Rock, Church, Movie (Shoot)

Whew!

Gosh, today was exhausting.  We traveled to three different towns today as the culmination of our orientation week here in Bath (which I have finally started pronouncing "Bahth"): Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock.  We also had our first brush with real English weather-- we woke up to RAIN.  It was crazy.  We all had to break out the umbrellas and raincoats and waterproof shoes... no one was ready for this.  Thankfully, it cleared up by the time we reached Salisbury (and Stonehenge really is much better in the rain-- it just feels like it is supposed to be foggy and rainy and misty and stuff-- greatly improves the effect). 

I'm just going to backtrack for a moment first (I know, I'm sorry, you want to hear about the rocks and stuff, and I just want to tell you a funny story).  Last night, my friend and I were making dinner in our house.  I was making home fries for the both of us, and he made pasta for himself and I made eggs with spinach to go with my home fries (which makes a lot more sense than pasta).  Anyway, we didn't have olive oil in the house yet-- we just had margarine, or, according to the package, "buttery".  So I put some buttery in the pan, and heated it up.  Then I put the potatoes in.  But they weren't cooking.  So we're looking at the pan, and Clay says, in a lovely accent, "Needs more buttery!" at which point he adds an enormous blob to the pan.  We laugh about this, but it actually starts to work, so we continued adding giant pats of buttery to the pan, yelling "Needs more buttery!!!".  It was pretty fantastic.  Maybe you had to be there.... sorry.
Oh, but the exciting part was this:

"I beg your pardon, but there appears to be a feather stuck to your egg."

Speaking of buttery....sort of.... Andrew Butterworth, one of the most fantastically stereotypical British men in existence, who is our programme's internship and education placement director, was our tour guide on our trip this morning.  He is hysterical-- going off on all sorts of tangents and such-- but he knows basically everything that there is to know about Bath and its environs.  We all like to follow him around, listening to whatever he says, because it's bound to be brilliant or fascinating; we also enjoy simply saying his name in a British accent (try it-- it's pretty fun).  Fun fact: Andrew Butterworth is, in fact, married to Mrs. Butterworth.

ANYWAY, Stonehenge.  We took a bus early in the rainy morning off to Stonehenge, about an hour away from Bath, through lots of lovely English countryside filled with livestock:

Huh...looks like Williamstown.

Then we passed what our driver (only sort of) jokingly referred to as "Strawhenge":

Then, we got to the astounding, the magnificent, the awe-inspiring, looming, epic rocks of Stonehenge!

Oh hello, line of tourists with umbrellas....and really tiny circle of rocks. Hm.

So, ok-- it's a bit smaller than it's usually made out to be.  But it's still really fascinating.  Stonehenge was constructed in three stages, beginning in 3,000 BCE.  These stones, most of which are hidden below the ground by this point, weigh an enormous amount, and were dragged to this site over 240 miles, from South Wales.  They were then cut (this is pre-Bronze Age) into perfect rectangles, with tongue-and-groove joints to connect the lintle pieces to the upright ones.  Not to mention the fact that they got these rocks to stand perfectly upright, get the big rocks on top, or line the entrance up perfectly with the summer solstice.  

With me, for scale. I was standing about 100 yards or fewer away.

(First use of my raincoat-- don't I look happy?)

  This is how it looked originally.

So then we hopped back on the bus and drove to Salisbury-- a really cute little town, which seems to have lots of markets and such.  I didn't get much of a chance to look around, as I spent my time in Salisbury following Andrew Butterworth around the Salisbury Cathedral, which was worth every minute that I spent there.

Part of the town-- in the middle is one of the gates to the cathedral, which is to this day shut at 11:15 pm, and reopened at 7:15 am, so as to keep the rabble away from the cathedral at night.

The cathedral is breathtaking-- three times grander than Bath Abbey (which is saying something)-- and completed in only 38 years, back in 1220 CE.  It is really old.

p.s.-- The spire (the big pointy tower) is 404 feet tall.

