Stonehenge to Scotland → By Anika Chang (‘18)
NEWS
5
Over fall break, 30 HBA students left behind their scratchy school uniforms and backpacks, and donned their cozy sweaters and sightseeing gear for a 10-day trip to England and Scotland.
Led by the English Department, the biennial trip prides itself as a literary adventure, where students can engage the world of literature by visiting literary landmarks and immersing themselves in the culture that produced literary greats like Wordsworth and Shakespeare. After close to 17 hours of airplane travel, the students landed at Heathrow Airport and headed straight to Windsor Castle. The official residence of Queen Elizabeth II, the castle is the oldest and largest castle in the world. The students saw the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, built for Queen Mary between 1921 and 1924. The miniature house, built to a 1:12 scale, is famous for its intricate details and working features like electricty, running water and even flushing toilets. They also visited St. George’s Cathedral, designed by the great Victorian architect Augustus Pugin in 1848, and watched the Changing of the Guard, a formal ceremony during which the Queen’s Guards—in their iconic red coats and bearskin hats—change shifts. Outside the castle grounds, the students spent the afternoon in 5,000 acre Windsor Great Park, which includes a deer park. Junior Jailyn Choi said, “The most memorable experience from the trip is when we got to visit Windsor Castle because it was so beautiful and I couldn’t imagine how much time, work, and effort it took to build it. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures which was sad but it definitely helped me to look around and observe the little details of the castle.” The second day of the trip took the students to Stonehenge and Oxford. Sophomore Cobi Pimental was surprised by the scale of the Stonehenge. “I got to listen to a recording about the historic and the archeological finds at the place. Stonehenge was surprisingly big. You don’t know a place unless you go there yourself,” he said. After walking the halls of the prestigious Oxford university, Pimental
was struck by an interesting detail from campus life there. “One thing I learned that fascinated me was to know that Oxford’s time is off by five minutes on purpose because the school is five minutes off of the time zone demarcation,” he said.
“One thing that literature and travel have in common (and people like Lewis and Tolkien knew this) is that they both open doors. They remind you that... there’s a wide and wild world out there to explore.”
Teacher & chaperone The next day they traveled Tony Traughber to Stratford, home to the Shakespeare museum and Shakespeare’s childhood home. At the museum, three performers dressed in full Shakespearean dress welcomed their audience to request a monologue or scene from any Shakespearean play. The group then had a traditional fish chips meal before watching the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage. York was next on the itinerary, where students walked down the Shambles, an old street that served as J.K. Rowling’s inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter series. They also stepped into York Minster, the second largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, where candles are continuously lit by parishoners to represent prayers for loved ones around the world. Bible teacher and trip chaperone Traughber noted, “It was a good reminder that God has been a significant part of the human experience and that He’s not just someone we talk about in chapel and Bible class.” On Day Six, the students visited medieval Skipton Castle, built in the early 12th century and one of the best preserved castles in the world.