Birds in My Schedule: Redeeming the Time

The days are evil.

It's a fact. Actually, YouTube may be the most particular and specific evil in my days, but it can be Twitter, Reddit, ye-olde-blogosphere, or even (though it pains me to admit it) that beloved hub of all things, ranging from the humorous to the vapid, from the just plain annoying to the genuinely thoughtful, that great facilitator of mental interaction when time and circumstances refuse otherwise to comply, Facebook.

I used to make New Year's Resolutions as a child and a teenager. Made them in spades, and had the usual appalling track record in actually keeping any of them. Partially, of course, this is because I was attempting to craft in myself the "perfect" human girl, a blend of disparate elements fictional and real, Biblical and eminently self-centered, Victorian and modern. This venerably intentioned vow toward rigorous self-improvement never appeared to come to much fruition, as is often evident by how many of the resolutions were the same every year. "I shall continue to endeavor to..." Oh, yes. We all know what that meant about how much endeavoring had gone on before.

This led to me largely attempting to give up the habit of resolutions by the age of 19 or 20. But, I am also a child of my family, and at that a child of a predominantly Texas Aggie family, with a large helping of Scottish blood, and together this all means that tradition is holy law to every fibre of my being, so of course I didn't stop making resolutions at all, really. I just altered my mode of trying to improve my years by gradually attempting to aim at more concrete self-improvement.

This year, I am facing a number of challenges to myself, but they're different ones than I've ever done before.

Firstly, I worked largely with my parents and a couple of others to address what I should improve on this year. I've never before considered my resolutions or goals to be topics of discussion or debate. (Well, probably because for a good ten years I had a respectable internal sense that told me that all rational humanity excepting myself would find them all to be entirely ridiculous in every particular...this, I may say, was an utterly correct suspicion and may be proven by reference back about 5 volumes in my diary. But, moving on.)

Secondly, the so-called resolutions of this year actually aim at concrete goals which themselves theoretically progress toward real events in my life. Twelve-year-old me was interested in being a paragon of flawless femininity/a romantic heroine/queen. (Okay, I still want to be queen.)  But chiefly, young-twenties me is concerned with assembling the functional skills to hold and apply for a salaried job, be reasonably regular in my schedule, stay in meaningful contact with all my important people, and manage to feed myself by some method other than the pub next door. (I've memorized the table numbers. And the menus items. And prices. Desserts are £4.95, two-for-one.)

And, in a sense, it's beginning to dawn on me that a lot of these things come down to schedule.

I hate the word schedule. I couldn't even pronounce it properly as a child. Actually, even more bizarrely, I used to open my dad's briefcase every morning and claim that I was putting birds in his schedule. No one ever had the slightest idea why. But, I can tell you that my "normal" schedule is FULL of birds. They fly right and left, they chase their tails and start squabbles and block out the sky. I chase every last one of them off into the trackless blue without a second thought. 

In other words, I forget to eat reasonably often, and I am generally unaware what day of the week it actually is. I have to check my phone. Even it may have gotten birds...usually the I-forgot-to-write-that-down bird. I basically can't see my schedule for all the birds having a Bacchanal up in there.

And so I have been attempting to regularize things like bedtime. Getting-up time - with NO snooze button! Three meals a day at reasonably sane hours. Time each week to plan those meals. Time...to find and repurpose. This is the hardest.

I actually had never (probably deliberately never) thought about how many hours of my life are spent doing things like YouTube, Facebook, and aimless perusing of a couple of fashion blogs which I'm actually sick of reading. I find the days so short not only because it's January in England and it gets dark at 4pm, but because I make the days short. Because I dither, and chase mental birds, and have been known on occasion to walk around with half an outfit and half pajamas on for hours past noon while still mentally reflecting that I must have breakfast very soon, really.

Redeeming the time. That's the King James version. In the ESV, it says: 

"'Awake, O sleeper, 

and arise from the dead, 

and Christ will shine on you.'

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,

16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil."

