Sunshine

Thank you Iceland. Pretty from far away.

The sheep whisperer working his magic...

The loveliest part of the whole show.

Dove Cottage.

I am in love with life. Sometimes everything goes right and just gets better. After being homesick and normal sick and angsty and cloud covered, I feel a little bipolar. I just can’t get over how fantastic being alive is.

So my friend Chris visited this week, and it was great fun. Chester has been putting on quite a show with flowers and sunshine, and I was happy that this was the side of England he got to see. We did the standard tour, walking the walls, the cheesy museum, dinner at a pub, etc. Man, I love England. I love the people, the buildings, even the food. I think I started out feeling like this was a vacation, then I just felt homesick, but now I feel like this is mine, this is where I live. It was fun showing this place off to a friend.

After the few days in Chester, we took an awesome day trip to the Lake District, which is a few hours north of here. It’s one of England’s national parks, and I am so glad it’s protected. Anyway, we got up and took a couple different trains to end up in Windermere. It was great to catch up and share stories about school and different things in life. On the way there we passed this cool old steam engine but the best part was that it was some formal event, so for like the next hour we passed hundreds of Brits taking pictures of the track and the train. It was pretty funny.

We got there and took another train to Grasmere, where Wordsworth made his home at Dove Cottage. I took this cool tour of his house and learned all sorts of detailed facts about his life, his sister Fanny, Coleridge, and Sir Walter Scott. If you haven’t read Wordsworth, or haven’t read him since junior year in high school, I highly encourage you to take another look at his poetry. It really is fantastic. After that we decided to follow this group of heavily geared out girls towards the top of a peak. Although they were intimidated and turned around, Chris and I managed to make it to the top of the…hill. The mountains there are beautiful, but "mountains" is a generous description. However, the view from the top was stunning. It was the most peaceful feeling I’ve had in months. Away from the cities, away from people, away from everything except sheep and good company. I just wanted to wonder lonely as a cloud forever.

And then there were sheep.

We were talking about how funny/stupid sheep were on the way up, but right as we were about to reach a pinnacle, this ball of fuzz looks up, specifically at Chris, and lets out this curious “BAHHH”. This was funny enough, but to add to it, this particular fellow decided to come on over to Mr. Christopher. The other sheep and I were curious what was going to happen, and it turns out anytime Chris laughed this sheep would “bah” back. Then follow him. Then the rest of the sheep would do it. It was probably the funniest thing I saw the whole week.

Except for the swans from hell. Well, to be fair, all swans are mean, but… So we came upon this little lake, in the company of more newlyweds and nearly deads, (all of whom were in love. Everyone in the Lake District I’m convinced is in love), and these gorgeous swans, floating on the face of heaven. This was all fine and dandy until this little dog ran up, and Mama Swan turned into a combination of a viper and a grizzly bear. I ran away, because I was scared. Then this kid comes up and tries to HAND FEED the killer bird. Chris and I left before carnage occurred. Who knew swans were that terrifying. Clearly the descendants of raptors.

We got lost in the hills, (which was just fine by me), and we hiked the rest of the day from town to town enjoying everything in the Lake District.

That experience was followed by Iceland blowing up, which gave England airplane delays and SPECTACULAR sunsets. And there’s no like giant cloud of doom like the news is saying. It’s all invisible particles, so it just looks like a forest fire sky.

Next up on the program: Oxford and Wales.