Arts Fest

Now that (mostly) everyone's exams are over, Kent had a lovely little party this weekend. There was music, dancing, fireworks, and even fire-breathing! I went with a group of friends for the afternoon, and we all had a great time. We spread a picnic blanket on the grass and spent a nice, relaxing afternoon in the sun. I'm especially glad I stayed for the fireworks, because they were really neat.

I just realized something tonight--after today, I've only got three full days left in England. On Thursday I'll be flying home! Time flies...

(Note: I'm going to try to post some pictures from Arts Fest as soon as I get my picture software reinstalled. Stay tuned!)

Finished!

I'm officially finished with all my schoolwork here in England! I took my exam this past Thursday, and I'm happy to say that I think it went well. It was a little strange taking an exam for a class I'd finished six months before, but I guess doing new things is what this year has all been about.

Katie and Emily were here to visit last week too. We did some day trips around Kent--Dover, Whitstable, Deal. Whitstable in particular was really pretty. It's a coastal town with pebble-beaches and lots of cute little boutiques and bookstores.

The weather lately has been especially gorgeous, so my flatmates and I (and practically everyone else on campus, for that matter) have taken to spreading blankets out on the lawn outside and sitting in the sun during the afternoons. It feels really great to be able to read for fun again without worrying about the studying I have to do.

I've only got 18 more days here, so I'm trying to make them count!

Barcelona

So Ginnie and I got in to Barcelona on Saturday night, and the views from the plane were pretty spectacular, especially of the mountains. On Sunday we did some walking around and saw the main part of the city, including the Placa Catalunya (the main square), La Rambla (a long pedestrian street with shops and performers), and the pier. We took lots of pictures, and soaked up the Spanish sun while we sat by the water. Unfortunately, I think we both soaked up a little too much sun though, because we were both a little sunburned that night.

Then on Monday we did one of those tourist bus tour thingies, which I personally think is a great way to see large areas of the city. We saw tons of great architecture, Montjuic (a really pretty mountain/hill), and had great views of the water. Oh, and we also saw the Barcelona Cathedral, which had an especially pretty cloister area. With swans!

And that brings us to today, which...was not great. Well, the first half was alright, as we visited La Sagrada Familia, which is the absolutely enormous cathedral in Barcelona that was designed by Gaudi. It's going to be an even more amazing place once construction is finished--they've been working on it off and on since 1882. I got lots of pictures of it, but unfortunately you won't get to see them because I no longer have my camera. Which brings me to the second half of my day. My bag was stolen. We were having lunch at an outside table, and my bag was sitting right by my foot, touching it. One minute the waiter is pouring our drinks, and the next I look down and my bag is gone. It couldn't have been out of my sight for longer than 60 seconds. My current theory is that someone came up from behind and reached through a row of hedges to take it, because no one in front of me came close enough. So that sort of threw me into a panic for the rest of the day, as my bag had tons of important things in it like my passport, camera, wallet, and phone. Very luckily, the police found my passport discarded in the street some hours later, so at least I can still make my flight back to England tomorrow.

All in all, a not-so-pleasant end to what was otherwise a very pleasant holiday. But even then I suppose there was a bright side. And suffice it to say that from now on I'll be keeping one hand very firmly attached to my purse at all times!

(Here are the pictures from our first day in Barcelona, which I copied to my computer before my camera was stolen.)

Barcelona

Dublin

On Tuesday morning, I left for London to meet my friend Ginnie at Heathrow. We spent the day seeing the cool sights in London, and I got to go up on the London Eye for the first time. It's really high! Obvious, I know, but still impressive when you're up there. We also walked around and discovered a cool market area that I'd never been to before.

On Wednesday we flew to Dublin. I'm in Ireland right now! Dublin has been really amazing. On Wednesday we walked around a bunch, mostly along O'Connell Street, which is one of the main thoroughfares. Then on Thursday we took a Dublin city bus tour so that we could get a feel for the city. We saw lots of monuments and buildings and stuff, including the statue of Molly Malone and the huge 360-foot Spire, which looks like a giant needle and is very helpful in terms of orienting yourself. We also visited the Guinness brewery, which has been by far my favorite part of the trip so far. I got to pour my own pint of Guinness, and I got a certificate to prove it, heheh. Today we took another bus tour, this time up north along the coast and to Malahide Castle. There wasn't much to see in the castle, but the tour along the coast had some pretty cool views. After that we took a tour of Dublin Castle, which had lots of amazingly decorated rooms and even a little underground section that was really neat.

