At 11am on the dot, most of the graduate students bolted to the front door, excited about the prospect of Father Christmas (that’s what they call Santa here in England) arriving.  We joined hordes of excited schoolchildren from a local primary school at the entrance of the college.  They were just as giddy and energetic about the whole thing as the supposed adults standing behind them.

And then, he appeared.  The kiddies started jumping up and down and yelling “It’s FATHER CHRISTMAS!” and “Look, he’s got REINDEER!!!!”

Indeed he did.

Unfortunately, Rudolph had a little too much mulled wine on the way there and was arrested for flying under the influence.

What are YOU looking at, buddy?

Santa had to put on his lawyer hat and do some smooth talking to get him out of that one, let me tell you.

After the kids lined up for their photo op with Santa and his reindeer, we went inside for some mulled wine (adults) and neon yellow festive beverages (kids), as well as a bunch of freshly baked mince pies.

The kids then sang carols and Santa handed out presents underneath the Christmas tree.  Pretty adorable, no?

(Sarah, the above paragraph should, in your case, read “All of the students at Wellesley made excellent use of their reading period study time, wrote 12 drafts of all of their papers, and never, ever watched an entire season of 30 Rock in less than 24 hours during that time.”  Ahem.)

When I entered grad school, I figured that as someone who was (slightly) older and (somewhat) wiser, I’d be totally rocking finals season.  Procrastination?  Pshhht!  What’s that?

Right now is, for lack of a better word, what I’d call finals season around here.  However, there are 3 terms in a year, so we get an extra finals season.  Finals: Buy 2 get 1 free!!!  Admittedly, things are a little more low key – I only have to write 2,500 words, do a 20 minute presentation, finish up all of my practical work, and take a chemistry quiz.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not procrastinating.

Right now, for instance, I should be writing about the roles of a book conservator…or typing up my condition reports…or finishing a couple of book models…or reattaching the boards on one of the books I’m conserving…or studying for the chemistry quiz next week because I stupidly booked tickets to see the Messiah in London the night before I’m supposed to take it and I don’t actually live all that near London, as it turns out.  Instead, I’m writing a blog post, knitting like crazy, and listening to music.  Ironically, the song I’m listening to right now features the words “I will be the picture of discipline, never minding what state I’m in.”  Mmm…yeah.  About that.

And yet, the experience is different.  For one thing, in college I got the whole week off to study and write papers during reading period.  In grad school, I don’t.  I’m in the workshop from 9am-8pm on many days.  Any writing happens outside of those hours.  Despite having less time, I’m getting more done.  I’m actually being pretty efficient, and I’m only procrastinating a little in comparison to my college days.

I’m not sure what this says about me other than the fact that I shouldn’t be given free time when I have lots of work to do.  Idle hands are the devil’s work and all that.  It just so happens that I do all of my best work when I only have time to get a specific project done without any extra mucking about.

Take, for example that 2,500 word essay I was talking about earlier.  I wrote most of this post on Tuesday when I still had plenty of time to get the essay done and was feeling pretty confident that I could type the remaining 1,800 words in the course of three evenings.

That is, until other schoolwork obligations intervened and I found myself sitting here at 6pm this evening with another 1,800 words left to go.  Did I mention the paper’s due tomorrow?

And so, faced with a short amount of time, I proceeded to type 3,000 words* in the space of 3 hours. Why?  BECAUSE I’M AN ACADEMIC ROCKSTAR, THAT’S WHY.  Or, you know, just really good at the whole procrastination thing.

*Yeah, 700 + 3,000 =/= 2,500.  I’ve always been a bit, shall we say, verbose.  Oh well.

This post was brought to you by the girl who packed for her move to a different country 15 minutes before she left for the airport.

Just kidding.

I didn’t take the train, my uncle drove me.

But I totally go to Hogwarts:

Well, you know what I mean.  The place where I attend grad school is an English country estate (6,000 acres!) with a very fancy main building – it’s rather castle-like with all of the archways, turrets, and crenelated walls.

Here’s a picture of the dorm/house where I live:

It doesn’t look like much, until you realize that this is the view from my window:

Obviously, all of these pictures were taken back when we had things like flowers, apples, and sunshine.  Now, it’s November.  It’s still just as green, but it’s now cloudy or raining most of the time and all of the apples have been picked.  I do miss the apples – it was so nice to be able to walk out my front door and eat one of them whenever I wanted!

