Living Up to My Middle Name

After many hurdles (including an initially rejected visa application; the ongoing strike at York U that finally ended with Ontario back-to-work legislation last week; a serious lack of fieldwork funding from the uni; and the writing and defending of my last comprehensive exam), I managed to get together with most of my friends in Ontario one last time and finally left for my fieldwork in England! Yes, I arrived here on Thursday and am currently staying in Cheltenham, in the Cotswolds, with my friend Sarah. I've been having a grand time with her showing me around and helping me to get things like a phone and internet set up, but the weather here has been quite unusual. There is snow, and rather a lot of it (for this part of the world, anyway). The chilliness is the worst part, though, since the snow melts a bit during the day and then freezes into slick sheets of ice on the sidewalks as soon as it gets dark. Things are supposed to warm up a bit this coming week, though, so I'm hopeful I'll be able to get back to exercising outside soon. And I really need to, given that I've been eating so many lovely British sweets!

I move to London on Wednesday and will be staying with Liz, a friend of a friend who has generously offered to let me stay with her and flatmates until the end of the month. I'm really excited to meet them and experience life in such a bustling place. My only problem at this point is that I've moved here to do research, and I still don't have permission to do that research from the museum I want to work with! Up to this point, they have failed to respond to my email inquiries, so I'm going to try one more time - I figure if I email them to set up a meeting for next week, and they still don't respond, I will just drop by the museum and try to use good old fashioned charm. Wish me lucck...

I'll be posting on here more regularly from now on in order to document my travels - stay tuned! :) Oh, and you may also notice that I changed the title of my blog. What does "Married to Amazement" mean? Well, one of my favourite poems is called "When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver, and it's basically about not wanting to miss out on anything in life, and living it without regret. My favourite lines from the poem are:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

That's really how I've felt about my life in the past year - I never want to stop challenging myself and embracing the wonder of new experiences. That's part of what this trip is about for me and I'm really excited to be taking this big leap - leaving behind home, friends, family, and cat - to move overseas for a few months and immerse myself in a new and strange place. I've done it before by moving all across Canada, but going overseas is a bit harder! My middle name is "Farryn", which means "wanderer"or "adventurer", and I'm happy to continue to be living up to it.