We're flying to Barcelona tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have more updates for you in a day or two. And hopefully it'll be a little sunnier in Spain than it has been in Ireland!

Dublin

Dublin 2

On the Road Again

Well, I've just turned in my 18-page paper for my Roman and Medieval Artifacts class, and now I'm packing for a week and a half long trip to Ireland and Spain! I'm so excited! My friend Ginnie and I are going to spend 3 days in Dublin and 4 days in Barcelona. So expect lots and lots of pictures when I get back! Hopefully I'll be able to post updates along the way as well.

Family! Battleships! Stonehenge!

What a great week! My parents and my aunt and uncle came to visit, and we all had a fantastic time. It was really great to see more family again! We toured London, visited Canterbury, and even got to see Stonehenge and the town of Salisbury. So we saw the sights, had plenty of fish and chips, and even managed to watch a little football. Along with getting to see my parents again, I was particularly excited to finally see Stonehenge. It was pretty awesome, lemme just say. :D I took about a million pictures of it, but I couldn't help it. And the neighboring town of Salisbury was really cool too. We visited the Cathedral there, which has the tallest medieval spire in Europe, and something like the 4th tallest in the world.

In London we also got to go aboard the HMS Belfast, which is a military cruiser permanently anchored on the Thames. I had a lot of fun climbing around the ship from the engine rooms below the waterline to the admiral's quarters on top.

It was hard to watch everybody drive off to the airport at the end of the visit, but I'm consoled by the fact that I'll be home in about a month and a half. How time flies! In the meantime, enjoy the copious pictures of Stonehenge and the surrounding countryside! (All those yellow plants in the fields are canola plants, by the way.)

Salisbury and Stonehenge

Easter

Easter Sunday was a lovely, quiet day here. I went to the Canterbury Cathedral for one of their evening services, and it was really nice. There were only about 80 people at the service I went to, but judging by what the priest said, the morning service was very, very crowded (as I expected). It was very low-key, but I did get to hear the organ play!

The night before I had gone to some friends' house to do a little egg-painting. It was a little different than the egg-dyeing as I'm used to it. They boiled the eggs in colored water to dye the shells, then used acrylic paints to paint all over them. I managed to paint one really cute egg, and one really ugly egg. I figure they even out. We didn't end up eating any of the eggs that night, so I can only wonder if the eggs still tasted okay with all that paint potentially seeping through the shells.

Llama llama llama llama!

Well, it's the last week of the spring term. Time has really flown by! All the students around Parkwood seem to be buckling down for last-minute papers and projects, and everyone's really excited that the Easter holiday is right around the corner.

In some interesting news, I went to Bigbury a couple weeks ago with my Foundations of Britain class. Bigbury was a Kentish hillfort from the Iron Age (middle of the first millennium BC), but there's not really much left now except mounds of earth that have been pretty worn down. It was a lovely hike in the woods, though, and we even saw a llama! Apparently it's a nature preserve there now, and there are four llamas that roam the woods. It was a rather strange surprise, but he was pretty adorable!

I have to keep this short because I have to go make a carrot cake for the flat dinner tonight. Yum yum!

St. Patrick's Day and Other Amusements

My friend Dez came and visited me this past week. We totally had a blast! We spent a few days in Canterbury, one day in Dover, and a couple days in London. It was cool to get to show off the town that I've been studying in for the past six months or so to someone new. (It also made me realize that a lot of what I do here is study, stare at the Cathedral on bus rides, and shop in the little boutiques.) But Dez and I discovered some pretty residential areas on our rambling walks, and we also found a really gorgeous little courtyard/garden in the Cathedral's precincts.

Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day, so of course we had to celebrate. We went to Rutherford Bar where they had all kinds of Irish-themed craziness like Guiness-shaped hats and Irish dancers. It was super fun! Oh, and we also totally made green pancakes that morning. We put green food coloring in the batter, but once we cooked the pancakes they sort of lost their green coloring, except for around the edges a bit. But still, how many people can say they made green pancakes on St. Patrick's Day? We can.

On Wednesday we went to Dover, which was completely awesome. We climbed two mountains that day! Well, big hills and cliffs really, but they sure felt like mountains. The Cliffs of Dover are every bit as gorgeous as the photos make them out to be, and then some.

The weekend we spent in London, doing cool stuff like seeing Shakespeare's Globe Theater, went on a "Blood and Tears" walking tour of London (the guide talked about Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd, and other creepy London stories), and even saw a musical. We also saw the obligatory sights, like Westminster and Covent Garden.

Dez's Visit

21st Birthday!

Monday was my 21st birthday. Woohoo! Another year older and another year wiser. Well. Another year older! Woohoo! The girls and I went out to Rutherford bar, which was really fun. They had board games there, so we played Guess Who. :D

Other than that, nothing that interesting has been happening lately. I go to class, I walk about, I hang out with people. :P I feel like I've become too blase about being in England--I have to get psyched about being here again! Hopefully I'll have lots of fun things to do this coming week, as my friend Dez is flying in tomorrow. (I have to get up at 6:30 and go to London to pick her up. So early!) We're planning on doing some pretty cool things in London, like going to the Camden markets and maybe even going on a creepy supernatural London tour. Spooky.

Anywho, it's pretty late here, so I will leave you with this interesting tidbit: in Britain, substitute teachers are called "supply teachers." Neat!

Birthday (Blog)

Flat Dinners and Fire Alarms

Not a causal relationship, I assure you.

Last night we had a lovely group dinner in the flat. Valentina made lasagna and Gabby made buchty, which is a traditional Czech desert. It's basically dumplings with jam inside. It was delicious!

Later that night we were all rudely awakened, however, by the fire alarm going off at 3:30 in the morning. For a minute I thought I was dreaming, but no such luck. So we all trooped outside and stood in the courtyard for half an hour while they checked the flats and turned the alarm off. Then we went inside and back to bed. But THEN! At 5:30, the fire alarm went off again, and we had to go through the whole rigmarole a second time. Nobody was very happy about it, as you might imagine.

As for some positive news, I got my paper about Scottish architecture done and turned in last week, so I've spent the weekend doing productive things like reading about Andean pottery. Yeah, I really did.

February Review

Well, well, well. It would appear that I've gone nearly the entirety of February without posting anything. Many apologies for that, and I intend to rectify things in March.

In the meantime, a quick bit about the goings-on of the last few weeks. Last Tuesday was Mardi Gras, or as they call it here--Pancake Day! And yes, there were many, many pancakes involved. The pancakes here are more like crepes, but not quite as thin. Valentina mixed the batter and we all took turns making them on the griddle. For toppings we tried lemon juice and sugar, fruit jam, nutella, and maple syrup. Not all on one pancake, of course. Delicious!

And of interesting note, one day while I was studying in the library I was asked to be a participant in a psychology study. I was about to say no thanks, but then the student kept going on about how she couldn't get anybody to help her out, so I gave in. Turns out the experiment was really fun and quite painless! It was a computer simulation designed to measure gambling habits and subliminal messaging. I don't FEEL brainwashed...

As for my classes, I'm slowly working on my essay about Iron Age Scotland for one, and still researching broad topics in Roman coinage for the other. For fun I'm reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, watching sitcom episodes and shopping with the girls, and managing to stick to a fairly reasonable sleep schedule. Woohoo!

Snow!

We finally got a bit of snow here over the weekend. It only amounted to a couple inches, but that was enough to throw everybody into a tizzy. All the students rushed outside to have snowball fights and make snowmen. Classes were canceled on Monday--for two inches of snow, can you believe it! It's mostly melted now, except for a few stubborn patches of ice on the sidewalks. Helen, my English flatmate, was very excited to see the snow, as it's not something that happens frequently around here.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of my window pelted with over a dozen snowballs. ;)

Tea update - current favorite: chai.

