Ah!

So to be honest I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. I feel like I’ve been here a month and it’s only been 10 days, which speaks to the amount of things we’ve been doing, I guess. Let me catch you up briefly…

Monday we traveled from Edinburgh, Scotland, via Abbottsford, to Lindisfarne, England. The bus was really smelly and not so clean, but other than that the day went well.

Informational Note: Abbottsford is the home of Sir Walter Scott, one of the infamous writers in Scottish history known for his poetry and anonymously written Waverly novels. We stopped here to take a tour the house, which ended up being one of the most marvelous museum-type tours I have ever been on in my life. The robust Scottish man who guided us through the home was contagiously enthusiastic about Sir Walter Scott (who I didn’t previously know much about to be honest), seeming to spill out story after story about every individual artifact held in the house; and he assured us that our tour was only about 5% of what was actually in the house/his brain. Haha!

In case you were wondering: The house was well kept, very homey, and proved Scott to be quite an avid collector of many historically significance things, making his home a converging point of several events/figures in European History. For example, we saw a small, hand-held cross that had belonged to Mary Queen of Scots and is supposedly the same cross she clasped in her hand as she was beheaded. There was also a notebook having belonged to Napoleon, no kidding!

Moving right along…

We stayed in Lindisfarne that night, which is also called Holy Island. So technically we were on an island in the North Sea, which is “connected” to England via a causeway. We learned a lot about Celtic Christianity here including figures such as St. Cuthbert, St. Aiden, and others. For the sake of time I won’t go into that now, but it was a very quaint town and reminded me minorly of the island of Wyk auf Fohr (also in the North Sea, but a part of Germany) that I visited with Bethel Choir in June; but Fohr was larger and more touristy.

On from Lindisfarne, we traveled to Durham, England for one night, staying at St. John’s College. We toured the Durham Cathedral while we were there and it was very magnificent. Here we also continued (and ended) our discussion of Celtic Christianity as we saw the tombs of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede (you know you’re an English nerd when you know who that is).

Yesterday (Wednesday), we traveled across England towards the west coast (we had been on the east) to the Lake District which is fabulously beautiful. I would describe it as an English “Ozarks”, if you’ve ever been to Missouri and know what I’m talking about. I’m enjoying the views. We’re staying in a conference center and are sharing a kitchen; the first night we had a group meal of spaghetti!

Today we went to visit Wordsworth’s house. He’s one of those English dudes who writes neat poetry in case you were wondering. We saw Dove Cottage where he lived for a while and also heard a lecture on some of his writings and saw a few original manuscripts which were really cool. The evening a group of girls and I went out for dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays, so that was fun. Then, my roommate Carrie and I have been doing laundry all night and now have wet clothes strewn about our room because the dryer doesn’t work. Go figure. Haha.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to have this outdoor adventure day and it’s supposed to rain like no other, so I hear. (Oh, goody.) We’ll see how that goes.

Whew! Needless to say I’ve been super busy – hence the overwhelmed feeling. I need more processing time and down time (and homework time!) than I’m getting…(maybe I’ll mention that to my professor). Therefore, it’s time to go to bed. Miss you all. It’s beautiful here; you’d love it.