Getting Ready for SBSA 2016

Who loves her Timbuk2 courier bag? I do!

I'm very excited about getting ready for SBSA 2016. I have done this a few times, so I have my bags all ready: I carry two Timbuk2 bags, one medium and one small.  That seems to be enough for what I carry.  I don't like to carry a lot of bags, and I'm okay with doing a little laundry every night.  I have my "zip dry" shirts from Travel Smith, and I have a nice "zip dry"suit from Eddie Bauer that is really comfortable. Oh, I also got a good pair of boots that are water proof, comfortable, and don't look too bad from Ariat.  Let's see...what else...passport, ID: check.  I need to call the bank and tell them I will be using my credit card abroad.  I need to see if I will be extending my stay, and I need to decide what I will do if I stay a bit.
And then there is all the class stuff I need to put together for everybody!

Nashville Breakfast

I am in Nashvile, TN, for the Quality Matters Conference. The breakfast room is full, and pop music blares from from two tall standing amplifier towers.  Two large screens advertise the software companies and products that one's institution can buy.  It is like academic NASCAR.

But wait, there's more.  There are sausage sandwiches, like at McDonalds, and there are little rolls with piles of vanilla and chocolate icing. It is popular.

Next to the "make your own cinnabon" there is a more healthy option of fruit. However, it might not be sweet enough, so there are six bottles of syrup you can pour on your fruit.

Sugar, fat, and pop music.

We are sitting at a table with people from Lubbock, TX.  One nice person was very friendly. She asked where we were from, and when she discovered we were from Blue Ash, she mentioned that she had not heard of Blue Ash. I said it was named for a kind of tree. "Oh," she said, quite cheerfully, "We know ash trees.  We call them trash trees. Nobody wants them. My husband just says we don't need those trees, so everybody just cuts them down."

Social commentary.

So, the lights just came up, but the music rocks on. It is time for our KeyNote Panel that will talk to us about Content, Design, and Delivery: the Past Present and Future of Distance Education.

Let me get another cinnamon bun with chocolate icing, tap my foot to the music, and settle my trashy self in for some lovely exhortation about how my distance learning experience can be a matter of high quality.

Heathrow in Another Light

Heathrow is globally known as one of the busiest, largest airports in the world.  Indeed, watching the airplanes land is like watching traffic in South Florida; it is a never ending, regular stream of traffic.  And such big traffic, too!  I came to Heathrow to see the students off back home, and it was a sad sundering  of the fellowship. It was bittersweet to see such emotion at parting.  Nick Smith noted, in his blog Nautodidact.wordpress.com that it is more like meiosis that just splitting apart because each one takes a bit of the other in the separation.  That is a sweet, if sticky, metaphor. These partings seem more like the eddies of a river where we swirl around together and then are swept onwards.

So after saying goodbye, I went to the Heathrow Ibis Hotel.  I love Ibis hotels because they offer nice little cubbies as rooms.  I find the small size comfortable and comforting.  From there I had the afternoon so I went to see what was in Heathrow aside from the behemothic airport, around which the entire area revolves.  I found Cranford Country Park!  Oh my heavenly starts, but who would know that there was a huge meadow, some orchards, forest paths, and hedges full of larks and thrushes.  

If you sit on a park bench in the right place, you can watch the jets flow into the airport. In between the planes, you can hear the birds singing.  There is also a medieval church, St. Dunstan's. I spent a good half hour reading the poignant gravestones ranging from 1800 to 2006. 

It was a delightful two hour walk in the woods.  In Heathrow!  

Last week in England

This week we are winding down, and the students have their final presentations tomorrow.  My students are creating their own definition of what Gothic is.  Molly actually said that she realized what cultural relativism really means after having been to so many countries.  She said its just that people do things differently, and it it's all okay.  Molly is the one  in the hoody.

Isn't study abroad great?  Another student, Sarah, comments that doing study abroad has allowed her to become more courageous.  She says it helped her come out of her shell and try new things she never thought she could do.  Isn't study abroad fantastic?  Sarah is the one with the wonderfully red hair. 

