Thursday, 3-28-96
10:00 PM Leaving London
4:00 PM E-Town
Well, we’re off! Yep — we’ve gone for 5 mins. & we’re lost already! This is gonna be a great trip! ☺︎ I can’t believe we are really doing this road trip we have talked about for so long! Lori’s friend Alex is driving, Nick navigating, & the ladies (Lori, Ruth, & I) are chillin’ in the back!
Okay, the blokes got directions from a Tesco petrol station & now we are on the road again! ☺︎
Last night was the last Canoe Polo Club I will attend… It was fun! I played pretty well for my farewell performance & took lots of pics of the games — some great action shots of the world’s most random sport! ☺︎ Lori met us at the end of practice & went up to the pub w/ us! Darren and James had their developed pics from the Ball! It was great to see them… I can’t wait to see mine later, when I get back to the States & get all my rolls developed.
It was hard to say goodbye to my Canoe buddies! They were the only Brits I feel I really got to know & call my friends here… While at the pub the DJ played some of the same ones (songs) that he has played just about every Wed. after Canoe Club this semester! It got me all sentimental… When “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon came on the whole club sang along & I took a mental recording of the moment! ☺︎
Before Dennis left the pub he asked for my address & gave me a big hug! I’ll never forget the 1st night I went up to the pub w/ Canoe Club & Dennis and I talked almost the whole time… Whatta cutie! (One of my many crushes this semester ☺︎)
Rita got all my addresses (home, school, & e-mail) & was really sweet saying how she was glad to have met me etc. Dennis & Rita both mentioned trying to visit me in the States sometime… That’d be such fun!
It was hard to say goodbye to Louise, James, & Darren too. But I promised to send postcards for the Canoe Club bulletin board & keep in touch! ☺︎
Then Lori & I (buzzing from our cheap pints a la “Duck & Dive”)…
It has gotten too dark to write! More later…
CHEERS! ☺︎
Friday, 3-29-96
1:15 PM St. Andrew’s, Scotland
7:15 AM E-Town
8:15 AM H.H.I.
I will finish about Thursday night quickly to say that Lori & I went to e-mail & then took the tube home.
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Note from Present Day Kathy: I have such wonderful memories of the weekend road trip my friends and I took to Scotland in March 1996 and it was fun/funny to revisit that we managed to get lost soon after we left. I also get a kick out of seeing how I enjoyed trying to use terms like “bloke,” that I learned while living in the UK, in my journal entries.
It was bittersweet to read about attending my last practice, pub hang out, and saying goodbye to my teammates/the friends I made through Canoe Polo Club. If I recall correctly, we didn’t keep in touch. I don’t recall exchanging correspondence with any of those I mention here, except maybe a few emails with (not her real name) Rita, and none of them ever came to visit me.
I appreciate now how optimistic that might’ve been (thinking we might keep in touch), especially considering I didn’t make it back to London myself until almost 24 years later in November 2019. In some ways I wish I tried harder to maintain connections with some of these people, who I really enjoyed getting to know during my semester abroad. At the same time, I recognize that there are only so many hours in a day and when I got home I was excited to catch up with my family and friends that I’d missed while across the pond. Before long it was mostly out of sight/out of mind and I was back to primarily focusing my time and energy on my loved ones in the States.
The older I get, the more I am able to make peace with the idea that we can adore people and form strong bonds with them at various points in our life and also accept that those connections don’t always last indefinitely. Before social media that was certainly more the norm, however now it is easier, and sometimes more enticing, to try to keep in touch with more people that we have met/shared experiences with.
I do love being connected with a lot of people from different ages and stages of my life, while at the same time I appreciate the value in quality connections/relationships over quantity. I also am grateful for dear family and friends that I am able to go longer stretches of time without having contact and then being able to pick up where we left off when we do reconnect.
To this day I think of my Canoe Polo friends when I hear “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon and am so glad that I got to play “the world’s most random sport,” as well as attend the Purple’s Ball, with them during my London Semester Abroad. I love that I mention taking a “mental recording,” as some of my most vivid memories are the ones I know I really recall and don’t just think I remember because I have actual pictures to help me.
It was also fun to look at these photos again and reflect on how long I had to wait to see them back then. In this time of digital cameras and having them embedded in most mobile phones, it is bizarre to recall how different things were when we used film and had to get pictures developed. I definitely took a lot less photos when I had to pay for every roll and set of prints (which I usually ordered doubles of), however it didn’t feel that way at the time. My friends used to tease me for having so many photo albums, while at the same time enjoyed looking through them.
Lastly, I found it amusing that I talked about (not his real name) Dennis being one of my many crushes that semester. He was a really nice guy. As I think I’ve shared in previous posts, I purposely avoided getting into a romantic relationship the semester before I studied abroad, as I didn’t want to feel tied down during my time in the UK. As a result I was all over the place during those months with crushes and trying to make sense of lingering feelings for guys that I had previously dated or been interested in, as well as those whom I was noticing new feelings for/connections with.
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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.
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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.
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