A Sea-Change

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

The phrase “cloudscape” is one of those profoundly accurate phrases, like “backhanded compliment” or “cool as morning” or “hootenanny,” which I should note I spelled wrong, but auto-correct fixed for me. I could write “Orvis” or “Ozymandius” and it would yell at me, but it’s okay, it knows how to spell “hootenanny.” The English language is safe.

But cloudscape is an accurate turn of phrase because I woke up from drifting in and out of sleep and I looked out the window of the plane, and you could start to see the beginnings of the sunrise in the distance. And below us was just raw, solid cloud, as far as you could see. There was just enough light to see them, but not enough to really illuminate them, so the shadows were still pitch black wherever they were cast. It was honestly like looking down at a jungle, with mountains and valleys, and gulleys that you couldn’t see the bottom of, but then it would change to flat salt planes, or a tundra, or a snow-swept artic bay with these meanacing, glacial figures in the distance. Other times it was like looking at two scrims layered on top of each other, and you could only make sense of what you were seeing individually, or later only in gestalt. And it occurred to me that I was about to go to a place that I had basically no conception of, that could be anything, and it would be absolutely new. I had only ever heard about it, seen it maybe in artistic renditions. England was more a concept, a state of mind than a physical place. Like the repartee in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead:

Ros. I don’t believe in it anyway.
Guil. What?
Ros. England.
Guil. Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?

England was beyond my understanding, and I was about to go there, and it would be entirely new. In my half-awake state, I concluded that this transition must be something like what going to Heaven would be like. Again, I was drifting in and out of consciousness.

At some point I checked out our stats on the TV, and it gave me some numbers about how fast we were moving and how many miles were left (kilometers too), and it looked like we were getting close. So I looked out the window and sure enough, on the horizon, I could see the beginnings of that sunrise peeking over the tips of silhouetted mountains. Land ho! I concluded it must be Ireland.

I sat there staring at them wondering exactly what was happening in Ireland right now, who was up, who was asleep, what they were doing, and how I was going to pass right over them without them even noticing it. At least, I thought I would pass right over them, since I could see the mountains in the distance out of the window, meaning they were to the far left of the plane's course (port side?), and the plane wasn’t turning. So, we must be flying south of Ireland? I couldn’t ask the Welsh lady next to me because she was still asleep, but I just kept sitting there, figuring the plane would turn soon. Maybe we weren’t going to go over Ireland, maybe we were just going to swoop under it. I sat there, entranced by the mountains for a little while longer. Eventually, I caught sight of the TV again, and then out again at the mountains. The numbers didn't match up. Then I checked the map. I slowly realized that the whole time I had been looking at more clouds, not mountains, and pretty soon I watched what I thought was Ireland pass into the rest of the cloudscape until there was just a horizon. The TV's map had displayed our course, and we were still smack dab in the center of the Atlantic ocean, still far from Heaven.

A few hours later we passed over Ireland without me noticing. England as well. I had heard that there was a storm due when we touched down, but rather than a storm it was more an impenetrable cloud cover. I actually didn’t see any land until we were about to touch down in Bristol, and we descended through the mists and suddenly there it was: land.

I will just state this: England is very beautiful. From the sky even more so. It’s these rolling hills covered in farms, arranged like a stained glass window with green or brown or yellow panes bordered with lines of trees. And as we got closer I could make out cows and sheep in some of the fields, or we’d pass over these tiny, tiny towns that maybe were whole cities with winding roads and roundabouts and city planning that looks like it will never give you the quickest way between point A and point B, but rather the most rewarding, most adventurous way. But apart from that there was no trace of any urban area. I also had a Simpsons moment, as I shared Marge’s comment when she was in a similar state, “a lot of people have pools.” Except she was naked and in a balloon. But as we were descending, it got to the point where I could count the spots on the cows, and there was no sign of an airport. And there weren’t any emergency landing procedures, but I honestly thought we were going to land in a field. We must have been under 100 feet in the air when, out of nowhere, an air strip appeared and we landed. I caught my breath and we slowed to a stop. As we taxied, I looked out the window and there was a fence along the one runway, and on the other side some goats were grazing, and some people playing golf were watching planes land.

