Hello dear ones!
I write this from Keswick town in the Lake District of England! It’s the perfect haven of pastoral beauty; tranquil and sleepy. The town has peaked gable roofs and a ‘Wild Strawberry Shop’, and I’ve seen daffodils, ducks, stone walls, lambs, and beautiful sweeping views of Derwent Water 🙂 This is where the Brits go on vacation, and I’m here!
This has also been our first week of classes, so I’ve spent quite a few hours cuddled up with Chaucer, Malory, Shakespeare, and various travel essays. Not all of them are cuddly: I’m realizing what a violent time were the Middle Ages, with a vengeful honor society and little respect for human life. Children had a 50/50 chance of surviving to puberty, and after that, there were still more hazards, especially for women: if the typhoid and dysentery didn’t get you, you’d probably die in childbirth or be drowned as a witch. Average lifespan was 20 to a very ripe old 40. Makes me really glad to be visiting this place as a 21st century college student!! However, I am really loving my books. Chaucer is all in Middle English, and my new favorite words are ‘ymagynacioun’ and ‘sqwirelle’ 😛 Sound them out to see what they mean…We read Richard III aloud as a group, which was marvelous, and I spent a lovely quiet afternoon curled up on a couch with a cup of tea and my brick-sized tome of Troilus and Criseyde, looking over the misty lake and mountains…:) Malory might be my favorite, though–who gets to read the account of the Sword in the Stone and call it homework?? It’s hard to believe I’m really here! But with all the different area dialects, my own accent is starting to get slip-slidy…
Here in the Lake District, we’re staying in a youth hostel (a converted country mansion! I’d include pictures, but the computers here are silly and don’t recognize my camera). But check this link out: http://www.yha.org.uk/Images/Derwentwater_tcm8-4011.jpg ! I’m in a room full of bunkbeds with 5 other girls; Alyssa, Laura, Cathy, Sandra, and Lisa, and we’re getting along ‘brilliantly’, as the British would say 🙂 Meals are served cafeteria-style, and the charming English staff feed us very well. I must say, though, the Brits have a fetish for potatoes. They’re in everything! Last night I found them in ‘spicy chicken tortillas’–possibly a British attempt to do Mexican food?? But there were potatoes in them…They also feed us what they call ‘flapjacks’, which are actually bar cookies (and very tasty :)).
One of the highlights of being here (besides sitting around a daffodil-topped table by a sunny window and talking about Shakespeare!) was a ramble on the hills I took with some friends yesterday. The constant drizzle that had been going since we got here finally stopped and the sun came out, so we grabbed our cameras and jackets and went wandering! Passing by the waterfall behind the hostel (you can hear its soothing sound from our room!), we saw the pasture of sheep I mentioned. We saw little lambs that jumped in the air and ran around headbutting each other! We also saw a pair of ducks (Jemima Puddleduck? This is Beatrix Potter country!) and some donkeys, and made it to Surprise View, which was an incredible panorama view of the beautiful lake below us. This land has a subtle beauty, not necessarily eye-popping like Half Dome or the Grand Tetons, but one that’s been here a very, very long time and doesn’t really care about performing. It just is. Being here gives you a sense of your place in history; England has a long memory. It is both a rich blessing and a burden of responsibility. We Americans are used to independence, entrepreneurship, and haste, the hare to England’s tortoise, it seems.
Anyway, it was a delightful, aimless ramble through gullies, past fences, and across creeks–a moment of the tranquility of this place. I am reminded of this hymn:
This is my Father’s world/I rest me in the thought/of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.
I love you all!
Adventures Abroad 
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