May 7, 2008

Today—well, what a day. I spent a great deal of the flight fighting a migraine and consequently nausea, and the last hours of the flight I spend in tortuous motion sickness. Once on the ground, I thought it would be over, but then began the marathon of riding various branches of the “tube”—British for subway—for over an hour. Father Boonzaaijer and Erica took turns carrying my bag as I half-blindly followed the group. I made it to the hostel, up the stairs, and into a deserted hallway (our room was not ready) where I collapsed while Brooke and Erica changed. How wonderful it felt to sit in still, dark quietness! I made nearly a full recovery, after having stayed behind from St. Paul’s and the Tower of London.
Erica and I (she kindly offered to stay with me) popped over to Greenwich Park and took a nap, then headed over to St. Paul’s to meet Fr. and Brooke and the boys. We waited outside for an hour, having just missed the entrance to evensong at 5:00 p.m., and watched the rehearsal of some sort of military display during that time. None of the police or security people seemed to really know what was going on. Then we caught up with the group as they exited from evensong, and made our way to a pub (lovely and clean compared to St. Christopher’s where the hostel was) called Pimm’s, where I ordered sausage and mash, my first pub meal. After dinner we found time to take a nice walk along the Thames and across Tower Bridge before heading back on the tube to St. Christopher’s, our lodging for the next three nights.
At St. Chris’s we all eight shared a very small room with but eight bunks—I found that rather awkward at first, but attempted to make the best of it. We also shared three showers with locking doors and three toilets and sinks with all the other hostel guests, male and female. The showers are fun but somewhat complicated. They operate with a push-knob that pops back out after a few seconds and shuts the water off, so you have to keep pushing the knob to keep a flow of water. The windows were open because of the unusually warm and sunny weather--they stayed open the whole time we were there. One or two guys decided to keep their shoes on the outer window ledge during the night (thoughtful!).