Only in England.

I found my way through customs pretty easily, and even all my bags arrived on time to catch my Welcome Bus to Exeter. At one point I left my Orvis Brand Carry On Travel Bag (bought at a 50% + 20% employee discount from the Orvis in Lahaska) open while I was getting my bags, and my passport and money were in the side pocket. I got the bags I wanted and came back to my stack, noticing my tremendous faux pas, and rushed to check to see if documentation and money were still there. They were. Nothing had been moved or stolen. I don’t think it was even considered. I dragged everything out into the lobby where University employees were waiting for me.

A number of Exeter students volunteer to help out during Welcome Week, which is when the international students and the freshmen show up. They are required to wear these green shirts the entire time, even when say clubbing in town or walking down to the grocery store, so that if anyone needs them they can pick them out of a crowd and ask any question they need to ask. They’re lovingly called “Greenshirts,” and I can’t understand why you’d do any of that without being paid. And I’m usually all for volunteering.

Anyway, so some Greenshirts were with the Welcome Bus to help everyone pack their bags in, relax, and everything, but my four suitcases and two carry on bags quickly confounded their packing abilities. Whatever I couldn't stow in the bus I carried with me, and we headed off, out of Bristol and into the countryside.

I tried to text my mom saying I was safely on land, but not only was my cell phone still running low on batteries, but it got no service. Ever. It was kind of frightening, because I couldn't call anyone in case of an accident. If I hadn't been so tired I would have gritted my teeth or something: the bus driver hauling this very large metal thing full of people along a highway, barely missing other cars and squeezing through exit ramps and the like. This is the second lesson I learned about England: never let your guard down around English drivers. They are crazy, can drive within inches of you without hitting, and take advantage of the fact that there are little to no traffic laws protecting pedestrians except that a herd might really damage a car. Also, as my friend Andrew, who I met at the airport and lives a floor beneath me, would point out, in England there’s a tax on having a car based on the size of the car’s engine, so if you see anyone in a car, they’ve got a deal of money. And if you see someone in, say, a BMW, they’ve got a whole lot of money. So people in cars in England are generally used to getting what they want, suggests Andrew.

I saw a complete rainbow on my way - I've only ever seen one side of a rainbow, like one part of the arch going from ground to cloud or something, but this was a complete one, it had a beginning, middle and end. An Aristotelian rainbow. I tried to take a picture of it with my dying cell phone, but I accidentally hit "delete" instead of "save" after I took it. It was probably just to magical to be documented.

English farmers also like putting things on the side of the highway if they have a farm that buts up against it. So if you’re looking out the window you’ll see something like this: cow sheep cow sheep cow cow cow sheep sheep cow sheep cow sheep sheep GIANT WICKER STATUE OF A MAN DANCING cow sheep sheepdog cow cow sheep cow sheep PINK AND BLUE FIFTEEN FOOT TALL STATUE OF A TYRANOSAURUS REX UNDER A TREE cow.

Only in England.

When we got to the University of Exeter, the number of Greenshirts increased, and we were all shuttled into the place where we get our keys and filled out our forms, and all that. They unpacked our bags from the bus and I quickly pushed my six bags together and away from the group so I didn’t get in anyone’s way. As the herd moved on, I noticed that they were moving up a hill to a large building that I would eventually know as Cornwall House. I tried to pile all my bags together and pull them, but they quickly fell apart. So, naturally, some kind-hearted Greenshirts came over and offered to carry all my bags. Little did they know what they were getting into, because, as I would discover, the Streatham Campus of the University, which is the main campus, is located entirely on hills, and big ones at that. And not only that, but there are plenty of stairs, and my bags had those five drama anthologies in them …

By the end of the day I was known throughout the Greenshirt community as “That Asshole with Five Bags.” Really, I was "That Asshole with SIX Bags," so that rumor was an upgrade.