And, because it’s England, we have things like croquet…

…and morris dancers…

…and sheep.  Lots and lots of sheep.  I cannot tell you how many sheep there are around here.  Actually, I can tell you.  According to the farmers on the estate, there are upwards of 1,000 sheep in this particular flock.  They are particularly fond of sneaking under the fence in the ha-ha and grazing on the front lawn of the college.

There are also pheasants, albeit less of them now that hunting season’s in full swing.

So, there you have it!  After 2 months of being here, I finally managed to post some pictures of where I live and study.

After several weeks, I started to notice a trend.  As soon as anything flying-related landed in the house, my dad would grab it and read it from cover to cover.  Turns out, his brother (my uncle Bill) had just gotten his pilot’s license and my dad had subsequently developed the urge to also take to the skies.  When a Groupon for a flying lesson came up, I quickly bought two – one for me, and one for a Father’s Day present for my dad.

We left it a little late to book it – after scheduling it for 5 days before my departure, the flying lesson was postponed no less than twice due to inclement weather.  Finally, one very early Sunday morning, we were good to go.

After a bunch of pre-flight checks, we hopped into the plane and taxied onto the runway.  My dad flew the first leg of the journey, from Norwood, Massachusetts to Somewhere Random, Rhode Island while I spent my time snapping photos and admiring the scenery:

After about half an hour, we landed and swapped places.  My dad made it look super easy, but I definitely struggled with the whole taxiing thing.  I kept on almost crashing the plane into the grass instead of keeping it safely in the middle of the tarmac.

My favorite part was liftoff – I mean, here I was, driving an unbelievably heavy and expensive hunk of metal, when all of a sudden I was no longer touching the ground.  So utterly cool.  I couldn’t quite believe that I was being allowed to fly an actual airplane with little or no assistance from someone else.  I was really surprised at how much I was allowed to do – takeoff, landing, and random flying around with a couple of neat little turns thrown in.  The flight instructor helped a bit for the tricky bits, but most of it was me flying solo.  Pretty neat!

It was so cool.  Unbelievably cool, in fact.  It was kind of exactly like driving a car, only 100% more awesome.  I kept on turning to my dad with a big old grin on my face and saying “OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING!!!!!”

The week after I arrived in England, I also got the chance to fly.  My Uncle Bill, as I mentioned, has a recreational pilot’s license and occasionally rents a Cessna from a nearby airport so that he can toodle around in the very congested airways of England. He lives near London (surrounded by many large and small airports), so trust me when I say that flying a plane around there is a bit like trying to elbow your way through Walmart on Black Friday.  Pilots in other airplanes kept on radio-ing in to our headsets and telling us to Get. Out. Of. Their. Territory. NOW.

It was very fun, despite the severe turbulence which made flying this little plane a bit like trying to ride a yo-yo.

As I stood in the cold, grey courtyard, I thought of my great grandfather who fought in World War I.  He came back from the front, yes, but he struggled with the after-affects of injuries from the war for the rest of his life.  I thought, too, of my grandma who lived through both WWI and WWII, who lived close enough to London that stray bombs blew out her windows during the London blitzes.  And then, I thought of the youth who still march off to war today, only to come back emotionally and/or physically broken, if they come back at all.  WWI was initially referred to as “the war to end war,” yet there is still fighting in the world (albeit different conflicts) nearly 100 years later.

And so, on this day, as on so many other days, I hope for peace.  Idealistic?  Yes.  Unrealistic?  Possibly, but don’t you think we deserve to try?

Dona nobis pacem.

When he opened up the box of eggs, I noticed that they all had blue shells.  In America, they’d come from Auracana chickens, but here they were from Cotswold Legbars.  Expecting them to be the same as Auracana eggs, I wasn’t paying much attention when my uncle cracked the eggs open.  When, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the yolks were BRIGHT ORANGE, I let out an almighty yell.

See? Orange! The pictures don't really do it justice, though...

“What?” said my uncle in an all-too-innocent tone.  “Aren’t your egg yolks orange too?” knowing full well that orange yolks aren’t standard issue in America OR England.

The orange doesn't really show up here, so you'll have to take my word for it - I'd added rather a lot of creme fraiche to the eggs before I scrambled them...

When the egg and potato omelet was done cooking, it was orange rather than the standard yellow that I’m used to.  I was tickled pink to be eating something so familiar and yet so utterly different.  Despite the fact that I was at my uncle’s house for nearly a week, the novelty didn’t wear off.  I ate many, many eggs during that time.

