It's been quite awhile since my last travelogue - last November to be exact. Deanna came home for Christmas and we did basically nothing -- at her request. Then I spent 2 months in Tacoma, Washington* auditing some classes at Northwest Baptist Seminary and spending time with my kids. When I got back to Germany I was kind of ready to stay put for a while, but it was time for a trip that I committed to long ago.
So . . . . on March 28th (over a month ago now) I met the juniors and seniors of Covenant High School (including Deanna) and 9 other chaperones at Heathrow Airport in London for their bi-annual 15 day historical tour of England, Scotland, and Normandy. Since behavior issues at Covenant HS are fairly rare, the title "chaperone" is somewhat of a misnomer. "Adult tag along" would probably be a more appropriate label. However, exceptional student conduct should not be misconstrued to imply that this was a leisurely or luxurious vacation. Staying in youth hostels is not exactly luxurious and traveling with sixty 17 and 18 year olds for 15 days is incredibly exhausting. When I left the group on April 11th in Glasgow, the only 2 adults who didn't seem to be showing significant signs of wear were our unofficial tour guides -- Mr. Bond (English and History teacher at CHS) and Mr. Hannula (ad hoc teacher and principal of Covenant High School). Either they are just in much better shape than I am or their love affair with history allowed them to function on adrenaline the entire trip or they have discovered the fountain of youth. I'm not sure which. They also have nerves of steel. Picture yourself doing the following: handing out to 60 high schoolers London tube maps and instructions for locating the Queens theater, then escorting them en masse to Westminster Abbey via the London tube, guiding them through Westminster Abbey and then releasing them to spend the afternoon and eat supper on their own in London (in groups of 3 or more) with instructions to show up at the Queens Theater for a performance of Les Miserables at 7:00 PM. If that doesn't send you into cardiac arrest, you either already work in secondary education at a fairly top-notch high school or you should apply for such work – whatever you are doing now your abilities are being wasted. If that DOES send you into cardiac arrest, resign yourself -- you are probably doomed to spend the rest of your life rubbing shoulders with lesser mortals like myself.
High School Students
10
Chaparones
1
Large Bus
A word about youth hostels before I go on to describe the more exciting parts of our trip. Hostels are a wonderful invention and I could happily incorporate them into all my future travel plans except for one thing - the rooms are too crowded. I don't mind sleeping on the top bunk in a room with 3 to 11 other people, using a community toilet and shower down the hall, eating the same breakfast every day, putting coins in a pay computer to check my email or even hauling my luggage up multiple flights of stairs - all in the interest of saving a few bucks which can then be applied to future travels. BUT I don't like having nowhere to put my suitcase. Some of the hostels we stayed in were more cramped then others but most of them were more or less wall-to-wall beds. Obviously you're not supposed to DO anything in your room other than lie in your bed (even just getting dress and undressed is a little iffy) and your luggage is supposed to be really minimal. I spend lots of nights with my suitcase on my bed for lack of anywhere else to put it. Car camping is a better deal. We can take the middle and back seats out of our van and have a lot more "privacy" and room in which to spread things out then most hostels provide. Nevertheless, getting Mike to drive our left-hand-steering-wheel van into right-hand-steering-wheel England is not a possibility and renting a van in the UK would be prohibitive (as are motel rooms!), so hostels are probably a fact of life - at least when traveling in the UK.
Which leads me to a word about driving conventions. Several of you have asked me about the chunnel - if they drive on the left in the UK and we drive on the right in the rest of Europe, what happens in the chunnel? We did not go through the chunnel on this trip, but our coach driver (UK lingo for "bus driver") for the Normandy part of the trip was quite knowledgeable about such things and I took the opportunity to ask him your question. His first answer was that things just get really dicey in the middle. When pressed further he explained that the chunnel is not technically a "car" tunnel - it is a railway tunnel. Taking your car through the chunnel actually involves loading it onto a train and then riding along in a passenger car. Also -- if you are among those lesser mortals like myself who feel extremely cautious about driving in the UK because of their left-hand driving convention, take heart. They feel equally cautious about venturing into our space. In fact, the coach driver with whom we started our trip refused to do the Normandy portion of the trip and his company had to find some else who had more "mainland" experience to take the wheel for those couple of days. One more thing - people do drive left-hand-steering-wheel cars in England "all the time." The problem is that if you're driving on a two lane highway it's impossible to ever pass anyone because you can't see the oncoming traffic at all. Hummmm.
