Fall Term Abroad in Stratford Writes In
Greetings from your favorite seniors across the pond! Our group of eight students is having a bombastic time on this old, god-forsaken rock we lovingly call “England.”
Mr. Chisholm (who has revealed himself to be the sassiest man alive) kicked off the trip by tossing us into our nine-passenger Ford Transit and shipping us up to the Lake District. Running only on crumpets and tea, we galloped around the Wordsworthian landscape, hiking mountains with varying degrees of difficulty. Mr. Chisholm was our fearless leader, cheerfully dragging our rather out-of-shape bodies past gorgeous waterfalls and vast sheep pastures.
After some pleading, Anna even convinced him to take us to Scotland for a day trip as it was only a stone’s throw away! At the end of our week, we bade farewell to the castle and traveled a few hours due south to our cozy little cottages on Furzen Hill Farms.
Back at our home base, we began our classes. Mr. Chisholm teaches an awesome class called “Landscape, Architecture, and Archaeology,” a big part of which includes traveling all corners of England to different medieval buildings and sketching the beautiful Gothic cathedrals. Some highlights have included climbing up the steeple of Salisbury Cathedral, which was pretty high up, and attending Evensong at Winchester Cathedral.
Mr. Chisholm also teaches our history class, which is fascinating—once you can get all your King Henry’s in order and sort out Richard the Lionheart from Richard III. Ann Haughton, a teacher at the Rugby school nearby (where the sport of Rugby was invented) teaches our Art History class, which usually comes with some fun stories about her students as well.
Last, our favorite part of the day usually includes lectures at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, where many of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars work and lovingly devote their time to teaching us all the ins and outs of the Bard’s crazy world. These classes take place in our namesake town, and we love walking around Stratford during our lunch breaks and fueling our somewhat worrying addiction to Cornish pasties.
In between our packed schedules, we have book club meetings with the Rugby School’s Landor Literature Society, somewhat chaotic grocery shopping trips for our family dinners every night, and lots of surprise field trips that Mr. Chisholm cooks up for us. In our downtime, we watch TV (but only if it’s a Shakespeare movie), talk about Shakespeare (yes, it has invaded all aspects of our lives), and spend time together as a little family!
We are now just about halfway through our trip, and none of us can even stand to look at a crumpet. We’ll let you know if the same goes for pasties eventually, but for now we remain obsessed. We are all addicted to tea. Some of us call parking lots “car parks” unironically. Furzen Hill Farm is now just “home”. And yes, we will discuss any work from Shakespeare’s canon happily. Make of that what you will.
Cheers!
Love,
The Stratford Seniors.
P.S. Follow @exeterstratty on Instagram for frequent updates on our trip.