A Boy's Trip across the Pond: What Will Be Your Waterloo?

When I was a camp counselor and RA, I would always gather my campers each night for the sacred ritual of “check-in, check-out.” The name comes from two phrases you say: you begin your turn by saying, “check in” and end it by saying, “check out.” Looking back on it, “check-in, check-out” was probably my favorite part of working at camp—it was the only time of the day where I could just exist in the same space as my campers and find out what was going on in their minds. Since I haven’t written on anything I’ve actually been doing recently, I figured I would try a “check-in, check-out” style for my next couple blog posts:

Check in.

With the prospect of cheap travel to so many interesting, diverse places, I’ve often found it easy to forget that I’m actually living in one of the most exciting cities in the world. I described a phenomenon a few weeks in where I started to get settled; I gradually stepped out of the tourist mindset of trying to do everything cool or different-looking all the time and into the resident mindset of balancing work, daily tasks, friends, and rest as well as possible. I welcomed this change at the time, but I began to realize there’s a danger in living in the resident mindset as well: I became all too content to sit on my couch at night and talk with friends or surf the Web instead of getting out and having new experiences. I’ve worked harder over the past few weeks to find cool things to do right here in London, and here are some of the highlights:

This Saturday, I tried to embrace my inner tourist by hanging around Parliament Square for most of the day. Our program had a tour of Westminster Abbey set up in the morning, so we bypassed the throngs of people and walked around the Abbey for a couple hours. It was wild to be in a building that was over seven hundred years old, unfathomable perhaps. Unfortunately, our guide assumed that we were also obsessed with the Royal Family, so we had to suffer through hearing all about the Royal Wedding and how Kate and Pippa (I think that’s her sister’s name, who knew she had a sister?) wore lovely dresses and how William was a real gentleman because he said something funny to his father in-law. I’ve grown to understand and even appreciate a lot of British traditions in my time here, but the monarchy seems as foreign and antiquated to me as when I first arrived. At least in America I can tour Washington without having to sit through the details of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s wedding.

Anyway, I met up with a friend from UNC who’s on another program here and headed down to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum, where we were able to spend a few hours. I found the museum in particular to be incredibly interesting, a portrait of a man who was credited with saving Western civilization but who seemed out of place during peacetime. As it turns out, I came away thinking Churchill to be a bit of an unprincipled curmudgeon, one of the last exemplars of the doddering British upper class that controlled the country (and in effect, the world) for centuries before. I think I would’ve hated Churchill had I been around in his time. He seemed to want to be in Parliament for little more than to exert his own influence—he even changed parties from Conservative to Liberal and back again, if we had any doubts to his lack of clear ideology. His political stances were underlined by a belief that whites were superior to Indians and that even as Gandhi was rallying support for Indian independence, Indian people needed to be controlled by white people for their own good. He stood up to Hitler, but in peacetime, his record was less impressive.

After the War Rooms, I crossed the Thames to go to the National Theatre. At the suggestion of our program staffer, I had bought the last available ticket to Saturday night’s showing of This House, a play about Tory and Labour Party whips in the melodrama that was 1970s. My seat was above and behind the stage—since the play was set in Parliament, I “became” one of the opposition backbenchers. I even became friendly with one of my fellow backbenchers, a retired civil servant who had come in from Leeds to see the play. The play itself unfolded like a West Wing drama with a less happy ending—the main characters were of the Josh Lyman mold: insulated politicos more concerned with the business of politics than ideals of it. Yet for a political junkie like me, it read like an idealistic tragedy of the highest order: idiosyncratic, yet caring individuals trying to make deals to me people’s lives better who were undone by their ultimate realization that life is bigger than politics. It was a sad play, but it had more than its fair share of funny moments and it was extremely good. I’ve struggled a lot with British politics throughout my time here—it can be antiquated and self-defeating and, like Churchill, slimy at times, but this gave me a real connection to the motivations and ideals of someone in the Labour Party. For good measure, I listened to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” again that night.

On the Westminster Abbey tour, the aforementioned program staffer told us about the Choral Evensong services that many of the Anglican churches put on here, so I decided to go to one at Westminster on Monday. I thought I’d feel a bit awkward being since I couldn’t partake in all of the prayers to Christ, but I felt incredibly welcome. It was actually much less of an ordeal than the tour on Saturday was; I mentioned that I was there for Evensong and the guards let me right in. It felt right to be in the cathedral for prayer instead of touring—the place was empty save for the couple hundred chairs they had set up for visitors. I took my seat in one of the last rows and looked up; a thousand years of history returned my gaze, assuring me both of my insignificance compared to higher powers and my safety in a room full of people driven by their faith to pray for a better world. Amidst the go-go-go environment of living in a city, it was nice to take a step back for an hour and reflect. I hope I can go again soon.

I can’t believe my London experience is coming to a close. I have less than three weeks left in the program from this point. There’s so much that I’ve been able to do, yet so much still left to do (including more essays than I’d like). Yet I’ve been able to learn so much here. I was sitting in Evensong service on Monday, taking in the late afternoon light streaming through the stained-glass windows and the airy harmonies of the choir, when I noticed that I was a bit chilly. Instead of lamenting my situation or putting on my gloves, I decided to embrace the by-now familiar feeling. It made me feel alive, vibrant, like when I take a deep breath and see it hang in the air for a moment before dissipating, or when I see the blue of the sky poke through the clouds after a long absence. Sometimes, at least every once in a while, London can captivate you.

Check out.