In America, you probably wouldn’t be able to find this type of egg at your average supermarket – in fact, you’d have to go to Whole Foods and spend a bunch of money for a half dozen Auracana eggs.  Here, you can get them in many of the large grocery stores.  That’s not to say that our grocery system is any better or worse (I actually had to think about whether I meant England or America when I said “our” – it’s America…for now), but merely an interesting observation.

I arrived in England after an extraordinarily stressful 24 hours.  I didn’t quite manage to get everything packed into boxes from my old room, so by the time I gave up trying I was due to leave for the airport in 15 minutes.  Try packing enough for an entire year into just 2 suitcases in only 15 minutes while simultaneously trying to check in via your malfunctioning computer.  I guarantee that you will also have a nervous breakdown.

At the airport, I had to deal with getting patted down (I guess I could have avoided it, but I hate the idea of those full body scanners, so I requested the alternate screening).  By the time I got on the plane, I was exhausted and ready to just zone out with the in-flight entertainment.  I specifically chose Virgin Atlantic because of their superior selection of shows and games, but (just my luck!) my screen was broken.  Plus the dude next to me kept on talking every time I was about to drift off to sleep.

Fortunately, when I got to Heathrow my uncle was waiting to pick me up – SO nice, considering how dreadfully godawful London traffic can be and the hideously expensive price of petrol (sidebar: I remember complaining about the cost of gas in America when it hit $3.75 a gallon – here, it’s more like $11 dollars a gallon.  OY).  I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house for the next week, then went down to school where I’ve been ever since.

It’s rather hard to believe that I’ve been in England for more than a month – time has just flown past.  I’m starting to adopt the lingo (oh boy, do I ever have some funny stories about that for you) and I’m finally starting to realize that I can’t spend pounds like they’re dollars (considering that they’re nearly double the price.  Yeowch!).  It no longer feels “foreign” to be here, and most of the time I don’t feel like a foreigner either – when I do, it’s usually for new experiences like topping up my mobile or dealing with the bureaucracy at the National Insurance office.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll try and post more about the specifics of how I spent the past month, complete with pictures.  More soon!

I expect the next couple of weeks to be quite busy, what with sorting out logistics and starting school again, so the blogging will be quite light or nonexistent for a little while.  I promise to start writing again soon, but for now I’m taking a necessary hiatus until I have more time

Don’t worry, I’ll be back within a few weeks!  I can’t wait to tell you all about the Cotswold Legbar eggs…

Anyway, if you feel so inclined, you can check out the deal here.  The deal is only good until 11am tomorrow EST, so don’t dilly dally   I’m not being sponsored in any way, though in the interest of full disclosure I will admit that if enough people follow the above link and purchase the deal, I will get the deal for free – and so can you, if you do the same thing!

When the school dean walked into my classroom, I didn’t think anything odd was happening.  I figured that she probably needed to give a message to the teacher.  Instead, she turned to the class.  “Two planes have flown into the World Trade Center in New York City.”  Thinking back, I wonder if I’m forgetting the part where she privately told the physics teacher first.  It’s hard to believe that she’d just drop a bombshell like that in front of a teacher and her students without giving the teacher time to compose herself.

I entirely failed to grasp the enormity of the situation initially.  Possibly I was numb, in denial, or both.  Oh, an accident, I thought.  It will be ok.  I’m sure they’ll rescue everyone. 

The Dean went on to explain that the planes had taken off from Logan Airport, less than 5 miles away from our school.  “Rumors have been going around that more planes are going to attack local schools.  I am here to tell you that this not true.  You have nothing to worry about.”  Actually, we hadn’t heard those rumors, but thanks for planting the suggestion in our heads.  At that point, I started to worry.

My next class was English.  The teacher herded us into the history classroom next door (which would have been our next class anyway, thanks to block scheduling), and sat us in front of the tv.  We spent the next two hours watching footage of the towers falling down, over and over and over.  It was like a horrific version of Groundhog Day.  The planes flew into the towers and billowing flames erupted forth from clouds of smoke.  The towers crumbled and fell.  People screamed in terror in the streets, fleeing from the unthinkable carnage.  After every commercial break, the towers stood whole and unscathed again, awaiting their pre-ordained doom.

I have no doubt that the teachers were trying to make the best of a bad situation.  What adult could tear themselves away from the coverage?  Nobody knew what was going on, everyone was terrified.  The news was the only way of keeping track of the unfolding horrors.  But to subject the children in class to hours and hours of these monstrous images?  It was certainly a cruelty.  I came from that classroom completely traumatized and in a state of utter panic.

