MAd Tea Party

Between 1849 and attending Oxford in 1851 an unexplained gap exists in the life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the whimsical author behind Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland. I have unraveled the mystery of the missing years: the author attended my university. The experience provided inspiration for one of the most memorable chapters in the book: the Mad Tea Party.

I entered my department’s induction expecting to receive the answers to my most pressing questions. Alice wanted to find her way home; I want to know what classes I am going to take and when. Instead, I received riddles.

We filled out forms in the meeting listing our top ten choices of optional class although we only take two. We will find out next week, except classes start now…sort of. Geography classes begin this week, War Studies classes relating to Europe begin next week, and all other classes begin the following week.

What am I supposed to do until I know what actual classes I’m taking? Why, sit in all my top ten classes that I might be taking, of course.

Move Down!

I listed a geography class as my number six choice but could not find the time or location for the class. I waded through enrolling freshman to locate my Master’s department. The answer: “Ask the Geography department.”

Move Down!

I tried to open an international student bank account but didn’t have an acceptance letter with my London address on it. The school wouldn’t send an acceptance letter to a London address that I would not have until after I received confirmation that I would be an international student in London.

Move Down!

As our library resembles a castle more than an actual library, I signed up for a library tour. In the madness of 200 students trying to sign up at the same time, I couldn’t hold onto the sign-up sheet long enough to see where and when the session was being held. I asked a program coordinator and was told, “Monday, at the library training center.”

I arrived early on Monday and was fairly suspicious when nobody else appeared to wait outside the classroom. I entered the classroom to ask the instructor just finishing a session with obvious freshman. My training session is on Monday at this time and in this location but next week.

Instead of being late like the White Rabbit, it appears I was very, very early.

Into the Land of Harry Potter

Saturday night I went out in London for the very first time, and I instantly felt pulled into almost everyone's favorite children's book: Harry Potter.

We passed through King’s Cross Station although we did not stop to look for platform nine and three quarters. I was told however that people are constantly hovering around the train station, taking pictures as they pretend to smash luggage carts into the wall. No word if any hopelessly Potter obsessed nine year olds have suffered a concussion after actually charging into the wall.

After starting the evening at what I would consider a traditional pub that would fit in comfortably at Hogsmeade, we walked to Ester Square. I was struck by how much ridiculously drunk teenage boys resemble goblins or bumbling mountain trolls who stumble around causing destruction in their wake.

Once we left a club, we waited for a night bus in a gorgeous curved street off Piccadilly Circus. Yes, a real two story red knight bus! I was so excited when it came bustling down the street. When the doors flew open, I wanted to yell “Stan!”

Unfortunately, the bus driver was not the lovely red head from the book.

The ride was only slightly less mad than what is written on the page. I had no idea walking down the steps from the second story to the first could be so difficult when in motion.

We hopped off the bus and walked down the silent streets of a Julia Roberts movie worthly neighborhood. The grandeur of the buildings could not be masked even in darkness. We turned into our little square. Squeezed between the cheerfully yellow and white townhouses and boutique hotels is our own grey Number 12, Grimmauld Place: home.

So far I haven’t had any run-ins with death eaters, and I have yet to receive my first broom-flying lesson. Give it time though. I haven’t started classes yet, and it very much could be that I have Professor Snape or Professor Gilderoy Lockhart as my instructor.

Bad China Month

While I have not been in China for six weeks now, the ghost of Chinese deniability is still haunting me with severe financial consequences (considering I’m now a poor student in one of the most expensive cities in the world).

First, the Agricultural Bank of China stole nearly 400USD from my bank account. I meticulously check my bank accounts online and double check that every line item is something that I actually spent money on even if I regretted it later. Some of those rash purchases at the fabric market fall in that category.

When suddenly three withdraws on the same day appeared, I noticed, and complained, but I made no progress at the Chinese Bank. The Chinese bank’s official line is, “You will have to talk to your home bank about the problem”

My American bank was appalled and tried twice to file a complaint with the Agricultural Bank of China, which is insistent that a glitch never occurred.

