And So It's Over

We’ve just returned from our last trip in England. My family and I spent the day in Dover (the one with the white cliffs) and Canterbury. It was really, really cold today, maybe about fifty degrees, and windy. This made the day a bit more disagreeable than it might have been, as the weather was supposed to be warm and we were all dressed for that. However, Dover was still really pretty and we saw the white cliffs, which is another one of those things you don’t realize you want to do until you do it. We went to Dover Castle and all of the war exhibits near it.

We weren’t sure if we’d make it to Canterbury, or rather, we thought we might get to the city and find that both the cathedral and all of the shops were closed. Asking only got us a million different answers. However, the train station we would end up at in Canterbury was the same one we needed to get back to London and we decided to use that to our advantage; if we got to Canterbury and found that everything was closed, we’d go back to London.

Everything was open, and so I found myself in Canterbury Cathedral for the third time in five months. This meant that I didn’t walk around much, though I did take all of my small English change, which I’d never be able to spend without someone wanting to kill me, and dumped it in their donation box. It was pouring on and off, but we managed to get dinner to go and make it back to the train station before it rained again.

Tomorrow, we go home. Adrienne is bringing her stuff to the flat and traveling with us to the airport, since she’s on the same flight. Unfortunately, just as it did on my family’s first night, the cab service she hired is screwing her over. She’s been waiting for them for almost an hour. I may end up going to the uni to help her bring her stuff here on the tube, but we’re still waiting to see if the cab will show up.

Anyway… tomorrow we go home. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I definitely don’t want to leave England. Besides my London casting inbox suddenly overflowing in these last two weeks (of course), I keep looking at everything and thinking how I can’t leave it. I love London and England and the people here too much to leave. I’m talking about the English, yes, but also my friends that I’ve made here that are otherwise, too. Laura and I had a good-bye chatting session yesterday. I went to her room at school and I figured I’d just stay for a bit (I try to avoid goodbyes), but I kept thinking, ‘I’ll just stay for fifteen more minutes’ until nearly three hours had passed and my mom called and asked me if I would be back for dinner. It was really sad to say goodbye to her. She may live in America, too, but she lives really far away from me. I hope we get to see each other again.

Tomorrow is finishing cleaning up, packing anything we used today, getting an English breakfast and heading to the airport at 12:30 (if our cab shows up this time.) By 4:15, we’ll be on the plane and eight hours later, we come home.

For those still looking for the rest of the advice blog, I promise it's coming. I added a lot of stuff from these last two weeks :)