ARRIVAL

So I'm here. I think that the crazy trip over here helped to detach me from my old life and completely turn my biology inside out and upside down. After an early morning flight to LA I sat and waited for 4 hours for the Air New Zealand terminal to open. Then I met up with Michelle for our 10 hour flight to London. We chatted, ate, watched movies and didn’t sleep much. We watched “Night at the Museum 2” which was great, I can’t get over the lisp and “The Secret of Moonacre” a B grade tween fantasy flick with a great cast and fantastically ridiculous costuming.

On the ground we successfully got from Heathrow to Kings Cross and on to Leeds. It was quite the production with all my luggage. The scariest part was navigating the Kings Cross tube station without getting run over.

I slept most of the train ride to Leeds and we took a cab to my flat. Upon first entering my new little home I was a bit overcome. I was relieved, disappointed, happy, confused but mostly just overwhelmed. It’s not really fair to spring something like that on a person when you’re so vulnerable from jet leg. But I am very glad that we had few days there before heading out.

We sat down for a few minutes to get a grip and change before heading out to explore the neighborhood. The neighborhood is lovely and the main street that we live on is tree lined and the sidewalk is made of giant paving stones. We picked up some groceries for dinner and headed back.

We went to sleep around 10. I was full on black out no dreams asleep. A house or car alarm woke us up at a quarter to 2. It went off for a long time and it was hard to get back to sleep. Then of course I was just lying there and thinking, which is not good in my current state and I started crying. Michelle asked if I wanted to try to sleep or to get up and talk. We got up and I broke down, but Michelle is an excellent counselor. I’m so thankful that she’s here to provide a second set of eyes and perspective. She’s been through this whole move your entire life to the other side of the planet by yourself before and so she knows what I’m going thorugh. We talked from 2-5 and it really helped a lot. Then we slept from 5-10ish.

REACTION

My life these past three years has been fantastic. And the past two years has been rather consistent. I’ve been really really focused on work and I’ve been social and had an incredible support network, unlike anything I’ve ever had in my life. When I started EdCC, the mission and UW it was really hard. I was at times scared and nervous and sick. I would put all my nerves and fear in my stomach and often be sick effecting my appetite etc. Besides some misgivings about applying for the EW job, my life as a teacher has been blissful. It has been a lot of hard work but I have LOVED it. I threw myself into my work and was richly rewarded with a feeling of satisfaction and confidence and I found success and grew and was loved by students, colleagues and parents. It has been by no means perfect but it was absent of the paralyzing fear and emotional toll of previous challenges.

This reminds me a bit of the year before my mission that was so fantastic and then the mission was so hard. So here I am on my new mission, stripped of my comfy Hobbit hole and part of identity.

My life has been consistent and on the whole I’ve been balanced if not a bit self absorbed and too comfortable. I’ve had difficulty sometimes focusing on Spiritual things. Now I’ve been ripped wide open and am a pulsing ball of emotions right on the surface. The twisting pit in my stomach has returned. I haven’t missed it. I think that recently I’ve really either been not feeling things or have really been in control and now everything is rough and raw and I’m trying to ride it out.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and visualizing my life here- going to school, shopping, riding the bus, going to church and activities. I also anticipated freaking out and some thoughts that I would have that would want to make me chicken out. I tried to plan ahead for those eventualities and to remind myself that I chose this, I wanted this. I knew this would be hard, that it wouldn’t be better to go home, that it takes time to get set up in a new place, but as the emotional reality hit I had to ride it out because you can’t reason with emotion. I’ve felt scared, trapped, alone and that was just in the first 48 hours.

Fortunately I am not without coping skills. Having Michelle here as helped and I’m storing up inspirational scriptures and quotes, moments of peace and comfort and other things I can hold on to like remembering what my goals are for this adventure. Besides getting a degree and long awaited musical training I purposely put myself in this situation to knock down some of my barriers and limitations. I chose this life knowing it would create a situation in which I would be required to rely upon the solely upon the Lord, increase the spirituality of my life and the closeness of my relationship with Him. And so with my hand in His, here we go.