This week we had our final conferences with all the students asking them, "So, how has study abroad changed you?". Okay, so how has this trip changed me?  Interestingly enough, I have learned to have a lighter hand and a quieter mind.  I can more clearly see where people's fear comes from, and what effect that fear can have.  I feel like a wandering mendicant with my experiential begging bowl.  Some of the students complain that the novelty of the new cities and the manor house wears off too fast, but I feel like I have rediscovered the constant renewal of novelty in everyday life.  Here at Harlaxton, we have bacon and eggs every day for breakfast.  Everyday, I get my little saucer of bacon and egg,  and it is as divine each morning as it was the day before.  Oh delicious breakfast!  I walk through the halls of Harlaxton and smell the past in the walls, and it is so much fun every single time.  We went to Kew gardens and it was as deliriously beautiful as it was the first time.  

So as I get older, and more practiced in being in the moment, I find that I have more joy and patience.  I also think that being well rested, joyful, and patient leads to more compassion for the suffering of others.  I used to think it was my responsibility to take it away from them, but that's not nice.  It is better to be a sympathetic witness.  

City of stone and moor

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We arrived in Edinburg in the glowing evening, but the next day, the heavens opened and the rain poured down in a blowing welcome to the North country.  

Above is the castle in the mist and rain.  It was divine!  I loved the stone city in the grey rain, the water making little rivers between the cobble stones and the wind making free with our umbrellas.  I have been to Edinburg several times, and I have never sprung for the cost of actually entering the castle.  But this time I was with a group who Attended Castles, so I went in.  The weather was foul and perfect for this eclectic pile of stone perched on an ancient volcano.

 In the evening while we dried off in our hostel, Debbie read the history of the benighted Rock from her guidebook.  The English took it, the Scots bravely took it back, then the English took it, but the Scots audaciously took it back.  Rinse and repeat.  We visited the Museum of War, but it talked about how the horses got shell shock, and I wept to think of the poor emotional horses being terrified out of their little horsey wits, so I had to go wait for everyone in the lobby.  Then in the next memorial for dead soldiers they did include two horses and a dog, so I was slightly mollified. War. 

I was cheered by our company:  see how cute we are?  

The next day I joyfully climbed Arthur's Tor in Holyrood Park.  It was a delightful to be in the grass above the Stone City.  Our group was congenial, the food was delicious (macaroni and chorizo at the Fiddler's Elbow), and the Edinburg Central Hostel was quite reasonable.  Oh, and I saw more UtiliKilts than regular tartan wool kilts.  Debbie and I agree that more men would wear kilts as it is a most attractive garment for any gentleman.  

We are in Harlaxton

We arrived at Harlaxton Manor last night.  The students have been prompt at the refectory, and it is lovely to have three hot meals a day at regular intervals.  It just as lovely to have someone else wash the dishes afterwards.  It is positively, deliriously wonderful.  And what makes it all the more wonderful, if that is possible, Debbie and I have been relegated to the Gregory Cottage since the faculty state rooms are full.  Oh, woe is us, and we rub our hands with glee.  No need for plush blue starred carpets and gilded ceilings for us. Give us a little cottage with a parlor, a kitchen with a kettle, a sea of daffodils, and we are happier than Wordsworth in Cumbria.  Here is our cottage door under the blooming dogwood trees: 

And then when we thought it could not get any better, we found the tub.  A deep, prop tub. A tub that a lady of a certain age recognizes as the truest way to appreciate the panacea that hot water can be.  

But it would not be the cottage of Shangrila if it did not have Digestive Biscuits. Ah, and I hear Debbie on the step, and look, here she comes in with an enormous bag of digestive biscuits, chocolate and plain. Oh, is life good? Resounding yes.  :-)

Happy Mothers Day to Priscilla

Hi Mom!  Happy day upon which we love you just as much as every other day, which is a lot, but we announce it to the world.  Rah, rah, you are wonderful and fabulous and it is because of your love  and support that I can do what I am up to today.  No, really, its true.  Even across the Atlantic ocean I can hear you snort and say that it is because of my own will to achieve, but, see, that's what I mean: you inspire that will and confidence and joie de vivre.  You, you, you, oh, wonderful mummy, you.  Yup.  I'm a big fan.

So in addition to loving my mother very much today, as usual, I also went with the Band of Young Scholars to the Prague Castle.  We saw the ever so grand St, Vitus Cathedral. Here is one of our lovely young scholars observing the sublimity. 

In the afternoon, we walked down through the town and had diner at u Fleku, a 15th century restaurant.  I had potato soup in which the herbs danced around on the palate and had a little flavor party.  There was also an ancient accordion player who played Beatles tunes and other schmaltzy favorites.  He wore a checked suit as loud as his accordion.  The serving of pork knuckles that one student received was positively medieval, in perfect keeping with the reputation of the restaurant.