My year at Herringswell

I was enrolled in Herringswell Manor school in England...at Bury St. Edmunds...a boarding school, because my family had moved to Oslo, Norway. I hated being separated from them at such a young age, but it had to be....so I tried to be grown-up about it. It was close to Newmarket and Cambridge, England, and was way out in the country.

They put me in a small dorm room with another girl, Janet. I guess the head mistress thought that would be good for both of us. We were both spending our first years there...and she probably thought we'd be good for each other. We weren't up there with all the other seniors, but we were still seniors, and had the few privileges that the senior girls had, like tv, and off-limits to the younger girls.

I believe the school was only 8th grade on up to 12th, so there weren't very many kids there.

Janet and I eventually moved in with the other senior girls, in one of the two big rooms for the senior girls. There were five beds in one room and four in the other. They were on either side of the headmistress and head teachers quarters. We had one big bathroom to share, with toilets, showers and sinks. We had to go downstairs to the dining room to eat meals, and breakfast was pretty early. Mornings were crazy, with all of us girls getting dressed, brushing teeth, taking showers, and all the stuff you do before breakfast. We were able to come back up to our rooms after breakfast to grab our school stuff and head out.

This was where I learned to like coffee. I had to doctor it up with lots of cream and sugar, but it was good. I'm not sure why I drank it....All of the high school kids ate in one room. It was probably the whole school, but I'm not sure. It was served family style, where we all sat at assigned tables, and were served the food in big bowls. I found out that the servers, and maybe the cooks, couldn't read. That must have been difficult. "Dunno, do I?" was one of the sayings that we repeated when one of the ruddy-cheeked servers was asked a question.

I got to know all of the senior girls. We would often sit around and talk, exchange stories about our lives, talk about the boys in the school, or some of the younger girls. We would also exchange dresses, too, since we had to wear dresses, and we got tired of the same ones all the time, we thought it would be more interesting to wear each other's clothes. It became a confusing, running joke for the boys. "Whose dress is that?" they would ask? We must have been all about the same size. I also remember wrapping my hair that year. That was a technique that we learned to straighten our hair...even if it had a wave in it. I would roll the top part on a couple of huge rollers - the bigger the better - and then wrap the rest of my hair around my head, securing it with large bobby pins. Looked wierd, but it worked!! Long, straight hair!!

I took piano lessons from an English woman who came to the school once a week or once a month. I practiced and took the lessons in the billiard room of the old manor house that was the school. It just happened to be the room that had a piano in it. I learned a lot from the woman there, and I really enjoyed continuing my lessons at Herringswell.

The school itself - It was in an old English manor home....huge building!! And so beautiful! As far as I could tell, everything was pretty much as it had been when it was a home, but it was now converted into dorms, offices, and dining room. But the staircase was still there...the woodwork was beautiful...you could see some of the elegant things that only an old home like that would have. I'm sure there were servants quarters, or nanny's rooms, and the front of the house was the main part, with the sun room, the morning room, or whatever they were called. The windows were spectacular, giving out a great view of the lawn where we played field hockey and soccer. We were not allowed to go into the woods, but I spent many hours wandering around out there....on the edge of the woods.

I loved England...it was full of history. Sometimes, when we would go to a town on the weekend, friends and I would explore the town, maybe get a brass rubbing, check out the tea places, or look at the shops. Everything was so old and quaint, and I loved the people. They were always very polite, and they tried to accommodate us! The countryside was gorgeous as well, and there was lots of the thatch-roofed cottages that you see only in photos, dotting the landscape. It was easy to imagine Shakespeare, or the Artful Dodger in any of the scenes I saw!!!

The teachers - There was Miss Petrie, who was the head teacher. Prim, proper, Scottish lady. She also taught the senior English, which was mostly vocabulary words and some reading. Miss McFadyen, the headmistress, and lived with Miss Petrie. I think they might have been gay...but I do know they took an alcoholic nip each night. We could smell it on them sometimes. I guess that's what the British did when they wanted to relax. There was also Miss xxxx, who was the French teacher. She was really nice, a bit harsh, but still had a good heart. We girls really liked her. She had come from Belgium, or somewhere like that, spoke really good English, but was still fluent in several other languages. Miss xxxx who was American, and taught math, I think, to the lower grades. I don't think she was ever my teacher, but she would come up to the senior girls room and visit with us. Mr. xxxx was the Social Studies teacher. He was American, had kind or long hair, and was a bit weird, but ok. I fancied myself in love with him. There was also the PE teacher. He was English. I will never forget the times we were playing field hockey and he said "Hard luck. Play on!" when we would fall, or get hurt. It was his Volkswagen bug that the senior boys picked up and moved out into the field at the end of our senior year, as a prank.

I DID learn how to study there. We had a study hall every night after supper for an hour, and everyone was required to go. It was even segregated, so we didn't get to see the boys until the next day. They were real sticklers about the sexes not touching each other. I know it didn't stop some couples - they went into the woods and did their thing anyway!!

Every once in a while we would have a dance, or get to go somewhere on the bus to another town....but mostly we stayed there at the school. The kids whose parents lived in London, or somewhere close, could go home every weekend, but there were also those of us whose parents lived in another country. Some of the girls' parents lived in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and other places far away. I think maybe Norway was one of the closest, actually!!

When it came time to graduate, there were 23 of us. The speech that was given by Miss McFadyen was quite disparaging for our class, I remember. She talked about how apathetic we were, and how she couldn't remember a class that was less motivated to do anything. I thought it was not very nice to say those things at graduation, when all our parents and grandparents were there!

My parents were there, and so were Gma and Gpa. They came all the way over from Ohio...not just to see me, but to travel around Europe, too. It was great that they were there...and I know they liked it. I'm sure Chuck was there too, but I doubt that Jim was. The diploma we got was a beautiful one done with calligraphy. I still have it.

It was a good year. I learned a lot. I am grateful for the experience, and I will never forget it. But, I am also glad that I was only there one year. There were things that were not so fun...and I remember being quite lonely and homesick at times. When it was time to pack up and go, I got all my stuff in a trunk, and a suitcase. I was going to college back in the states...in Kansas!!