Despite Eurostar’s fabulous breakdown, they managed to barely pull things together in time for my trip. I had a very long day, as I left my place at 7AM to catch a bus into Rennes, at which point I switched over to the metro to get to the train station. Hung out at the train station until getting on my train, which took me to Paris. I then got to take another train to get from the Montparnasse station to Gare du Nord, where I had a bit of down time before checking in for my Eurostar train. I was delighted about the fact that you do actually have to go through customs, meaning I got two more nifty stamps in my passport. Eurostar still wasn’t running at its normal speeds, but it got me to London in plenty of time to hop on the Tube (in case you’re counting, that’s vehicle number six of the day) to get from St. Pancras station to Paddington station. I then had some time to kill in Paddington before my train to Swansea left, so I treated myself to a lovely peppermint mocha from Starbucks. Mmmm. Delicious. I then had a train ride to Swansea before our family friend, Padraig, picked me up in his car. It took roughly thirteen hours and eight vehicles, but I made it. Huzzah!
Last time I was in England it was after spending about five or six weeks in France. At the time, as it was the most time I’d ever spent out of the US, six weeks felt like a TERRIBLE amount of time to go without my native language (because we did SO much speaking French among the IAU students, REALLY), and I was utterly delighted to be back in an Anglophone country. This time around I was mostly looking forward to getting a taste of Americana (thus starting off the trip with Starbucks) and seeing family friends. I wasn’t really thinking about the language, although it turned out I should’ve been, because I FORGOT ENGLISH. Not conversational English, but social niceties like sorry and excuse me and all that fun stuff. Anyway, apparently 3.5 months living with a French family, working with French people, and not using any language besides French on the streets means that even if you do write regular blog entries in English, read plenty of novels in English, and have a good number of friends in the area with whom you speak only English, you will lose your social fluency in English. I had a number of moments during my trip when I absolutely froze because I couldn’t remember the English equivalent of “je suis désolée pour vous deranger…” I also discovered during my stay in Wales that I could not for the life of me understand a lot of Welsh accents. I usually pride myself on understanding all accents of English, but it turns out that is no longer the case. I felt as if I was listening to rapid-fire Spanish, where I could pick out the occasional word, but I mostly just tried to nod and smile at the right points in the conversation. Thankfully I could handle the accents in London pretty well, which kept me from utter despair.
I stayed with our family friends, Ruth and Padraig, in Wales. It was wonderful to be in a home-like atmosphere for the holidays, and they made me feel so welcome. I was offered lots of delicious food, given a steady diet of tea, and there was even a fireplace for me to sit in front of. Even the weather was in on it, since there was a good four inches of snow on the ground. That’s not at all normal for the area, and as a result, no one shoveled. Apparently the normal idea is that it isn’t worth shoveling since the snow will melt soon anyone—the only problem was that the snow stuck around for a good week. I’m amazed I didn’t once fall flat on my face, despite wearing impractical (but adorable) shoes the entire trip.
The first day I was there Ruth and I went into Swansea’s city center to hit up a bookstore (YAY for books in English!) and stop in some other shops. I had a terrible time selecting books, as always, but finally picked out three (all three of which I finished before I made it back to Rennes—so much for restraint), and then we made our way to a lovely café near the river in Swansea. We had hot chocolate with Bailey’s (YUM). After popping in a few other stores (including Boots, so I could pick up my favorite hair gel which is sadly unavailable in France), we went to Tesco, an impressive supermarket (erm, grocery store, that is) that provided me with two things of utmost importance: oatmeal and brown sugar. My mornings have been absolutely fabulous since returning to Rennes and getting to eat that for breakfast. I don’t remember when I started eating oatmeal for breakfast (I think it was probably around age nine, the point at which my mom cut me off of Lucky Charms), but once I got started on it, it was my staple (aside from a brief foray my senior year of high school into Honey Nut Cheerios and from the five months I spent in France in 2008, when I had to resort to cold cereal). There is nothing better on a winter morning than tea and oatmeal with a bit of brown sugar. After I stocked up on my kilo of oatmeal and kilo of brown sugar, we headed back to Ruth and Padraig’s.
I went to Midnight Mass with Ruth and Padraig on Christmas Eve and discovered, much to my shock, that there are several Christmas carols that have different tunes in the UK than they do in the US. And they aren’t completely different songs—the lyrics are the same—but the tune is different enough to completely confuse you. The first song they sang I didn’t know, but when I saw that they next one would be “O Come Let Us Adore Him,” I figured I was good to go. Not! There was another one that again had the same lyrics, but apparently a more traditional tune, but I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, I was rather perplexed by the whole thing. It’s odd, because I’ve come to anticipate plenty of cultural differences, but there are always some that can’t be anticipated. Different tunes to Christmas carols? Who knew? Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that Silent Night has the same tune in the UK (probably because we all stole it from the Germans), and I just decided after mass that I’d have to do my own singing of “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”
I was able to skype with my family on Christmas day, which was fun. It was morning for them, so I got to watch them open all of their presents. The rest of the day was spent cozily inside (I’ll never be able to make it through another Chicago winter again), mostly watching movies.
