The birds are chirping. The sun is shining. The breeze is blowing. I only have to wear a light hoodie when it comes out. You know what that means. It's spring!
Alright, so it's been spring for a good month now. But as a native Ohioan, I know to never trust spring. Whenever it starts to get warm and you get excited that spring is here, it gets really cold again and a huge blizzard rolls in and kills all of the pretty flowers. However, seeing as how it's June tomorrow, I'm 99% sure that this blog won't jinx the warm weather and cause Queen Elsa to set us into an eternal winter.
England is absolutely stunning in the spring. Everywhere you look, there are beautiful flowers and gorgeous trees. The country has gone from being grey and bleak to looking like a postcard. While the plants aren't doing much for my spring allergies, or "hay fever" as it's called here, they're lovely to look at.
The campus is built around a nice sized lake filled with many different kinds of birds. While the ducks are cute, the majority of the geese and swans terrify me to no end. I finally understand why kids run for their lives when playing games of "duck duck goose." However, since it's spring, all of these birds have babies now, and nothing is cuter than a gosling. I tried to get a good picture of them, but since their mamas and papas tend to hiss at you if you even look at their babies, I got one on the bridge and ran away before the mother goose could come and gouge my eyes out with her terrifying goose beak.
Mama Goose is glaring at me...
Nothing says spring and summertime like ice cream. While I was playing football with my friends, they were asking me if I've ever tried certain kinds of ice cream bars. It was then that I realized that not only are the sweets here different than they are at home, but the ice creams are as well. So I bought a couple and was NOT disappointed! Let me tell you...if I could figure out some way to fill my suitcase with British ice cream bars, I totally would!
The first one that I bought is a Twister. A Twister is a ice cream treat that has a sherbert core and is wrapped in both creamy vanilla ice cream and hard popsicle. Marius and Cosette's part from "One Day More" popped into my head when I took my first bite.
The other kind of ice cream that I've tried is a Maltesers ice cream bar. Maltesers are the British version of Whoppers. However, while America's only got the malted milk balls, England's also got a candy bar called a Maltesers Teaser, which is like a crunch bar with malted milk ball dots instead of puffed crunchy rice. It quickly became my favorite sweet over here. The ice cream bar is like a Teaser bar, but better.
In other news, in two weeks from now, I will (hopefully) be at the Heathrow Airport, waiting to board my flight to JFK. (I say "hopefully" because I'm still stressing out about getting the bus to the train station, the train to London, and the tube to Heathrow) (But that's another blog post). I'm trying not to think about it. I'm not sure if I'm ready for more goodbyes.
For the past five nights in a row, I've had dreams about coming home from England. Some of them have been rather odd and unbelievable, like the one where Avengers 2 was being filmed at the camp I work at and Samuel L. Jackson was driving me around in a golf cart, but some of them have been so realistic that when I opened my eyes and saw that I was in my room in England, I was confused as to when I had flown back. In the evenings, I spend a lot of time thinking about home. I miss the sound of my back door opening. I miss the church bells. I miss the dog. I miss my American friends. I've been away for so long, and I really miss it all.
But as much as I want to go home, I don't want to leave England at all. I'm not ready to. There are so many wonderful things here that I can't get in Ohio. I love taking the bus into town and getting lost in streets that are older than my entire country. I love going out with my friends here. I love going to the shop here and knowing exactly which brands I like and which brands I can do without. I love learning about the cultural differences that we have with England. I love those little moments when I think about how much I have changed. I've been here for such a short time, but I'm going to really miss it all.
I never stay in one place for too long. Heck, I only live in my "home" for less than 10 weeks out of the entire year! I'm always moving into Wooster. Back home. To camp. To a different cabin each week at camp. Back home for a week. Back to Wooster. Home. Wooster. Home for a month. Wooster. Home. Camp. In fact, York is the place that I've lived in the longest since June of 2011! It's really started to feel like home. I really want to stay here. And the fact that I have to deal with putting everything I own into two suitcases again just makes me want to cry.
Why can't my two worlds just combine?! I simultaneously want to live in both of these places at once. It's hard having so many places to call home. Sure, I miss the Ohio home right now, but once I get back to Ohio, I'm going to start having dreams where I'm back in York with all of my friends here. It means that I have to spend my entire life feeling homesick.
Perhaps I should stop whining. After all, ten years ago, if you would've told me that I have four different places that I call home (home, Wooster, camp, York) and that each of those places has a group of people who genuinely like me, I would've laughed in your face and told you that no one could ever like me that much. I guess that it's a blessing and a curse to have so many places that this song applies to:
"With 1,000 places I call home, I know I'm not alone."
In England, Mother's Day is celebrated at the end of March. But in America, it's celebrated in the middle of May. I was curious as to why that is, so I did a bit of Internet research to find out.
