Tuesday, 1-30-96
8:25 PM London
2:25 PM E-Town
I am so stoked right now! (figuratively speaking…) I just spoke w/ Laura a member of ULU’s Ladies Canoe (Kayak) Polo Team! She is meeting me in front of ULU tomorrow night at 8:20 PM & then I will go w/ her to the Canoe Polo trials for the teams! Usually there would be practice… but not this week! But, she said I should come & check it out anyway! I cannot believe that I am actually going to do this! Granted I have played water polo & kayaked (canoed, whatever…) before, I have never combined the two! ☺︎ There Brits & their crazy sports! j/k ☺︎
WAHOO! The adrenaline rush from knowing I am gonna try something new & completely random… how exciting!
This morning I took the tube to Marble Arch & started walking from the “Speakers Corner” of Hyde Park! I walked through Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, saw the famous “Peter Pan” statue & then followed Bayswater Road till it turned into Notting Hill Gate back to Pembridge! Good exercise & great scenery!
E-mails from Peggy & Cheryl! Fr. Basil is in Chambana for a week while Fr. John is out of town! How nice for Cheryl & the rest of the St. John’s community who adore him so… to have him back, if even for a short while! ☺︎ He told Cheryl he hopes I can make it to Rome, in April, when I am traveling, to see him!
Tonight I went to daily mass w/ Jill. She is really embracing her faith & seems to enjoy learning more about God & reading the Bible! She asks me a lot of questions & I do my best to answer them…
Well, I think I am gonna put this burst of energy to some good use & work on my essay for MBS (Modern British Society)!
To close, I recall my favorite sentiment of dear Fr. Basil:
“We must have the faith of a child!”
So, true…
CHEERS! ☺︎
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note from Present Day Kathy: So funny that I used the word stoked in this entry, as I can’t recall the last time I said that or using it much when I was younger.
Love that I sought out cool new to me experiences during my semester abroad, such as trying Canoe (Kayak) Polo! I will share more about Canoe Polo in future entries, but I recall how surprised I was to learn that such a hybrid sport, water polo combined with kayaking, existed in the UK.
Also, I just Googled what the British call canoes, if they call what American’s refer to as kayaks, canoes. Apparently Brits refer to what Americans refer to as just canoes, Canadian canoes.
I don’t remember much about the walk that I took that day from “Speakers Corner” in Hyde Park back to where I lived at Pembridge Gardens in Notting Hill Gate, but it sounds so lovely. That’s another thing I may want to add to our growing list of things to do, as a family, on our Summer 2020 trip to London/England.
Lastly, I appreciate reflecting on how special (not his real name) Fr. Basil was to me and my Catholic college friends back then, as he still is. I don’t recall if I go into much detail about how I got to know him at U of I in my journals and will talk a lot more about him (spoiler alert) when I share about the time I spent in Rome, during my travels after school ended that semester. Fr. Basil was in grad school at U of I and helped out at the Newman Center there. So many of us grew to love him and he was such a positive influence on our faith journeys. Fr. Basil ended up marrying Bob and I, in September 2000, which meant so much to us. Though I don’t see him often these days, Fr. Basil lives and is a pastor in Illinois now, which is awesome.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reminder: Unless I’ve been given permission to use people’s actual names, in most cases I’ve removed or replaced the names of the real people who were part of my journey/experience there, in effort to protect and respect their identities/privacy in my London Semester Journal entries. I will also not share details that I think and feel are too personal for anyone I interacted with, my loved ones, and me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here’s the back story of My London Semester Journals from 1996, including what prompted me to revisit and decide to share them here in 2018. And here’s a list a list of the entries, which I will update as I share them.
{ 0 comments… add one now }