Advent Calendar to Adventure Derailment

Sorry for the delay of late - I guess it's true that even the best laid plans often go to waste, and certainly the past 44 hours that I spent continuously traveling threw a bit of a wrench in my ideas for having a post a day before my departure. My dad and I had to drive down to South Carolina to drop off my two horses at a farm where they'll be spending the winter while I'm away and then tried to get back home to Massachusetts before Christmas: not a small task given the 2200 mile round trip distance we had to cover in two days! Fortunately the drive went very smoothly, though it's hard to make that much driving with that little sleep very enjoyable.

I was going to write about British Riding, Traveling, and Food on these past three days, but can probably sum up my feelings towards those things without entire posts to back myself up. Those feelings entail:

Riding:

Determined. As in, even though I'm going to be 3,000 miles away from my own horse for a significant period of time for the first time EVER, I'm not going to go six months without putting a foot in an iron. I don't know yet what my involvement will be, but with God as my witness, it will be something!!

Traveling:

Pumped. I love traveling, and have really never seen much of England. I'm not that tempted to try to cram in all of Europe while I'm here, as I've done that a few times now on trips solely devoted to covering as much foreign soil as possible; this time I'd really like to focus on this fascinating little collection of islands and learn as much as I can about Britain (and let's throw in Ireland) as I can.

Food:

Dubious. At best. I'm a vegetarian whose two main culinary loves revolve around soul food and fresh salads; as far as I've gathered, neither of those play largely in British food whatsoever. My previous experiences with British food have been downright scarring (aubergine instead of sheet pasta in lasagna? Shrimp cocktail-flavored crisps? Sausage at every god-forsaken meal? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE?!), and I really don't want to try to live off of soggy British chips for six months. I've heard there's a good falafel van in Oxford (and I LOVE a good falafel), but I'll go insane if that's it. I spend a good portion of each and every day thinking about food, and so will be rather put out if England turns out to the be the culinary wasteland of which the legends warn.

So that's really about it. I've got patches of tomorrow (when I won't be tied up in family commitments) and Boxing Day morning to fit my entire life into one large suitcase and a single hiking backpack; I've given up thinking that I could prepare for the whole trip in one go, and have now split things into piles that I'll change out at spring break. Of course, no matter what Rational Me tries to say, Stubborn Me always manages to find a way to put a positively absurd amount of books into the "pack pile," so I'm going to have to spend much of that time convincing myself that I do NOT in fact have need for every cookbook I've ever taken a recipe out of for a six month sojourn where I probably won't even be doing much cooking. After that, the clothes debate is almost a relief! Wish me luck.