Snow

Superheroes for Obama

I was in town with Helen the other day, and she came across this fantastic comic in a shop. I couldn't resist.

Superheroes support Obama too! Heeheehee...

Mike and Alyssa's Visit

Mike, Alyssa, and I had a great week in London, Oxford, and Canterbury. On Saturday and Sunday we were in London, doin' the whole walking tourist bit. Not sure I'll ever get tired of that city. Definitely already tired of the pigeons there though. Those little guys are scary!

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we spent in Oxford, and man was it fun! I was a little wary at first, because Oxford is a pretty intimidating place. I mean, everyone there is supposedly super smart and super rich. But after a while you just go with it and it's really cool. It also seemed more "British" than anywhere else I've been so far. Lots of old academic buildings, cobble-stone streets, striped scarves, and many, many pubs. We got to see a couple of the older colleges there (including the one where they filmed part of the Harry Potter movies), the town museum, a cool covered market, and one of the most cavernous bookstores I've ever see. I think that place had something on the order of 3 kilometers of shelving--in just ONE room. Crazy! And on Tuesday we watched the presidential inauguration on TV. It was super fun, even if there was a collective horrified gasp when the oath went a bit...differently.

Thursday was my first day of class, and despite a small freak-out about my schedule, it went really well. My classes this term seem even better than last term. I've got The Archaeology of Britain in the First Millennium B.C., and Roman and Medieval Artefacts. For the artefacts (I know, silly British spelling) class I get to go to the local museum every week and do a hands-on lab. We had to buy white cotton gloves to handle the artefacts, so I felt like a real pro. I can't wait to get a few lectures under my belt and really get into the topics. Interesting stuff!

Thursday night and Friday I got to show Mike and Alyssa around Canterbury, which was really fun for me--and for them too, I hope! I think they especially liked the Cathedral. Sadly, they had to take off on Saturday morning, but I think we all had a pretty awesome time!

Mike and Alyssa's Visit

Good Times, People

Dan and Beth visited this past week, and it was a total blast!

On Monday we started out by seeing the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. It was very cool. The guards all marched in from each side of the gate, and there was a band too. They played "Mama Mia" and "Singing in the Rain," and if you don't believe me, just ask Dan or Beth. (I also caught part of it on video!) The whole thing took about half an hour, which I thought was surprising because they do this every other day in the winter and every day in the summer. I wonder if the guards ever get sick of it. :P Later we did a mini walking tour of London. We saw Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square, Theatreland, the British Museum, Oxford Street, and dozens of little side streets too, including one that was full of vintage bookshops.

On Tuesday we saw the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Going up to the top of the bridge was pretty cool. I got lots of pictures of the city from up high. We went down into the engine rooms to see how they raise the bridge to let ships through. There was this little gold box on the wall--and I'm not even sure what it was for--but it provided probably the most entertaining part of the trip: we each took turns standing in front of it and taking pictures of our warped reflections in the metal. So if you're wondering what those funky-looking pictures of us are, that's what they're from.

On Wednesday we went into museum mode. We saw the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. I think the Natural History Museum was the most gorgeous, architecture-wise. It had this incredible bi-color stonework that was amazing to see, and on the inside there was a huge vaulted room with all these arches. The Science Museum was more modern looking, but still very cool. We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend in there, so I mainly saw the space exhibit. What I remember most is that there was this really loud annoying ring every couple minutes, and I never managed to figure out where it was coming from. Weird. Then we moved on to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Beth said has something like 7 miles worth of exhibits. It was like the British Museum all over again, with just tons and tons of stuff to see. My favorite part was the Cast Court, which had plaster casts of all these famous statues and monuments, including Trajan's Column from Rome and a really neat Celtic cross. Across the hall they had another Cast Court gallery, but it was closed, which was a bummer because I could just barely see the top of the David statue peeking above the closed sign. I bet they had a bunch of cool casts in there too.

All too soon, it was time for Dan and Beth to catch their flight back home. But it was really awesome to have them here! And I can't be too bummed out, because Mike and Alyssa are coming tomorrow!

