2. School Day and Salisbury Cathedral

Today's day can be described in two parts, as announced in the weather report.

To stay in the weather metaphor, one could say that the school day was unfortunately quite gloomy regarding the behavior and motivation of the youngsters.

A report from experience:

To our great regret, the memory of the students apparently suffered quite a bit due to yesterday's fresh wind. The rules explained by the English teachers just the day before barely resurfaced. The sunshine promised for later could have easily fit into these gaps.

Apparently, some found it more interesting to attract wild animals from the savanna with the sounds produced by their bodies rather than listening to the teacher and taking the opportunity to learn from a native speaker.

Some of the youngsters replaced English class with mathematics. More specifically, with the subject of geometry. Due to a heightened level of fatigue, which took up about 50% of the attention span, some even rested their heads in perfect parallel to the table, and their backs resembled beautiful arcs.

The excessively long breaks of 20 minutes led some to idea in the spirit of physics to test the sudden expansion of H2O at the water cooler on the upper floor. The teachers imposed cleaning the test environment as a punishment. Thus, a bad deed was balanced by a good one, but unfortunately, the balance is back to zero.

What is almost routine for the two accompanying teachers was for me a mix of incomprehension, shame, disbelief, and anger.

After class, we continued somewhat uncertainly towards the cathedral in Salisbury. The cathedral is shaped like a cross and thus symbolizes Christianity. The construction used 60,000 tons of stone, 2,800 tons of oak, and 420 tons of lead, which began in the year of our Lord 1220. The church tower’s tip is at 123 meters and weighs 6,500 tons, making it the tallest in Great Britain. In 1991, Salisbury was the first cathedral in England to establish a choir with female singers.

On the way there, the weather cleared up. Once again enriched by the fundamental questions posed by the students, fitting with the sunshine:

- Why do we have to look at the cathedral at all?

- Why do we still have to walk so far? (SPOILER: The distance from the bus stop to the cathedral was about 470m)

- Couldn’t the bus just take us to the altar directly?

To prevent a joyless walk through the cathedral, our tour guide Sara had prepared tasks that are to be presented tomorrow at school. By the way, Sara sang in the girls' choir of the cathedral when she was 15 years old. Later, she began her music studies with a scholarship and still sings.

However, the biggest surprise of the day for us was that some students approached the local church leaders of their own accord and asked for help in solving their tasks. Real conversations took place. One might think that God wanted to lend us a hand at this point and blessed the youngsters in the house of the Lord with enlightenment. Let us pray to the Lord that this enlightenment lasts more than 15 hours and that there is brilliant sunshine on the next and last school day. In conclusion, everyone could spend an hour in the town, where the fascination with H&M and various shops serving stylish appearances was also unabated. 😃 Whether this was typically English, I leave open for discussion. But bargains were made, and everyone was satisfied. Amen.