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Jun. 29th, 2007 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gogmagogBack at my customary spot outside Waterloo. Spent yesterday hanging out with Ollie (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
satsu), who introduced me to the wonders of curry ketchup and Vodka Revolution (which are two entirely different things - a condiment and a cocktail bar - just in case you were wondering). Also tried some delicious Dutch sausages with an unpronounceable name and tasty fruity beer that he recommended to me. However, hitting three salubrious drinking establishments in five hours or so meant I had entirely too much to drink - unfortunately I am not able to hold my liquor as well as your average Brit, it seems - so I was a bit of a drunky tard, but I don't think Ollie minded that much (I hope?). XD
Speaking of drunky tardness, I totally spaced the fact that I had a Globe ticket for yesterday when I was hanging out with him...I didn't remember until this morning when I woke up. Still, it's probably just as well...at 7:30 I still had enough alcohol in my system to make standing and watching a play rather difficult, I imagine, though perhaps more authentic to the experience of your average soused Elizabethan laborer. XD
Anyway, today I went and saw Hampton Court, which my Tudor-loving self enjoyed immensely (even if I did end up getting lost in the hedge maze, thanks to my craptastic sense of direction). I also spent entirely too much at the gift shop (I had no choice! It was like ALL TUDOR ALL THE TIME), though in my defense it's not ALL stuff for me. However, my mom, as the only other person I know with both as large a range of interests and as ardent a case of Anglophilia as myself, is gonna get a crapload of souvenirs and stuff next time I see her. XD
Plans for tomorrow are to get up at the buttcrack of dawn, take the train/tube to Kings Cross, take an 8 a.m. high-speed train from there to Durham, hang out with my former flatmate Colin for a few hours, head back about 6, get into London around 9 or a little after, and meet up with another former flatmate, Yasmin, and hang out for a few hours. Then Sunday pretty much all I'll be doing is heading to Gatwick and saying goodbye to England (at least for a while). D:
I actually have quite a bit of time right now - I'm just waiting for an e-mail from Colin to confirm things so that I can make the train reservation - so I think I'll probably subject y'all to some observations on nostalgia and place, inspired by having returned to England for the first time since my year here.
As most of you probably know, I left England under pretty sucky circumstances. Not only was there the regular suckitude of having to leave the friends that I'd made and really what had been the happiest period of my life to date, but I was returning to my dad's funeral and to a life I felt I'd outgrown. It felt like I was going from the best of times to the worst (yes, I picked up A Tale of Two Cities the other day, why do you ask?).
What some of you may not know is that part of the reason I hated leaving my friends in England so much was that they were the first close friends I'd had in years. See, I had a couple of best friends in grade school, but after I left that for homeschooling I didn't really get to know anyone else my own age (mostly I just hung out with my family). And when I started college, I made acquaintances but not really friends - it probably didn't help that I was 16 and really that my undergrad campus was in part just an extension of "family," since both my mom and stepdad worked there and it seemed like everyone knew them. And finally, my temperament is not the kind to make friends easily, I think. I don't have a showy personality - in fact, I'm rather painfully shy around folks I don't know - which is why really the only way it seems I ever make friends is just to see people on a very regular basis, at which point I grow more comfortable around them and they see much more of who I would say I really am. (In my more self-deprecating moments, I'd say I grow on people. Like a fungus.) But even at my most social and outgoing, around people I am very comfortable with, I would not call myself a scintillating conversationalist or the life of the party.
Back to my point, though...because I was living with my flatmates, and seeing them on a VERY regular basis for extended periods of time, I did become quite close friends with several of them. And I think I hadn't realized how lonely I'd been until I did have that - I mean, I love my parents, and they have always been just as much friends as parents once I hit a certain age, but I don't necessarily want them to be my only ones, y'know? And while I've made close friends since, both in my second phase at UMKC and now at Iowa, at that point I had no guarantee I'd reach that degree of closeness again. So that's in part why I ended up in such bad shape, even when I was just preparing to leave, before my dad died.
So back to what I was trying to say, was that nostalgia is an interesting thing. My first full day back alone I went to Kingston, and spent all day going around seeing all the sites I remembered from my year here (and a few new ones). My big fear was that things just wouldn't be the same without the people I knew and cared about, and that I'd discover that this place and culture that I'd put on such a pedestal and essentially made the major goal of my life for the past half a decade was not worthy of that - that it wasn't England itself, just the fact that I'd been out on my own for the first time then and made my first friends in years and I'd feel completely stupid for having been sighing about England all this time.
To a certain extent I was right, in that things WEREN'T the same. Obviously. I mean, things have changed, and much as it sucks to feel like things you feel like you should have been part of have been going on without you - it does a lot to puncture any illusion that the world does in fact revolve around you - it happens. My friends have scattered, and even if I'd been here for that following two years, everyone would be gone now anyway, and it's silly to imagine things would have been the same. At times it really sucked realizing that: making my favorite walk on the Queen's Promenade along the Thames, listening to the music I listened to back then, but knowing I wasn't going back to Middle Mill like then but to a tiny hotel room in Feltham, was probably a low point, and actually did lead to a few tears.
Nevertheless, one thing I did discover this week is that I'd fallen in love with England all over again. And I think the good thing is that this trip, even before having gone to see my friends from back then, has given me a sense of closure that I didn't have before. Now I don't feel like I HAVE to come back to England, because I know now genuinely, not just intellectually, that obviously I can't pick up from where I left off; but now I feel that I REALLY REALLY want to come back here permanently. And I think that's a much healthier attitude to have, I guess.