One more logistical note before I go on to the sights themselves. All 60 of our students did in fact show up at the Queens Theater on time and intact. And such was the norm for the whole trip. We were required to show up in the "common room" of our hostel each morning at a certain time for morning devotions and a briefing about the schedule for the day. Anyone late was fined 1 British pound ($1.75). Kids were occasionally late, but not many and not often. But, when we were given free time during the day and told to be back at the bus at a certain time, no one was EVER late. In fact, 9 times out 10 the bus was actually rolling at the designated time. Head counts were easy on the bus because every seat was filled. Other times we counted off to be sure we had everyone. Everyone had a number between 1 and 70. Except in the mornings, when occasionally someone was late, we could count off in a minute or two at most and be on your way with everyone accounted for. Incredible.
The "focus" of this trip was historical - primarily Christian / protestant / reformation history and more specifically Scottish Presbyterian history but also some English history and a little bit of WWII history added in for variety. The kids spent a lot of class time preparing for this trip - even to the extent of taking some tests - and they were required to do some journaling during the trip - to the extent of having 20 journal pages ready for inspection on the plane trip home. (Also 2 original sonnets or hymns a few days later!) I came less prepared and I didn't do any journaling (or does this qualify?), but I did do some reading along the way and our resident tour guides were very helpful and hence I came back knowing a LOT more about all of the above topics than I did when I left. The itinerary for the trip was really "dense" - everyday was packed with sights. However, we did also have some free time almost every day for exploring on our own. Being a definite introvert and observing that Deanna had her own friends to hang out with (or more correctly "out with whom to hang" in honor of Winston Churchill who abhorred the idea of ending a phrase with a preposition), I did things on my own a lot during those free times and was quite content with that arrangement. I did not know any of the other chaperones prior to the trip. They were all very friendly and as a group we were all really compatible, but there weren't any Siamese twins among the group.
Now on to the sights. First a brief overview of the kinds of things we saw and then I'll highlight a few of my favorites.
(1) Cathedrals - Westminster Abbey, Winchester, Bayeaux, Rouen, Canterbury, and Durham.
Bayeux Cathedral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rouen Cathedral
(2) Other churches - John Wesley's chapel in London, John Bunyan's church in Bedford, Elstow Abbey where John Bunyan was a bell-ringer, John Wycliffe's church in Lutterworth, John Newton's church in Olney, the church C.S. Lewis attended, St. Giles Church in Edinburgh where John Knox preached, etc, etc, To be honest I've seen as many churches and cathedrals as I want to for a long time. Mike wanted to show me a couple of churches in Speyer (a town near Heidelberg) the weekend after I got back from Great Britain. Had I not been cherishing his companionship after having been away so much, I would have staged a protest and refused to go in. On that note --- I will limit my comments about cathedrals and church to one general observation: in Great Britain they are generally less dark and gloomy than they are in the rest of Europe.
C.S. Lewis Gravestone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Narnia Window
3) Graveyards -- those associated with the above cathedrals and churches, also one in Edinburgh that some of us just "happened onto" during our free time where the economist Adam Smith is buried, and one in London called Bunhill Cemetery (probably originally called Bonehill Cemetery) where all the non-conformists - like John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and Suzanna Wesley - were buried during the reign of Catholicism. During the plague bodies were literally just dumped in Bunhill Ceremony.
Olney Church Graveyard
(4) Castles - Tower of London, Dover Castle, and Edinburgh Castle
Dover Castle
(5) Universities - Cambridge and Oxford
Cambridge University
(6) Sites where various people were martyred - Thomas a'Becket (Canterbury Cathedral), Bishops Latimer and Ridley (Oxford), Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart (St. Andrews), Joan of Arc (Rouen, France)
(7) Various Ruins - Landisfarne Priory (where the Landisfarne Gospels were kept hidden for several centuries), Hadrians Wall and Vindolanda (1st century Roman structures).
