An Entry to End All Entries

It started with an LCD clock reading 7 a.m. and ended with a Pistons-Magic game on TNT.

These are my first and last official memories of London, the former being on the shuttle bus from Heathrow to the London Centre, the latter embedding itself in my mind as the JetBlue plane touched down in Rochester. A perfect four month separation strung together by countless memories and epic stories that are lumped together in a single hackneyed word used to describe every study abroad semester: an "experience."

True, that's about all it can be called since the perpetrators asking this question demand a concise ten second response before they move on in conversation. But there isn't much else that can condense a literal life-altering time in one's life and explain it. When you think it over, there are a myriad of things to consider about your favourite this and that, the best cities, the best food and so on and so forth. And when the conversations have ended and you're left alone to bask in the spring that May brings and the familiar scent of budding lilacs, mowed grass and unwashed dog, a deluge of London comes back without warning.

I have been drowned more times than I care to remember in the ensuing flood. The walks to class through Hyde Park, the taste of farafelle pasta with salt, pepper, butter and basil mixed with the musty scent of Arabic carpeting in Flat 95 and the shift of the sidewalk tiles on Edgware Road while walking toward Marble Arch still linger potently. Words are too cheaply used and yet they are all we have to convey our lives to one another. It's something I've tried to do ever since arriving in the States and have failed miserably at. Waking up in your own house and not knowing where you are for a full ten minutes due to culture shock can't be accurately portrayed with these simplistic utterances. Yet we still strive to encapsulate our lives, these moments, tragedies and comedies, sights and sounds, these...experiences into writing or oral presentations, knowing full well that most of it will never escape our lips and will remain locked in our souls for us to dip into eventually, much like the proverbial jar of sunshine saved for a rainy day.

Words may be forgotten, but London lives on subtle feelings and sensations; a collection of scattered sparks that will ever light the fires of my imagination. Yes, in case you can't tell, I miss London. And while this may or may not be the conclusion of my depiction of a semester spent abroad, it will remain something vivid and beautiful to me long after the writing ceases.

Thank you for reading this odd collection of writings about the past four months; your comments (and sometimes lack thereof) kept me creative and flowing. Cheers!