I often hate to admit that this is true because it means that, frankly, my parents were right. (Parents, I love you. Please resist any urge to say you told me so.) I have inveterately hated words like "dawdling" and "hurry" all my life because me and this time-thing were just never on the same page. It was like the worst group project ever. Birds all over the place. Feathers, flying.

But this year, I suppose I'm finally old enough (or desperate enough) to take many years of kind upbraiding into consideration. And I have a problem with time.

Today, I deleted YouTube from my phone. A small step, I suppose, but it's not like I do the hairstyles that I watch all those videos on, anyway. I never have time.

But this new year, I have prayed and I have cried, and I will continue to pray and cry and strive, that somehow I will learn to make good my time. To get to the end of the day and not wonder where on earth it went and if there's anything to eat. My dad has been entering into awesome partnership with me over recounting what I've actually accomplished at the end of each day. (Which I haven't done in a couple of days. Sorry, Daddy!) My mom has been a great encouragement in providing kitchen encouragement and suggesting other sensible ways to arrange life and tasks. (Thanks, Mommy!) 

And sure, there will always be birds in the schedule, because I am not and never will be a storybook girl with a perfect life. Life has birds in its schedule. 

But, it never struck me before how powerful that verse is. The Lord says that we are to awake! To rise up and live wisely. That we can redeem the days! A powerful word, that redeem. To leave a product, a good deed done, a task completed, a thought fully articulated, or even just a day of rest fully enjoyed, is a beautiful and awesome thing that shares in our Creator God's work of redeeming his beloved Creation.

 That's worth leaving a bird or three unchased.

 

Happy 2014!

As it has been requested from many quarters, one of my goals this year is to keep this blog running in some semblance of order and frequency.

In order to do so, I felt like I would first share some of my anxieties about blogging regularly, and then this year, you can watch me work through them (and hopefully share input to help me!)

In no particular order, these have been some of my reasons for not blogging regularly:

 - uncertainty about what I want this blog to be (i.e., travel, personal, or a higgledy-piggledy mixture?)

 - uncertainty about how the internet will respond if I do write any personal opinions or posts of a more reflective nature (what? It's a zoo out there, and my skin is none too thick, sometimes)

 - complete inability and/or unwillingness to schedule posts (if I promise you a post once a week, then I'll struggle with the deadline. Then I won't know what to do once I've missed the deadline. So I don't make myself a deadline. But then I don't post. Because I don't have a deadline. See the deadly spiral? It's a trap that my lazy brain has laid for itself, at this point.)

 - fear that if I comment too frankly on my experiences as an expat in another country and culture, someone will sooner or later accuse me of insensitivity (it's mightily hard for me to air my frank and real opinions without sounding high-and-mighty, sometimes)

- consciousness that I don't have enough photos and formatting skills and technical know-how to make this blog an elegant, visually attractive corner of the internet (yeah, okay - this one is sheer personal and creative pride)

 - uncertainty of how much of my academic work should or should not become blog-fodder (too many issues to go into)

 - fear that I may run out of interesting things to blog about (I mean, having nothing to say never stopped me from talking, but we can all dream....)

These and other concerns have hampered me, and allowed me to talk myself out of writing, even though I know that some of y'all would deeply appreciate hearing from me reliably. (Thanks for every encouragement, by the way! They may fall on fearful or lazy ears, but they don't fall on totally deaf ones.)

My primary concern right now lies with whether or not I should put myself on a schedule. I would really appreciate commentary, here, so, dear readers:

If you have ever had a blog (or column! or similar), how did you approach it? Knowing that I am a procrastinator, and that tight schedules often kill my sense of creativity, flexibility, and fun, do any of you have any advice? Perhaps I could commit to a post or two a week, but not to any specific day or topic? I'm looking for a reasonably encouraging post structure that gives me room to play around and write as inspiration strikes, rather than saying, "nah, I'm bored. I don't have anything to say on Wednesday this week," and therefore refusing to write. I have graduate essays for the non-negotiable deadlines thing.

