those lovely moments, we clambered back on the bus to Stratford Upon Avon again.
where I visited Shakespeare’s grave (I thought it would bring the trip full circle in a very nice way, what with visiting his birthplace the first time!)
and then sat one pub having dinner and another having drinks for a few hours. It was spectacular – I finally found £2 beer! (It was awful beer… but it was only £2!) and then saw the RCS’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I loved it. It was raunchy in all the right ways, it was bizarre enough to keep me interested (I’ve seen a few productions of it as well as was in one in high school), and the actors were stellar. I believe that we saw the actress who played Helena make her debut on that stage that night!
When we returned to Oxford, the next day my friend Caron and I decided to visit two of the museums that we hadn’t yet visited, and have some cream tea and scones at the White Horse in between the two. The Ashmolean was lovely, but massive (we walked through many of the rooms, but didn’t nearly visit it the way we could have!) and the second museum was a natural history museum whose name I forget, but I was delighted with the second one. It screamed “19th Century” to me, and really was a cabinet of curiosities.
There were skeletons, specimens in jars, stuffed specimens, things to touch, and things to explore that stimulated of your senses (seriously – some signs instructed you to smell the objects! But none instructed you to taste anything!) Outside of the museum, there’s a sign that says that this museum is where Darwin’s Origins of Species was debated, and my friends Katie and Caron took it upon themselves to demonstrate for me what the debate had probably been like.
Final banquet was a formal event, and everyone dressed up for it! We all (sans one of the professors, who wandered off somewhere) posed for a photo or twelve, and then had a delicious three course meal in the Hall.
Afterwards, we went to the JCR, our makeshift classroom of the summer, and enjoyed a series of skits, songs, and improv for a few hours. A bunch of people went out for the after after banquet party at the pub, but I had to go to my room and pack all of my stuff!
The next day I have already written about in my last blog, so I will spare you another rendition!
The following weekend was spent mostly in Central London – I was staying at Siobhan’s house near Wimbledon (I spent a lot of time traveling up and down the Northern Line. Pretty sure I’ve memorized the way that “This train terminates at Morden” sounds in that lady’s voice on the metro!) I met up with my old nanny Anika and her boyfriend Sean, and the two of them were just so lovely and kind!
It was lovely to meet Sean and great to catch up with Annie, who I haven’t seen in six years! We went all over London, doing the very typical attractions (some of which I hadn’t yet visited!) I was very sad to say farewell to them on Monday – They made my last weekend in England that much better! We got to eat at Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Covent Garden - Jamie's Italian - and that was super yummy! I want Jamie to put one here in Austin now...
Saturday night was a joint party for Siobhan and her roommate Theodora’s birthdays (Siobhan’s 21st was yesterday, Thee’s in a few weeks). It was a fun party!
Someone nicked my camera (but I got it back, no worries!), so there are a lot of photos of me from that night, which was really unusual for me to see. Definitely not used to so many photos of ME!
Last night, Siobhan, her parents and I went to TGI Friday’s to celebrate her birthday. We were joking that it was prepping me for my return to America!
And certainly my burger did make me miss my home even more! The margarita I ordered was so terrible that I missed going to Chuy’s every Sunday evening with Ally!
(Here, I had to close my computer because we were landing. Begin blog written on Saturday morning!)
That brings me to my flights. Nine hours from London to Atlanta (I watched movies and chatted with the lady next to me for a few hours – She was very sweet and offered that if I were to ever go to Orlando in Florida, I could stay with her and her husband. I don’t know if I’ll take her up on it, but it was lovely to meet someone who also loves to travel as much as I do!)
My mom had a business trip in Atlanta and was set to go back to Austin on the same day as me, and she was sweet enough to book herself on the same flight home from Atlanta! She used her superior Airport Superpowers to finagle her way into the seat next to mine, and we spent the flight home drinking wine and chatting about our summers. Alright, mostly it was me chatting. I was very tired, but I pushed myself to stay awake the whole time!
I breathed a sigh of relief when I crawled into my bed at Mom’s house. Home sweet home…
BEST SUMMER EVER.
So I wrote this for my school blog, and I thought that since it was already all written up, I thought I would add it to this blog! I will blog about everything else I've done in the next few days - because I've done a lot! That said, enjoy!
