St. Ives, Shooting Stars, Bertrand Russell, and Fond Farewells

Before I go any further, I should take this opportunity to say that I am home safe and sound, typing this post from my room in New Jersey. It has been a fantastic experience and I am both bewildered and sad that it has ended so quickly. This will be my last 'chronological' post in the sense that this will be the last post that outlines where I went, what I saw, and what I did in the order that I went, saw, and did it. However, in the coming days/weeks, there will be several more anecdotal posts that will focus on random things I found interesting about England, i.e. the gardens, street signs, pubs, etc. The last post will be a reflection piece. So, not surprisingly, when you see a post titled, 'Reflections,' that means that'll be the last you'll be hearing from me...at least until I go someplace awesome again, which I really hope will be sooner rather than later. Now, without further ado, I shall regale you with tales of what happened last week when I was still in England.

Sign for the Old Fire House

I was a social butterfly and went to the Old Firehouse on both Monday and Tuesday with some friends. On both nights I had the wonderful opportunity to try toffee cider, which is absolutely delicious and very much what I had always imagined butterbeer to taste like in Harry Potter. (Incidentally, I have tasted the 'butterbeer' they serve in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Orlando's Universal Studios and I don't think it tasted at all like what I imagined.) I also discovered that the Firehouse serves some of the best pizza known to man (their Hawaiian is particularly tasty). Like On the Waterfront, their pizza comes out in a wicker basket. Unlike On the Waterfront, their pizza is square. Squares are a nice, novel shape for a pizza, I think. I'm still a bit jet lagged, in case you couldn't tell.

There was a mini-meteor shower on Monday night that we witnessed on our way back from the pub and I saw somewhere between 8-10 shooting stars, which is about 8-10 more shooting stars than I had ever seen before in my life, making this quite an exciting event for me. On a clear night, you can see more stars in Exeter than you can see in most parts of New Jersey, so even when there was a lull in the shooting star show, it was still mesmerizing to look up at the sky. We stayed out so late stargazing that Exeter's campus police showed up to make sure everything was okay!

The village of St. Ives

On Wednesday, we took our last day trip to the Cornish village of St. Ives. This was perhaps my favourite day trip of all. St. Ives is located right on the coast and its shimmering clear waters are at once turquoise, sapphire, and aquamarine. The town is known for its art galleries and workshops and we made sure to nip into a few of those!

I had my last Cornish pasty in St. Ives at the Yellow Canary Cafe before heading off to the pier with my friends to take a boat trip to Seal Island.

Seal Island is a small rocky outcrop a few miles out to sea, well within the view of the jagged Cornish coastline. It is named for the small population of Grey Atlantic Seals that live there. They often sun themselves on the rocks, but when we saw them they were mostly swimming around in the water.

A seal!

As nice as the seal viewing was at Seal Island, we actually got our best view of a seal when we returned the pier. This particular seal was extraordinarily friendly. He or she would swim up to passing boats, passing kayaks, passing swimmers...basically anything remotely interesting-looking that passed by. Even though this was awesome for tourists like ourselves, I am a bit worried about this seal's future and I hope that most people are smart enough to simply take photos and otherwise leave the seal alone.

There was an extra note of melancholy in our departure that had not been present during the other trips. We all knew this was the last one. Still, we gathered up our strength and trudged up the insanely steep hill to the coaches and started back to Exeter.

Discover St. Ives' glorious art galleries and beaches here: http://www.stives-cornwall.co.uk/

Those of us who had presentations the next day spent a feverish night putting the finishing touches on them. My group presented on Bertrand Russell. Our task was to show how he illustrated some of the global themes we had discussed in our previous classes. We talked about his anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anti-nuclear proliferation protests and general activism and we made sure to throw in a few jokes in there as well. All in all the presentation went swimmingly on Friday, as did all of the rest of the presentations in the Global and Imperial History pathway.

I spent my last afternoon in Exeter eating lunch with friends at Herbie's Vegetarian Restaurant before meeting with Valerie to discuss my Fulbright experience. As you may have guessed from reading this blog, there were many positive things to report. Valerie explained that upon returning home, many people who study abroad for any length of time experience anti-homesickness and reverse culture shock. It has been about one week since I had that conversation with her and I think I'm still suffering a bit from those things to be honest. Writing about them certainly helps though.

We attended the gala dinner that night. We were all dressed in our smartest clothes for the occasion and the dining hall was decked out splendidly. There was champagne and wine. There were speeches and toasts. There was a performance by the Shakespeare pathway which summarized our time in Exeter. Highlights of this performance included people panting their way up steep inclines and screaming at the infernal seagulls that lived alongside us in Holland Hall (these seagulls were twice as big as Jersey seagulls and sounded like children being murdered). There was photography galore. There was music and dancing. There was laughter and tears. It all went too fast. Suddenly I was in a cab, then on a bus, then on a plane. Suddenly it was all over.

I'm still sad about it. Still frustrated that it all went by so quickly. I miss England. I miss the architecture, the landscape, the atmosphere, the accents, and yes, even the food.

But most of all I miss the people. I miss the friends that I made during my time there. Many of them are half a world away now. I don't when or even whether I'll see any of them again. I sincerely hope so. That really is the hardest part of all this.

As sad as I am, I'm also tremendously grateful and happy - to be home safe with my family and friends and to have had such an incredible experience to look back upon. To be that sad about something means the converse is also true - that it gave you extreme joy. I never could have imagined how wonderful this experience was and part of me is still incredulous of it all.

I will write more about my reflections in a later entry. In the meantime, keep checking in for short, fun posts about English culture. See you soon!