Transporting a Thought

"American students this is your stop.  This is O'Connelly Street.  American students this is your stop."

I am used to being watched.  I am used to being started at, scrutinized, and gazed down upon.  I'm used to sticking out.  It's something I've come to expect from my journey to London.  But, once again, as the bus driver calls attention to our group,  I feel my cheeks turn a little pink as all the eyes on the bus turn our way.  We all awkwardly stand up and shuffle off the bus, embarassed of not knowing our way.  The humiliation only lasts a minute, luckily, because as soon as I step off the large double-decker bus onto the gray and tan cobblestone path it hits me that I'm here- I'm in Dublin, Ireland- and who knows if I'll ever be back?  I only know that if I am ever fortunate enough to come back, it's not going to be for a long, long time.  So I better make the most of it. 

Busy streets, cars, hustling people.  All cities have these things.  The Guinness Factory, castles, Temple Bar.  These things are definitely unique.  Walking through the streets of Dublin, it's easy to separate the ordinary from the extraordinary-  and there's definitely not enough time to explore the extraordinary.  Starting out at the "Rod to God", "Stiletto in the Ghetto", or "Erection at the Intersection"- as our Irish tour guide would like to say- also know as the tall, silver, needle- like Millenium tribute located just a few blocks from our hostel, we work our way through the massive city.

I'm from the city- I'm from busy streets and gas stations on every block.  Perhaps this is why I'm fascinated with things not from the city.  I'm fascinated by the Irish coastline, small farms, and gorgeous rolling countrysides.  I'm fascinated by the serene feeling, the calm, the overwhelming sense of peace present once you travel outside the city limits.  I'm fascinated by the color green and anything and everything it entails. 

Green is the color of the grass, trees, and bushes.  Green is the color used to describe the effort of preserving it all.  Green is the color of flowers, leaves in the spring, and four leaf clovers.  Green is the color of Ireland.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons I loved it.  I loved the color, the history, the sense of nationality.  I loved the music,  I loved the dancing, I loved the accents.

I love to be at home.  I love having all my things around me, and I love sleeping in my own bed.  With all these things on my mind, however, I have to say that I love traveling the most.  I like seeing things that others deem important to view at least once in your life,  and I like seeing things that I deem important for others to view at least once in their lives.  I like experiencing different cultures and different lifestyles,  it makes me learn more about myself.  I'm so thankful to England and, now Ireland, for providing me with this opportunity.

So, as I begin my exploration of Dublin and myself,  I have to snicker a little bit at the bus driver's announcement at our stop.  I have to snicker as we all shuffle off the bus.  And, lastly, I have to snicker at those staring at me.

Natural History Museum

The moment I will remember most about the Natural History Museum occurred before viewing the exhibits.  It occurred before I learned about the history of the world, and about the skeletons of the many vast creatures that have roamed it.  It happened before I learned about the earthquakes, before the volcanoes, before the caves.  None of these awesome exhibits could even begin to have the impact on me that I had experienced just minutes before.  The moment I will remember most about my visit to this Museum was the first time I saw the building the museum is in, called the Waterhouse Building. 

          The building itself was designed by a man named Alfred Waterhouse, built between 1860 and 1880.  The entrance is a high-arched stairway built in a Romanesque style.  After entry, there is a large grand staircase which leads up to the second floor of the museum, followed by intricately painted ceilings, and elaborate sculptures.  The overall effect of the architecture of this building was absolutely breathtaking.  The old style of architecture- a mixture of Romanesque and Victorian- was so classic and simple in design while being complex at the same time. A lot of this is due to the simple yet elegant building materials, consisting of glass and bare iron. The amount of work put in to the creation of this astounding framework, especially without modern building equipment, is absolutely unfathomable.  It shows more than just determination, though. It displays teamwork, work ethic, and a respect for the arts.  It shows that the English in this time period had much more of a sense of true beauty than we do today.

          The entire building also follows the theme of the museum.  The art on the ceiling contains plant paintings, and the sculptures located both inside and outside of the building are of plants and animals.  The four sections of the museum contain articles that relate to what can be found in that section- from Darwin’s evolution to the age of dinosaurs, followed by  Earth’s ecology and the wonders of our planet.  As fascinated as I was by the exhibits and navigation of the museum, I could not get past the ornate detail that was engrained in every piece of the building around me. 

