Recap

 Adventure is out there...

Each time something cool happens, I try to take note of it on my way to or from my experience. I find my solace on a bus, train, flight, river, or underground. This recap blog is a lazy composition of a few of my excerpts. Though it's hard to keep track of all this in a consistent and careful way, at least something is better than nothing.

5.27.2022

Trip to Cambridge, England. Saw the school.

5.28.2022

Trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. Had a cup of coffee, found a hostel, made friends in a pub, climbed many hills, cheered on marathon runners, got free drinks from Marta.

6.03.2022

Sooooo...I was on my way to afternoon tea, when I decided tea is not quite enough for lunch so I’ll get myself a pizza beforehand. When I got my pizza, I opened it up to find it was shaped as a heart. How sweet, I thought! They make heart shaped pizzas in England. Then, when I looked at the top part of the box I saw that THE ITALIAN BOY WHO MADE MY PIZZA HAD WRITTEN HIS NUMBER, NAME AND A HEART ON THE BOX. He made the heart-shaped pizza for me. Ohhh. The phone number he left was from Italy and I’m still hesitant to message.

After the pizza, I had my nice afternoon tea date with the girlies, and proceeded to spill more tea than I drank. If you know what I mean.

6.04.2022

Experienced a Mama Mia musical. SO CUTE. I am saying farewell to the session one students as they fly home tonight.

6.07.2022

I went to the Tate Modern Museum to see the 2001 Babel Sculpture, which I loved, but I took an interest in the Monument for the Living. The sculpture “Monument for the Living '' was made by Marwan Rechmaoui in the year 2000. This piece represents diversity as the intersecting of different identities and characteristics. The sculpture is made of concrete and wood, replicating the Burj El Murr building in Beirut, Lebanon. Burj El Murr was built in 1974 with the intention of becoming a large office building. The ravages of war left the building unfinished and the office plans were not carried out. During the Lebanese Civil War, it was instead used as a sniper post. The entire evolution of this eerily resilient building greatly represents its environment and people. 

First built to hold office space by a wealthy family in a time of plenty, then filled with ammunition and dead bodies, and later deemed useless and obstructing in the post-war era. Now that the unfinished building can’t be knocked down, it serves as a memorial for the unresolved conflict of the civil war. To me, the building is a great representation of the “elephant in the room”. It's a looming reminder of change that the city is unable to be rid of. 

This historic structure represents many things for the country. Money, strength, neglect, abandonment, unresolved conflict, and death. The prominent building is a display of wealth because it had grandiose expectations. There were constant renovations and a lot of money put into it in order to become a strong office building. Then of course, the war left it neglected and abandoned. The war also left a lingering unresolved conflict and death. In “Monument for the Living”, we see that diversity may be a vast range of experiences all happening at once. 

This was interesting to me as a viewer because I’ve never considered the relevance or depth a sculpture of a building could hold. When I first saw the tower, I noticed that it was tall, sturdy, and jarring. I scoped it out all around and couldn’t think of the beauty or meaning in a tall concrete building. Before I read the description, I didn’t understand it at all. The artist, Marwan Rechmaoui, is from Beirut, and chooses to express Lebanese history through his work. The Lebanese civil war and its interconnected complexities is far out of my world knowledge, yet Beirut’s story traveled all the way to London, and I met in the middle from Hawai’i. That is a diverse interaction in itself.

6.09.2022

Heads up, I wrote this on a train in present-tense speech. Today I am traveling along the sea-to-sea rail service from West Ham station to south end central, to see the sea. I am taking a round trip train for about 1.5 hours total. The ticket was £17.50. We are passing tall green foliage that sometimes let up to reveal a town or forest. The lavender fields have opened up at last, and I want to be in the country as much as possible to explore the fruiting terrain. The closer I get to Essex, the wider the fields get, as the blue sky opens up to accommodate fluffy white clouds. I first catch sight of the ocean at Chalkwell. To my right are beautiful white beach homes surrounded by trees. To my left, flat and glittering cold water. Its good to see the area where I’ll attend school in the Autumn.

6.12.2022

Traveled far south to the lavender fields today. Got lost, had fun. Loved every moment. I hope to buy a film camera soon and capture all this on 35mm so I can keep my phone turned off.

Places to go within England!

One of my biggest fears with my study abroad experience was that I was going to come away from it wishing I had done more, gone more places, tried more things. Thankfully, now that I'm back I don't feel like that at all! While I didn't get to travel over to Europe during my stay, there were more than enough places within the UK that are just as exciting and beautiful to go to. If you find that you're in England with spare time and money and wanting to travel, these are a few places for day trips/long trips that you can do!

• London: This one's a given but I could go to London and find new things to do with every trip. Make sure you look up what there is around and make the most of it!
• Cambridge: seeing the different colleges is amazing and really feels like you're stepping back in time. Some of the colleges are free to get onto, some cost money so be prepared for that. Also, make sure you book one of the punting tours along the river to see the historic bridges and get historical/fun stories about each of the colleges.
• Oxford: similar to Cambridge, the colleges are so fun to look around. Also, you can see several places where Harry Potter was filmed.
• Dover: aside from being able to see the famous white cliffs, you can also visit Dover Castle which is the largest castle in England.
• Stonehenge: this one is also a given but not only is the experience breathtaking, the town you take the train into is very cute and has a lot of fun little shops to walk through.
• Edinburgh: really visiting anywhere in Scotland is amazing, but Edinburgh has so many cool attractions and picture spots, it's definitely a must! Try to visit Holyrood castle and the Elephant House cafe which is where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter
• The lake district: any of the little towns will do. If you want to really experience the English countryside and small English towns with beautiful views, this is the place to go.
• Harry Potter Studio Tours: If you're a fan of the movies or the books, this is definitely worth it! it's a self guided tour, so you can take as long or short of time as needed.
• Portsmouth: this is a city I hadn't heard of before but I'm so glad I went! It used to be an old navy town, and now you can go explore old British Navy ships as well as see a once sunken ship that was one of the first naval ships in Britain.
• Brighton: worth it just for the pier and fun shops alone but also just a really cool city to explore with fun museums and historical sights.