Four hundred dollars gone…

Second, I apprehensively awaited the arrival of the last box I sent from China. Its contents included my very last purchases from the fabric market, which I already dearly miss. It did not arrive until four days after I left for London…I should say that the box arrived with two large slashes in it and no contents except an old bag I sent home with sentimental value. A gorgeous white cashmere coat, a pink coat I bought my sister, a full suit, the altered pants to two other suits, a silk jewelry box, and souvenirs that I bought for my entire family were all stolen.

The US Postal Service is looking for the “missing” items, but they were already gone before USPS even received the package. I’m not going to see them again.

Another four hundred dollars gone…

So some devious person is walking around with four hundred U.S dollars in my white coat that I bought for the cold London winters. Needless to say, it caused a very, very bitter impression within my parting memories of China.

Am I Still a Smart Postgraduate Student If...

I had some time to kill between the hours of queing to enrol and my department orientation so I decided to take the time to wonder around the “campus”


The Strand Campus of King’s College London consists of an attached addition to the Summerset House with a hideously ugly attached front building and a dozen attached row houses on one side, AND the attached former Strand subway station. The outside of these buildings are the same, but the inside has been cubed off into professor offices as I am quick to learn.

After spending hours in the original buildings, I thought a foray into the clustered side buildings could be fun.


I crossed a frosted glass bridge into that wing and entered a claustrophobic maze instantly. I went up a baby fight of stairs and then down another, dimly noting that the hall were narrowing like Willy Wolka’s factory.





What followed was a series of sharp twists, winding staircases, and swinging fire doors all along halls so slender that I could fan my fingers out down at my sides and still brush both walls. Only the change in side molding helped me distinguish when I was leaving one building and entering the next.

I bumbled into finding the object of my mission, the waterfront bar overlooking River Thames.

The trip back proved trickier. I thought I mentally mapped my route, but when I reached a sweeping staircase, I had no idea where I needed to go.


Working off faulty memories, I pushed through one heavy fire door after another almost bursting into a professor’s office because pop-up intersections lined with doors disoriented me. When I passed the stairs that stopped directly into the ceiling, I knew I was on the right path. At the multi-mini-stair intersection, I took the narrow stairs that wind around an old cage elevator painted bright blue, which didn’t lessen its creepiness.


Picking up speed, I almost took out a young British professor. I somehow missed the turn to the greenhouse bridge and entered a completely round room. I took old wooden steps into a tiny courtyard and made it back into the ugly front building that suddenly became a lot prettier.

Roly-Poly

I landed at Gatwick Airport in London after an uncharacteristically uneventful flight and realized that I probably should have created a better plan for making it to the dorm after twenty hours traveling.

The largest problem was that Gatwick is located about thirty miles from the center of London, and I didn't want to spend 160 dollars on a taxi to reach the city. (I hate the weak dollar.)

I went up to a friendly train ticket officer and told him that I needed to go to Paddington so I wanted to buy a ticket to Victoria. This exchange shouldn't have been difficult because we were both speaking English except I couldn't understand half of what he said. I did decipher: "Victoria is not possible"..."Go to Farringdon and change"...

I looked at the tickets and couldn't make sense of the zones that seemed more suited for a locker combination than a London map key. I just went to the platform he told me and jumped on the same train as everyone else with suitcases. Minding the gap is very difficult with a fifty pound suitcase, a thirty pound suitcase, and a computer bag.

Forty minutes into the ride, the next station was announced as Victoria. Very confused, I dragged my suitcases off the train and decided it would be best to take a taxi.

The taxis are huge! They also don't have trunks. My driver, whose abilities are probably more suitable for a Mad Max remake, zipped around the corners with no regard to the fact that my suitcases have very well performing wheels. I felt like I was in a London cab washing machine as I tried to balance both suitcases and keep them from knocking me unconscious.

Within moments after beginning the ride, we passed a Rolls Royce with an old lady in a goofy hat. Instantly I thought, "The queen!"

