The weather was sunny and beautiful Wednesday in Oxford. So Bond – who teaches English and history at Covenant – gathered students in a meadow and scoured around for copies of “Macbeth,” offering an impromptu outdoor Shakespeare lesson.

A group of students from Covenant High School in Tacoma is making the most of a volcano-extended trip to Britain.

David Banz, a senior at the private Christian school, said students have mixed emotions about staying an extra five or six days on their European history tour.

The group of 45 students and 10 chaperones began its trip April 5, and was due to return home Tuesday, following visits to France and the United Kingdom.

But ash clouds from the April 14 volcanic eruption in Iceland canceled their flight and hundreds of others across Europe, leaving millions stranded. Most of the Tacoma group is now scheduled to return Sunday, with the rest following Monday.

“There’s some homesickness, and some of us are even kind of tired,” said Banz, who was traveling Wednesday with the Covenant group on a bus between Oxford and Cambridge, England. “But there’s still some excitement and adventure. It’s not every day you can say you got stuck in Great Britain because of a volcano.”

One of the highlights for David has been seeing spots where martyrs of the Reformation were burned at the stake. “It’s moving to see places where these passionate men who trusted in the Lord and were working for him were killed for that,” he said.