Dan and Beth's Visit

Sightseeing

I had a great week this week. I saw the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben (finally up close!), Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Tower Bridge.

It might be kind of strange to have a favorite Underground station, but I love Westminster station. It goes down four long flights of stairs (well, escalators anyway) to the lowest platform, and there are all kinds of exposed pipes and structural bits. It feels like you're in a secret underground base. But the best part of Westminster station is that when you first step out, immediately you see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, right across the street and right in front of your face. Very cool.

Westminster Abbey is very close by too, and also completely gorgeous. But even the gorgeous outside has nothing on the interior. It's so amazing! I couldn't believe how lavishly decorated that place is! There's gold and stonework and colors and statues everywhere you look. It's such a pity that they don't allow photography in the abbey. I think I could have taken about 600 pictures. Instead, I had to content myself with listening to Jeremy Irons narrate an audio tour, which was pretty interesting. I also saw the grave of Elizabeth I, along with a lot of writers in Poet's Corner. SO worth the time if you ever go to London.

On Friday I went to the Tower of London. It was a much bigger complex than I had thought it would be. Apparently there are actually 20 separate towers in the whole place. The two most famous ones are the White Tower (where all the torture happened) and the Bloody Tower (where the princes were killed). Fun stuff. I went on a tour given by one of the Yeoman Warders (also known as Beefeaters), who was very cool. They get to live in the tower, but then again they have to put up with all the tourists. I'd have to say, though, that the best part of the trip was getting to see the Crown Jewels in the Jewel House. They have the world's biggest cut diamond there, set into one of the coronation scepters. It's unbelievable! And they have little conveyor belts going along the display cases, I guess to make sure that nobody stops and gawks for too long. I rode around it twice to make sure I got a really good look at all the crowns and things, heehee.

Also, Dan and Beth are flying in today. Woohoo!

Westminster

Tower of London & London Bridge

New Year

Happy 2009, everybody! I hope the new year has gotten off to a great start for everyone. New Year's Eve was fantastic on this side of the pond. I met up with a group of friends in London and we went to a fair in Hyde park. They had a pretty strange assortment of rides and attractions there, like a tilt-a-whirl topped with a Christmas tree right across from a haunted house. Unfortunately, we went through the haunted house, which was, as expected, not so great. It was silly fun, though. :) There were also lots of Christmas craft stalls open, and even an ice rink. It was ridiculously cold that night, so I'm glad we didn't go ice skating or I might have turned into an ice cube.

Around eleven o'clock we headed for the river so we could see the midnight fireworks. I guess we should have started out way earlier, because it was a total madhouse. Seriously, I've never seen any place so crowded as that part of London on New Year's Eve. Anyone who is even remotely claustrophobic would have gone crazy, I think. People were all mashed together in this huge crowd that went on forever, everybody trying to press forward to get to the river. Every so often we would pass a line of police officers in their bright neon vests, which I thought was a little creepy at first, but for which I quickly became grateful. It was a little unnerving, really, to be stuck in the middle of that massive crowd. Because there were so many people, we couldn't get anywhere near the river, so we stopped in Trafalgar Square and watched the fireworks on the huge screens they had set up. It would have been cool to see the fireworks firsthand, but this was cool too. We could see the sky beyond the buildings of the square light up from all the fireworks, and at one point it was so bright it was like daylight. So like I said, very cool.

Getting home after all the festivities were over was a transportation nightmare. We ended up walking for like an hour to find a tube station that was a) open, and b) not completely mobbed by hundreds of other people trying to get home. That was actually pretty fun though, because we got to walk around London and see what everyone was doing to celebrate the new year. When we got to Waterloo Station, Gabby and I had to make our way through another huge crowd being herded into the station past barricades, which took like half an hour. And when our train finally got in (they were running trains until like five in the morning), there were so many people rushing to get on the train that the train car we were on was worse than a can of sardines. I can't say that being crushed into a train car for half an hour at 2:30 in the morning was great fun, but it's certainly an experience that will stand out in my memory for a while. ;)

So all in all, New Year's was crazy, crowded, and super fun!

New Year's Eve (Blog)