I've had a couple of ideas for series of posts as well. I could go back and detail my days in London as a tourist. I could do a loose summary of my experiences so far in Leicester. I could do photo-posts where I lead you on a little tour of somewhere I've been. I could talk about cookies/biscuits!

Or, I could depart from a solid travel/study-abroad format to sometimes just share opinion topics, and eventually perhaps craft ideas or other thoughts and experiences. I am a bit afraid of this, largely because I often object to the tone of excessive generalization and unassailable expertise at life often adopted by other twenty-somethings online who, face it, know nothing much about anything. But I could try it.

So, I'm asking. If you read my blog here at all, I'd love to see a comment, whether here, as a personal private message on Facebook, or sent to the email associated with this blog, pearlsonmyshoes@gmail.com.

Please talk to me! And we'll try to see what I can set up for 2014.

Happy New Year!!

Life in Leicester

Hello!

It has recently been pointed out to me that it has been over a month since I blogged, and the best thing I can say in response to this is that it seemed necessary to get on my feet in Leicester and to process more important things in my head first before getting around to sharing them with the world.

Now, however, I am finally starting to adopt a groove and a routine here, so I feel that now will be an opportune time to look back over what's been going on in the past few weeks and to try to give you the highlights, rather than a sprawling account of every inconsequential detail and every immoderate emotion that comes with moving to a totally new place for a year.

Please do forgive me for the delay!

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I have been doing a series of posts there called "Adventures in Biscuitry," in which I explore the vast and varied realm of the British cookie. Never have I come across a culture in which dessert is held in higher esteem as a necessity and a right of life, and frankly, this alone guarantees that the British and I are made to get along swimmingly! One of my goals as I go along is to transfer the Biscuitry posts here, and to add elaborations of other splendiferous desserts as I run across them. I'm thinking of setting up a day of the week for these - say, Sweet Tooth Thursdays, perhaps?

For today's post, however, I think I'd best give you all a run-down of where I'm staying, and my general class situation at "uni," the British slang for "university."

I was in Leicester for at least two weeks before anyone made any mention of class actually starting and my having to attend! There was International Welcome Week first, full of events - bus tours of the city, a ceili dance, a talent show night. Then there was Freshers' Week, "freshers" being the Freshman, and evidently British Freshers' Week is very unlike US freshman orientations. First of all, practically the whole school shows up and attends half the events, by way of free entertainment, free pizza, and give-away pens and USB sticks. No rolling into town on the Sunday before classes start here!

As far as I can tell, the main objective of Freshers' Week is to get everybody signed up for more clubs and societies than they can possibly participate in, and to talk about absolutely everything you can do at uni besides go to class or study. It was all terribly fascinating, and, between this and the cookies, and the postgraduate wine-and-cheese receptions for general postgrads, for our specific departments, for those of us with brown hair (kidding! but only on the last one), I was beginning to think that uni in England consisted solely of socializing, pub-going, being fed free wine by the faculty, joining clubs, going dancing, and occasionally eating Indian food (which it turns out I don't hate).

Eventually, in early October, a rather vague email instructed me that I had to attend an Induction for my course of study.  It turns out that the induction is an official day set aside for doing what US professors take care of in the first twenty minutes of class on that dreadful Monday after you've just rolled into town. Here's the syllabus, here's the course website, here's your advisor, now read the fool handout before you ask me about it, child! That kind of thing. Only rather more helpful and polite. This single day of induction counts as your course time for the first week, and, at the end of it, they tell you your first reading assignment and finally, finally someone sees fit to mention that you actually do have to attend class eventually, and that it actually does have an assigned room and timetable which you should probably know, come to think of it. This is, by this point, weirdly reassuring knowledge, as if to convince you that you have, after all, arrived at a school, rather than an extended social network of youngish people who like free wine and giveaway office supplies. (Though really, who doesn't like free wine and giveaway office supplies?)

