Bringing It All Back Home

My god, what happened to February? Did January even happen? And now it's April. I turn around and all of a sudden it's spring break and we're registering for next semester and I go back home in two months. Home... remember home? I thought I remembered home, but now I'm not so sure. Home sure feels like the place that I sleep, where I return to after a trip and where I write these posts. Home is where the heart is, and for sure I will be a leaving a piece of my heart in England.

A long, long time ago, on a lake far, far away... someone told me that my study abroad group would become a kind of family. I didn't believe them. Traditionally I haven't meshed well in big groups and I knew I was taking a gamble - but I lucked out. Seriously this has been the best seven months of my life and it's in no small part due to the people I'm with. There's no way I could have predicted pretty much anything that has happened so far, and I've always had someone to cheer with or complain to. It's pretty great.

At some point in the last month the impermanence of our situation started creeping into our thoughts and conversation. We all know that this nine month experience will end eventually, but it's making me really sad to think about it. This is the way I see it: in a year or two, most of us will be graduating anyway, and then we will all scatter into the great diaspora of life. Why rush it? After we get back, most of us are going back to Duluth, so why shouldn't the friendships we made here survive the trip over the Atlantic? So I keep telling myself, though I know that real life isn't quite so simple.

Above all, I will take this opportunity to enjoy what time and trips I have left. This past weekend we went to York. I suppose it's fitting that I visit the original York before New York, where I someday hope to live (at least for a little while.) It's a testament to how comfortable that I've become with these people that I worked up the courage to make a video featuring people other than myself. The videos are generally a lot of fun to make, and they're a great way to share what I've been doing to my stateside audience. But, of course, my videos serve another purpose: they document my year in a way that text never could. Thanks to this uniquely 21st century technology, I will be able to look back at myself in decades to come and really remember what a great time I had with my friends.

And who knows? Maybe we'll still be in touch.

All At Once

It was a beautiful early spring day, and after three hours of purgatory class, I walked down to my favorite park and watched the sun set over Worcester. The sky was clear, or at least, clear by English standards; what clouds that remained were bathed in pink and orange light as the sun made its slow plummet towards the horizon between the Malverns and the Cathedral. I was reminded of the last time I had watched - really watched - a sunset: August 29th, 2012. That night I had driven out to one of my favorite places to watch the night fall, for less than 12 hours later I would be leaving for Duluth, and everything would change.

See, I wasn't used to change. In my eyes, I haven't changed since like middle school. I mean, once I discovered the Beatles and got my first computer, the stage was pretty much set for everything that came after. Even most of my clothes are 4+ years old. But the thing you have to realize about change is that it has a nasty habit of sneaking up on you...

Romancing the Stone(henge)

(for the record, the intro for this video was inspired by the opening credits of my favorite movie, School of Rock, and I regard it as the best 30 seconds of video I have ever created)

At some point on my train journey to Liverpool, I realized that I was:

1. Alone
2. Not Lost
3. Still Alive

It didn't even feel like I was traveling very far - although, to be fair, I spent more time on trains than I did in Liverpool itself. But I did it - I arranged my own travel and left Worcester by myself. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was to me!

Most of the rest of my time has been spent between Reddit and Netflix on an ordinary school schedule - wake up, eat, class. Eat a few more times. Get outside. Watch Buffy & Angel. Rinse. Repeat. The promise of routine helps keep me sane, but obviously I didn't come all this way to do exactly the same things I do at home.

A couple weekends ago the UMD group went to Stonehenge and the city of Bath. Stonehenge is cool because it's Stonehenge - a tourist mecca. I'm pretty sure England doesn't even count your visit to their country unless you go there. They reenact ritual sacrifices every twenty minutes. And the laser show - did I mention the laser show? You should go sometime.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Let me give you the low down on my school week:

• Monday: No class
• Tuesday: Human Geography, followed by a seminar
• Wednesday: Educating the Human Brain, followed by Social Constructions of Britain
• Thursday: No class
• Friday: Biology (all morning)

The whole "having to sit in class for more than one hour" thing is really throwing me off, but I think I'll live.
Anyway, I was sitting in Tuesday afternoon geography listening to the lecturer talk about what makes a place. "Place" as a concept here - a "place" could be your seat at the dining room table just as much as your home town is a "place." He showed us pictures of some of his favorite places, and asked us to think about what some of our favorite places are. I thought about mine:

1. Duluth, Minnesota
2. My basement at home
3. The bike trails back home

All of sudden, it hit me. Harder than anything I had felt on this trip so far.
I was homesick.
I missed Netflix on the worn couches in my basement. I missed the exertion of biking up and down hills. And I missed waking up near the awe-inspiring majesty of Lake Superior.
The feeling soon passed, but I was left considering how "home" had changed over the last year and a half.
Last year, as myself and hundreds of other freshmen settled in to college life, I would occasionally hear someone refer to their dorm or floor as "home." And this was always weird to me. I mean, yeah, it kind of was - it's where we slept and kept our junk. But to me, it was never "home." My room here has a much stronger claim to the term - considering I have my own bathroom and kitchen, and I have to do my own shopping and everything - but it still isn't "home."
Home to me is still the place where I grew up, all the way back across the Atlantic. I know this will eventually change, and that it's starting to change already. But they don't call it "homesick" for nothing.