Highs and Lows

Wednesday, October 28th – Tuesday, November 3rd:

Our time at Salomon’s was a much needed countryside retreat after having been on the go for so long. Let me share some of our highlights from our week there with you:

On our first day at Salomons we woke up bright and early to participate in a high ropes course as a group. Several of us were a bit whiny after breakfast and quite shy of enthusiastic as we dragged our feet out to the forest; suddenly multiple people had a fear of heights (though some legitimately did.) However, one we got suited up, had a few laughs looking at each other in harnesses, and gave it a go, it really wasn’t that bad. Personally, I was super impressed with myself! I thought the elements were going to be a lot more difficult than they turned out to be based on my previous experience in taking a ropes course in high school. However, it was really cool to see how I had grown since then, especially in my trust level of myself and other people. By the end of the morning I had done a couple of pole-climbing elements, repelled down a tower, and ridden a zip line!

Besides this first day, our time at Salomon’s was rather monotonous, but still enjoyable. We had class every morning after breakfast until lunch, except for on Sunday, with our afternoons and evenings free – save for a couple exceptions.

I think I can make a blanketing statement for the group when I say that we were very happy and thankful to have all of our meals provided for us again! This also hadn’t been the case since our home stays in Ireland about three weeks prior. Another blessing of being in England that we all enjoyed was the return of the electric tea kettles in our rooms accompanied with all necessary tea-making essentials including cookies! Dare I say we now expect tea in our rooms wherever we stay?

One of the great benefits of England Term in general came out while we stayed at Salomons – this being our ability to be a sort of learning community as we are living together and studying the same things. For example, since we were covering both ‘Othello’ and ‘Twelfth Night’, several of us spontaneously got together to read Shakespeare aloud and trade off parts. There really is nothing like reading aloud Shakespeare in the English countryside, while huddled inside with a cup tea as it pours rain outside the windows. That’s something I’ll always remember. Furthermore, I believe we got as close as it gets to actually having your professor do your homework for you. One evening most of us students all gathered together to hear Mark read aloud the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (arguably his favorite) in Anglo-Saxon, which was our reading assignment for the following day. It was highly more enjoyable to listen to than it would have been to stumble through on our own. (Thanks Mark!)

Though there are plenty of perks to living and studying together, there are also drawbacks such as the “England Term Plague” that developed out of no where. Our first day at Salomon’s when we were all supposed to show up for the ropes course, there were already several people who didn’t show; and it turned out they weren’t bluffing. Slowly but surely others started dropping like flies, contracting head colds, coughs, and sore throats galore. I don’t know if we ever had full attendance at any of our classes at Salomon’s, and many of us that were present provided very congested-sounding answers alongside plenty of coughing interruptions. I found myself fighting off a sore throat for a couple days that then turned into a cough, which got worse as my throat got better. A couple individuals went to the doctor and the rest of us just tried to sleep as much as possible. In the end, there was only one supposed case of swine flu (just in case you were wondering), plenty of germs left behind when we left, and some still taken with us.

On the upside of things we made the most of being able to celebrate Halloween together at Salomon’s, which turned into quite a fun party! There’s no doubt we’ve all found ways to create fun wherever we are on England Term. So despite several individuals feeling under the weather, we all decided to dress up for dinner that night. And I have to say I was blown away by the incredible creativity that was apparently unleashed – who knew we could come up with so many creative costumes only from the suitcases we had been living out of for the past 3 months! Our dinner party was attended by the “Grapes of Wrath” (Allison, Melissa K, Evie, & Erin G. creatively employing their abundance of purple clothing), a Russian spy (Anna W.), Aladdin (Zach), Jasmine (Rhiannon), Harry Potter (Carrie Carter), Draco Malfoy (Emily C.), ‘another Harry Potter character I don’t remember’ (Erin B.), a fashion victim (Alea), “Super Mom!” (Hannah), Emily Dickinson (Emily Wick-“inson”), Jesus (Joel), a “Bro” (Bryan), Tobias from Arrested Development (Dan), a Spanish dancer (Katy), a European (Kaari), a cat (Anna S.), Annie Taylor (Nelly Patterson), a menorah (Annie Taylor), and a girl from the 70s (me)! If you haven’t yet seen the fun photos I posted on facebook of all of our costumes, then I should tell you that I fro-ed my hair (the inspiration for my 70s style garb), which sparked many comments and interest among the group, including: “so do you just do this for every Halloween then?” which I found most hilarious because this was the first time. Apparently many people thought I should sport a fro on a more regular occasion. I’m still hemming and hawing at that idea; we’ll see if it grows on me. Anyway, the incredible costumes made our Halloween dinner a success! It was also followed by a viewing of a homemade Halloween movie, specially made by select England Termers earlier that day for our enjoyment. The evening culminated in a dance party, which was amusingly held in our classroom – for lack of the Underground in the BC. But who else can say they’ve held a dance party in their classroom? Only on England Term.

Finally, I should also mention that our time at Salomon’s was furthermore plagued – besides our literal sickness – by the angst of registration and figuring out scheduling for our interim and spring semesters. Of course you rarely hear people bragging aloud about their good experiences with scheduling, but the feelings of struggle and disappointment seemed to ring true for many people. Personally, this turned out to be a sort of low point for me in the semester as I began to realize that I had classes conflicting with each other and other priorities and aspirations for my spring semester. I tried to repeatedly pray about it, mull it over in my head, write out alternatives, give myself a pep talk, listen to God on the subject, and other attempted remedies, but for some reason it was still bugging me even as we left Salomon’s – at which point I was just hoping time would help me process.

P.S. One of the evenings we attended a play and small recital show at the in-house theatre at Salomon’s, which included mediocre actors and a sick Soprano – and that is about as much space and detail I’m allowing for this event on this blog. Haha.