Of course, the cabby entered a round-about at that moment, and I was flattered against the window. On closer inspection the woman wasn't the queen. I think her majesty rides in a carriage anyway

Goodbye China!

My year in China includes some of the funniest moments, greatest friends, and hardest-earned accomplishments (and I have a broken bone in my foot to prove it). Now it's time to move onto the next chapter of my life: London. The story continues...

Home Base

In some odd combination of purpose and accident, I have spent a lot of time wandering, yet I still always come back to the place I consider home base. When my time in China ended, I returned to the cornfields of Ohio.

My hometown is still a place where post office workers and grocery store clerks ask about my family in unexplainable southern accents considering how far we are from the Mason-Dixie Line. It’s a town where music simply stopped in 1986, and the Eagles and CCR are still kings of the radio. American flags are hung from lamp posts during every summer holiday and a giant Ohio flag is painted on the grain silos on the edge of town. Teenagers ride along winding country roads with sunroofs down, trying to catch fireflies and bridge jump along dusty and deserted gravel roads.

I came home in the heat of August when the humidity thickens to the point of practically requiring swimmies. Just at that point thunder rolls across the horizon bringing the green skies and rapid fire lighting of some of the fiercest thunderstorms that I’ve seen in the world. When the rain clears, a mist lingers within the meadows so that only the tops of the wild flowers and tall grass rise above the haze.

Summer in Ohio also brings every possible festival imaginable besides the county fair. The summer holds the Strawberry Festival, Strut Your Mutt, multitudes of car shows and races, the Street Carnival, and maybe the most famous in my personal history: Balloon Fest, the hot air balloon spectacular.

My trip home was only for a month of respite. I will move from a teacher to a student as I attend school in London this fall to obtain a Master’s degree. When the year is over, I will once again return to the drive-in theaters, old-time carousel, and football obsession of my hometown.

In the Name of Security

Many, many people ask me if I feel safe in China when in reality I do not think I have even lived, visited, or thought of visiting anyplace nearly as secure. In Shanghai I rarely saw People’s Liberation Army officers or police officers. Actually, the only times I see cops are when they hassle the street vendors for selling food without a license.

Xinjiang Province is different. I was stopped at a police checkpoint sometimes as often as every ten minutes along a straight desert road. Occasionally we were even treated to an overzealous young guard who inspected the engine and car for explosives. I’m not sure how accurate some of their tools are though since my bag set off one of the wands. I think only sudden panic of being buried under a mound of Western underwear drove the young cadet to stop me from opening my bag for a closer look.

Even some local Uyghur towns took up the security cause and set up make-shift check points with slender poplar trunk barriers counterweighed with hanging boulders, making them easily drawn.

Our protection was taken so seriously that the military manned the checkpoint as we traveled to Karakol Lake, thirty kilometers from the gateway to Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were even protected from our Uyghur guides and had to use a Han Chinese guide to take us up to near oxygen-needed altitudes on a little sibling to the nearby K2.

To continue with the theme of protection, Uyghur dominated Old Town Kashgar was scheduled for demolition. The government feels the two story stone and brick buildings that have stood for hundreds of years might not survive a massive earthquake so the entire population is being relocated to tall skyscrapers on the edge of town. The destruction was scheduled for one week after we left.

A labyrinth of narrow alleys opened to courtyards and mosques. The domain of laughing children, they ran passed us playing games with rules made up on the spot. The larger streets felt even smaller with vendors packed along each side selling their wares of everything from wool caps to raisins and loose tea. As a brilliant marketing tool, pedestrians were forced to walk close to the stands while donkey carts forged through the center of the road along with small flocks of herded sheep. All will be gone soon in the name of security.

Addendum: The struggles in Xinjiang are quite real and felt constantly. A week after I left the area a checkpoint outside Kashgar was attacked and sixteen police officers were killed. Most in the minority group are so fearful of retribution and wiretapping that they are too weary to say a word against the government to foreigners at least.

And of course, the large oil reserves in the province complicate matters…