Hope that made sense...it's taken a while to type, and I'm almost out of time, so I'll sign off now and post it.
satsu), who introduced me to the wonders of curry ketchup and Vodka Revolution (which are two entirely different things - a condiment and a cocktail bar - just in case you were wondering). Also tried some delicious Dutch sausages with an unpronounceable name and tasty fruity beer that he recommended to me. However, hitting three salubrious drinking establishments in five hours or so meant I had entirely too much to drink - unfortunately I am not able to hold my liquor as well as your average Brit, it seems - so I was a bit of a drunky tard, but I don't think Ollie minded that much (I hope?). XDSpeaking of drunky tardness, I totally spaced the fact that I had a Globe ticket for yesterday when I was hanging out with him...I didn't remember until this morning when I woke up. Still, it's probably just as well...at 7:30 I still had enough alcohol in my system to make standing and watching a play rather difficult, I imagine, though perhaps more authentic to the experience of your average soused Elizabethan laborer. XD
Anyway, today I went and saw Hampton Court, which my Tudor-loving self enjoyed immensely (even if I did end up getting lost in the hedge maze, thanks to my craptastic sense of direction). I also spent entirely too much at the gift shop (I had no choice! It was like ALL TUDOR ALL THE TIME), though in my defense it's not ALL stuff for me. However, my mom, as the only other person I know with both as large a range of interests and as ardent a case of Anglophilia as myself, is gonna get a crapload of souvenirs and stuff next time I see her. XD
Plans for tomorrow are to get up at the buttcrack of dawn, take the train/tube to Kings Cross, take an 8 a.m. high-speed train from there to Durham, hang out with my former flatmate Colin for a few hours, head back about 6, get into London around 9 or a little after, and meet up with another former flatmate, Yasmin, and hang out for a few hours. Then Sunday pretty much all I'll be doing is heading to Gatwick and saying goodbye to England (at least for a while). D:
I actually have quite a bit of time right now - I'm just waiting for an e-mail from Colin to confirm things so that I can make the train reservation - so I think I'll probably subject y'all to some observations on nostalgia and place, inspired by having returned to England for the first time since my year here.
As most of you probably know, I left England under pretty sucky circumstances. Not only was there the regular suckitude of having to leave the friends that I'd made and really what had been the happiest period of my life to date, but I was returning to my dad's funeral and to a life I felt I'd outgrown. It felt like I was going from the best of times to the worst (yes, I picked up A Tale of Two Cities the other day, why do you ask?).
What some of you may not know is that part of the reason I hated leaving my friends in England so much was that they were the first close friends I'd had in years. See, I had a couple of best friends in grade school, but after I left that for homeschooling I didn't really get to know anyone else my own age (mostly I just hung out with my family). And when I started college, I made acquaintances but not really friends - it probably didn't help that I was 16 and really that my undergrad campus was in part just an extension of "family," since both my mom and stepdad worked there and it seemed like everyone knew them. And finally, my temperament is not the kind to make friends easily, I think. I don't have a showy personality - in fact, I'm rather painfully shy around folks I don't know - which is why really the only way it seems I ever make friends is just to see people on a very regular basis, at which point I grow more comfortable around them and they see much more of who I would say I really am. (In my more self-deprecating moments, I'd say I grow on people. Like a fungus.) But even at my most social and outgoing, around people I am very comfortable with, I would not call myself a scintillating conversationalist or the life of the party.
Back to my point, though...because I was living with my flatmates, and seeing them on a VERY regular basis for extended periods of time, I did become quite close friends with several of them. And I think I hadn't realized how lonely I'd been until I did have that - I mean, I love my parents, and they have always been just as much friends as parents once I hit a certain age, but I don't necessarily want them to be my only ones, y'know? And while I've made close friends since, both in my second phase at UMKC and now at Iowa, at that point I had no guarantee I'd reach that degree of closeness again. So that's in part why I ended up in such bad shape, even when I was just preparing to leave, before my dad died.
So back to what I was trying to say, was that nostalgia is an interesting thing. My first full day back alone I went to Kingston, and spent all day going around seeing all the sites I remembered from my year here (and a few new ones). My big fear was that things just wouldn't be the same without the people I knew and cared about, and that I'd discover that this place and culture that I'd put on such a pedestal and essentially made the major goal of my life for the past half a decade was not worthy of that - that it wasn't England itself, just the fact that I'd been out on my own for the first time then and made my first friends in years and I'd feel completely stupid for having been sighing about England all this time.
To a certain extent I was right, in that things WEREN'T the same. Obviously. I mean, things have changed, and much as it sucks to feel like things you feel like you should have been part of have been going on without you - it does a lot to puncture any illusion that the world does in fact revolve around you - it happens. My friends have scattered, and even if I'd been here for that following two years, everyone would be gone now anyway, and it's silly to imagine things would have been the same. At times it really sucked realizing that: making my favorite walk on the Queen's Promenade along the Thames, listening to the music I listened to back then, but knowing I wasn't going back to Middle Mill like then but to a tiny hotel room in Feltham, was probably a low point, and actually did lead to a few tears.
Nevertheless, one thing I did discover this week is that I'd fallen in love with England all over again. And I think the good thing is that this trip, even before having gone to see my friends from back then, has given me a sense of closure that I didn't have before. Now I don't feel like I HAVE to come back to England, because I know now genuinely, not just intellectually, that obviously I can't pick up from where I left off; but now I feel that I REALLY REALLY want to come back here permanently. And I think that's a much healthier attitude to have, I guess.
Hope that made sense...it's taken a while to type, and I'm almost out of time, so I'll sign off now and post it.
