Fifteen Days: Day 14.penultimatez

Another person I have had the great pleasure of getting to know over the last few months, despite the fact that we come from very different backgrounds, have very different political attitudes, and had no reason to interact with one another.  Maybe it will always be a mystery why Rachel DeFoe and I even started talking.  Regardless, I am glad that we did because she is awesome.  She is from Texas and goes to Trinity in San Antonio.  Rachel has a lot of drive, a huge personality, and a work ethic like none other.  I think that’s why I have such mad respect for her: if she wants something, you better damn well know she’ll be getting it.

Rachel has a blog, for those of you that do not know her, where she has been blogging about her study abroad experience at intermittent points over the course of the semester.  Last night, however, she did something that I was looking forward to doing myself: acknowledging all of the wonderful people in this program and dropping a little note about them.  The ones who I am closest to over here already know how I feel about them, so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal that Rachel beat me to the punch.  However, I would like to repay the favor:

Rachel- You are effervescent and I don’t think that there’s any other way to describe you.  Sure, I could say that you are eloquent, motivated and motivational, gorgeous, intelligent, hysterical, and approachable, but I would rather just say you’re effervescent: it’s cooler.  Your charm and unyielding kindness is nothing I expected from a conservative, though I suppose that’s what is so endearingly wonderful about you.  You’re unexpected.  You’re a breath of fresh air.  You’re a good friend and I am so lucky to have met and interacted with you this semester.  So, in short, you’re awesome and I am a better person for having met you.  Nothing but love for you, my dear. 

Quick Summary of my day: Woke up late (too much cider and beer the night before, but cheers to Drew, Izzy, Steve, and Ben), had lunch, went to Harrods with Katz, Steve, Izzy, and Drew for some last minute London-ness, took a photo with Peter Pan, went to dinner at My Old Dutch, and came back to the room to unwind before our final day together tomorrow.

I have been looking forward to this post forever because it’s the second to last in the Fifteen Days series.  And why is that important, you ask?  Well, I’ll tell you!  I am obsessed with the word ‘penultimate’—have been since Lemony Snickett taught it to me in his 12^th novel in the Series of Unfortunate Events—and anytime the next to last item in a series comes about I get to word drop.  Ah!  Love it.  I love saying penultimate almost as much as I love saying insidious.  Go ahead; try that word…tastes good, don’t it!

Yes, Microsoft Office, I am aware that using ‘don’t it’ is not grammatically correct.  That little jagged green line is not going to force me into compliance so just put it away!  I wrote it that way for effect!

So, yeah, this is the penultimate post of the London experience.  It’s bittersweet.  Maybe even the definition of the word.  I cannot think of another adventure in my short lifetime that has compared to the one I have been on all semester here in this city—perhaps there will be nothing to compare it to even later on in my existence.  I imagine that studying abroad is rather anomalous; there’s little that matches the experience of being on your own in a whole other world.

I know I’ve said it before, but my god is it ever relevant now: I am so fortunate and this whole abroad thing has served as a much needed reminder that when we get opportunities as great as this, we need to run with them.  We need to embrace them and allow them to trigger personal evolution and change.  I like to think that I have done that this semester, that I’ve made the most of four months of my life and done the best that I could with all the circumstances surrounding them. 

In 40 hours, I will be gone from this place and I will never again sit in room 810 and look out over the city, the London Eye just out of sight.  I’ll never watch an airplane cruise against the clouds while the moon peeks out through the gray.  I’ll never see a man storm out of Londis and throw a piece of citrus fruit at a woman walking by and pushing a stroller…I guess I could live without that last one.

In all seriousness: I will be back in London, but living in this room is never going to happen again.  Really, I suppose that’s fine.  I mean dormitory living isn’t exactly the highlight of the experience.  I guess if you got as lucky as I did with an excellent roommate, it’s not all that bad—still, I won’t miss this twin-sized bed and the lack of independent space.

This post is dedicated to Drew, Rachel, Michael, Izzy, Emily, Emily, Steve, Jenny, Jamie, Jacque, Ben, Melinda, Kelly, Jennifer, Sara, Alex, Virginia, Stacy, Kori, Alyssa, Anne, Brandy, Taylor, Megan, Becky, Alec, Micah, Matt S, Christine Matt A, Dan, Miles, Garrett, Roy, Charlotte, Laura, Velma, Kristy, Jenna, Nicole and Alli and anyone that was very unintentionally left off this list.  Each of you has touched my life in various degrees of significance and I am thankful for everything I have learned from you.

I realized tonight, after walking in after dinner at My Old Dutch one last time, that seeing this view of London will happen one more time before it never happens again: my penultimate room with a view.

For the second-to-last time,

Cheers.