Spilling the tea: the strangeness of ending a chapter of one’s life

Hello, everyone. We hope that you are having a great week.

We think it’s incredibly important for you to know that by the time you will be reading this, the two of us will be exactly one month away from being back on home soil (cheers).

The thought of familiar comforts is tempting, but we’ve got just enough time left to squeeze in a few more weekend adventures.

This past weekend we once again ventured our separate ways in an attempt to finish out the last few bucket list items, one in Italy for Summer and closer to home in the UK for Kayla.

First up, Summer and her weekend trip to Rome, Italy:

This weekend kicked off with a memorable scene straight out of TV soap opera. Just as our plane was about to depart, an extremely angry passenger decided that they were over it and, after some serious side-eye from the rest of us passengers, had to be escorted off. My flight landed very late in Rome, and I swear the wait for a taxi was even longer. I traveled with two other Johnnies, and we met up with another group of CSB+SJU students. The group we spent the weekend traveling with consisted of students from four different study abroad semester programs (Italy, France, United Kingdom and Austria). We got to the Airbnb around 3 a.m. and went right to sleep.

While we were still exhausted, we went into full tourist mode the next morning. We hit up the Vatican Museums Pantheon, and Colosseum in record time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned abroad, it’s the fine art of walking so much that your feet disown you by the end of the day.

The Vatican was awe-inspiring, the Pantheon left me dizzy from all the looking up and the Colosseum? It’s like stepping back into an ancient Gladiator match, minus the lions and swords.

Of course, no travel story is complete without a mishap, and mine came in the form of dinner. The group and I got lured into the ultimate tourist trap by a cozy looking restaurant that promised authentic Italian food.

Instead, I got a bowl of pasta so bad and so plain I nearly didn’t eat it, but when you’ve racked up 30,000 steps in a day, you’ll take whatever calories you can get, even if they come served with a side of disappointment.

The weekend wrapped up on a high note, though, as I joined a massive crowd at St. Peter’s Basilica to catch a Sunday blessing from the Pope. The cheering and clapping when he appeared in his window and the silence that followed once he started speaking gave me chills. Suddenly, every travel hiccup, weird meal and aching foot felt totally worth it.

Now Kayla and a weekend with friends and Oxford:

It’s official: I am so tired of cross-country flights, if I see another plane that is not the one taking me back to the US, I may run away screaming. Luckily for me, that doesn’t stop me from doing some more traveling, just maybe some that doesn’t require TSA and customs.

I’ve decided it’s the era of day trips and London-based experiences during this second half, so I’ll keep you posted on the progress. This weekend was an Oxford excursion with two friends, but before that I had another two visitors.

Remember the Johnnies I went to go see in Greece? Two of them came to see me this time in London for the weekend. I lured them with my dazzling company, the fact that we have a Chipotle here and also the promise that they’d see some “Harry Potter-looking stuff”…whatever that means. You know the drill at this point: visitors arrive, and we immediately start running like crazy people to all the good spots. Borough Market, Big Ben, the Paddington Bear Experience (don’t judge me, we love him here)—you get the gist.

One thing I hadn’t done yet in London was a tour of Westminster Abbey, so this was a great excuse to buy a ticket since I felt the interior would fulfill some of that “Harry Potter” vibe they were searching for.

Both of them were also very good sports as I discovered there was a “Poets’ Corner” of the abbey where there are memorials for Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen among others and immediately freaked out. More on Ms. Austen next week…

We packed as much as humanly possible into just two days of this weekend to give them a little taste of London.

I said farewell to them on Sunday morning and booked it to the train station for a train to Oxford.

I think I can confidently say you’d be hard pressed to find someone you know who is more into academics and books than me, so this was a big deal. I also realized on the train that “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien was buried there, cue more freaking out. We arrived and found ourselves at Britain’s first public museum, The Ashmolean. It’s full of half a million years of art and archaeology stocked with the acquisitions gifted to the University of Oxford by a politician in the 17th century.

More importantly, I also found a painting of a bear on a print in the gift shop that was so cute we decided we were going to try and find where it was in the museum.

I refused to ask someone for help for the first 15 minutes of searching, and when we finally gave up, the gift shop clerk told us it wasn’t currently displayed and was in storage.

I was considerably upset, because who cares about perfectly preserved mummies and ancient Greek statues when you could look at a bear painting?

Oxford has a covered market in the city center that we loved, which had a shop where purchasing a book would get you a free coffee. The bookshop hits kept coming as we visited Blackwell’s, the largest academic bookseller in the UK.

I’m not kidding when I tell you I audibly gasped out loud when I realized this place had multiple floors and a basement level that was as big as a house. I had to be dragged out so we could keep moving. They should rename that place “Kayla Anderson’s personal circle of Heaven.” Much better ring to it.

The trend continued with a stop at one wing of the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford (I told you I wasn’t kidding when I said this trip was a big deal for the book lovers). The libraries also had a really great gift shop that featured authors that were significant to Oxford, so we all know how that turned out for me. I’m beginning to think these shop workers see me coming and start preparing to be cleaned out.

The entire town is essentially taken over by the University, with its buildings scattered throughout so you can’t walk two feet without finding a new academic wing. The architecture of Oxford is so incredible, so we stopped a few times around the big famous spots for photos.

We walked through the university parks before of course making a trip to visit Tolkien’s grave, which was also really cool. People leave sweet gifts for him and his wife, Edith, from Lego figures to rings (shocker). Dinner and a very welcome stall for time at a pub followed before we grabbed the train back to London.

So, another week has come and gone. We both had some pretty significant weekends, and we think a big theme for us was enjoying some incredible history.

Summer spent her days exploring one of the most sacred places in Catholicism, while Kayla strolled through a university that is steeped in the legacies of its most famous alumni (Stephen Hawking, Oscar Wilde and Hugh Grant, to name a few).

One thing that has differentiated our time here in Europe compared to the US is how old everything is. We tour structures and places in the US that have a lot of rich history, but some of what we’ve seen here while abroad makes the US look like a teenager. But regardless of how far back in time it takes us, we think that everyone should at least try to be a history buff.

Now before you tell us that it’s not your cup of tea, we’d like to point out that the world is an incredibly complicated place.

In our time here we’ve explored world history that is painful and controversial, but we’ve also seen a lot of positive and joyful history too.

We think that in order to make any progress in life, you should keep one eye on the past.

Be energized and motivated by the good stuff, learn from the bad and keep moving forward.

We argue this applies to international relations and also your next calculus test.

If our abroad adventures have been any indication, everything is a lesson. We can also attest that seeing centuries of history in front of you only serves to remind you how much had to happen for you to end up where you are—mistakes, successes and all. Don’t waste it.

And on that strangely deep note, that’s all for us.

We’re definitely not finished telling you about some last-minute travels and activities that we’ve got planned, but we only have two Record editions left before we sign off from abroad.

Remember when it was midterm just a few weeks ago? Feels like ancient history to us.