Kingston

Well, there's not terribly much to report, but I just wanted to check in. I've mostly been in Kingston, taking long rambling walks and discovering all the cool little side streets and things. Last night I saw a group of swans (what's the technical term for a group of swans?) floating down the river, which was really cute. And a few nights ago there was a fox out in the parking lot.

Also, Gabby is teaching me a little bit of Czech. Ja mam rada studovat cestina! That means "I like studying Czech." Well, there are supposed to be marks above the letters, but I don't know how to type them. Anywho, it's pretty fun.

That's about it. I know, I'm so exciting. :) But at least I have pictures this time! Here are the ones I took in London on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter!

Yesterday I went downtown to see London on Christmas Eve. It was very cool, but also very crowded. Oxford Street, one of the really popular shopping districts, was jam-packed with last minute shoppers. So for about four hours I just walked around to see what I could see, as it were. I walked through Regent’s Park to see the Queen’s Rose Garden, realizing only when I got there that—oh hey—it’s the end of December and there probably aren’t going to be too many flowers blooming. Still, it was a nice place.

From there I found my way to Baker Street, and I was really excited when I saw the Sherlock Holmes museum. Earlier this semester, I’d started reading some of the Holmes stories, so going through the little house-museum was really neat. Yes, I know he’s fictional, but still. There were lots of little pictures and odds and ends from all the stories laid out around the house, and they even had those creepy wax figures. All the museums here seem to thrive on those. Yeesh.

After that, I finally found my way to Buckingham Palace. And, while it’s cool to able to say that I’ve seen it, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I mean, it’s a beautiful building and all, but I was expecting it to be flashier, I suppose. There weren’t even any of the Queen’s Guards with the funny hats. The monument out front was really gorgeous though. And like I said, now I’ve seen it.

Then I joined Gabby and another of our friends, and we went to dinner. (We went to Nando’s, which has the most hilarious chicken-shaped logo ever.) By then it was proper dark, so we walked down the main streets for a bit looking at the Christmas decorations. I got a few pictures of the ones on Oxford Street, but I’d forgotten to charge my camera batteries (d’oh!) so my camera died around that point. I still got lots of good pictures during the day, though.

Christmas Day has been pretty quiet so far. We had originally planned to go to a friend’s party in London, but the Underground doesn’t run on Christmas, so we couldn’t get there. We also forgot that all the stores are closed and that we have little to no food in the flat. Thus, our Christmas cuisine was…creative: fajita-spiced rice for lunch and cous cous salad for dinner. Unconventional, but excellent—much like my Christmas this year. :D

I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas!

On Holiday

Sorry for the massive delay in posting, everyone. Things have been mighty busy lately. Last week was the last week of classes for me. So I spent pretty much all of that time either in class or writing my two final essays. I can't believe the first term is over already! It seems like time is really flying here. And I'm really glad that I'm here for the full school year instead of just one semester. I do miss everyone at home, but I think going home now would mean I wouldn't get to see a lot of cool things here.

We did manage to have a little fun during the stressful, last week of term. The weekend before we all left for the holidays, our flat had a little Christmas party, which was very fun. We did dinner, and also presents and Christmas cookies.

Then just this past Friday, Gabby and I left for her friend's flat in Kingston (a suburb of London). It's just a quick train ride to downtown London, which is very cool. We did a little shopping there on Sunday evening, and man is London beautiful at Christmas time! All the department stores had ridiculously gorgeous decorations covering the entire sides of buildings. There's no snow here yet, but it still feels like Christmas because of all the decorations and music coming from everywhere. People here are really into the holiday spirit, which is nice too.

Now that I don't have class, I have lots of time for sight-seeing. So if anyone has any good suggestions, let me know! There's a train station just five minutes' walk from here, so I'm in a great position to go anywhere!

The internet here isn't terribly reliable, but I'm going to do my best to keep updating. Happy Holidays, everybody!

Carols at the Cathedral

There was a really lovely carol service at the Cathedral tonight. The choir sang maybe a dozen or so Christmas songs, many of which were in different languages. (And if anyone's interested, "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day" is apparently a traditional English carol.) There was even a verse of Silent Night sung in Swahili. There were also some readings, but not all from the Bible; some were poems too. And at the beginning and end of the service they turned off all the lights in the Cathedral, and everybody had lit candles so that the whole place glowed. It was really pretty! The Cathedral was really gorgeous from outside too, all lit up against the dark winter sky. There were even some lighted Christmas trees and a manger scene on the lawn in front.

I thought I'd mentioned this before, but maybe not. A few days ago I got an email from my professor saying that there's definitely going to be a trip to Germany from April 1-5. We're going to see some different Roman ruins around the country, especially in Trier (yay!). So I'm really looking forward to that. And my flatmate Sarah just proposed a trip to Scotland the weekend after we all get back, so that could be really fun too. So many places to go here, I love it!

Happy St. Nick's Day!

Happy St. Nick's Day! In our flat, we put paper stockings on our doors with our names on them, and Valentina gave us all little Santa-shaped chocolates and clementines. Yummy!

Last night we made gingerbread cookies. Valentina had made the dough the day before, so all we had to do was cut out different shapes (we used jar tops or glasses to make circle and square shapes) and decorate them with sprinkles. The cookies turned out pretty hard, almost like biscotti, but they're really good when dunked in cocoa. Mmm, mmm!

A bit of awesome news: I get to stay in London over the Christmas holidays! Gabby's friend has a flat in London and, as he'll be out of town during our break, he says that we're welcome to use it. How cool is that? I'll get to wake up every day and be in walking distance of all these great museums and parks and things. I can't wait! We're leaving on the 19th of December and we'll be staying until sometime in the second(ish) week of January. It's going to be amazing!

Well, it's finally starting to get cold here now. Though, from what I'm hearing from home, it's still not as cold here as it is there. I don't think we've really had any proper freezes yet. Alas, we don't have any snow here yet either. I'm hopeful that at least sometime before Christmas we'll get some snow.

Two more weeks of class and then I can start the serious business of full-time sight-seeing and traveling, starting with more of London. I've got two essays to write before the end of term, but I don't think they'll be that hard. Everyone in the flat seems to be buckling down for two weeks of work, but at the same time we're all excited for break. And to celebrate, we're having a Christmas dinner this coming Friday, which should be lots of fun.

Snowflakes and Christmas Lights

Last night Helen, Gabby, and I spent a couple hours making paper snowflakes. We're all about the kindergarten crafts, here. :D We taped them up on our kitchen windows, and it actually looks really pretty from outside (and inside too, of course).

And then today Gabby and I spent two hours waiting in a queue for tickets to the Christmas carol service at the Canterbury Cathedral next week. Apparently it's really great, so it's really popular and the (free) tickets go really fast. I had tried to pick up a ticket yesterday after my class when they handed out the first batch, but they were all gone by the time I got there. So to be on the safe side, we got there way early (I sat in line reading Obama's book) and we were one of the first ten to get tickets. I can't wait for next week!

Well, it's that time again: time to start researching for my next round of essays. This time I'm writing about medical care in the Roman army for one class, and open-air museums for the other. I've already got two big stacks of books on my shelf... Oh boy.