I just came back from a weekend getaway to the Lake District. I’d been planning to go there for a long time, but never really got time to do it until my old friends told me they were coming there.

A few days before, I was still hesitating. As much as I wanted to go to the Lake District, my dissertation was screaming for attention. I was ready to ditch the plan and told my friends to meet in London, but thank God my flatmates told me that I had to go. So I bought the tickets to Windermere, while still stressing over the dissertation.

We planned to meet at Manchester Piccadilly station and went together from there. I arrived way too early, and got even more anxious when it was time for their train to arrive and yet I hadn’t seen them. With no internet connection, I was afraid that the whole debacle of contacting them would be as disastrous as when I was meeting Joydi a few months back.

Fortunately, it wasn’t like that this time. I was looking around the station and saw Dhena, then all of them. I laughed and ran, too excited to stay calm. And there, after almost a year, we met again.

The next day, the guys wanted to go to Helvellyn, and I didn’t feel like doing hiking that day. So we parted ways and the girls went to Orrest Head.

We walked all the way up to the station and went to Orrest Head from there, stopping here and there to take pictures. Once we got to the top, we just stared in awe at the view below us for the first couple of minutes, before taking (more) pictures.

The view was amazing, really. On one side we got to see the lake and the town, and when we turned around, we saw the countryside.

It was windy and cold up there, but we didn’t go back until it started raining. We passed the lake on our way back, but the grey sky didn’t make it look that much appealing for me.

We went back to town to have lunch before seeing Beatrix Potter attraction and went shopping. I kept asking my friends, ‘Are you sure you wanna buy that? It would be SO heavy.’ It was too much cuteness in one place and you should never expect a girl to hold back from such things (plus, they got 50 kilos of baggage limit, so I guess they’re safe).

In the evening, we would choose a random pub to hang out, and talked until late before coming back to the hotel. Meeting them felt like going back to Bandung two years ago, where we often stayed late to study, work in the lab, or just talk and laugh. And with these guys, there would be random things about petroleum that slipped into the conversation, somehow. Like the other night we were talking and suddenly one of them said, ‘Kopparberg? That reminds me of Klinkenberg effect,’ and we ended up talking about permeability and gas slip on Friday night. Trust these guys to steer the conversation from a cider brand to petrophysics.

On the last day, we took a walk to the lake before heading to the station and parted ways in Oxenholme, with a promise to meet in London in three days.

I have to thank my flatmates for encouraging me to go and have a much-needed break from dissertation. Meeting old friends is always good, but meeting them in a charming little town with breathtaking view is even better.

And that’s how three days with them has charged me, because sometimes all we need is the comfort of being home, and nothing beats the feeling of finding a piece of home after being away for such a long time.