Great Britain, Visited.

Almost to the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland

At the end of the first day of my study abroad, I laid down in a hostel bed in Scotland and wrote, dazedly, "My pictures cannot capture the beauty my eyes have seen." I feel the same now. I've started so many blog posts trying to summarize the trip. I don't know if my words can capture the beauty my eyes have seen, the hills my legs have climbed, and the animal poop my nose has smelled.  Am I being dramatic? Cliché? Possibly, probably. But sometimes life is wonderfully dramatic and magical and to be unreservedly gushy is to be truthful. Because this was a fairy-tale that was real.

Summiting Ben Lomond in Scotland

The mountains and hills of Great Britain made me feel like an Adventurer. Before the study abroad, I hiked occasionally. I knew how to relieve myself ( if ya know what I mean) in the wild. But I was a nervous, tentative outdoors woman. Heights, bugs, wild animals--all of those things terrified me. Fortunately, I confronted few bugs. Instead, I learned how to deal with snow, thick fog, sleet, vicious winds, drenching rain, waterfalls, rivers, bossy horses and sheep. And that horrible liquid manure spraying tractor thing.  Each hike, I combated my fear of falling to my doom, my utter exhaustion, and calf muscles that just couldn't go any farther. I hated every step uphill, and prayed for steadiness every step downhill. Because I and my travel amigos, are avid bookwooms, each hike felt like Lord of the Rings, Narnia, King Lear, or Jane Eyre. It was both awful and awe-full, and I loved it. 

Great Britain made me believe in magic and fairytales again.  Looking at the Edinburgh Castle, through the window of the Elephant House (a cafe that is birthplace of Harry Potter), riding the coaches that, like the Knight Bus, squeeze and maneuver themselves through the tiny and curvy roads and cars, made Harry Potter more real. Hiking through the wilder countryside of Wales in Brecon Beacon National Park,  and seeing a ruin of an old Castle, made me believe in Dragons. At Mary Arden's Tudor farm (Mother of Shakespeare), we listened in the rain to a

The kitchen maid, telling us about the fairies

Blacksmith (who, despite the ponytail, had a certain, attractive  charisma...) tell us how the Elizabethans believed that blacksmiths performed a type of sorcery in the trade as he forged a metal dragon. In the kitchens at the Arden farm, the kitchen maids told us how they believed in fairies and would make the fairy of the hearth a fairy-sized dinner from whatever they were cooking and give her a thimble of water and a cloth so that she could wash herself afterwards. All because the fairy controlled the fire. It made me want to write fiction again!

 My experiences in Great Britain proved to me the importance of applied and active learning. I went on the best study abroad. I freaking went to Shakespeare's plays at the Globe Theater in London, had class about Wordsworth's poem, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" laying in the grass and making daisy chains at Tintern Abbey, and saw the impact of death in the Brontë sisters' lives by standing in their backyard--a graveyard crammed full of over 4,000 corpses. I love the introspective aspect of reading--how everyone has their own unique relationship to books and authors because of their freedom to interpret and create it according to their imagination and experiences. But, I found that breaking books out of the mind and confronting the reality of it (the authors life, the physical place, the historical background), makes those words on a page mean more. Like, a teacher can lecture about the historical background, list autobiographical facts in classroom via a slideshow with pictures, but where is the excitement in learning by that? So here's the dilemma:

On the ground of Tintern Abbey, with my daisy chain

When I teach Jane Eyre in high school, I probably can't take my students on field trip to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, England.  But maybe I could take them to a local graveyard (sounds creepy, I know), and explain to them how this is what the Brontë sisters would have seen each time they looked out of their bedroom windows, and how the average age of death in Haworth was 25, so burials happened in their backyard each day. We could walk through it, read the chapter of Helen's death, and have them take 5 minutes to write down how they think she presents death, and then discuss it. When we read Wordsworth's poems on nature, we could go on a nature walk around the school and then read them aloud outside in one of the green spaces. When we read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I could have them interview their parents or another teacher about how 911 impacted them. I can team up with the drama teacher if he decides to do a Shakespeare play and have him discuss with my class  how he interprets Shakespeare on the stage, get him to read a monologue from it, and then take all my classes to the dress rehearsal of it at the end. Because Shakespeare is wonderful in text, but ah-mazing outloud and on stage.

Now that I'm back home, I miss my travel compadres and the green-green hills and wild daisies, but I will see them all again. (Though it will probably be a couple years before I go back to fair England).