And so my course schedule reads as follows - or, really, I should call it my "module" schedule or "timetable," to be all British about things. "Module" here refers to the entire course, rather than to a particular sub-unit or topic of the class, as you might otherwise expect. "Course" is not an individual class, but your entire course of study - in my case, my course is the MA in Victorian Studies. "Class" can be used as in the US, to refer either to the whole class over the course of a semester, or to each individual class session, e.g., "for that class I have Professor A," or, "class is cancelled today." So, my schedule is:

Wednesdays, 10-noon: EN 7001: Bibliography, Research Methods, and Writing Skills for Postgraduates.
Wednesdays, 2-4: HS 7499: Victorian Society
Every other Thursday, 10-noon: The Brontes

Or, in plain translation:
Every Wed: How to use the library (actually an extremely helpful class)
Every Wed: Long list of  terrifying Victorian statistics that somehow is totally fascinating anyway
Every-other-Thursday: Utter bliss, somehow accruing academic credit anyway.

Let me explain that last one a bit.

I have an entire course/module entirely on the Brontes. There are three students in it - all girls. We are such a small class that, when we were accidentally double-booked in our classroom, the professor didn't even bother to apply for a new room but just decided that from now on, we hold class in her office. Her office is on the thirteenth floor of the Attenborough tower on campus, which means that we have a fantastic view of all Leicester spread out below us. Quaint rows of cookie-cutter red brick houses, looking almost as if they were cut from paper and had sprung up like a children's pop-up book, extend until mounded green trees take over, and these run up the basin-shaped land, punctuated every so often by an old white smokestack from the true Victorian era, and then, at the edges of this bowl in which Leicester sits, there rise misty green hills-upon-hills, fading out into the sky, and suggesting that somewhere, perhaps, picturesque English countryside is rolling out for miles undisturbed. One almost couldn't ask for a view that looks more like it came from a BBC miniseries.

In this utterly apropos setting, we are asked to read one Bronte novel every two weeks, then to discuss amongst our four selves for two hours, while eating tea and cakes. (See? Sweets again. They're ubiquitous. Incorrigible. Omnipresent. Fantastic.) And, somewhere, somehow, some blessed soul not only calls this graduate school, but some other blessed soul pays for me to call this graduate school. I am in a certain species of earthly heaven, and truly grateful to God for this wonderful opportunity.

That said, it isn't flawless. I still struggle with missing people from back home quite a bit, and I still have my daily frustrations with a foreign culture - strange grocery stores, absurdly small kitchen space, and the most bewildering array of laundry soaps ever, none of which seem to have any definable link to ordinary US detergent.

On the whole, my flat is reasonably pleasant, though. I am in student accommodations, or, basically, the dorms, but they're a step above just the one-long-hallway dorms of which I have relatively unpleasant memories from freshman year. There are four individual hallways on each floor, and each individual hallway is one "flat" containing six rooms and a shared kitchen and bathroom. Four of my five flatmates are Chinese, and the remaining one is Vietnamese, so I don't always understand the animated conversations taking place in my kitchen, but they are all very nice girls, and we are getting to know each other a bit better.

My main frustration is the kitchen itself. We are provided with a refrigerator slightly shorter than I am, and perhaps two feet wide, to accommodate the food for all six people, and it is maddening to try to cram your groceries into any available nook or cranny. The stoves, also, are roughly large enough for use by an American Girl doll, and the kitchen cabinets and windows have all clearly been arranged in a way that will maximize the potential for banging heads and for rendering all other doors and windows temporarily either un-open-able or un-close-able. The hot tap turns out water so hot that it steams (the shower, on the other hand, persists in being a barely tolerable lukewarm), and none of the drains seem to have understood that it is their function in life to get rid of water, rather than to retain it indefinitely in the sink. Failing this, however, the tiny countertops, bizarrely placed outlets, and absurdly low ovens are all a perfect model of functionality and ease...

However, one must make the best of such things, and it could be said that at least I have a kitchen.