As some of you know getting my student visa to the UK has proven quite the challenge. One of the main issues was that I had to show that I had money or a loan letter from a bank to cover tuition and 9 months living expenses.

The process:

• Acquaint myself with the 200 page document about how to apply for a VISA
• Email and ask the school to write me a visa letter
• Assume I could get a student loan
• Find out I couldn’t get a subsidized loan
• Find out that I’m not on any loan lists
• Start asking relatives for money
• After waiting 40 minutes, open US Bank account to get line of credit that I can’t actually get for 90 days and which they can’t give me an official letter for 30 days and upon which account they spelled my name Charlotter.
• Borrow money from parents- to be paid back from end of the month last ESD paycheck.
• Go back to Bank of America and beg for statement letter: totally got the hookup thank you Heidi and the Woodinville BofA
• Start online application and find out I have to schedule a biometrics appointment [eletronic fingerprint scanning and photography]
• Aug 7-Go directly to post office to mail off official documents $20
• Aug 13 get biometrics done at the department of homeland security, drive straight to the post office and send off stamped form $20
• Aug 20th- Receive email that they’ve started the application and find out that I missed to things. Run around to get them and over night them again $20 on the way to the camp out.
• Aug 24- a.m. Attempt to call the consulate. Lots of recordings no real people. I could pay $3 a minute to get application advice but not to get application status.
• p.m. email two different addresses and beg.
• Start looking at flights/hotel/car to LA to fly down a day early if necessary to pick it up in person.
• Aug 25- send another email with a different subject line.
• August 26th 9:00 Call the consulate and dial the British National emergency number to talk to a real person. She couldn’t help but connected me to someone and I left a voice message.
• 9:30 email visa company for help
• 10:30 Email #3 to consulate
• 11:00 Receive email that my visa has been approved
• 11:15 Email #4 Are you sending it today? Will it get here?
• 11:30 Email #5
• 12 Call UPS and ask about shipping
• 12:30 Real person calls from the consulate asking if I want to pick it up or if they should overnight it. Much rejoicing.
• 4:25 picked up from the consulate and tracked on UPS

Aug 27

• 5:00 am Arrives in Seattle
• 9:00 Consulate calls to see if it’s arrived
• 9:48 Delivered

The punchline:9:55 notice that VISA is valid from September 5th, meaning I can come early as a visitor but have to leave and re-enter as a student before school starts. Our itinerary has us in Ireland until the 4th- might have to shuffle everything a day or there's always EuroDisney.

To be continued...

PS Thank you thank you thank you to all of you who were praying for me!!

My first year teaching I had quite the commute- 75 miles a day. I passed a lot of the time listening to college lectures on CD from the library produced by The Teaching Company. I listened to enough lectures to earn myself a degree if not a major in English and American literature and history not to mention a whole load of composer bios. Enter itunes U. Now that I’ve a converted mac follower I’ve discovered podcasts and itunes U. I love subscribing to great NPR shows like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I’ve also downloaded a whole crop of free college lectures including last weeks highlights of SPU lectures on Tolkien and CS Lewis and lectures by Timothy Morton on Sense and Sensibility. Today I enjoyed lectures on The Hobbit by Corey Olsen.

If you have not read The Hobbit you should do so, and soon. It is a delightful book. Since the title of my blog was inspired by The Hobbit I found much of the analysis today very applicable to my upcoming adventure. In the beginning of the book Tolkien lays out a conflict within Bilbo between his Took and Baggins side. Baggins’ [his fathers’ side] were “respectable, never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking.” Tooks on the other hand had “something not entirely hobbit-like about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures.”

The Baggins side is sensible and enjoys the comforts of the hobbit-hole- good food, a warm fire, friends, walks and sleeping. The Took side longs for adventure, action and travel. “This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.”

While I love the comforts of my Hobbit hole I’m headed out on a grad adventure to see new lands and new people. It may at times be not as comfortable as my current life but if I let my latent “Tookish” nature carry me along who knows where I might end up. I wish I could say it as well as he, I particularly like how he, Prof Olsen, talked about how Rivendell was the perfect place for Bilbo because it balanced his Took and Baggins’ sides. So read the book and check out the podcasts.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.... You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."