The end of one adventure begins another

After I completed my study abroad experience in the spring of 2009, it was the end of the road for "Notes from London." It would have been quite a misnomer if I was writing "Notes from London" that were in fact being written in Hamilton, NY, as I finished up my senior year! Nevertheless, this blog remains as an online record of the incredible experiences I had during my time abroad. Regardless of how or why you have navigated to this blog, I invite you to explore my posts, make comments, and ask questions. I may no longer be in London posting, but I am still online, and I certainly haven't forgotten my experiences yet. I never will. I'd love to help out if you are also thinking of studying abroad and are grappling with any issues or decisions.

As I write this particular post I have not only completed my study abroad experience, but also my undergraduate study! I graduated almost exactly three months ago in May, 2010. That, of course, marked the end of my collegiate adventure, and the beginning of my "adult life." It seems weird to think of it in those terms when I can still remember some of the individual gifts I received at my eighth birthday party!

Nevertheless, I am now out on my next adventure in the real world, looking for jobs, paying rent, and all those fun things. If anybody is particularly interested in keeping track of me beyond this blog, I can offer you a few options. For starters, there is my personal resume website (http://www.jasonbk.com). It is something I put together to help in my job search. It's a little dry, but it certainly has all the facts, and you'll also be able to find my professional writing samples there! Of course, in today's world, there are always social media options for keeping in touch as well:




I tend to keep my Facebook profile confined to my close circle of friends, so if you fall into that category and want to connect on Facebook, I should be easy enough to find!

It is certainly late to finally be wrapping things up with this blog, but better late than never, right? Thank you to everyone who followed me, and good luck in all your endeavors.

Traveling with my father

Obviously this post is coming a little late. The end of my time abroad went in an absolute blur. On May 19 I took the last of my final exams. Fingers crossed that it went well. I won't know until at least July 3; that goes for all of my classes. I believe it was the night of May 19 when I hopped on a bus to Heathrow Airport.

But it is not what you think.

I was not going to Heathrow to get on an airplane. Rather, I was going to meet my father, who was coming to spend my final week in England with me, traveling. Up to that point I had actually seen very little of England itself. I pretty thoroughly explored London, obviously, and the area around Egham. I had also been to Brighton. I had been to Wales (2x), and Scotland; but that is not England. I had been to Italy, Switzerland, and France; but that was not England. So Dad insisted that we would rent a car and drive around England.

Yep. Rent a car.

So we did. Luckily we had a GPS, so the navigation part was a lot easier, and we could focus a lot more on driving. In other words Dad could focus more on driving and I could focus more on telling him that he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

He actually fared very well, and we got to see an awful lot. The trip hit the following locations in a whirlwind week:
-Stonehenge and Avebury
-Bath
-Oxford
-Forest of Dean (on the border with Wales; we visited some people Dad had met when he was working in Holland during the stone age)
-Lincoln
-York
-One last day in Egham. One last trip to Tesco. One last trip to the Happy Man. One last sticky toffee pudding.

Avebury standing stone and two ugly guys
(pic at top of page is Lincoln Cathedral)

The trip was a great success. We stayed in bed and breakfasts scattered across the country, except for the one night we spent with the Phelps, Dad's friends, who were generous enough to host us on about one day's notice when we got stuck without a place to stay (we hadn't anticipated that it was a bank holiday weekend when we were traveling). We saw a whole lot of stuff, were stalked by references to Bill Bryson, ate some good food, didn't die while driving. It was all good.

The trip's end was thus: we spent our last night at RHUL, and took the bus to the airport in the morning (we had dropped the rental off the day prior, and taken the bus to RHUL). Of course, we had to catch the very first bus of the day, which came at some ungodly hour like 5:17 am. That is obviously not the approximation I made it out to be. As if that were not early enough, we had to walk across campus to the bus stop to begin with... carrying four suitcases. Oh, yeah, and to make sure the university left a bitter taste in my mouth, housing refused to let me check out of my room the night before leaving. I had to go sign the paperwork in the morning as I was leaving. So at 4:30 am I found myself talking to this night security guy at the "reception." The process that was so important for me to do in the morning as opposed to at night? Sign a piece of paper. Honestly.

Nevertheless, we caught our bus, navigated the gargantuan airport (largely due to the fact that I had navigated the same route a week earlier as I went to retrieve my father upon his arrival), and boarded our plane without issue. I was entertained in flight with the likes of Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, and the comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop (okay... maybe I wasn't so entertained). And that was it.