So I leave for Britain tomorrow.
Sitting in my living room in Massachusetts, it feels inconceivable. This time tomorrow, I'll be over the Atlantic Ocean. My theatre board is meeting tomorrow night, and I had to be like, "Sorry, I will literally be over the ocean at that time," and that's when it hit me. Catch you later, Western Hemisphere, I'm setting sail for the streets of London.
I'm not a transcontinental virgin or anything. The last time I was in Europe was junior year of high school, and the first and most recent time I visited England was a full decade ago. That was a magical experience. I say that because there's something inherently magical about getting on a plane, falling asleep, and waking up on another continent, and because there's something even more inherently magical about seeing landmarks from books gloriously life-size before your eyes, and that all of this magic is magnified when you're ten. But it was also magical because I decided to make the entire trip my own informal Harry Potter Experience. I visited Platforms Nine and Ten at King's Cross Station before there was a sign there and I saw Oxford's Great Hall. There's also picture of me jumping up and down on the lawn of Alnwick Castle, site of the Quidditch Pitch in the films (the caption reads "I fell off my broom"). So if you told ten year-old me that I'd be returning to this enchanted country someday to study acting at Oxford - practically Hogwarts itself - well. Ten year-old me would flip a shit.
Which is pretty much what twenty year-old me is doing right now.
Anyway, the whole thing still feels a million years away, so today I concentrated on making my last hours in the US as awesome as possible. My dad, stepmom, and I spent most of the day in Boston. It was a perfect, picturesque New England afternoon, mid-eighties and sunny, with just the right amount of breeze off the harbor.
See? Perfect.
And downtown was packed with people - upstairs in Quincy Market it was almost impossible to find a seat, and you could pick out seven different languages easily. Street performers were out in full force. A guy on a corner gave my dad and I an impromptu lecture on the finer historical details of a nearby church. And I thought about how I would miss New England, but then I remembered that I can transport its beauty with me anywhere via Instagram, and I felt better.
Things I can't transport via Instagram: burritos. I figured they're not quite the hottest commodity in England, so we grabbed lunch at Boloco (which, for all you Midwesterners in the dark, is like Chipotle but a thousand times better). I also used the last-day-in-America thing as an excuse to get fro-yo for the second day in a row, although I have a feeling that'll be easier to come by than burritos.
I felt good about making the most out of my favorite American delectables until I was talking to my friend Erin, who did her undergrad in Ireland and as such has spent way more time in the UK than I have. "Be prepared, there is a lack of Reese's Peanut Butter cups in LND because they just don't eat peanut butter the way we do," she said.
Which may not be a big deal to some people, but
Pro tip: If you drop these, they bounce.
But that's stupid because they I couldn't get it through customs anyway, right? ...Right?
This is almost as bad as when I found out that baby carrots inexplicably do not exist in the Commonwealth.
Annnnd now I'm stereotyping myself.
And this is way longer than I intended it to be.
So goodnight for now, blog. Brb gotta vacate the US. Catch you on (the way to) the flip side.
can't you pack it in your suitcase? Is that a dumb suggestion? I <3 peanut butter.
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