Lindisfarne Abbey
Now, here are few of my favorite sights / events:
(1) Les Miserables - Prior to this trip my "exposure" to Les Mis was limited to one viewing of the movie version. I was a little concerned as to whether I would remember the story line well enough to follow what was happening. My family can testify that following the story lines of movies / plays is an ongoing problem for me. This was an exception. Every word of every song was enunciated absolutely perfectly and from start to finish it was an incredible production and a powerful storyline to boot. When we were in Vienna I can honestly say that I enjoyed Manon Lescaut, but that was the kind of thing you sort of had to work to enjoy. This was a sit back and relax kind of enjoyment. I would go back again at the drop of a hat. Of course I don't actually know how much the tickets cost since it was all part of the tour. If I did, I might think twice about going back. Maybe not knowing what it cost was part of the reason it was so much fun!!!!
(2) The British Museum - some of you already know that I am not too "into" museums. In fact I've been known to find something else to do when I've found myself with a group of people who wanted to "do" a museum. Amazingly enough, this was a museum I really enjoyed. It was neat to be able to see things in real life that I've heard about all my life ---- like the Rosetta Stone and mummified bodies, and cuneiform writing and hieroglyphics, etc. Our "tour guides" - Mr. Bond and Mr. Hannula - did a good job of pointing us in the direction of certain rooms that contained all sorts of "stuff" related to the Bible. In fact, partway through our time there, I started realizing how often I've seen the British Museum referenced in Bible commentaries. All that archeological stuff that verifies that the Bible is historically accurate is located in the British Museum. It is there because the Brits just happened to control the part of the world in which it was discovered at the time it was discovered. For example --- Cyrus's Cylinder in which Cyrus, King of Persia, decreed that the Jews should go back to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. That particular item we didn't actually get to see because the room it was in was closed for renovation. But we did get to see Nabonidus's cylinder which verifies that there really was a King of Babylon named Belshazzar - Daniel didn't just make that up as certain naysayers claimed for many years. By the way a "cylinder" is just that - a barrel shaped clay tablet that has rows of writing on it, small enough that you could hold it in your hands and turn it as you read - assuming you could read cuneiform. Anyway, I now own a book (thanks to Mr. Bond and the British Museum bookstore) that details exhibits in the British Museum that have relevance to us as Christians. I'd love to go back someday. Alan has been thinking that he might transfer to London with Google which would have provided that opportunity, but it now looks like Zurich, Switzerland is a more likely possibility (more about that later).
The Rosetta Stone
(3) The War Cabinet Rooms (ooops, another museum!)- this was the nerve center of British operations during WWII. It is right in the heart of London, although it was unknown to the average Londoner at the time and not even bombproofed until later in the war. Churchill and his wife and a wide variety of staff including some generals, Cabinet Secretaries, Royal Marine guards and typists, lived there for months at a time at various points during the war. It is all set up to look like it did during the height of its use. There are mannequins "working" in the various rooms, wearing the appropriate uniforms, using the actual telephones and other equipment with the actual maps still on the walls. You can see the room where the transatlantic telephone was installed that allowed Churchill to talk to Roosevelt. On the door it simply says "Keep out." Apparently most of the personnel never stopped to ask what was behind that particular door. There is a sign in one of the hallways that was updated daily describing the weather outside - the day I was there was "Fine and Warm." The staff meeting rooms are all set up ready for use and a glass wall allows you to see into Mrs. Churchill's tiny kitchen. All really fascinating.
War Cabinet
(4) Pont du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the church at Sainte Mere Eglise. I watched "The Longest Day" several months ago, but I'd love to see it again after having been to these places. They were all very interesting and "well done." Somehow it's just easier to retain historical "details" when you're reading / hearing about them at the very place where they happened. Omaha Beach is the Arlington Cemetery of France - huge green fields filled with white crosses and walls inscribed with the names of those missing in action. Also giant maps on the stone walls of the monument - one of the Normandy coast and one showing all of Europe. Both are marked with the location of every unit on D-day - Army, and Navy, Allied and Nazi. I understand that my mother was engaged to a bomber pilot who was shot down somewhere in Europe during WWII. I assume that probably his body was never recovered. I don't even know his name (do you, Dad?) Could his name have been on the MIA list at Omaha Beach? Or maybe one of the other American cemeteries in Europe??????
Pont du Hoc has been left exactly the way it was at the end of the war - bunkers and gun placements everywhere and huge craters in the ground from all the shelling prior to the allied invasion. You can't get close enough to the edge to see the cliffs that the Ranger battalion actually scaled, but you can see similar cliffs on the coastline just to the north and imagine what was involved in taking that little point of land. The church at Sainte Mare Eglise has a dummy soldier hanging from the steeple by the cords of a very tattered parachute. Mike had planned to join our group for the Normandy portion of the tour, but the Army had other ideas, so he wasn't able to come. Maybe it's just as well because now we'll have to go back and there is lots more to see than what we saw. (It was great to see Ruth and Ron Bechtel and Jana Glessner from Tacoma, WA, who showed up at Omaha beach to say "hello" to our group. Wish we had had more time with them!)