The cathedral contains: one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta, Europe's oldest working clock, and the tombs of many English bishops and royalty:

Part of a very cool tomb, just hanging out along the wall of the apse. Such tombs lined practically every wall, and divide the central nave from the side parts that you walk through (aisles? I've forgotten what they're called).

And did I mention that it's gorgeous?

The courtyard

The nave.

The choir, with the altar in the back.

I can't properly describe how huge this place is, or how astoundingly beautiful it is... guess you'll just have to see it for yourself!

Then we continued on to Lacock-- a medieval village which has remained largely unchanged, thanks to the fact that the entire village belongs to the National Trust.  The only thing that gives it away are the cars parked all along the streets:

Because of it's largely untouched nature, the town is often used as a backdrop for many films (for instance, it serves as Meryton in the BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice").  

Lacock Abbey, which later became the Talbot Estate, and is now the Lacock Abbey/Fox Talbot Museum of Photography (Mr. Talbot invented the photographic negative), is particularly famous for its use in this little movie that's not really a big deal.... something called "Harry Potter":

Cauldron from the movies!

The rest of the Abbey/Estate is also lovely.  I'll give you a brief tour in photographs:

I couldn't help but feel like I was in Mr. Darcy's parlor....

We finished our excursion with a trip to The George Inn-- the oldest pub in Lacock, and the oldest liquor license in England!  We had dinner there (I had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and a chocolate torte for dessert), and had a quiz to see who remembered the most information from the day-- my group came in second, due to the fact that we couldn't remember how many King Georges there were.

All in all, a most excellent trip.  We had lots of fun, saw lots of interesting, different things, and got to listen to Andrew Butterworth talk all day long-- what could be better?

I leave you this evening with something that I found rather hysterical:

And old church chandelier, refitted with compact fluorescent lightbulbs...

but they're just kinda hanging there...marvelous contrast between the modern and medieval!

Classes start tomorrow, already!  Can't believe it.  I'll probably be updating a bit less frequently from this point on, but I promise, I will keep you up to speed-- it's just that I'll have much less to talk about.

Cheers!

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

Hi everyone!

I am amazed at how fantastic the weather has been here.  Seriously.  Everyone told me that I would be in a constant state of being cold and damp, and yet, it's been between 65 and 70 every day with bright sunshine.  Now, granted, since I've said this, it's likely to change tomorrow morning (I think we're expecting rain Sunday anyway), but I simply had to spread the news that English weather is not always miserable.... only sometimes....ok, most of the time.

Anyway, the morning actually started out a bit foggy-- we got up early for our last orientation meeting, all about cultural enrichment.  We had a lovely time talking about our stereotypes of the British, strange things that we've encountered here, as well as what the British think of us.  Turns out, they get most of their perceptions of us from reality tv....they think we're all like the characters from Jersey Shore.  I've never watched this show, but apparently, it's truly awful.  Also, several Brits seem to blame every single American for the Iraq War...which is a bit awkward.  No wonder people hate Americans!
Interestingly, I'm not really going through much culture shock.  I feel very at home in this culture (though I have to keep remembering not to say "pants" instead of "trousers"... as "pants" here means "underwear"), and as a whole, the Brits are much friendlier, wittier, and classier than most Americans.

After the cultural session, we took a tour of the University of Bath.  The campus is very peculiar-- up on top of a hill, in a giant complex of connected buildings-- it could almost be an outdoor mall, with lots of levels.  It has a world-class fitness center (it was super intimidating to simply walk through, let alone work out there), classrooms, a few dorms, a travel agency, a library, an art center, a theatre, some bars, a grocery store...I don't think you would ever have to leave the campus.  We also took a few minutes to sit outside by the pond-- and we had some visitors....

So many ducks!!!

After the tour, we didn't have anything to do until 7:30, when we had an evening reception in the Victoria Art Gallery with our tutors (like professors, except that in the British system, you aren't called a professor until you've become super accomplished in your field and have been teaching for bajillions of years).  So I decided to take a little stroll through Victoria Park (five minutes from my house), and maybe sit and do some reading (my first homework...and classes haven't even started yet).  By the way, this is no Core Creek Park that we're talking about here:

...Because this park has the Royal Crescent behind it-- one of the most expensive and prestigious addresses in the world.  It's beautiful, and too big to fit into this picture!

