Home sweet Suburbia.
Last month I got home from another writing adventure in England thanks to Rutgers Study Abroad. This was the first time the English department had developed a class like ours (I guess I just like to test drive all these new out-of-the-country programs!) which was based off of Virginia Woolf's lifestyle in Sussex County, in a country town called Lewes.
We were in the countryside, which was totally not what I expected since so many English-based books I have read were based in London or other big cities. I honestly wasn't the biggest fan of British literature growing up, but began to appreciate it more during my junior year of high school as we read more Shakespeare and Orwell. I always wondered—how in the world can these characters spend THAT much time sitting and walking around in a garden? My little dinky backyard garden only serves the purpose of organic vegetables!
And then I started to understand the United Kingdom, where tea is blessed by the Queen and every meal might as well be fish and chips. Where you drive on the left and where pedestrians certainly DO NOT have a right of way. Where you can hike 72 miles in two weeks along the same river Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell walked (yahooo Bloomsbury!). Where Camden Market means more than just a random place Charles Dickens always mentioned and where you’ll ache for a winter jacket in June.
The purpose of our trip was to discover our own writing routines—what works best for us. Do we need complete solitude? Can we start our first novels in the middle of Piccadilly Circus? Does taking the essential walk for 9-10 miles a day help us unwind and write more at night?
Virginia Woolf typically woke up early, had breakfast in bed, and set out to write in her own writing room (a room of her own!) for hours. Her writing room was built separately from her house (it was in Rodmell, a couple miles away from my program base in Lewes, and it was so small that it is considered a village and has no postal office) so she could have some kind of balance between digging deep into herself for hours and hours and having a stable life with her family. Then she’d go on one of those walks, which, when they don’t involve sharply-sloped, chalky hills and 90mph wind gusts, are very therapeutic. And then she’d unwind with dinner, reading, and time with her family.
To be honest, I was a little frustrated for the first two or three days. I am a true city girl at heart—born and raised in Newark, New Jersey—so seeing so much farmland, green hills (green at all?! Unheard of…) and agriculture for hours was so unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. But then we started to visit the homes of Rudyard Kipling, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Anne of Cleaves, and Vanessa Bell. We went to the BEAUTIFUL Brighton Pavillion. I went to London—which is a lot smaller than you’d think—to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. I walked around in Hyde Park with my roommate, saw Buckingham Palace, and only spent 40 pounds at Camden Market for 7 different outfits.
And I wrote a lot. A lot a lot. And if you couldn’t tell from reading all my posts, my life revolves around three things: writing, not sleeping, and Douglass. Writing is of course at the top of that tier, and with everything I do, I NEED that outlet for myself. It’s that thing that keeps me going. Do you ever just have those awful yearnings to get up and do something? That something for me is writing, and being afforded an opportunity to go write in a foreign country was so priceless. All day, every day, anywhere and on anything I can.
I finished the program off with a 26 page portfolio which included a sestina--I know you groaned reading that—and the first short story I had written since my junior year in high school. I wrote about our infinite walks, the tea, and how I ended up going to an English library just so I could read more of my favorite American authors without meaning to do so. You can only read so much of Paradise Lost before you want to read Billy Collins and Mark Doty—who by the way both lurked through Rutgers. In fact, Mark Doty teaches here. If that didn’t get you excited to come to Rutgers, you either aren’t as much of a groupie as I am or don’t like poetry. But that’s okay because I promise you’ll find lots of other reasons to love Rutgers and want to stay (and maybe I can read about them on this very blog… applyapplyapply!!!).
We had a final reading at a pub. Pub life is hella integrated into English culture. Dogs and children are welcome and pretty much every area has its specialty brewed beer available. We called our reading event The Rutgers Rambling Writers. You know you’re a poet when alliteration lurks in every part of your speech. Each of us shared our best work and said our goodbyes. Some of us were headed back to the US, some to other parts of Europe, some traveling to other parts of the world.
I once again got to talk to professors and administrators on a casual level—thank you Paul Blaney and Karen Alexander for being awesome mentors, to Catherine Charlton (if you’re interested in flocking off to England, she’s your go-to woman) for leading the way through everything really, and to Carolyn Williams for your guest appearance! Professors are real people too, who had the same struggles and inhibitions as any of us do, and it’s awesome to be able to talk to them over a cup of tea.
Studying abroad has that brilliant way of making you feel completely out of place, alone, lost, but really adventurous. I highly recommend doing it, whether it be for a class, a Byrne Seminar, or service learning. You come back and appreciate your own home and realize always how much the world has to offer and that even more diversity lies even beyond New Brunswick.
And since I certainly know words can’t all describe my adventure…:
SUP LONDON?!
You know, Mob Mentality and blindly following a festival in Brighton
Virginia Woolf's bed
Virginia Woolf's writing room
This is a heartbreaking bend for two reasons: it felt like it kept going on forever on a 12 mile walk and it was also the same river along which Virginia Woolf walked to her death
Pit stop to a Blacksmith's shop
English countryside
Chillin' on top of a castle
Rudyard Kipling's house
Sissinghurst Castle, home to Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's lover
Part time princess, part time writer... same ish
Oh, yeah, part time convict too...
JUST KIDDING
SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE THEATRE <333
Lurking in the gardens
Getting some serious legs on the hikes
Buckingham Palace
Charging the Lewes Castle at night
And some videos:
Braving the wind on a walk
Nearing the edge of Beachy Head
Street performers at the farmer's market in Lewes
Driving on the left!
Missing it already!
Location: SinglePost