After months of planning, over one hundred e-mails, dozens of international calls, and one organizational meeting, our “Literary London” CVCA J-term class finally arrived. For those not familiar with the concept of J-term, schools sometimes take some time after Christmas break to offer unusual classes and trips for the students. Our college, Middlebury, had this program for four weeks in January, and this year CVCA implemented a J-term program of eight school days, from January 3rd to January 12th. Meredith proposed that we offer to bring a group of students to London, and last spring we had thirteen students sign up. It always seemed as if we had lots of time available for the planning, and we did make good use of the time, but suddenly Mer and I were meeting students at CVCA this morning at 8:00, with the bus to the Pittsburgh Airport leaving CVCA at 9:00.

A note on the interesting use of time in this entry – “today” is a funny term, in that Mer and I woke up at 6:00 am on Monday the 3rd, but did not land in London until noon London time on Tuesday the 4th – it is all the same day for us. Happily, all of the students seemed to get some sleep on the plane. Sadly, the old-and-used-to-a-bed folks did not.

Anyway, Mer and I were very pleased with how things went this morning – everyone was at school by 8:45, as we had told them to be. We were all loaded and on the bus and underway right at 9:00. The students were cheerful and chatty, but certainly not bouncing-off-the-walls excited. I think they knew we had a very long day ahead of us.

The bus ride was uneventful, with the exception that we had to circle around the airport one full time. It turns out that if you try to obey the signs and follow directions for buses at the airport, you end up at a gated road; it seems the airport meant commercial buses with special passes. A nice man gave us directions and got us all set.
The check-in at the airport went really well. Our students were great – they did whatever they were told, and the process of checking in fifteen people went really smoothly. The Delta counter people were very helpful, and one of the ticket agents got me and Mer signed up for a miles-club so we could take advantage of all of the miles for this trip – we ended up with enough miles for two free domestic tickets. That was very nice of the lady to point out. They also offered me and Meredith free drinks on the plane (of the imbibing kind), which we turned down, explaining we were with a Christian school; maybe it was a small witness. We got to the gate about ninety minutes before our flight to Atlanta (where we would catch the big plane for London), so that gave time for some of the students to get lunch if they desired and come back to the gate area to eat it. Everyone was back on time, and the flight to Atlanta was smooth and on time (after a few minutes where it looked like we would be delayed because of a stuck pin on the loading ramp, but they were able to free it after just a few minutes).

We got to Atlanta, where we were scheduled to have a layover of over seven hours. Mer and I decided that was too long to spend in an airport, so we decided to take a field trip to downtown Atlanta. We figured out the inner-airport train and got to the city train system (the “Marta”). We were again helped by a very friendly worker who helped me buy fifteen round-trip tickets for the Marta system. We figured out how to get through the turnstiles (all the mass transits of various cities seem to be slightly different), and we headed north to downtown Atlanta.
We got off at the Peachtree station, and headed off down the street – I was aiming for Atlanta’s Olympic Park, which is a short walk away from the Marta station. It was sunny, but cool in the shade of downtown, but it felt good to be outside.  We started heading down a hill, and I could not see any space opening up. After three blocks, I stopped and dug out my map in my backpack, and discovered we were heading east when we needed to be going west. Mer and I chalked it up to showing off downtown Atlanta.

We did get to the park, but the sidewalks turned out to be very crowded getting there – we were walking against major crowds that turned out to be there for the Passion Conference 2011 (it appeared to be a huge Christian conference). Somehow we managed to run into the huge crowds both going to the park around 4:00 and coming from the park around 6:30.

We got to the park, which is not very big, but is well laid out. We took some photos near the park’s dancing fountain, which is in the shape of the Olympic rings, and then we got an early supper from Googie Burger, a burger stand on the edge of the park. It was cool (in the mid 40s), but we were still able to eat outside.
After supper, we wandered around the edge of the park. We took a bunch of pictures of various statues and well-lit flora, and we took the time to cross the northern edge of the park to see the outside of the World of Coke (the softdrink manufacturer is based in Atlanta). We did not have time or money to go in to the World of Coke, but we took some pictures with the statue of the inventor of Coke.