And so, there is your first real blog-taste of my experience in Leicester. More updates to come - the goal right now is once a week, but that may not happen immediately.

Love to you all!

From Heathrow to My Temporary Room

To continue from my previous post:

After fetching my bags at the airport, I came out into a maze of taxi drivers, all standing there holding up signs with people's names written on them. I had pre-ordered a taxi and knew that one should be waiting for me, but I passed what seemed like a million signs, typed on iPads, handwritten on the backs of papers, neatly printed out, underneath a million bored faces and above a million blue uniform suits, and not one of the names was mine. Shoving my two towers of stacked baggage and looking lost, I turned around to review the entire maze again, and a small older lady in a bright yellow shirt nearly ran into me.

"Are you a student?" she said, almost immediately and with great enthusiasm.

"Y-yes," I stammered, wondering exactly how she knew (well, besides the utterly lost expression). I cleared my jet-fogged brain and read her shirt: "Meet and Greet!" In her hands was an orange paper, writ large with the words, "Student? Need help?"

It turns out she was part of a Christian ministry called Friends International, which organizes greeters for arriving international students. She handed me a little guidebook to life in the UK, complete with an email to contact the "Friends" in your area, and helped me figure out the process by which the taxi drivers line up. Since I was 15 minutes before the time for which I had ordered my taxi, she suggested that my driver probably wasn't there yet, and showed me the "Meeting Point," so labeled by a large sign on the airport ceiling. I thanked her profusely and stood where appointed.

My taxi driver met me there with ease, and helped me roll my luggage to the car. He cautioned me that what would ordinarily be a twenty minute drive into central London would instead take closer to an hour, and he was right. It wasn't bad, though. Being driven on the wrong side of the road was, of course, still quite odd, but not so terrifying as the first time when I was in the coach (bus) in Scotland. The very first time, you feel as if you are constantly headed into incoming traffic!

The drive in was green, sunny, and otherwise unremarkable. I do love the British (I say British because it applied in Scotland as well as in England) proclivity for lace curtains in windows, though. It makes even the shabbier cottages you pass look so charming and storybookish.

The driver dropped me off at the Fulbright Orientation accommodations, where I arrived earlier than most students, and went through quite an ordeal getting my internet connected, as both the Ethernet port and cable they had provided for me were broken.

While wandering the building, I met another early arrival student, Julia, and, finding confidence in numbers, we set off to find lunch in the area around our accommodation, and, having found cheap sandwiches, ate them in a peaceful little garden.

Especially on that lovely sunny day, the whole atmosphere was so quaint, so cute, so...entirely what one might expect of a quiet autumn afternoon in London. It really is surprising what illusions are happily fulfilled, sometimes, and found not to have been very illusionary at all.

The day ended with a pub meet-up for the scholars, at which point I was entirely too tired to learn anyone's name. By that point, I started desperately missing the people from home, too, and it made me rather unwilling to socialize. But I think that what I will do is narrate the first week's events for the next few days, then go back and track my mental-emotional state in a separate post, to keep the length manageable.

Love you all!

Next up will be probably a post combining the first two full days of orientation - today was by far the more interesting. I met titled minor nobility and an ambassador, today! Find out which ones and where and why by coming back next time.

The Transit and Arrival

Hello! First of all, I'd like to reassure all of you who haven't seen on Facebook or email that I am indeed safe, well, and in England!

My flight into London Heathrow was uneventful in the good way, though I did have a few memorable moments in airports throughout the journey.

In New York, after I managed to lug my bags to the international gates, I happened to sit down next to a lovely great-grandmother named Mary, who also, it turns out, travels and blogs. She and her twin sister Martha have been all kinds of places over the years, and what started with her wondering where there was a restroom and me wondering where there was food led to a lovely conversation about our respective adventures. You can follow her adventures (if she doesn't mind my sharing) at www.the-traveling-twins.blogspot.com.

