It a while since I last posted, though I place all blame on my laptop, which teetered over the brink a few days ago. It’s all rebooted from backup now though, so hopefully all is well.

The fall semester at UNC is just starting, and there’s nothing like an awkward facebook message from a drunk friend to remind me that the party season is well and truly underway. Plus I’m still on most of the emailing lists, so my inbox is cluttered with invites to meetings, clubs, and parties… slightly surreal.

Anyway, I’m being filling up my evenings, managing to meet up with a colleague to work on my German and bump into CH friends entirely by chance , as well as meeting up with an American Old Blue (alumnus of Christ’s Hospital, my high school) who is quickly becoming an old friend.

It’s amazing to think how much has changed for me over the last three years: three years ago, I’d never been further west than Wales. Six months after that, February 06, and thanks to the American Old Blues I was two weeks into a month-long placement at Gilman school in Baltimore, as the first part of a new exchange program. I come back to the UK, decide to take the SAT for the hell of it, and start looking for places and means to study in America, and I guess the ball was rolling…

(Brit, American, American, Brit respectively – the first two years of the Christ’s Hospital / Gilman exchange programme)

I think I’m more attached to my old school than most, which I guess is hardly surprising, given that I spent the majority of my years living there after the age of 11. It’s not that my closest friends are people I met there – they’re not – just that I realise how lucky I was to go somewhere that opened my eyes and broadened my horizons so much. The school’s 450 years old, and it’s all wrapped up in tradition by any American standards, but the one which has really stuck with me is the Charge, delivered to the leavers by the Headmaster during the final service of the summer term. I’m going to quote it almost in full here:

I charge you never to forget the great benefits that you have received in this place, and in time to come according to your means, to do all that you can to enable others to enjoy the same advantage; and remember that you carry with you, wherever you go, the good name of Christ’s Hospital.