That was my thought last night at around midnight. I was sitting on top of a spiked seven-foot-tall gate, staring down at my new roommate Katherine. On the other side of the gate were two slightly tipsy British men who had just hoisted me up to my perch. Really, how in the world did we end up like this?
Let me start from the beginning....
After several hours in O'Hare, my YAGM friends and I boarded our flights to London. In London, I said goodbye to my friends as they met their host families and set off for York. I was most anxious about this leg of my journey - being by myself and hauling 75 pounds of luggage across the city. But it was really fine, and although my forearms got a good workout, pretty uneventful. The train ride up to York found me gazing at the beautiful British countryside.
At my first stop, a man, his wife, and their teenaged daughter got on the train. The man took the aisle seat next to me, and the wife and daughter took the two in front. We exchanged a hello smile and I returned to my window-gazing. I fell asleep without realizing it at some point, and when I woke up my first thought was, "I've just been asleep with my mouth hanging wide open in front a stranger." Then I heard the man say something to his wife, and my second thought was, "I have no idea what this guy is saying." In my jet-lagged stupor, the British accent was far too much for me to comprehend.
At the train station, Katherine, my new roommate, and Derek, our church secretary, came to meet me. It was such a relief to be with people who knew where to go and what to do. We went to the University of York, where Katherine and I were staying for one night before our sublet started. After settling in, we walked and bussed our way into the city of York. It was a chilly night (it feels like October here) and I was in awe of my new city's beauty. We had dinner at the Golden Fleece, which is a historic restaurant here in York.
At the counter of the pub, I went up to order my olive and goat cheese tart.
"Weryebesignnnnn," said the bartender.
"Um." I said.
"Oh. Sorry. Where are you sitting?" she asked, enunciating each word carefully.
After a few more misunderstandings (thank goodness Katherine came up behind me at this point and rescued me) on how to open a tab and what to drink, we settled in for a good meal. We made our way to the bus stop, and after a short journey, found ourselves by the University of York and headed straight back to our dorms, ready to fall into bed.
It was at this point we had our first adventure as roommates (but not the last). After an hour of walking around the university, Katherine and I had to admit to ourselves that we were thoroughly lost. Katherine's phone was dead, and all we could figure out is that we had passed by the same plum tree we had seen earlier. Finally, after asking about 5 different people, we made our way back to our dorms.
The next day started out much better. Derek picked us up to take us to our new sublet and we explored the city and visited the church where I'll be working (and Katherine too). The building is beautiful. About half of it is in use for the charities that are part of the Foundation, and it was so cool to see the physical space of organizations I had researched online. The other half is the church space; the sanctuary is a large, sunlit space, and I learned about the many activities hosted there. I am both excited and nervous for the year to come - the church space seems so full of life and possibilities but I realized when I got there that I really have no idea what I'm doing. It will be interesting.
After a day of napping and walks, Katherine and I walked over to Derek's house for a wonderful dinner with he and his wife Isobel. Derek is a retired hospital director. He has had many adventures, and he and Isobel lived for ten years in Israel, serving at the only hospital in Nazareth. Their stories and take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was extremely edifying, and I look forward to hearing more from them this year.
Katherine and I went home (uneventfully this time). I had been feeling homesick all day, on and off, but the only moments I wasn't were when I was outside walking. I sat on my bed for almost an hour, looking at Facebook, reading text messages, and responding to Groupme, and I wanted to read my book and curl up. Maybe I'd call my dad or Shantonu. But then I realized, NO! I did not come to the UK to do the same things I do at home. If I wanted to read a book or sit on Facebook, I could have stayed at home in Baltimore. So I grabbed our house keys and let Katherine know I was going out. I made my way into the city, only a short walk from our house, and wandered around the narrow cobblestone streets. I stood in awe in front of the lit-up York Minster, and enjoyed the misty light rain. There were lots of drunken revelers out and I was enjoying myself a good deal when I took a series of turns and realized I had no idea where I was.
I wasn't worried but I was getting tired after being lost for almost 30 minutes, so I finally asked for directions from a series of helpful (and some not-so-helpful) Yorkians. Turns out I was on the complete opposite side of the city. After what felt like an eternity, I finally triumphantly made it onto my street. "Not so bad," I crowed to myself. "And now I can go to bed!"