About the time that first class started boarding, I got up to do some ballet stretches by the window, since it was effectively the last time I would be able to move for six-and-a-half hours, and while I did so, a Jewish man stood up further down the window and appeared to do some kind of prayer. Pardon my complete cultural ignorance of Jewish custom, here, but he appeared perhaps particularly Orthodox or Hassidic, with a long black coat and large black hat, a full beard, and the curled locks of hair by his ears. He took off half his coat, rolled up his sleeve, and wrapped a complex set of leather straps around his bare arm and over his head, then stood before the window with his arms upraised. I stood at a short distance, watching his deep calm as I bent sideways over my leg, propped up at ninety degrees on the window ledge. There seemed to be something introspective and self-sufficient about him, as if he were content with conversations and experiences held inside himself, and therefore observed and perhaps enjoyed the passing world, but could also easily drop it from his mind for bigger things.

On the plane, I got an aisle seat, which is fortunate as I really can't sit down for six hours at a time, and people do make such a fuss when I have crawl over them every hour or two. I actually fell asleep for a little bit, with the aid of a lovely mix CD I had with me. First time I've ever slept on a plane, and it did much to improve my mood upon arrival.

After the jetway got stuck in midair about halfway to the airplane, and the engineers came and repaired it for us, I had to pass customs, which is a thing not lightly done in any country, I am coming to discover. There was a separate line just for International Students, and so I joined it. The vast bulk of the other students in line were Asian, many Chinese as I could see by their red passports and the English labels on their Chinese health certificates.

Having a long time in line, I observed all of the non-student comers to the non-UK/EU passport line, and learned that, while of course no country is clearly distinguishable all the time, by and large one can identify other Americans as the people with the blue passports and too much luggage. Above my line, there were scrolling screens and televisions that aired short programs, without the sound, sponsored by VisitBritain. Sometimes I have heard Americans wonder why things like Wills and Kate and the monarchy, or old castles and quaint villages, can become such a big deal to people in the US. Surely, the subtext runs, those are very stereotypical things to excite you about modern Britain? Well, if they are, then I can tell you conclusively that stereotypical things must sell, because the VisitBritain short films I saw detailed various areas of England, in all its pastoral, castle-filled, Royal Wedding glory.

However, the screen with still slides was actually my favorite. Mostly it was dull information about which documents students needed to show to pass customs, but one screen warned of "Detector Dogs at the UK Border," and featured a large picture of a thoroughly goofy Springer Spaniel, standing next to someone's bag with it's pink tongue lolling out of its amber-eyed, droopy-eared face, and its tail half-wagging behind its liver-and-white spotted body. It was the least intimidating, friendliest photo of a drug-sniffing dog that you could ever imagine!

After customs, I went to collect my bags. I found the carousel marked, and started to get a sinking feeling as minute after minute went by and the same bags, none of which were mine, trundled 'round and 'round. After about half an hour, I worked myself into a state of some panic, and started wandering anxiously around to all of the carousels. On the way, I ran across an American Airlines kiosk, where apparently American had already pulled my bags and had them waiting for me, I suppose because I had taken so long to get through customs. At any rate, I strapped all my four bags together and off we went.

To be continued...

(Time for shower and bed, here.)

Off on the Grand Adventure!

In my brother's bedroom, my two rolling suitcases are packed and locked, and my two carry-ons are waiting for last minute filling with my toiletries and my purse.

I have packed everything I will need for a year in two medium-size rolling bags, one rather large carry-on, and one rather reasonably-sized carry-on, which, for a Texan woman, is a Herculean accomplishment. I suspect it may be aided by the fact that my clothes and shoes are all slightly smaller than average. Originally, I had packed a very large rolling bag, but it had to be unpacked and returned when I discovered that, far from lifting it, I could hardly manage to roll it when fully stuffed, seeing as it weighed something over half of what I do.

