Please note:

The MIT Welcome Center and Admissions Office will be closed for winter break December 23 through January 4. We will reopen on Monday, January 5, 2026.

church gardens by Audrey C. '24

some paintings!

I spent my IAP in northern Wales through Global Teaching Labs, a teaching abroad program! All of my weekdays were spent teaching at local schools and nights preparing last minute lessons. I’ll hopefully write a separate blog about that soon. 

Thankfully, I got weekends to hop on a bus or train to the destination of my choice. While there were about a dozen other MIT students in South Wales, I was the only MIT student in North Wales. Unfortunately getting to South Wales would be 8 hours roundtrip for me, so I wandered around British streets solo. It got a bit lonely towards the end of the month. But I did appreciate getting to see things at my own pace and liking. British seagulls and pigeons fascinate me; somehow their presence seems more imposing than their American counterparts. Maybe this is just me stereotyping British entities as “posh.” Seriously though, British people eat everything with both a fork and a knife (I only noticed this after getting called out for never using my knife at dinner) and don’t tell me that’s not posh. Anyways, I scribbled the following text on a scrap piece of paper while waiting for a massively delayed train back from a day trip in Liverpool. Then I painted a few scenes while killing time in London until my flight back to Boston.

I visited two hollowed out churches during my time in the UK: One in Liverpool, bombed out during WWII. The other in London, burned down during the Great London Fire. I think there is a quiet resilience to letting vines and shrubs grow over your ribcage. Make peace with your skeletal remains by tending to it as a garden. The Welsh word for children is “plant” (pronounced like “plang-nt”). I’m not a linguist, but I bet that some Welsh ancestor saw within children, people and communities altogether, the everlasting potential to bloom. To bloom is to change. The Liverpool church garden may not function as a church anymore, but it’s still active as a community space, bringing people together through outdoor art, music and theater events. When your walls come tumbling down, you don’t have to rebuild them. You can bloom into a garden instead.

Text for accessibility: 

I visited two hollowed out churches during my time in the UK: 

One in Liverpool, bombed out during WWII (St. Luke’s Bombed Out Church). 

The other in London, burned down during the Great London Fire (St. Dunstan in the East Church Garden). 

I think there is a quiet resilience to letting vines and shrubs grow over your ribcage. Make peace with your skeletal remains by tending to it as a garden. 

The Welsh word for children is “plant” (pronounced like “plang-nt”). I’m not a linguist, but I bet that some Welsh ancestor saw within children, people and communities altogether, the everlasting potential to bloom. 

To bloom is to change. The Liverpool church garden may not function as a church anymore, but it’s still active as a community space, bringing people together through outdoor art, music and theater events. (there was a disco ball in the church wall!) 

When your walls come tumbling down, you don’t have to rebuild them. 

You can bloom into a garden instead.