Canterbury and Tales

Ugh. Keeping up a blog is sometimes hard to remember to do. Well let’s see. Last week was bad. My mom left and the sun didn’t come out at all. Between those two things I was like the most homesick I’ve been yet. I also was just like in my room the entire week, pretty much just sleeping and going on facebook. Not a healthy routine. I also got kind of frustrated about deadlines back at home that I was sort of out of the loop on, and I made several upset phone calls home.

Because of all of that I was not excited to go away for the weekend with a bunch of choir kids that I only sort of knew. However, it turned out to be the best weekend ever. We drove all day Friday, (which meant I got to skip my worst lecture, YES), south, which was like about 6 hours, mostly because of traffic when we hit the edge of London. It was funny, at one point we started crossing this river, and I asked my friend Tony what it was, and he said “that big muddy ditch is the Thames.” EEK! So exciting. I don’t know how many times I can bring up how lovely the English country side is before it starts to get boring to y’all, but here I go again. It’s beautiful. Pastures of green with docile, loving sheep munching away, all set to the back drop of fairy tale towns. Love. Well after some time, we pulled into our hotel, which I was expecting to be barely above a hostel, but it wasn’t. It was sooo much better than that. It was a nice hotel with a TV, clean sheets, oh man, like civilized life. We then went to the first rehearsal at the school in the town of Canterbury with the 300 other choir kids, and then came back and crashed. Then the next day we did Canterbury in full glory. We started the morning off with a dress rehearsal in the quire of Canterbury Cathedral. Canterbury is probably my favorite cathedral I’ve been to yet. It is stunning. Absolutely breathe taking. Even in this time, it makes you feel utterly miniscule and mortal, but it also made me feel like I was protected by an awesome and terrible God. I think that’s really the point of Gothic Architecture, but in our modern day world, there aren’t many opportunities to feel insignificant in a good way. And I can’t even begin to describe the stain glass. It was like the walls of the church were on fire. Well, anyway we had our rehearsal and then we had like 7 hours of free time. A bunch of us decided to walk around the Cathedral first. There is so much history there. We saw the place that Thomas Beckett was martyred; we saw where his shrine was, the black prince, and the chapel of modern day martyrs. I was really touched at the display and prayers from around the world. One of my friends in choir is a monk named Nelson, and he showed us the page in the book that talked about his brothers who had been murdered a few years ago for standing up for their faith. It was a pretty powerful experience reflecting on the lives and deaths of those people.

After spending a ridiculously long time in the church, and an even longer time in the line at the gift shop, we went to next most visited point of worship, meaning of course, Starbucks. We had a good laugh at my new friend Heather’s impression of an American accent and a good long think on the implications of a Starbucks in an old vicarage from like 1430, and then went on our merry way to the wax works Canterbury Tales. Now it’s a little bit misleading to call them wax works, because what is really was, was a fully animatronics and life size recreation of a good portion of Chaucer’s work. My favorite was probably the Wife of Bath, but that’s my favorite in the actual story so…

Oh! I should mention how we got into this little attraction. We were waiting in line, and we started chatting up the cashier. She found out we were a choir, and then told us we should sing for her. We did, and then she let us in for free. It pays to be a choir kid sometimes.

Anyway. After the Chaucer extravaganza, we went walking through town determined to find the Norman Castle we’d seen on our way in. Canterbury was a Roman fort that became an Anglo-Saxon stronghold (hence the “bury” in its name), that then became a walled city. Just like York. And Chester. So naturally, it looks just like York and Chester, only with different colored limestone. Well, after meandering through the lovely shops and narrow streets, we emerged with the ruins of this magnificent castle in front of us. Because of its location, the Norman’s chose Canterbury for one of their first settlements post-conquering, and this castle was the ruined remains of that jaunt. It was so cool. I can’t get over how cool castles are. They look just like every book I read as a kid. This one was especially cool, because some of the staircases were still intact, which meant all sorts of Repunzel type posing and fake sword fighting ensued. We finally went back to the school, grabbed some dinner, and then headed back to change and take our seats for the concert.

It was so eerie and beautiful in the Cathedral at night. It seemed just, I don’t know, reverent isn’t even a strong enough word. It was utter blackness, with columns of light where we would be singing. I was in awe. But then the concert started, and it was different. The second half was my favorite part. We as a collective group sang Rutter’s Requiem. It’s one thing to sing liturgical music with a choir. It’s another thing entirely to sing it with 300 other people in an ancient and colossal space. That’s about all I have to describe it.

Afterwards, we had a fair amount of fun back at the hotel with the other choirs staying there. I learned a lot of English drinking songs. And football songs. And rugby songs. And was reminded again how much British people like living life to the fullest. It was great though. Then it was a spot of Olympics and bed. The next day was entirely new friends on a happy (slightly tired and…well you know) bus and then rest at Chester.

Since then we’ve had several days of sunshine, Suvi and I booked tickets to London this weekend, and basically just overall happiness. My scary spider bite is even almost healed. Yay life!!