I slid my key into the lock and turned. The door didn't budge. I turned it the other direction. It didn't budge. I turned it the other way again, and lifted the handle. I tried all the combinations of unlocking the door that I could. In a state of near panic, I frantically started rapping loudly at the door, praying Katherine was a light sleeper.
Thank goodness, she heard me, and came down the stairs. I was momentarily relieved. I passed the keys to the inside of the house through the mail slot and she tried from the inside. The door still wouldn't open. We both tried fruitlessly for almost five more minutes to unlock the door from both sides (she was locked in and me out), and then we decided we'd use the series of back door keys so I could come through the alley. The back of the house has a series of small locked rooms jutting off the kitchen - a little sunroom and then an enclosed patio, and then a locked gate that leads to an alleyway. We agreed to meet in the back alley instead - of course that would work, right? I made my way to the back, and to my horror, noticed that the alley itself has a gate with a padlock that requires a passcode.
"This is ridiculous!" Katherine exclaimed. She went back inside to look for the passcode, but it wasn't in our welcome book. After calling our landlord and the other emergency number with no response, we both had to admit this was going nowhere.
"I could jump the fence?" I suggested when she returned. Katherine surveyed the situation.
"I'll get a dining room chair." Katherine said, and left to get the chair, which would serve as something for me to land on when I made it to the other side.
I surveyed my options. The gate is, as I said, about seven feet tall, in some places a bit more, with black spikes at the top. There are two sections that are clear on the top without spikes: where the hinges are that meet the wall, and where the gate opens. If I could just get up there, I could perch myself on those clear spots - and then what? Jump seven feet down?
Trying not to think of that, I dragged a heavy, tall trashcan over so I could get higher up. Katherine met me with a chair on the other side. As I started to climb, I noticed light flickering from a nearby yard and heard voices. Some people in a house on the alley were having a party! We asked them for help, and a genial man promised over his fence that he'd get us the gate code.
At this time, two middle-aged men walked by on the outside street, and Katherine bravely called out, "Sir, can you help us?" They came over to us and I looked down at them from my trashcan perch.
"We got locked out," Katherine explained. She didn't have to explain further, because I think the men were excited to give a display of chivalry. They quickly began offering suggestions for how I could make it to the top of the fence, which met my waist height (so I couldn't get my leg that high). Using their hands as a boost, I clambered up to the top of the fence.
As a side note, I have intense acrophobia - I don't do ferris wheels, diving boards, tall escalators, or even piggy-back rides very well. I was petrified at the Grand Canyon and I despise tall sets of stairs that have gaps between the steps. I hadn't been fearful up until the moment when I was suddenly staring seven feet down while sitting on a narrow gate in the middle of a dark alley. The men behind me were getting excited, sensing success.
"Now just drop down, just like that!"
"Just drop your feet down!"
"Are you crazy?!" I yelled. "This is so high!" Luckily the men didn't seem to notice my rudeness after just having come to save me and Katherine.
At that moment, the genial man from the garden party leaned over his fence and shouted an incomprehensible series of numbers. Katherine plugged it into the gate pad while I shrieked "OH MY GOD IF THAT WORKS I'M NOT JUMPING FROM HERE!"
It didn't work. Instead Katherine level-headedly dragged a large trashcan over and made a series of steps with the dining room chair so I could climb my way down. On the ground, the men cheered. "Woohoo! Have a drink for us!" they said, and headed off.
Katherine and I felt as though we had just run a marathon or won a battle. It took us almost a half hour of laughing over the craziness of our first 36 hours as roommates to calm down. We certainly weren't going for a drink, but we did share some cookies we had in the house.
This morning before I had even woken up, Katherine called the landlord (how's that for a responsible roommate?). He called a locksmith who said the lock had gotten messed up because the door was a new one. Thank goodness, we agreed, that it was only me who had gone out!
We're cautiously going to leave the house later today for groceries and an evensong worship at York Minster, but we're DEFINITELY going to check if we can re-enter before we leave for good. Fingers crossed we make it through today without any other wild mishaps!
In other news, congratulations to Willy and Marlena for the birth of their new baby boy, William Kauko Ewald! He was born on August 25th at 10:16 pm!!!
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