I can never thank my Italian teacher enough for doing the right thing.  As jittery and upset as she must have been, she stayed calm.  Instead of making our class even more wrought up with yet another hour of news coverage, she plowed ahead with her lesson.  Perhaps Italian verbs weren’t the most important thing happening on that day, but to us they indicated that yes, life would go on, and yes, there would be a future.  A future with weekly pop quizzes.

They said that there weren’t supposed to be any planes in the sky.  None at all.  Which is why a distant buzzing outside my classroom caught my attention.  My Italian classroom was on the 5th floor, the highest one in my school.  As the buzzing sound grew nearer, I realized that it was a plane.  A low-flying one, at that.  When it flew directly over the top of my classroom, so close that the roar of the engines was deafening, kids started screaming, shaking, and crying.  Some hid under their desks.  I later found out that it was probably a fighter jet patrolling the skies, but at the time I genuinely thought we were going to be utterly wiped out.

The school changed drastically over the next few months.  Suddenly, the Pledge of Allegiance (never before used in our school) became mandatory.  A flag brigade came around and made sure that there was a flag in each classroom (mostly, there weren’t).  A girl suddenly found herself to be an unwilling celebrity of sorts after she lost both her father and her uncle in the planes.  Gradually, things went back to normal, but it was a new and uneasy version of the status quo.

A little over a year later, there began to be talk of war in Iraq.  The one in Afghanistan had already been going on for quite some time.  Upset at the idea of yet more violence in the world, I helped organize a walk out from my high school, an act that was so successful that an estimated 500-1,000 students participated.  Suspensions were threatened, but when faced with having to nearly shut down the high school due to the number that would have to be doled out, the administration caved and nobody was punished.  I marched through the streets and into the Harvard Yard rally, screaming “Dick, Cheney, and Rumsfeld can fight this war alone!  We support the troops – that’s why we want them home!” filled with the righteousness, rebelliousness, and passion of youth.

The extreme racism and bigotry towards Middle Eastern countries and the Muslim faith in the post 9/11 world was and is shocking and horrible.  As any Muslim person will tell you, Islam means “peace.”  To judge an entire religion by the actions of a very small, extremist group is inaccurate and wrong, yet so many people justify the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because of these erroneous assumptions.

Two years after September 11 happened, members of my acting class were recruited to help in a terrorism-readiness exercise.  Children were painted with fake, gory wounds and given symptom cards.  EMT’s and ambulances converged on our location, the staged site of a pretend biological warfare attack.  We stumbled out of the building, were corralled by men wearing large, white hazmat suits.  Some of us were forced to run through decontamination showers, though we were allowed to skip it if we asked because we were young and it was cold.

I was strapped into a gurney and fitted with an oxygen mask.  The paramedic chatted with me in the back of the ambulance about school, then noted my pretend symptoms.  There were so many ambulances called to the scene that they had to distribute them across 5 hospitals in several cities.  Nevertheless, when 6 ambulances came to a screeching halt outside of one local ER, a woman outside fell to her knees and started crying.  She knew nothing about the staged exercise, but instantly assumed that terrorists had struck again.  That’s when I knew how much our world had changed.  We now assume that terrorism lurks around every corner, knowing that it can happen.  That it has happened.

And so, 10 years later, I write.  This morning, I paused to remember  the thousands whose lives were unfairly, tragically, and horrifically cut short by hate.  And then I held another moment of silence for the thousands more whose lives were unnecessarily cut short in Iraq and Afghanistan, the soldiers and civilians who were victims of an angry, unending war.  A war which sprung from America’s own hate.  As Mahatma Gandhi so wisely stated “an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”  When will it stop?  Will it ever?

I wonder how my life would have been different had September 11th never happened.  I try hard to picture a more carefree world, one in which I didn’t spend my teen years coming to terms with an incredibly devastating terrorist attack or protesting multiple fruitless wars or helping with anti-terrorism training activities.  One in which an unattended package on the bus meant that Mr. Jones had forgotten to pick up his Amazon box when he got off at Main Street.  One in which thousands of families were whole and complete, instead of being forever separated by the ultimate tragedy.  A world marked, not by hatred, but by love.  Perhaps it is naive of me, but I think that it is possible to someday have this kind of world again.  The option is ours, but only if we choose to pursue it.

I salute you.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not,
but there is much that while I cannot give,
you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.

And so at this [time],
I greet you, with the prayer that for you,
now and forever,
the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

~Fra Giovanni, 1513

It is important to remember and honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks, but it is also crucial to avoid being consumed by hatred as a result of that fateful day.  Until we learn to love again, we cannot begin to truly rebuild a more peaceful, loving world.

Take love.