Part One: Dragging our Damn Heavy Bags All Over the London Tube
My friend Caron and I left Oxford this morning bright and early (meaning, I slept through my alarm so Caron woke me up by knocking on my door!) not so much mourning our last moments in Oxford as wishing that our bags were not so heavy! Finding ourselves in Gloucester Green was a blessing, and our student tickets to London on the Oxford Tube were expensive, as usual. We successfully navigated the tube system in London (after a few embarrassing topples of our bags! WHERE are all of the elevators in this country?!) and found ourselves in Morden – or as we fondly call it, Mordor. We are staying with my friend Siobhan for the weekend, and decided that we’d deposit our bags at her house and then head back into Central. We suffered the mile or so from the tube station to her house (looking miserable enough for a man to slow his car and ask if we wanted a lift! We politely declined… no kidnapping for us this summer!) and finally – finally – found ourselves at her house. We knocked, waited… no answer.
NO. Oh come ON, this can’t be HAPPENING to us. Nobody’s in – we have a schedule, we have all of our possessions with us, and we are sweating from climbing that damn hill with our heavy bags.
Of the five people who live in that house… nobody was in. What are the odds of that? Honestly.
Part Two: Breaking and Not Entering with Caron. Caron’s Lessons on How Not to Pick a Lock
Finding ourselves in front of a house empty of all but the cat (Meg, who mocked us from her vantage point on the windowsill), Caron and I stood in awe of our own situation. We had no way to contact anyone in the house (everyone was at work and I only had Siobhan’s phone number), we had no way to get into the house, and there wasn’t even a way to get into the backyard, without scaling more than one fence! We ate a few cookies (emergency cookies are never a bad idea) and surveyed our options. As I saw it, we had three. One, pick the lock. Two, scale the house and enter through the open window (also taunting us from up above!) Three, ditch our bags and head into London as we planned, hoping that nobody rioted in sleepy Morden.
The fourth option was to cry quietly on her doorstep and wait for someone to come home, but we refused to acknowledge that.
We opted for option one, because I wasn’t comfortable with leaving our bags out in plain sight for anyone – literally anyone – to come and snoop through them. Or steal from them. I sacrificed a few bobby pins for the greater good of our day, but to no avail. Caron, in fact, can’t pick locks. She looked pretty good while she did it – bending in funny ways, screwing up her face, sticking her tongue out, and cursing quietly at the door. Actually, while all of these things might HELP pick a lock, none of them actually work without the proper equipment. Bobby pins painted blonde aren’t that.
After considering scaling the wall, we ran into a neighbor who was leaving his house, and we asked if we could hide our bags behind his car. He very nicely agreed, and we covered our bags with our raincoats – we were NOT chancing the weather – and then put all of our valuables in our backpacks and set off to London.
Part Three: London in Under Five Hours – The Marriageability of Men in the National Portrait Gallery
Having stashed our bags behind the neighbor’s car, we dragged ourselves back down to the Morden tube station, where we collapsed onto the tube, ready to ride the Northern Line as far as we could. Caron promptly fell asleep (I was jealous) and I pulled out my kindle and thanked God and any other deity that was listening that I could read exactly what I wanted to. Having been entirely unsuccessful at going into the British Museum last time we went into central, we headed there first. Caron named me Queen of the Underground, because I navigated seamlessly (and she was thankful that she didn’t have to navigate herself), and we walked around the British Museum for about an hour and a half. We saw plenty – whizzing through historical eras at a speed only capable by two twenty-somethings already half dead on their feet. (“I really could have used a hover-round. And I wish I were blind so I could go on the blind tour and touch things!” –Caron) Even though there was plenty of security in the museum, I was a little nervous about the backpacks… You see, we were carrying around two laptops, an iPad, two iPods, three phones, and two kindles (not to mention our wallets) and being so tired, I was not as alert as I could have been. There were no disasters, but I hated to turn my back on anyone. Or anything. Those mummies were suspicious.
We decided to go to Trafalgar Square (Caron, in her exhausted stupor, called it “TRAH-fall-garr square”, immediately realized what she said, and said, “That never happened. Never repeat that to anyone.” I made no such verbal acquiescence, so here it is, fodder for this blog.) We stopped for pizza near Leicester Square, and wandered into the National Portrait Gallery, where we were immediately blown away by the number of portraits that we recognized. There was a gallery of Tudors – we recognized Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth right off the bat, and tour brief tour through the rest of the museum involved a lot of scoping out of handsome men in portraits. Caron thinks that there’s something about a man in tights that just works. I liked seeing very Darcy-like men with messy hair. And the wigs, well, they were fantastic. We left the museum with lots of prospective husbands, only hindered by the fact that they were a little dead.
“We had a good day,” said Caron. I wholeheartedly agree.