Apparently in the UK, Mother's Day comes from a day that was celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent called "Mothering Sunday." This tradition, which dates back to the 16th Century, was a day when Christians would go back to their "mother church" to worship, reuniting the Christians not only with their roots, but with their families as well. Today, it's just a day to show your mother how much you love her.
In the USA, Mother's Day came from a woman named Julia Ward Howe, who wrote a Mother's Day Declaration as a call for peace. In 1914, President Wilson made the day an official holiday, where citizens would honor the mothers of people who died in the war. Today, like in the UK, it's just a day to show your mother how much you love her.
So while the current holidays are extremely similar, with greeting cards, flowers, going out to dinner, and plenty of hugs and kisses, the roots of this holiday could not be more different.
My mom is honestly one of the most wonderful people I know, and I love her more than words can express. I'm so happy that the two of us have such a strong relationship and that she's a part of my life. I can't wait to get another one of her perfect hugs in another month <3
So even though mother's day is on different days and has different roots, if there's one thing that I've learned during my time abroad, it's that mothers are mothers no matter where you go. A mother's love knows no nationality.
Warning: The above link was made by Disney, so it's got the most emotionally manipulating music I've ever heard. Get the tissues before watching it. Oh, and just as a bit of a warning, a couple of clips of Dumbo are included, so my own mom might not want to watch it ;)
I know that it's been a long while since I've posted last. And it's funny, too, because since I've last posted, I've been on two different holidays to London, once with one of my best friends, Meaghan, and once with my family. Perhaps someday, I'll blog about those trips. They really were quite fun. But for now, I have something else on my mind.
The more comfortable I become in England, the more I'll chat freely with other people. And the more freely I chat, the more I realize that I shouldn't do that anymore. When I keep my mouth shut, no one knows that I'm any different then they are. The second I start talking, they realize that I'm from America. And the second I start chatting, they're aware that I'm an American.
A couple of weeks ago in one of my courses, we were reading documents about the French Revolution. The leader of the workshop was saying that the French Revolution was the introduction of a free nation to the world and that these documents pretty much laid out what human rights should be. When the class was working in small groups, I raised my hand to call him over. When he did, I felt a bit nervous, but finally said, "Back home, I've always been taught that the American Revolution was the world's introduction to freedom, and that took place before the French Revolution." He chuckled, "You would think that. But really, the French Revolution is the one that has all of the scholarship and writings about it." I wanted to mention the Declaration of Independence, the works of Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech, but decided against it so that I wouldn't sound too American.
Today, we were reading the 1955 South African Freedom Charter. While I read it, I realized that it sounded a lot like our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The freedom charter even begins with "We the people." I was also going through and circling bits that are essentially word-for-word in the American documents, feeling excited by my findings. When I shared what I was doing with my friend, she asked me if all Americans have to know about these documents and if we know them word for word. I told her about how they're really well taught in schools and told her about this song:
She told me that that was so strange and that Americans really have a lot of national pride. I found it to be strange that other countries didn't have the same national pride that Americans do, but I didn't say that. Instead, I made a joke about how Americans always get really passionate about the Olympics, and the conversation drifted to American sweets.
When I raised my hand to share my USA document parallels to the Freedom Charter, the leader of the workshop got kind of awkward about it and skirted over it. I'm starting to think that these American documents which we learn about all the time in school aren't that relevant in the rest of the world.
Last night, I re-watched the Disney Channel Original Movie "The Color of Friendship." I remembered that it was about Apartheid and watched it in preparation of the workshop I attended today where we were discussing some of the documents of that time. However, while I watched, I noticed myself relating more and more to Mahree, the 14-year old exchange student from South Africa. Not because I believe that I live in an extremely racist society or anything, but because she was somebody living abroad in another land who honestly doesn't know if she's doing or saying anything that's weird. For example, there's one scene where the girl she's living with, Piper, asks her if she wants to go to the movies. Mahree is confused for a moment, then smiles and tells Piper what movies are called in South Africa. Piper laughs and tells her that that name for it is weird. I've had similar conversations when discussing card games and stuff with my friends. (Pro tip: In England, "ERS" is "Snap.") It's just hard living someplace and trying to fit in just to realize that you really don't.
This is not to say that I feel like an outcast or anything. Please don't get that impression! My friends are extremely welcoming and accepting of me. Just the other day, when we were sitting in a pub, one friend told me that I've really adapted to and blended with the culture very well...the highest compliment that an abroad student can receive. I just know that my nationality makes me feel different than anyone else. I've never been in the minority before, and it's an odd sensation.
I also fear coming home, because I know for a fact that I've picked up a ton of English customs and jargon that my home friends will think is strange and weird. I've developed opinions over here that other Americans might not agree with. I'm not the same girl that I was in December. We'll just have to see how well this new girl fits in when she gets back to Ohio.
American Ellen in a John F. Kennedy shirt on July 4th
English Ellen with a Lego statue of Queen Elizabeth II
