Oh, Happy Day!!

Consider yourself warned: I am about to gush.

TODAY HAS BEEN THE ABSOLUTELY MOST SPECTACULAR DAY!!!!

Seriously, I’m so ecstatically effusively ebullient at the moment, I’m not sure what to do with myself.

Perhaps I should explain…

I woke up this morning, dressed myself cutely, and headed outside to hop on the bus to tour castles for the day with my program. Joe and the people from his house showed up a few minutes later, and from then on we were basically inseparable.

We chatted all the way to Windsor, and then took off to explore for several hours. The sky loomed overcast overhead, but it never actually rained – though the weather forecasts had predicted rain all day. So we meandered around, looking at Queen Mary’s gigantic doll house, exhibits on royal weddings since 1800, and touring all of the state rooms and armory rooms and reception rooms and ballrooms…you get the idea. I couldn’t take pictures in there, but they were highly ornate. My favorite was the hall of arms with more than a thousand shields/coat of arms hanging on the walls and ceilings. Then we went to the chapel, where lots of famous dead people are buried (including King Henry VIII and some of his wives), and explored around the town, getting lunch at an Irish pub before hopping back on the bus.

Riding a ways, we arrived at Hampton Court, which was actually more impressive in a sense. It felt more real. At Windsor Castle you have a sense like you’re in a bubble of elaborate gold-embellished royalty. Hampton Court, however, is dirtier and homier without nearly the same amount of adornments. Much of it is wood instead of stone, for example. We were also free to explore all of the rooms and grounds more freely. So Joe and I wandered all over the castle, asking random questions of the security guards to learn more history. (The Pre-Copernican clock is awesome!) Then we went and got lost in a labyrinth, followed by meandering over to the formal gardens. The gardens were utterly spectacular. Lush green fields surrounded by perfectly pruned trees and colorful flowerbeds, stretching as far as the eye could see. Joe and I laid down in the grass for a while there, basking in the emerging sunshine, and just slightly flirting. Really, we didn’t do that much flirting…though I think spending nine hours together speaks for itself. Mostly it was just a handful of ambiguous comments – the sort you toss off in this delightful stage of indistinctness where you’re testing to see who will take the bait and utter some sort of genuine compliment, or actually dare to take your hand instead of accidentally brushing against it. I’ve included a picture of Joe and me finding the center of the maze.

He’s quite fun to talk to. He actually went to middle school and high school in Utah and many of his best friends are Mormons – now on missions. He understands the culture quite well, which is refreshing after having so many people know nothing. Joe himself is Jewish.

I came home, arriving back around dinner time, but felt rather tired so the fact that I had no plans for the rest of the evening didn’t bother me at all. I signed on to Trillian (an amazing instant messaging service; I will sing its praises forever) and suddenly found myself immersed in five or six different awesome in-depth conversations with stateside friends, some of whom I haven’t chatted with in quite a while. I needed to run to the grocery store – I’ve been craving ice cream – but instead I chatted for three hours to everyone. Finally, around 9 (the sun doesn’t set until about 9:45), I stepped outside to go around the corner a couple of blocks to the store. As I stepped into the warm night air, I randomly started blissfully singing “The Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady to myself. A few lines in, as I’m singing about “never knowing that you were here before”, I heard music emanating from the second story of one of the sectional houses on my row. In about two seconds, as I’m still walking, my thought process went something like this:

“Oooo! Music! That’s piano music! That’s piano music playing a Mormon hymn! How sweet!” I kept walking and then suddenly it hit me. “A MORMON HYMN?!?!”

I froze and backtracked a few steps, pausing to listen. “No,” I realized. “That’s not a Mormon hymn, that’s just “Nearer My God to Thee” which is a famous hymn across all of Christianity.” Still, it just sounded very Mormon, like it was an arrangement I recognized. The nearest church was still several hundred feet away, and this music was definitely coming from that building, so I turned to look at it, wondering whose house it was. Just then a beam of setting sunlight caught a little brass placard on a column outside the door. My eyes fell toward it and I read… “BYU Study Abroad Center.”

This is where all of the BYU London students live! It’s been literally 100 feet away, on the street where I live, and for two weeks, I’ve never noticed it. (To my credit, I had only walked that way two or three other times.)

Unable to contain myself, I walked up and rang the doorbell. A sweet girl named Kelly opened it up. I introduced myself, and the next thing I knew I was being given a tour of the place, finding out all the program details, and meeting people. I learned that this group was actually the tail end of the spring semester, and were taking finals and going to Ireland next week, but afterwards the summer session would be moving in for 2.5 months. Additionally, I was welcome to just come and hang out anytime I felt like it, even though they might be boring in the next few days because of finals.

I can’t even describe the difference walking into that building. First off, its decorations are about 10x nicer than that of mine. But it was packed with wholesome Mormon kids. The spirit was so different. It was like I had arrived home from an exhausting trip. It’s the same feeling as being overwhelmed by the end of the semester, then turning in the last final. Or it’s like the difference between getting lost in the brambles of the woods, only to step out onto the top of a clear hill overlooking a glorious valley. It’s so disparate as to not even warrant contrast. I can’t believe the center is eight doors away, in a city of six million people. Finding it was such an answer to prayer…I’m amazed. God loves me so much!