Here's another section of the park, with the monument to Queen Victoria:

And this adorable little cottage and tree that looks like it would be amazing for climbing:

While I was sitting on a bench facing this, I was approached by a Jehovah's Witness, and wound up having a very interesting conversation with her for about twenty minutes.  Needless to say, I didn't get an awful lot of work done.

Oh, and I finally remembered to take some pictures on the beginning of my walk into town!

We start by leaving my door:

And then we walk down my street:

I'm at the very top of this very long hill.

 

And then we pass through the Circus!  

Sorry....not the kind of circus that you were thinking of.

The Circus is a giant ring of Georgian town houses, like the Royal Crescent, but shaped like a circle instead.  Nicholas Cage bought a house here recently (but then had to sell it because he went bankrupt...or something....).

...And then I stopped taking pictures.  I'm sorry.  I had to start paying attention to where I was going-- there are so many options for how to get to Nelson House, you need to think about it.  Also, crossing the street is like running with scissors....the drivers are crazy, there are no crosswalks, and everyone drives in the wrong direction.  It's madness.

Also, I made my own dinner tonight for the first time since I've been here-- I was very proud of myself.  Pasta with spinach and butter, and then a jam-and-brie-on-toast sandwich (which I highly recommend!).

Another note-- pubs on a Friday night = madness.  Don't go unless you want to suffocate.  We went just to see what it would be like, and left fairly quickly-- not something I plan to do again soon!

Well, now it's quite late, so I had better be going-- talk to you again soon!

Bath Abbey and Food Shopping

Today started out kind of unexcitingly-- two more diagnostic exams (at least one was on a Ulysses excerpt!).  Things started looking up, however, when we went out for pasties for lunch, and sat in the new shopping center square, where a dj was playing songs to advertise the opening of a new department store (and there were jugglers on stilts!):

We then went into the new store, which looked like a Bloomingdales but had cheaper (but classy looking) things.  We tried on fabulous (read: ridiculous) hairpieces (with feathers!), which was a whole lot of fun.

Then I went on a walk along the side of the River Avon with a friend, and took some lovely pictures of the bridges, park (the fancy one that you have to pay to get into, to keep out the "rabble"), and a few buildings.

Then we went to Bath Abbey, the huge church which dominates the city center's skyline, for tea, cakes, and a tour.  The church is absolutely beautiful, and has a really cool history as well.
 

Bath Abbey from the outside-- it was HUGE.

The Abbey is 500 years old (and this is the newest version-- there were two before it on the same site).  It was designed to be the most beautiful church in the country, so they spent a ridiculous amount of money on...

Fan Vaulting!

And...

A

A ginourmous pipe organ!

It also had spectacular stained glass windows everywhere-- these were post-war, due to the originals having been blown out by a German bombing campaign that targeted World Heritage sites; ie, the city of Bath.

There were lots of other fun surprises in the Abbey, such as finding an old American flag hanging in the church from when Bath was used as a planning center by the British and American navies in preparation for the D-day landings, and a small carving of G-d's name in Hebrew along an inconspicuous door (by a monk who was apparently a fan of Hebrew).  Oh, but the best was discovering that there were 4,000 people buried beneath the church floor (including a former US Senator)!

So anyway: lots of cool stuff in the Abbey.

Right outside of the Abbey are the Pump Rooms-- the entrance to the hot springs that Bath has always been so famous for.  I haven't gone in yet (costs ten pounds...and unfortunately not in weight, but you know, money), but I took some pictures of the outside.

And then...we went food shopping!  We went to the little Sainsbury's in the city center (that's a half-hour walk from my house, by the way), and picked up a few things to last us through the week.  The food prices here are surprisingly good, and there are some interesting new things that I've tried here that are really tasty (don't even get me started on the pasties....I've literally had one for lunch three days in a row).  Then we had to carry the groceries back up the hill-- I'm fairly sure that the trip back from the store might burn all of the calories that I'm carrying with me!