We unpacked and got settled, most everyone on the Kenyon-Exeter trip made it, except for Ken Worrall, but that’s a separate adventure which I’m sure he’d be happy to recount for you if you wanted.

My room is good enough: a single, big enough to live in, a long desk, a bed, my own sink and mirror, bookshelves, window, adjustable radiator with five levels of heat, curtains, room light, bed light and desk light. Very secure, very safe. From the window you can see down into the town, and there’s a spire from one of the churches sticking up. In the distance you can see the rolling countryside and, on a clear day, of which England experiences about five a year, the mountains.

One comforting thing I realized is that the Quakers who first came over and settled in Pennsylvania, particularly Bucks County as it was one of the more colonized areas, were trying desperately to make their new home look like the West Country of England, with the fields and the rolling hills and old, preserved architecture. But they failed miserably. In Bucks County, the urban sprawl is moving in the roads are widening, and on the whole it just can’t compare to the real thing. In England, the roads are narrow, have been for hundreds of years, and the farms aren’t going to go away any time soon, and even though there’re more people in England than the country should probably be able to hold, there’s still plenty of open space. Open, beautiful space. So whenever I’m sad or feel homesick, I really just have to look out a window.

One thing the English don’t do very well is organize. Yes, they’ve made getting in line an Olympic sport, and yes, their trains run better than ours do, but take, for example, the Water Closet, or W.C. Suite. Just a toilet in a room. But what about the sink where you’re supposed to wash your hands afterwards, did you think about that, England? And there’s never any toilet paper because no one ever goes in there except to go to the bathroom, and if that’s the case you never notice there’s no toilet paper until it’s too late, and there’s no random girl putting on her makeup or guy washing his face that could notice the lack of toilet paper and fix the problem. It’s a never-ending cycle. And that light switch is probably the dirtiest light switch in all of Christendom, if you’ll forgive the random Shakespearen-esque saying. Conclusion: A W.C. Suite is a silly idea!

Or take the fact that the idea of a street sign must never have occurred to anyone until probably ten years ago, and they were obviously very bitter about their mistake, and so when they did put up a street sign they never put it anywhere you could notice. And this posed a serious problem to us Kenyon-Exeter students, as we wondered around Exeter searching, in vain, for a pub. In the rain. To the point where we ended up far outside of the city center and in an upper class residential neighborhood. With no other option left we, a bunch of crass, loud, lost Americans, asked a woman coming out of her house and her two children where the nearest pub was. She gave us directions.

(For those of you who don’t know, Americans speak louder than British people. Someone suggested it’s because our country is so much bigger, and they’re probably right. Many English people find this annoying. Many Americans find English people silly.)

Or that after an overnight flight into Bristol, a six hour time delay, a bus ride to Exeter, lugging my bags around, unpacking, finding my friends, finding a pub, finding our way back, and finally going to sleep, our fire alarm went off at 4 a.m. And we, an entire dorm full of confused international students who spoke either sub-par English or American English meandered out into the halls, completely unaware of whether this was a test, a malfunction, or whether it was a real fire, and it occurred to all of us, simultaneously, that we should probably get out of the building, but we had no idea what to do afterwards, what the fire protocol was. So we all meandered downstairs and opened the door, the door which has an alarm rigged to it that goes off if you don't hit a door release button - it won’t do anything else it will just be obnoxious. But none of us knew, the first day in and at 4 a.m., how to turn this door alarm off. And it was really cold outside. So we all literally huddled in the lowest landing, some people didn’t have shirts on. Then a security officer came up to us and yelled at us for huddling because there was a fire alarm, and so we all went outside. Then more security officers showed up. And the alarm was still going. And it became obvious they didn’t know how to turn it off. And it started raining. Cold rain too.

If there had been a real fire - which there wasn’t, some people just tampered with their fire alarms - we all would have burned alive or been hit by smoldering debris, since the ones who made it outside were huddled against the building to hide from the wind and the rain. And, apart from a note on our door that suggests what we should do in the case of a fire, to this day we have not had any kind of consensus set up as to how to save ourselves should the building start burning, or collapse, or get bombed by Germans or something.

Only in England.