Friday, June 20, 2014

The Metaphorical Resonances of the London Underground

My last day in London was pretty wonderful. I didn't do anything dramatic or expensive or crazy. I just
hit up all the old familiar places. I walked around the city that I'd come to think of as mine. I said goodbye to the wonderful host family that put up with me for several months. I had a last drink at our favorite pub with all my favorite London people. I said a tearful goodbye to my roommate who literally could not have been a more perfect match for me.
On Hampstead Heath

I spent my last day with my friends Katie and Jessica. We did things that we never took the time to do usually, like stand in the incredibly long line at King's Cross to get our picture taken at Platform 9 3/4 (totally worth it). We wandered around our lovely city, enjoying the fact that we knew our way around without a map and that we could navigate the tube with little stress. We looked out over Hampstead Heath at the iconic view of London.


Last selfie with my roommate
The fourteen of us who were part of the program got together at The Junction, our standard meeting
place throughout the semester for one last hurrah. We were minus a few people who had to leave early-I witnessed the saddest goodbye of all, when my friends Jessica and Megan said goodbye in the Harrow on the Hill tubes station. To say there were tears is an understatement. Later, after our night at the Junction in which there were many toasts and an impromptu piano sing along (piano performance by Denae McGaha), the rest of us said goodbye at that same tube station.
Goodbyes at The Junction

To say goodbye at a Tube station was pretty metaphorically resonant of us. Trains taking us to other places. The Metropolitan line-the first train line that we took together and the last. The train line that meant we were headed home.

I know London has been there for hundreds of years and will, in all likelihood, be there for hundreds more. But I won't ever be able to recapture those specific four months spent in a place I loved with people I grew to love. That's okay. I was lucky.








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