Looking across Lindisfarne island (the site of the first Viking invasion of Britain) toward the North Sea during a hike to the castle
Author: Ella Nations | Major: English | Semester: Summer 2023
“Payment accepted. Thanks for shopping at Tesco,” the self-checkout stated in its pleasant female voice as I grabbed my box of Jaffa Cakes and ran with my friends in the cold, pouring rain back to our dorm, slipping on cobblestones and hollering in joy. When we got inside the old building and shook some of the water out of our hair, we stood around the table in the small kitchen area and took turns brewing tea and trading Jaffa Cakes and stories. Two weeks ago, I had never met these people. I only knew one person in the program, and we had only spoken a few times in class. Now, standing drenched around a table in Durham, England with piping mugs of Yorkshire Tea and smiles, I knew I was in the company of some of my closest friends.
During our time together in class (and on late night Tesco runs) those first few weeks in the UK, our group learned just how similar we really were. Everyone in the program had different majors and goals, and there was a wide range of ages. We had everything from Junior and Senior Advertising and Public Relations majors to Freshman Classics and English majors. However, we all had one thing in common: we deeply cared about learning and about other people. In our lectures with Dr. Quinn, we sat together in the common room area of Hatfield College in Durham and had lively and curious discussions about Medieval culture, the roots of modern language and thought, and how the past can inform our present actions and present impressions of literature and society.
Those classes in Durham were special for other reasons too. I have never been so close to a professor during any class in “normal” school, or felt so encouraged by a professor to follow my interests and inspirations. Sure, I was doing assigned readings of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but I was also sitting with Dr. Quinn in the breakfast hall and discussing classic philosophy, the future of English at academic institutions, and even the differences in coffee between the UK and home. Dr Quinn encouraged me to see the possibilities of doing graduate school in the future, and he gave me books to read and videos to watch and ideas to consider for my Honors Thesis. Dr. Quinn became a mentor and a friend, someone who was invested in all of our futures and in all of our educations.
Outside of class, our group was traveling nonstop. In addition to the many site visits scheduled for the program (York Minster, Windsor Castle, and Canterbury Cathedral, just to name a few), I went with the group exploring all over the country. At Lindisfarne island, the site of the first Viking invasion of Britain in 793 AD, we visited ruins of a Priory and learned about early medieval monastic traditions, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon hiking around the island, playing in the North Sea, and laying in the sun next to the castle eating gelato. On a weekend trip, our group traveled to Edinburgh, and I had the time of my life (my journal literally reads “I think this was the best day of my life”) meeting so many new people, walking up and down the Old Mile, visiting the National Gallery of Scotland, lying in Princes Street Gardens listening to bagpipes and watching a Scottish Latinx cultural festival, and eating lots and lots of baked goods from the Stockbridge Market. I said it was the time of my life because it truly was – I had never experienced so much culture at once, or read so many new things at once, or made so many new friends who understood me so deeply at once – and I am incredibly thankful for all of the time I got to spend traveling during the program.
When the bus pulled up to our hotel in London for the last two weeks of the program, there was an audible gasp from everyone onboard. We had learned and seen so much already, and yet there was an entire city waiting for us just outside the door. Quickly, I learned that London is historically British but incredibly cosmopolitan. Those last few weeks were spent rushing on the Tube to site visits across the city from the British Museum to the Tower of London and then rushing back in the evenings to watch plays in the West End, visit Paul McCartney’s personal photo collection in the National Portrait Gallery, listen to street performers sing in French in Leicester Square, or eat bibimbap at Korean restaurants in Chinatown. On Portobello Road one afternoon I took shelter from the rain under an awning and spoke to the woman next to me from Belgium. I learned she had spent most of her career working in European Union legal offices, and as we waited for the rain to pass, she told me stories of her childhood in Morocco and taught me Dutch idioms she found amusing. Eventually the rain let up and we went our separate ways, but that’s just how London was; you’d walk a block and meet someone from halfway across the world who was kind and curious and who you could talk to all day.
On the last weekend of the program, I traveled with two of my friends from class to Copenhagen, Denmark, inspired by the history I’d learned of the Danish Vikings in Anglo-Saxon Britain and by class readings and translations of Beowulf. Edinburgh was maybe the best day of my life, but Copenhagen was by far the best weekend I have ever had. Getting to experience a culture where everyone speaks a different language from my own, and where the commitment to food and art and design is so high…that was the most incredible experience of my life so far. Learning about Viking history, visiting Rosenborg Castle, taking canal tours of the city, walking around Frederisksberg park during the Stella Polaris festival, grabbing early morning pastries from Juno the Bakery, riding rollercoasters at Tivoli, sitting in the park and doing schoolwork as swans swam by, and eating dinner in Nyhavn as the sun sank below the colorful harbor buildings was just unreal. It was thanks to this program that I could even go to Copenhagen for the weekend, and I know those days spent in Denmark are days I will never forget.
If I could do the Medieval England program all over again, I would tell myself to start more open-minded. I would tell anyone interested in the program the same advice. I arrived in the UK very independent, very sure of myself, and expecting things to all go a certain way. Long story short, things did not go that way. I got rained on a lot, I misunderstood a lot of accents, and I booked the wrong train tickets (twice). I had a hard time understanding the QR-code ordering systems in every single restaurant (almost no one orders at the counter or by waiter), I tripped on a lot of cobblestones, and I had trouble reading long passages of medieval texts at a time. I got really tired, and I missed my family a lot. But gradually I learned to brave the rain, to understand the accents, to do my readings in pastures filled with sheep, and to order my food correctly at restaurants. I began to go on late night grocery store runs with friends and warm up with a mug of tea and laughter. I began to see that home is more than just permanent place; it is the people you surround yourself wherever you are, and it is open-mindedness to see a home environment even in the most unfamiliar places. Home can be Mexican food and “Woo Pig Sooie,” sure, but it can also be Jaffa Cakes and “Payment accepted. Thanks for shopping at Tesco.”