Scotland!

Sara and I breathlessly made it onto the train bound for Edinburgh a few minutes before it pulled out of King’s Cross station. As we took our seats, and the announcer bellowed out last call, Sara and I high-fived each other and prepared for the 4.5-hour ride to Scotland.

We had a few hours before check-in when we got to Scotland, so we went to the Edinburgh Museum and marveled at all the men in kilts on the way there. There was even one playing the bagpipes on a street corner. We heard a lot of broad Scottish accents and saw some really red hair- so many aggressively Scottish people.

We ended up going to Costa and chatting with the barista there. He had (obviously) lived in Scotland all his life and was asking us what we were doing in Edinburgh.

Me: “Well, we’re studying abroad in London right now but we’re just here for the weekend.”

Sara: “And we’re from America, obviously.”

Him: “Ah weel ee thought tha’ because ye were either frim America or Canada, but it’s great yee came tee Scotland. Any particular places yee looking for?”

Me: (very fast and excitedly) “The coffee shop where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter.”

Him: “JK Rowling, yee say? Ah, she was here.”

Me: (gapes)

Him: “Ya, just over there by the window table. Interview or sometheen, few months back.”

Me: (stares and mouths wordlessly while hitting Sara on the arm)

Him: (amused) “She drinks a mediem coffee if yee interested.”

Me: (squeaks)

Luckily, Sara and I managed to meet some people during breakfast and one of them looked up the café on his blackberry for me. It was the called the Elephant House, and wasn’t too far from our Hostel- which was great, by the way. Our roommates were two lovely girls, one who lived in England and one from Japan who was studying abroad for a year in England. They were our age but had already finished university. We spent quite a lot of time passing around a carton of digestive biscuits and comparing and contrasting English and American life in profound emotional and cultural depth:

Jess: Well crisps to you in America are… chips, right?

Me: Yes, and you all call fries chips in England.

Imy: Do you have different names for the loos as well? Isn’t it a… a…

Sara: Bathroom, but you all also call them toilets.

Jess: When I visit New York, I see so many different names for cakes!

Me: Well anything sweet to you all is called a cake here but in America we have cupcakes and brownies and cookies…

Imy: Oh, those are called biscuits here. (waves carton of digestive biscuits)

Jess: What about boys in America? Are they like the ones over here?

Anyway, when Sara and I found the Elephant House, I had a fit. Sara had to pull me back from the street edge so I wouldn’t go dodging around the buses and taxis barreling their way down the (wrong side of the) roads. I was so excited that I kept exclaiming, “I’m so excited!” at an increasing volume and speed until I was squeaking incoherently while pointing ecstatically at the sign outside the shop, which read, “The Elephant House: The Birthplace of Harry Potter.”

Sara and I ordered and then got the last available table in the shop. It’s clearly a popular place and just as clearly God wanted us there (we got the last table!). I got a stack of napkins and Sara and I began scribbling on them, just like JK Rowling did so many years ago. I wrote the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book (because I possibly had it memorized) on a napkin and even got to pin it up on their bulletin board! Amazing.

Sara went to the bathroom and encouraged me to check it out and to bring my camera. I was in awe. On the walls, countless people had written about Harry Potter. Some had written quotes from the books, either funny (“Go, go Gryffindor!”) or profound (“It is our choices, Harry, far more than our abilities, that show what we truly are.”) Others had written personal messages to JK Rowling. My favorite was, “Thank you, JK Rowling, for my childhood.” Then I wrote, “To JK Rowling, the author of my childhood: thank you for the wonderment of a new world.” I got all teary-eyed and had to leave, but not before I took a picture of the Harry Potter toilet. What an awesome coffee shop. I also made Sara go there with me on Sunday before we left, because I just had to go there again.

Monday: horrible boat tour to Greenwich (radio-recorded tour and discussions of utterly random things, such as Jack the Ripper, with Adam and Tahn), after which the Janes bid us take off on our own and see the amazing sights. They suggested the Royal Observatory, the Prime Meridian line, and several museums. So Sara and I, being the model students that we are, went off and shopped for a few hours, played around in the Astronomy Center (“let me have a turn at making the stars explode!”) along with several class groups of small children, and then got ice cream.

