Month: December 2013

Part 10, in which I get lost again. I know, I know. I was in charge of making sure the students never got lost, and here I was getting lost again. But luckily none of the kids ever got lost, so I accomplished my purpose. And hey, we were finally in England, so there was the excuse of “I’m allowed to get lost once in each major country.” But before all of that happened there was a larger problem I had. My camera’s memory card was getting low as I had taken tons of photos in Ireland and Wales and I didn’t want to delete any of them. The countdown had begun, and my camera’s screen told me I was down to 20 photos left to take, and I was starting to hyperventilate because the best parts of England were still to come, including our first stop in Stratford, Shakespeare’s Birthplace.

Now, I taught Shakespeare for eight years and several of the students on the trip had taken my ninth grade English class at some point, so they knew how I felt about the Bard, that this was the absolute highlight of our trip. Before Stratford, though, we made a quick stop at Anne Hathaway’s house. No, not the actress who so pleasantly portrayed the new girl in “The Devil Wears Prada,” although that would have been interesting, but instead the erstwhile wife of William Shakespeare himself. Of course the students asked why they lived separately, but the ones who had me knew that Shakespeare had a few possible reasonings for that, not the least of which was his life in London while his wife remained in the countryside. As we entered her bedroom it was interesting to note the bench that looked as ancient as the house itself, and our tour guide explained that it might be the same bench that Shakespeare himself sat on when he came a’ courting.

Of course I had to sit on it.

I also learned about the word “threshold” and from whence it derived, which was very interesting. In fact, I told my students in summer school about it just this past summer, so chuffed I was from the experience. The threshold literally was there to hold in the threshes that were placed on the floor to stop the mud from taking over everything. It was difficult for me to navigate the rooms of the house, though, because I’m 6’5″ and the people in that time period must have been 4’11” or smaller. I have absolutely no idea how they did it, but after being stooped over for some time I had to get out of there and enjoy the sunshine. Um, I mean enjoy the rain, because it had started to shower while we were inside. Luckily I had my hat and I placed it on my head so at least it didn’t get in my eyes while I waited. It was beautiful there, but the next stop was the one I had been waiting for. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 10”

I’ll be the first to admit it was really sad leaving Ireland behind because I’ve always held an affinity for that country, its history, its culture, and even the Gaelic language (even though I don’t speak it). Although I knew it was coming I had talked myself into believing that we would be Irish forever, but Great Britain waited for us, and after the lovely, eh hem, ferry trip, we were in the place called Wales. I’ll also be the first to admit that Wales wasn’t really on my original itinerary for the group, but it was added in when the package deal that included Wales was cheaper than the one that was just Ireland and England. Some decisions are based solely on money, and I figured, “Why not?” Wales turned out to be more interesting than I had originally thought it would be.

We had one day to travel the width of the tiny country, but that day was more than enough to soak in the atmosphere. The highlight of the day was Raglan Castle, one of about a million castles we passed by in Wales. Our tour guide told us that there are more castles per acre in Wales than anywhere else in the world, a fact that I had no idea about until we toured the country. Raglan castle was quite unlike many of the other castles we had seen because instead of being so tall in the air with a tower and all, it was large around, with a huge area in the middle that was really quite like a park, open to the air. We spent the entire afternoon enjoying the castle grounds and searching through its nooks and crannies. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 9”