London Calling

Heathrow officials don’t advise leaving the airport unless you have more than a 6 hour layover. But even with long customs lines nipping away at my six-hour layover in London, I decided to do it anyways. It’s simply too easy: the Piccadilly Line of the Tube runs directly from the airport to the city center. It’s a quick and easy 50 minute trip for 4 pounds. (The conversion rate is bad. The dollar is weak. Don’t remind me!)

And the reward was far too great: a mid-morning coffee date with one of the most spectacular persons I’ve ever worked with at a camp, Miss Hadden.

She’s a San Francisco girl turned Londoner. She's been in London for the past seven years, with plans for citizenship and hopes of admission to Oxford. She's magnificent and caring and generous and gregacious and heart-warming and all other adjectives good. On more than one occassion last summer, she knew exactly what i needed to find balance or happiness, all while i was being paid to be HER counselor and teacher. Whenever she's able to steer herself back to Orcas Island for a summer, she'll become one of the greatest counselors to walk Four Winds. Nagyon jo lessz.

After our two-hour tea-and-buscuit, without either of course, I jumped back on to the Tube at South Kensington Station, happier than I'd been, inspired by the enthusiasm of a camp friend. In a bit of a happy daze, i was shocked back into realization only when i found myself surrounded by Hungarian-speakers at the Budapest-bound British Airways flight gate. I really am headed back to Magyarorszag...