It turns out that Jennie and Amanda went to the same shop we went to and we all ended up looking similarly great for the play that night: The Holy Rosenbergs, which was excellent. It was about a Jewish family on the eve of their son/brother’s funeral (he died fighting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza), and they have to deal with the fact that their family business is ending, the other son/brother is a complete failure, and their daughter/sister is investigating the dead brother for war crimes. Very real and touching with family drama and everything. (I had to write a review of it and I promise you it was more articulate than that last sentence :))

Another play on Wednesday, called War Horse. I cried. And gasped and yelled and laughed along with everyone else in the audience. No wonder it won so many awards. If you can create a mechanical, life-sized horse that can be ridden by a person around the stage and act like a real horse to the point where you forget it’s not… then you’re pretty much amazing. Although the sounds for the horses weren’t that great; they should have had me do them. Occupation found.

Excursion to Oxford on Thursday, upon which all us dedicated Hokies discussed how difficult it would be to transfer there. We had a self-confessed crazy (or “mad” as they say here) tour guide, who explained to our bewildered group that we might “see some students getting pelted with utterly awful things but don’t be alarmed! They’re just finishing their exams and that’s how they congratulate one another.” We didn’t necessarily believe her until we watched one girl shake up a bottle of champagne and, with a wicked grin, spray the entire thing on a fellow student who was already covered head to toe in silly string. “You made it!” she cried in a strong English accent while the now-dripping boy grinned sheepishly and we snapped furtive pictures.

Internship all day on Friday. I’ve learned more of the student’s names, but only the ones that constantly get in trouble; the teacher’s always yelling at them, so hearing their names called out in an angry accent twelve times an hour really helps memorization.

Today (Saturday), Sara and I went to Greenwich and hit up a few shops while browsing through a market that had set up in the middle of the square. We went to different stands and ended up in the food section. We each bought a cupcake and munched on them while walking through Greenwich. But then all the icing fell off of mine in a messy, pink splat onto the sidewalk. I stood there for a few moments, looking sadly down at the ground and then back to my now ruined cupcake. Sara told me I looked like a small child whose ice cream had fallen off its cone. Nice to know I’ve matured over the years.

Also, there’s a girl here (Jenna) who’s even more experienced than I am at horseback riding, and she, another girl (Elizabeth), and I are seeing if we can somehow ride in London. And Jennie and I are planning on going back to the Jane Austen museum (!) next Sunday and having tea with Mr. Darcy (!!!).

All in all, things are going well here. Despite the indecisive weather, 3 pound cups of fruit, and absurdly large amounts of tea, London is still pretty enjoyable.

Also, I went on an amazing run in Hyde Park the other day. I looked up at the sky shooting down thick, golden lines of light and thought: you can find God in every country of this world, in every sky.

Love you all!! :)

Scotland was beautifullllll!

 Told ya

More proof :)

"I'M SO EXCITED!"

 Me, dying to get inside.

Inside The Elephant House.

Enjoying over-sugared coffee in THE BIRTHPLACE OF HARRY POTTER.

I know, I know, I was surprised too!

Odes to JK Rowling.

The napkins!

What I wrote is above the 3 line, dark black writing in the middle and to the right of the "Harry!" under the "RIP Gandolf."

My napkin on The Elephant House board! "Mr. and Mrs. Durlsey of Number Four Privet Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd except to be involved with anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense." -The first paragraph of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, written on napkins, as JK Rowling did so many years ago in the Elephant House.  (And a Harry Potter elephant asking, "I'm a wizard?")

Sketchy, blurred picture of kilted man in Scotland. I just had to take it!

 Adam and I on the boat tour to Greenwich.

 Sara and I didn't want to pay to go to the Prime Meridian so we estimated where it was.

Our fantastic, eccentric Oxford tour guide. 

Oxford's motto: "God is our light."

Ridiculously beautiful school. But for the tuition they charge they should have constant rainbows and leprechauns running around and handing out random pots of gold to all the students. 

Right before the champagne. But you can see the silly string!