Arrival!

Tuesday 25 April

It's starting to hit home for me now, that I'm in Britain. You can't tell much on an overnight flight, passing over Ireland and western England in shrouded pre-dawn, but indicators as to my true location arrive quickly like clues on a once-puzzling treasure map after a sudden inspiration. There's the Brits returning home via Heathrow, some of them with accents which make them seem like stereotypes walking about unabashedly: men who sound like Eliza Doolittle's relatives, schoolchildren who seem like they might next tell me what house they've been sorted into at Hogwarts, and Scotsmen who make me almost believe they were childhood friends with Groundskeeper Willie. Then, of course, prices are listed in pounds, the buses are cardinal-red and the cabs a stately black. It's like a blisfully alternate universe with charming quirks: yield signs read "give way," cars on the left, vending machines featuring a mind-boggling array of Cadbury chocolates , the last letter of the alphabet is "zed", and so on. Another big difference: Underground stations that happen to be above-ground reveal not communities growing so alarmingly fast it's as though they're new and unseemly stretch marks on a culture's skin (as in Washington, D.C.), but instead show neighbourhoods--some rough, some refined--that have patiently acquired meaningful character, rather like faces of elderly women, whose wrinkles may be read like a script . . . some pleasant, some frightening, some melancholy, some laughing and bursting with vivacity.

And London truly is an old city, having matured over thousands of years, first seeing Stone-, Iron-, and Bronze-Age Britons, then domineering Romans and invading Germanic Angles and Saxons. The sturday brick-and-shingle dwellings girding the city's limbs tell of a broad steadfastness that only leaves a moderate amount of skin unguarded and bruised by mindless cosmopolitan trends. Starbucks and rave clubs will come and go, but the stalwart Britain these bricks and stones represent will slowly blink and breathe and evolve.

I can't romanticise and venerate London wholly, though. The Underground may afford peeks at beautiful views of budding spring trees and many landmarks, but one must be jostled about at stations and crammed into trains, the doors nearly grazing one's sweating scalp at times, and if you blow your nose after a little travel via these vehicles, you can see accumulated there dark matter--soot? petrol fumes? I don't know. But if you compare London to a knight on a white horse, you may soon find the inevitable realities of dints in armour and horse-hair flecked with mud. When fairy-tale beings become real to you at last, and thus they are more fascinating, terrifying, and beautiful.

My train from London to Oban will depart at 11:45 p.m., and today I arrived in town, very much weighted down with luggage, at 7 a.m. I didn't know where I could may my head to rest all day after a sleepless flight, and a buzzing train station certainly wasn't appealing. In a facility where you have to pay 20 pence merely to visit the toilets, how can you feel welcome enough to sleep, even for an hour?

All I want is a room somewhere
far away from the cold night air. . .

I recounted Eliza Doolittle's words as I nodded off on a metal bench in the station, watching cold rain fall outside. Finally I sought the respite of a youth hostel and the sleep and shower that £24 could allow me this day.

Well, much more traveling to do: onward.

T minus 34 hours

Tomorrow night I will start a series of traveling which will lead me to the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. I will be there for nine weeks, volunteering as a housekeeping assistant in the 13th-century Abbey which is one of the facilities used by the Iona Community, which is an ecumenical group of Christians doing all sorts of wonderful things in this place of contemplation, discussion, planning, fellowship, and worship. (Find out more here: http://www.iona.org.uk/ ).

In fact, this is the reason why I've started this blog: I want to share this experience with you. I go to be among strangers who, as Christians, are already friends unknown, and I want to stay connected to you, my friends and family. (Even my close friends can testify to my blaring lack of consistent correspondence skills).

I am almost completely packed, and have been trying to take as little as possible, because it'll be awkward to be heavily laden down during travel: in order to get from my front door to Iona's, I will be taking a car, plane, subway, train, taxi, two ferries, and a bus. You can begin to understand how remote this place is! (On the map at the upper left, if you look for Glasgow in the north, I'll be on one of the islands west of it, as seen in the map on the right).

Well, I'm off to church right now, and more inevitable last-minute preparation will follow.