When I leave tomorrow morning.

I will be carrying a suitcase heavy with the library I carry whenever and wherever I travel. I have made stacks: books about universities, books about cooperation and community, books about creativity, books about travel, books about the next places I'm travelling to. I will not be taking the horrifying apocalyptic novel I've been reading. I will be taking the small stash of art supplies--watercolors, watercolor paper, sketching pencils--I've been amassing over the past couple of days. I will also be taking my inflatable meditation cushion, my hiking boots, my best wool socks, my ordnance survey maps, my laptop, my cameras, my lenses, and my ziploc bags. I will be taking some kind of clothing that just might, if no one is looking too closely, pass for dressed up when I hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed on Easter, and when I see the debut of a play in London a few days later. I will be taking hats and scarves, because English beaches can be cold at any time of the year.

I will not be taking the stacks and stacks of train tickets that have been building up in the house, awaiting the Big Trip that will commence in just over a week. (I had to revise that sentence several times: just over two weeks? no. just under two weeks? no. just over a week: me, with fourteen students, at an airport, getting ready to fly together to Ireland and begin 17 days of exploring together. I don't think that I ever took a 17-day trip with my own family. But I get to try it now! And the prospect has me italicizing a lot of things.)

I will be taking the gorgeous blue towels I bought yesterday, since I have to take my own towels to where I'm going this week. I don't think I've ever bought myself new towels--I've always received them from my mother, in big bundles that I've always appreciated. These new ones are so soft and luxurious that I was actually excited about showering this morning just to use the new towels.

I will be taking notebooks. So many notebooks.

And then, the quiet.

The term schedule here is so different from the semester schedule at home that we're on break now, until May. I have spent my first few days unfurling a little: a bus jaunt to a nearby shingle beach in the sun on Friday; a train jaunt to London to meet a student's parents on Saturday; a mind jaunt into more than a handful of books on each of those days and the others till now. Tomorrow, essay-marking beckons. But tonight will be one more good, long sleep. These days, I awake with the sun on my face.