bye

Well, I've said good bye to my city of art and literature and my parentals and I are journeying home through Amsterdam. I'm sure there will be many missings, I'm already feeling a lot of them. I miss my street and the plethera of blue and purple hydrangeas. I miss living with Eve and Elsa.

I saw one of the most beautiful and quite things I think I'll ever see while walking past a canal at night, it wasn't lighted like the others were and there were hundreds of swans floating quietly like they were clouds. 

Also I had some really stellar frites and waffles. 

 I'm coming home I'm coming home

we go to church to learn about jesus

(that’s what the kids say, anyway)

Today was my last sabbath in the Catford Ward.

In primary the babies dressed up and put on a play of Samuel the Lamanite teaching about the birth of Jesus, they were ticklishly excited. Then, as tradition goes, Niveyah sat next to me in sacrament meeting and asked me to draw her a mouse and his family, then left her little sunday shoes by me while she skipped off with her blanky to sit with someone else. I’ve become used to looking for Karen (Niveyah’s mother) after services to return the shoes. I think about these things and can’t believe how much I’m going to miss them, all these kind faces and love-filled people...and their accents...will church even be as good again with Americans at the pulpit? Crap.

Anyway, Sara (Maggie left a few days early) and I said goodbye to our little ward, and I walked home with a broken heart (jk) shoe to our flat on Palace Court to find my cute Mom. My heart is full and it's almost time to go home.

a high tea celebration for everyone!! high tea and high fives (congratulations artists, you're done)

Except now you have to start doing real homework, no more "man, this paper's gonna have to wait because I need to go to the studio" stuff.

Anyway,

here's our last group outing (at the Orangerie at Kensington Palace), for which forty girls actually got ready for the first time in three months.

oh dear. i posed for this.

my teachers are amazing. their wives are more so. elsa is the most so.

the temple

(Eve took this of Jemima Puddleduck and her boyfriend)

 

this is the speck picture, because i am a speck

try no. 2

 This week in church, a thoughtful man gave a talk about going to the temple (which was fitting in preparing for today). It made me think about the nature of performing service, and made me want to continually be worthy of it. Service is what we perform in the temple. 

Also temple workers are cuter with accents. 

Special note for G-ma M: I didn't find any rhododendrons, but there was a pretty red tree.  

also

happy birthday kyr bagyr, we sure love you.

 

canterbury cathedral

ANNA I'M WEARING YOUR SCARF and I'm hiding 
too many bonbons in my jacket pocket. 

oxford (comma)

Oxford (KATO POTATO) - Madeline and I got distracted in the Botanical Garden. Earlier we had a delicious lunch (tomato soup and rose lemonade) at a pub frequented by CS Lewis and Tolkein, then just got lost and stuff.

Later that evening we all went to Evensong at King's College. When we were leaving, I saw that a little girl who had been sitting next to me left a coloring page with sparkly Minnie Mouse stickers all over it on the bench. So I stole it. Somehow it is a significant artifact.

stratford

Anne Hathaway's house (not big-lips-never-shoulda-been-cast-as-Jane-Austen-in-Becoming-Jane-and-a-lot-of-other-things Anne, Shakespeare's poor neglected wife Anne)

misfits climbing trees at Shakespeare's grave

Today I went on a pilgrimage following the most influential contributor to the English language. Then I saw a questionable rendition of Measure for Measure, and ate my face off with the best Indian food I've ever had. Om gnom naan.

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS TO NAN, SETHY, BECCA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOOD JOB GUYS!!!!