A few of us then went over to one of the other houses to play Bananagrams after dinner, and we stayed there talking for a good while (thankfully, I had my male friend with me, so I felt much safer walking home through the city later at night).

More to report later (this post is actually a day late, this all happened yesterday for me, but I was way too tired to finish the post last night)!

Cheers!

Bath = Absolutely Brilliant

Hi all!

Terribly sorry to not have updated earlier-- the internet in my house is a bit dodgy, and when I had planned to update yesterday, my internet was out.  But anyway, here I am, safe and sound in the absolutely gorgeous city of Bath! 

  

B

Bath, behind a bridge across the River Avon.

For a bit of background-- Bath is an 18th century Georgian city (one of the first and only examples of city planning in England!), but its history goes back much further.  The Celts discovered the mineral hot springs here somewhere around the year 40, and the Romans took it over in 63, as the world's first resort town.  People have been coming to Bath for thousands of years to bathe in the hot springs or "take the waters" (ie, drink the horribly smelly warm water that contains 43 gross-tasting minerals) for their health.  In the 18th century, Bath became the top destination for English tourists, and the center of social life outside of London (you make recognize it from Jane Austen's Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility).  Nowadays, it is still largely a tourist city, and home to lots of wealthy residents and a large student population, with a total of 100,000 residents. 

My arrival in England was actually quite smooth.  I got an empty seat next to me on the plane, so I got to spread out (thank goodness!).  Once we landed, I managed to actually handle all of my baggage at once, which was quite a feat.  I got through customs, even though the officer was teasing me (in a very strong accent) about the fact that I was studying English here, since it appears that I already speak the language (then he accused me of having no mates at home).  I found some other people from my program in the bus station, and we all took the coach to Bath-- about 2.5 hrs.  Once we arrived, we had to drag all of our luggage down the flagstone streets (with the CRAZY British drivers!) to the train station, to be picked up by the program.  They drove us to our houses, and we drove up an enormous hill to our house.

 Looking down the hill from our house-- you have no idea how steep this is.

I'm living in a "posh part of town," I'm told, in a cute Georgian townhouse.  Such houses are very tall, and very narrow, have small kitchens, quirky plumbing, and tiny beds (and ours has old carpet and lots of old mismatched furniture, plus bubblegum-pink comforters).  Despite the fact that we are on top of a ridiculous slope, and are a good twenty minute walk from our programme's building, and that the house is a bit odd, there is something very charming about it (plus, I'll be getting lots of excercise).  There are seven of us in our house, and there is an identical house across the street with another eight people in it.  There are also two other houses of people in the programme (living right next to the study center), for a total of thirty-seven people in the programme.

 Bath takes a lot of pride in its status as a World Heritage City, and our programme takes a great deal of pride in the fact that our study center (Nelson House) was a former residence of 

Admiral Lord Nelson.

Thus far, we've mostly been doing a lot of orientation stuff-- meeting the staff (the director reminds me of Hugh Grant....lovely), writing diagnostic papers (eww), wandering around town (much more fun), attempting to go food shopping and winding up just buying sandwiches at a shop (very tasty), and generally getting to know each other.  Everyone here is very nice, with lots of similar interests. 
Some highlights so far: eating fish and chips with beer at a pub, eating a Cornish Pasty (that's PAH-stee-- if you say pay-stee, people will laugh in your face), already acquiring a British-accent narrated interior monologue, having people say "cheers!" to me all the time, and finding out that my tutorial (which is NOT meeting in Oxford, by the way, which makes me very upset) has a 32-page paper required.  Woohoo!

 Eating fish and chips at a pub!

Also, I'm so sorry, but I've been really bad about taking pictures-- there's been a lot of running to and fro from our house to the study center, so even though I pass through the center of town every day, I haven't taken many pictures yet.  I promise to remedy this situation as promptly as possible.  Meanwhile, I can offer you this:

C

Cat that tried to steal my fish and chips.

Cheers!