It is difficult for me not to compare this English adventure with my time in Belgium, but I try not to. I really had very little impetus to go to Belgium, besides the fact that I had heard that study abroad was good for both the soul and the resume, and I had been told that Scottish brogue did not qualify as acquiring a second language. And, while I did have some lovely excursions on the continent, I really did not much enjoy my time in Brussels, and it has given rather a bad taste to "study abroad" in my mind. So, I am consciously attempting to think of this as My Grand English Adventure, a thing much more exciting and charming than mere study abroad.

And really, I think that this time around, things will go much better. I am actually excited the night before, rather than shaking in fear. Oh, I'm nervous, of course - anyone would be, on relocating to strange climes for a year. But there are several thoughts which never cease to calm my fears...

First, and foremost, I have the prayers of many dear friends and the grace of a perfect God going with me. How easy it is to feel the Lord's love when what seems like a thousand friends are ranged as my prayer warriors, asking for my safety and my sanity and that I be used as a light to others.

Second, it must be admitted that the (ostensible) lack of a language barrier comforts me. While I know that British English and American English are probably more different than I have yet realized, the essential fact is that I should be able to communicate coherently with the average person on the street, without having to rack my brain for obscure verb tenses and odd vocabulary words not taught in class. I had a thoroughly useless habit when speaking French of falling back into Latin when I lost the French word for a thing...a dreadful side effect of private school, I suppose, is that it becomes slightly inconceivable that the whole world has not been educated in basic Latin.

Third, I am simply thrilled by all the descriptions of the MA program I am going into! I get to roll around in reams of details about English country houses and Victorian novels and the social status of children and all that sort of thing that turns me inside out with mental delight.

Oh, AND I get to spend more than a week in London!

That's what I'm doing first, actually. I go to Fulbright Orientation, then I have a week in London before my accommodation in Leicester opens its doors. And so I intend to see Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, the Victoria and Albert museum and the Windsor Castle Victorian doll collection, the Thames and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and everything! I want to ride a double-decker bus and go into Harrod's and take the tube and wander in bookstores and generally soak in history until I am drunk on stories.

And so I and my four suitcases (and one loveable, long-suffering, and currently rather squashed stuffed pony) are about to set out on our Grand UK Adventure.

My friends, relations, and loves of all descriptions - I welcome your prayers, your suggestions, your communications, and your thoughts. Thank you for all you do for me -

Now read along and (almost) come with me!

In Britain I Shall Be

Well, it does seem to be mid-way through August, and this means that I am facing fairly imminent departure for England! 

This shall once again become a sort of travel or study abroad blog, as I prepare for my 10 months or so pursuing my Masters degree in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. I learned today that Leicester is in the region of England called the East Midlands, or, for you non-Anglophiles, pretty much smack dab in the middle of central England. I've heard it's not far from the Lake District of Coleridge-and-Wordsworthian fame, so at some point I definitely intend to make a stop there.

(In passing, isn't Wordsworth the most exceptionally apt name for a poet?)

In preparation for my English experience, I've been straightening out quite a bit of paperwork and beginning to assemble a packing list. When I went abroad to Belgium and briefly to Scotland before, I quickly learned that, to a native Texan, 

all of Europe only has one temperature: cold. It's really only a matter of cold or colder, or perhaps of utterly frigid, as in Bruges in February. I do not, in any other case, lump the entirety of the British Isles and the Continent into one indistinguishable unit, but I am operating on the assumption that the weather in any and all of the above is what I would consider to be winter, year-round. The unfortunate implication of this is that I must pack more sweaters than ever I cared to own, and the unfortunate fact about this is that sweaters take up room. If one wanted to study abroad with optimal luggage space, a tropical destination would certainly be the way to go!

On the whole, of course, I suspect the sweaters will be quite worth the effort,  when I start my year delving deep into the lives of the Victorians while based on their own proper turf. The biggest drawback at this point is that I am almost preemptively lonely for my dear friends and family! 10 months will pass so quickly, yet right now there are also ways in which it seems nearly interminable. To my lovely readers and world-wide supporters, your prayers are requested for my sanity in preparation, my safety in travel, and my sentimentality for my loved ones at all times.