When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things
I've dreamed about studying abroad ever since I can remember. When my brother and I played house as little kids, I was always a missionary in China or a college student in Germany. Then, in high school, I became enraptured with British television (Doctor Who, Merlin, Sherlock—the works), and I set my sights on England, hoping to one day spend a glorious semester across the pond and become a bona fide anglophile.
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