It’s a good year for it. Not only do I have the Brexit advantage, it’s the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and the centenary of the Irish Uprising. Many people who know me were surprised to hear that with all the travel I have under my belt, I have never been to the UK or Ireland. I am, after all, the biggest Anglophile most of my friends know. I am sure to sneak little English history lessons into my classes, (1066 and all that), and when I was in high school, friends pleaded with me, “do your British accent.”
As excited as I am, I am also trepidatious because I’m travelling alone. I’ve done it before, numerous times and to more “dangerous” places: Romania, India, the south. But it is still stressful to know that everything is dependent on me. I have to be diligent to guard against thieves, con artists, and other unsavory characters while the responsibility of arranging lodging and transportation falls to me alone. If I were wealthy, this wouldn’t be much of an issue because I could stay anywhere and hire taxis to take me door to door all the time. But I’m a teacher: that noble profession that gives me the time to travel but guarantees that I do so on a budget.
So I spent a great deal of time researching travel and hostel options before booking my flight to Dublin (cheaper than London) and my flight to Cardiff (cheaper and/or faster than taking the ferry to Wales and training down or flying to London and backtracking) and my hostel in Cardiff. And as I tried to do this at the end of the school year and while preparing a sermon for my church back home, I got really stressed. So much so, that I woke with an anxiety attack at 3:30 this morning and cried. I feared I would die on this trip. I thought about all the things that could go wrong. (I’m very creative about that, by the way. It even included getting arrested by a corrupt, psychopathic cop while I’m over there and subsequently “disappearing.” My mother, meanwhile, is most concerned that I’ll pick up bedbugs at a hostel and infest her home when I get back. I confess, of all the things I worry about when traveling abroad, bedbugs is not one of them. But maybe it should be.) I considered cancelling.
As experienced as I am, I still get rather terrified every time I travel. But I push myself to go because what kind of life would it be if I didn’t? I believe so much in the value of travel to help a person grow emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, that I make it a top priority in my life even when it is uncomfortable. This trip could be, and should be, glorious. That is what I’m hoping for and what I’ll do my best to facilitate. Beyond my normal desires when traveling (to see famous places for myself, to try new foods, to learn more about history and other cultures, to get resources I can use when teaching), I’m hoping that this trip will be refreshing for me, a chance to unload much of the stress I experienced this year in different areas of my life. I’m hoping to use time on trains and buses to read meaningful material, including a devotional my pastor gave me, and be transformed by it. I’m hoping I will become unheartbroken and undisappointed by my Brexit. Above all, I hope that all of these hopes realized lead to a restoration of my natural optimism and expectation for even better things to come.
I’ll keep you posted as wi-fi access allows!