Pointe du Hoc
Omaha Beach American Cemetery
Omaha Beach American Cemetery
Church at Sainte Mare Eglise
Church at Sainte Mare Eglise
(Parachutist Dangling)
(5) Arthur's Seat. This is a barren mountain overlooking the city of Edinburgh. We had a beautiful day for hiking to the top (except that it was INCREDIBLY windy). We took cabs to the highest parking lot above Edinburgh and then scrambled (about 30 minutes to an hour) to the top. Then we walked all the way back down ending up at the foot of the Royal Mile. The view at the top was really spectacular.
(6) St Andrews, Scotland. This is supposedly the town that "invented" golf. I am not even remotely interested in golf, but I really liked this town. Scotland in general was a favorite part of the trip for me, but I liked this town in particular. There is a castle there and the ruin of a cathedral - both are right on the coast and are particularly spectacular. Around the cathedral ruins is a fairly large graveyard (Samuel Rutherford's grave is there among others) and also a tower called "Rule's Tower" - the remains of a church that pre-dated the cathedral. You can ascend Rule's Tower for a good view of the area. One of the fun things about Scotland was that lambing season had just past when we were there and every flock of sheep had its requisite number of very young lambs wobbling or frolicking around. They were adorable.
Rule's Tower
View of St. Andrews from Rule's Tower
Lambing Season
(7) Weekend with host families in New Milns, Scotland. This event is a spin off of Dr. Rayburn's time in Scotland. Dr. Rayburn is the pastor of the church that sponsors Covenant High School and he did his doctoral work at Aberdeen University in Scotland. A former pastor of the church in New Milns, Scotland was a fellow student and friend of Dr. Rayburn's while he was there. When CHS began doing their Great Britain trips, the two of them (Dr. Rayburn and Ian Hamilton) hatched a plan whereby the students and chaperones would spend a weekend with various families in his church, experience the Scottish culture firsthand, fellowship with Christians in another country, etc, etc. Since then Ian Hamilton has moved on to another church (we actually met him in Cambridge!) and the CHS group has grown considerably, but the whole deal was such a hit with the New Milns congregation that they have continued the tradition. This was the 5th iteration of the event for my particular host family. We were preconditioned to understand that this was supposed to be THE highlight of the whole trip. I didn't think it was as wonderful as it was trumped up to be, so I'm feeling a little rebellious about even including it among the highlights. Maybe it's one of those things that is more fun to look back on than to actually experience. There were a couple of "problems" with the whole event from MY perspective. First it came at the end of the trip when I was so tired of being around people 24 hours a day that I could hardly wait to get home - then instead of things winding down I had to force myself into extrovert mode and smile and be gracious for 48 hours while living in the home of someone whom I had never met. To top that off, I somehow got put in a home with 3 male students who are, by nature, really quiet. The lady of my host family loved to talk and felt really uncomfortable with any amount of silence. My "quiet" boys were of NO help in keeping her entertained, so yours truly was front and center for the whole 48 hours. Enough complaining. Here were the good parts - Gordon and Jean Fleming and their 2 boys, Robert and Alan, were really friendly. Their accents were delightful. For the first 24 hours of so I had a lot of trouble understanding Gordon and I missed a lot of what he said and had the ask him to repeat a lot of the rest. But it got better. It was fun to be able to ask all those questions that you think of as you're traveling in another country and often never find the answers to because you don't know whom to ask. We got to taste some traditional Scottish food - like haggis, neeps, and tatties!!! (let's just say this is some kind of sheep "product," mashed turnips and mashed potatoes). Lastly, I got the opportunity to verify that I do still know how to ride a bicycle, albeit not with a lot of grace. I haven't been on one in 10 years. I have been noticing that there is a lot of good cycling to be done in Europe but somehow I was not getting around to actually doing any. So now the ice is broken, so to speak. The Flemings took us by ferry to a little island off the western coast of Scotland called Cumbrae and we rented bicycles and rode all the way around the island. I was afraid to ask how far it might have been around it. Fortunately it was pretty flat the whole way. Even so, I am really out of shape and it felt like a hundred miles!!! The weather was iffy to start with but it turned out beautiful and the scenery was incredible.