On Boxing Day (which, apparently, has nothing to do with the actual sport of boxing), we went over to Mark’s, one of Ruth and Padraig’s friends. He had his sister, his aunt and uncle, and another family friend there (and Sasha, the one-eyed cat). We had a delicious meal around 2pm, which was my first meal of the day, and I ate enough to make sure that it would be my only meal of the day. I would just like to say that Yorkshire pudding drowned in gravy is kind of delicious and I think I may need to start making these for holiday meals. We also played Trivial Pursuit for several hours in the evening, but everyone else totally had an advantage, since it was the UK edition of the game. I had no idea what half of the events were that they referenced, let alone why certain things happened at those events. I was, however, able to supply some valuable information about what Disney duet Celine Dion sang.
On Monday the 27th I bid farewell to the incredibly hospitable Ruth and Padraig, and I hopped on a train back to London to spend a day and a half there on my own before going back to France. I had even splurged on a hotel (though a very modest one with shared bathrooms) as a Christmas present to myself. My train was a little late getting in, and I naturally wandered around the station in circles for about ten minutes before I finally got my bearings, but after that I easily made my way to my hotel and checked in. I then set off in search of a cheap dinner (ended up grabbing assorted food from a grocery store and thus spending approximately 2 pounds, go me!), and then decided it was time to start profiter-ing. I wandered down Edgeware Road for no particular reason other than it was close to my hotel. It ended in a huge intersection near Hyde Park, and since I was a little wary of getting lost in Hyde Park (as I got lost last time I entered a British park), I decided to make my way down Oxford. The roads were SWARMED with people, very few of them actually speaking English. I heard more French than I probably do on the average work day (since my goal is always to make the kids speak English). It was a massive shopping day, and while I’d entertained ideas of buying a few things, I changed my mind after stepping two feet into a store and realizing just how packed it was. Turned around and decided to return to walking.
Once I was thoroughly exhausted, I turned around, headed back to my hotel, took a shower, and collapsed. I got up early, grabbed breakfast (yay for hotels that have breakfast included and bring you your own pot of tea!), and then headed off. I took the Tube to the Tower of London, which I had my heart set on seeing. It was a little pricey to get in, but it was absolutely worth it. Yeoman Wardours are traditionally the guards of the Tower, but they really function more as tour guides, and they are hilarious. Ours was cracking jokes about Scotland, Americans, French, Germans, men, and women, and asked at one point if there was anyone he had managed not to offend yet. He also pointed out that only Britain would have a monument to traitors to the crown—there was a monument to all the people who had been beheaded there, including Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey. There was another Yeoman Wardour doing a tour inside a chapel where most of those people are buried (I don’t understand what it is with the Brits and burying people under churches…first Westminster, now this), and he was also fantastic. I had the choice of going in to see the Crown Jewels, which I considered, but there was a line roughly two blocks long to do that, and I didn’t need to see some pretty stones THAT much. Instead I opted to walk around the outside walls, which had some gorgeous views of Tower Bridge.
Once I was all historied out, I left. I had no other big plans for the day, but I was determined to get more walking in. I ended up walking pretty much the entire central area of London, all the way back to my hotel, over the course of the afternoon and evening. I walked by St. Paul’s, got slightly lost (whoops), saw the Bank of London, figured out where I’d gotten turned around, walked by St. Paul’s again, made my way to Fleet Street (home of Sweeney Todd and the historical printing and publishing center of London), stopped near Somerset House (another large palace), walked to Covent Garden and meandered around there until I got sick of the crowds, then continued my way up Oxford. I stopped for dinner at Hummus Bros, the same restaurant I stopped at last time I was in London, since I knew it was both delicious and affordable. I took a slight detour to the theater district, which made me very jealous, and then I went back to Oxford and continued my way back to the hotel. Once again, I pretty much collapsed from exhaustion once I got there.
I left the next morning to head back to France. My last train from Paris to Rennes got diverted and arrived two hours late, which I was not happy about, but other than that the trip was fine. And what happened when I got back to my room? Yup, I collapsed. And slept about 13 hours.
OKAY. The Christmas entry is now done. I can go take care of some lesson planning, and you can go do whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be back in a week with a (hopefully) shorter post. Bonne année!
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