          In general, I have been quite astounded by all the architecture around me in London- which is not surprising, seeing as London is known for its architecture.  It is a fascinating subject to me, I think, because it is so unlike anything we have in the United States.  We have nothing to show for the first hundred years of mankind’s existence, whereas London has the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and countless others.  It is truly fascinating to be surrounded by all these amazing historical features.  A lot of the buildings from around London were built in the early 17^th century and follow Victorian style architecture.  The tall, connected flats that are the image of London housing “Georgian housing” stem from the Georgian Era of London, running from 1714–1830; it amazes me that the buildings were built steady enough to last through all these years. 

          All-in-all, the Waterhouse building (the Natural History Museum) contains 70 million artifacts. It is a huge, incredibly impressive museum in an even more impressive building.  To be able to witness something on the other side of the world with so much history and meaning behind it is an once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it is the sort of thing I hoped to experience on my trip abroad.

Introduction

For as long as I can remember, the things going on in the world around me only made sense when placed in organized, arranged patterns.  Each time a new piece of information was observed and added to my collection of knowledge, it was stored with other facts similar to it.  It was easier to process the objective versus analyzing the subjective.  This tendency began to surface in its simplest form, when, as a toddler, I would climb up onto the shelves in the kitchen and organize the disarray that was my mom’s canned food collection.  Everything works best, in my mind, when it is kept neat and structured.  Growing up, I was never told to clean my room, mainly because my room was kept neater than anyone’s who could have made this request of me.  Actually, quite often I was asked to inspect my sister’s room after she had been told to clean it, to verify that it was clean.

This obsession eventually led me to become a very rational person.  Simple calculations and formulas were always easy for me to understand, whereas writing stories and poems was something I had learned to dread.  To me, it has always been easy to solve a problem if you have an exact, infallible method of getting the answer and, once you have obtained the answer, to verify whether it is correct or not than to analyze the tone in a writer’s voice. No matter how complex the substitution or verification, it was always easier for me to break down the steps of a complicated calculus problem than it was to write the simplest of poems, because I merely had to apply a formula and verify that I had received the right answer. The majority of this perfectionist lifestyle can be attributed to traits I received from my father.  As he works with numbers day in and day out as a banker, I can only assume that his obsession with numbers had a great deal to do with my own.

 After discovering these pieces of information about myself early-on, I knew going into school that the classes I would succeed the most in would be the ones in which I could use numbers and formulas to derive the answers.  I also knew I needed to get away from my hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to really experience life as an independent college student.  As I began taking courses at UW-Madison the fall of my freshman year, I realized that the problems I had been learning about in class could be related to the world around me.  The background knowledge I was gaining could actually show how things worked in the world around me. These problems weren’t necessarily around just to improve my skills in any one subject, they were actual problems faced in professionals in the fields in which I was studying.  From this realization grew my desire to have an impact on the world around me.  Though I was always able to keep my life sustainably neat and organized, humankind has had quite the opposite effect on the world around us, and I hope that my studies are someday able to contribute to the creation of more environmentally friendly possessions and people.

 Being in London has provided me with the opportunity not only to learn about other people and cultures in the world around me, but to observe a different type of world, a different landscape.  The buildings and offices here are so much older and more antique looking; giving the entire city more of a “home-y” feeling to it, even though the population is so much larger.  The small corner coffee shops and cafes often serve homemade food which makes it not only better food, but often a more enjoyable, relaxed atmosphere than the busy, chaotic schedule I am used to encountering during a lunch hour. The history of the city is shown in so many monuments throughout the vicinity, and it is a place people from all over the world come to visit; that makes me realize how lucky I am to have the ability to spend an extended period of time here. The public generally takes the Underground Railroad, bus, or walks, and from this I believe only good can come.  I have high hopes for my time spent in London, as I know things here are so much different from what I am used to.  This change will force me to open my eyes and mind to the things going on around me, and gain a new perspective as I journey off into the world of employment.