The walk back through the park was pretty. We watched the small but popular (covered from the sun) ice rink, then took in the well-laid-out streams and waterfalls of the park. We stumbled across the “Quilt of Remembrance” – a stone “quilt” laid out in memory of the bombing attacks in the park during the games. We finished the park portion of the evening by watching the city lights come on as twilight fell, and we got great enjoyment out of the now-colorfully lit fountain (and the groups of people who liked to try to run through the dancing fountain without getting wet, which included several of our own students, who managed to not get seriously wet).

By a little after 6:00, I decided we should head back, so we went walked back to the Marta station, and took the twenty-five-minute train back to the airport. We got through security efficiently, and actually were ready to go to our gate just a little after 7:00 (for a 10:50 flight). We were early enough that our plane did not have a gate yet. I made an educated guess that we were in Terminal E, based on the number of international flights that seemed to be leaving from there. I was fortunate and turned out to be right. So, we spent about three hours reading or talking or getting food or playing games. The time passed pretty well, and we got on board the airplane on time, and the plane left around 11:00 as it was supposed to.

I can’t speak to what everyone did on the flight. It was an 8-hour flight, and it certainly looked as if all of the students got at least a little sleep. Mer graded papers for a little over half the flight. I tried to sleep, and when that did not work, I  watched movies. I got to see Despicable Me, an animated film I had wanted to see for some time. I loved it. The I took a chance on a film I knew nothing about called Flipped. It turned out to be a Rob Reiner film, and I enjoyed it. It was the story of a boy and girl who met when in second grade, and the story of how they came to value and care for each other. It was worthwhile, and helped pass the time. I also spent time writing up some of this blog entry.

We got to Heathrow at around 12:15 London time. We managed to get off the plane, get through customs, find bathrooms, and get our luggage with some efficiency. We headed over to the Heathrow Underground station, and a very helpful Tube clerk helped me sort out getting a one-day group pass (the rest of the trip will be covered by our week-long Tube passes). We got to to the platform, which was pretty clear, and then waited for what seemed like a very long time. I’m not sure what was going on with the Tube schedule, but we waited at least twenty minutes, and maybe as much as thirty before the train arrived. As such, it was very crowded. Since we were there early, we managed to get on without any real trouble, and the practice on a crowded line was probably good for us.

We transferred trains twice; the second time we changed right outside of the Tower of London, which Mer pointed out to the group, but I was so focused on trying to figure out where were were going that I missed it. We got to the Limehouse station and got off the train, and managed to find our hotel after one more of my little wrong-way detours. The hotel is about a five-block walk, which is not too bad. We managed to get checked in and had about an hour to rest and unpack before we needed to meet at 5:00 to head back into the city for supper.

We were out the door at about 5:00, and the Tube got us to downtown at about 5:30. We got off at the Westminster stop, and the kids finally got to feel they were really in London – the Westminster stop dumps you out in full view of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. The kids got very excited, which was understandable. It may have been a bit of a disappointment that I then marched them past all of the sights to get to our restaurant, the Italian Locale, County Hall. Once in the restaurant, Mer did assure everyone we would see those sights and have time for pictures.

The restaurant somehow did not have our reservation, but hurried to get us two tables anyway. Supper was excellent, and most welcome. After eating, we walked over to the Eye, which included coming around the massive County Hall building to see a tree-lined walkway framing the Eye. It was very impressive. For those not familiar with it, the London Eye is a huge Ferris wheel, with enclosed cars that hold about twenty-five people and go over four hundred feet in the air.

I got our tickets, and we all filed into a theater to watch a cheesy but fun 4-minute “4-D” film on London and the Eye. The 4th dimension of the film was tactile – the system blew bubbles in our faces, fog machines spit out fog, and so on. After the film, we went out to the Eye, where the people in charge gave us a car all to ourselves, which was really great.

Any doubts about this trip were laid to rest while watching the students run around the car, being excited over the sights, and snapping tons of pictures. This sharing of London was exactly what prompted Meredith to plan the trip, and it was very gratifying. I handled the height pretty well, except for the very top, where I had to sit down and not look down. Some of the kids joined me on the bench in the car at that point. Still, it was a great experience.

We took our time (and lots of pictures) in getting back to the Tube stop. The day finally caught up to me on the Tube, and I almost fell asleep twice on the trip back to the hotel. Once there, we handed out cell phones, and then told everyone to get to bed efficiently. It was about 10:00 or so when I finally got to sleep, and I was out pretty quickly. What a great day.