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walking through a winter wonderland
Dec. 16th, 2009 01:05 pmIt snowed today.
I was in my Dickens class, listening to the prof lecture about A Tale of Two Cities, when suddenly I looked out the window and big white snowflakes were just falling. I didn't pay attention for the rest of the lecture, just kept looking outside and watching it fall.
I have two more things I need to do before my semester is officially over and I can frolic in snow (sadly it appears to be slowing down now) without impunity: take French exams, and do reading for Representing London course. My French exams commence in two hours. I have a decent vocabulary but don't really know how to conjugate verbs.
I don't care.
I went ice skating the other day, and was supposed to go again tonight but the tickets for the rink by the Tower of London sold out before I could get one. I've walked up and down Oxford Circus and Regent Street and Bond Street with their Christmas lights, seen the tree in Trafalgar Square (pretty wimpy, but still a Christmas tree), had warm soup and hot chocolate, been to a 'Christmas dinner' with my flat at the local pub, and gone to a German Christmas carnival where I drank mulled wine.
This is what the holidays are supposed to be about. How in the world did I live with (relatively) warm Christmases for twenty years? Without markets and lights and seeing your breath in the morning and rain boots and twelve layers of clothing?
How did I live without London? How will I live without London? The easy answer is also the hardest: I won't. I am too in love with this place, these people, to give it up for good. I will live here again -- not just travel here, live here. I don't know how, or when, but I know that I will, that I have to. And not just because this is the most beautiful lead-up to Christmas that I've ever seen. Because this feels right, all of it, and that's not something you let yourself walk away from.
I was in my Dickens class, listening to the prof lecture about A Tale of Two Cities, when suddenly I looked out the window and big white snowflakes were just falling. I didn't pay attention for the rest of the lecture, just kept looking outside and watching it fall.
I have two more things I need to do before my semester is officially over and I can frolic in snow (sadly it appears to be slowing down now) without impunity: take French exams, and do reading for Representing London course. My French exams commence in two hours. I have a decent vocabulary but don't really know how to conjugate verbs.
I don't care.
I went ice skating the other day, and was supposed to go again tonight but the tickets for the rink by the Tower of London sold out before I could get one. I've walked up and down Oxford Circus and Regent Street and Bond Street with their Christmas lights, seen the tree in Trafalgar Square (pretty wimpy, but still a Christmas tree), had warm soup and hot chocolate, been to a 'Christmas dinner' with my flat at the local pub, and gone to a German Christmas carnival where I drank mulled wine.
This is what the holidays are supposed to be about. How in the world did I live with (relatively) warm Christmases for twenty years? Without markets and lights and seeing your breath in the morning and rain boots and twelve layers of clothing?
How did I live without London? How will I live without London? The easy answer is also the hardest: I won't. I am too in love with this place, these people, to give it up for good. I will live here again -- not just travel here, live here. I don't know how, or when, but I know that I will, that I have to. And not just because this is the most beautiful lead-up to Christmas that I've ever seen. Because this feels right, all of it, and that's not something you let yourself walk away from.