OK, so that's the Great Britain trip in a nutshell. Now for some family news. After the Great Britain trip I was home for 10 days and then went to South Carolina. No, I'm not kidding. Mike had to do two weeks of training at the chaplain's school at Ft Jackson related to his promotion to LTC. He was authorized a room at the Ramada Inn and a rent car and I had no responsibilities in Germany, so I flew Space A to Charleston AFB and joined him. I enjoyed the sunshine and the pool and the fitness room and the opportunity to be a hermit for 2 weeks. So now I am back in Germany again for a couple of weeks. Next on the calendar is a week in Oberammergau, Germany with Mike (some kind of NATO training) and then back to Washington State for Deanna's High School graduation. Amazingly enough the PWOC ladies have asked me to teach a Bible study in the Fall - apparently they think that there is some hope that I might stay home for some extent period of time in the Fall!!!! Hmmmmmm.
Deanna is about to graduate from Covenant High School and has been accepted to Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio, for the Fall. Cedarville is a small town near Dayton, Ohio. Cedarville University is a Christian school - a little larger than most Christian schools and somewhat more challenging academically. It is loosely tied to the General Association of Regular Baptists - same brand of Baptist as our church in Tacoma. Deanna knows several people presently at Cedarville and at least one other student from her school is also going there in the fall. Deanna is going back to Bootcamp at Precept Ministries for the 4th time this summer and then probably "home" to Germany for a month or so.
Alan is still enjoying his work at Google. He can now tell us what he is actually doing there - at least for part of the time - assuming we can actually understand anything he says. I THINK that he is formatting web content for a big European cell phone company called Vodafone. Apparently Google started working on this project before the contract with Vodafone was actually signed, so it was hush-hush until about mid-Feb when they finally got the contract signed. New chapters are being written weekly in the saga of Alan's possible transfer to Europe, so this may be out-of-date before you read it, but at the moment it looks like he will be working in Zurich, Switzerland for a month this summer (July possibly) with the idea of moving there long-term if he likes it. English is THE language of the computer world, but Alan has also been working on learning German, so that works out well. On another note, Alan somehow fell "heir" to the job of lead teacher for a "community group" Bible study at his church. They are working their way through the book of Romans. I'm thrilled to see him teaching. He's not sure what to think - except that it's lots of work!
Amy is settling in at Western Washington University in Bellingham. She had thought she was going to spend the summer in Germany and had a list a mile long of sightseeing destinations, but reality has set in. She needs to take a chemistry class this summer in order to get started on her major in the fall. This fall will be year 4 of college so it does seem like it's time to start on a major! (Just harassing you a little, Amy. You're a great kid.) Anyway she is going to be home for a month or so starting in late August. Hopefully my dad and brother and Alan will all be here about that time, too. We have some wild hair-brained things planned - like driving south to Rome and back and then north across the bridge from Denmark to Sweden and Norway.
Mike was promoted to Lt. Colonel and I managed to be home when it happened (March 24th). The second is probably more amazing than the first. This is a big milestone for Mike and I am proud of him. It also guarantees us 20 years in the Army and hence some retirement pay. Mike planned the ceremony and the "party" while I was busy traipsing around the world and both were a big success. On a sadder note -- Mike is being "forced" to take over at least parts of his boss's job while continuing to do his own job. Not good. His boss is PCSing (moving, for all you civilians) and will not be replaced due to the domino effect of someone in the food chain being "non-deployable." So Mike is having to scale back his family life assignment to part time - or maybe quarter time - and take on new tasks that are strictly administrative - very little interaction with people. He is NOT happy about this turn of events - not the added work load as much as the nature of the assignment. He'd much rather be the one deploying to Iraq - fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, that isn't a possibility because they have to continue to make it look like he is the family life chaplain. The Army spent a lot of money training him to do that job so it needs to look like he is utilizing the training. Such are the joys of working in a bureaucracy. The bottom line is - he wasn't too happy with his job before, now less so. I keep reminding him that this is the first time in 17 years in the Army that he has had an assignment that he really didn't like, but somehow he doesn't seem too comforted by that thought.
I'm sure you're all half asleep by now, so . . . . . . . sweet dreams.
Nancy
Cliffs of Dover
