Greetings from India,
It’s been a long time
since my last post, and there’s so much to say. However, after the fact
descriptions tend to be like leftover food: only good for so long. And so, I am
not going to go into the usual detail with everything, particularly those
things that we experienced in London. It was just too long ago, and I don’t
want to spend hours and hours on this. I’d like to make it clear that this is
in no way because I didn't enjoy London; I did. It was probably one of the best
parts of our trip. So I’ll give a brief recap.
Our time is London was
absolutely wonderful, it really was. Our house was great, we had the cutest cat
in the world, and we got to hang out with Liesl’s awesome family. We went on a
trip to Wales to retrieve Liesl’s guitar, and stayed in a guest house almost on
the beach. We spent much of our time in Wales exploring old castles. I went
properly inside a castle for the first time. We also went on a lovely and
adventurous hike along a murky brown river surrounded by sort of tropical
looking plants. We tried to meet up with our friend Jon in Bristol—you may
remember him from our camping night in Castle Park in Bristol—but, sadly, it
didn’t work out.
We did numerous fun
things in London, including seeing two musicals, Rock of Ages, which was fun,
and Billy Elliot, which was really good. We went to the Tower of London, and
went inside this time, seeing the priceless crown jewels, which are quite
exquisite. The royal family owns them. It’s crazy how excessively rich the
monarchy is, really.
Liesl and I had not let
go of our desire to go ice skating, so we went again to the Tower and went
skating in the seasonal ice rink there. It’s in the place where the moat used to be, which was really cool. It was weird skating around, spinning in a
circle only to find myself facing a huge castle. I kept forgetting it was
there.
We went out to eat a lot,
which was really nice. Oh, and we went on a tour of the Old Globe, a recreation
of Shakespeare’s Globe, which was located somewhere nearby, and burned down
during a play. They fired a cannon and, what do you know, the flammable roof
caught fire and the wooden structure burned. We learned a lot of interesting
things about the Globe, like how people used to say they were going to “hear a
play” instead of see one. This is because plays used to be more about the
language, so hearing the lines was enough. Because of this, sets were not very
important, and were not frequently used.
New Year’s in London
was great. First of all, we cleared out our backpacks of all of the unnecessary things that we had with us, stuff that we
no longer needed, and stuff that we hadn't used and wouldn't need. It was a
beautiful experience, let me tell you. Liesl’s pack was so light, it was almost
comfortable to carry. Mine was heavier, because I would be abroad longer, but
it was still much lighter. Liesl cut my mohawk off, so I have short hair now. For the rest of the evening we just hung out at
home, and watched some comedy on the telly until the fireworks starting. Let me
tell you—and this is from the perspective of someone that has seen at least 18 firework displays in her life,
every Independence Day—you have not seen fireworks if you haven’t seen these.
It’s a great display, it’s so cool. Fireworks were actually kind of boring to
me before this. It was really cool too, because we could sort of see them
outside, too, though they were mostly obscured by trees. They were fired
off/around the Eye of London, which is this giant ferris wheel near Parliament,
Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey.
It was so wonderful to
spend time with the Oestreichers, and they took us to so many awesome places,
we got to do many things that we wouldn't have been able to do without them. So
Oestreicher family, thank you so, so very much for a great Christmas and a
spectacular time in London.
I was nervous about
India: the different culture, the fact that it’s a developing country, so
different from the western world, the heat. But shortly before we left London,
I did start to get very excited. Liesl was very excited for this all along,
though she was worried about spicy food. I knew that the community we would be
living in was all vegan, and didn’t allow drugs or alcohol, which was quite a
relief for me. I’d never spent much time around people drinking large
quantities before this trip, and it’s not an experience that I particularly
enjoy. And while being a vegan in London is no problem, the ignorance about
vegetarianism in Ireland was tiresome. Both Liesl and I were happily
anticipating finally actually getting down to some serious volunteer work.
Our flight was at 6 a.m.,
and the family that lived in our London house was coming home late the night
before. So we hung out at the house and got our stuff all packed up and watched
a movie. I can’t emphasize enough how much I love being in London, and how
totally comfortable I was living in whoever’s house we were in. It honestly
felt like home, and I was sad to leave it.
Next up: India
Cheers,
Stephanie
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