Beatrix Potter and the Lake District

So I realize now that, even though I have internet in my room, that doesn't guarantee a blog entry. But that means that I've been really active and too tired to write, so...I think it's okay. So when I last left you I believe I was still in Edinburgh, Scotland. I am now in Keswick-silent "w"-England. This is a small town in the Lake District. Before coming to the Lake District we stayed one night on an island off the eastern coast of England called Lindisfarne or Holy Island. I actually didn't know what this island was or where it was until our prof Dr. Ritchie ("DR") told us a little about it. I then realized that it was the very same island that was a focus point of a BBC TV show from the '80s that I had watched and LOVED over the summer. So to make a connection to a place was really a cool experience. The place we stayed in was a Christian B&B of sorts. They didn't require any payment but had a suggested donation. It was a three story house with really narrow staircases and only a couple bathrooms and showers. Two people had to stay in another house they owned down the street because there were so many of us. I had to lug my suitcase all the way to the  top floor. Before heading to bed that night, a group of us walked along the beach of the North Sea and talked and enjoyed ourselves, walking barefoot and skipping stones into the sea. As we walked we noticed that there we a lot of unusual things in the sand that we didn't normally see in the states or the midwest. My friend Allison collected sea glass and I collected bits of broken painted china. We found lots of crabs along the shore, some dead, some alive. There was a steep cliff near the beach on which was a castle and various ruins of previous buildings. We sat up there and watched the sea for a while, the boys even climbed the rock face up to the top. And one detail about this island I have not yet mentioned is that it is connected to the mainland by a causeway, which means that during the day through four o'clock you can get onto and off the island. After that and overnight, the tide comes in and seals off the island. So while we were walking the beach we had taken off our shoes and set them on a bunch of rocks some 30 feet from the sea. Well, about an hour later we came back to that spot and notice that the water had come up about 20 feet in the time that we'd been gone. So we put our shoes back a bit and kept walking in the other direction. When we started back to our shoes from that direction we turned around and noticed that our path was completely obscured and we had to then walk on rocks and seaweed. It was really gross! We got to our shoes and things just in time. The place we stayed at served us home made dinner and breakfast with our stay-it was delicious quiche and toast and cereal and such. Lots of tea too!  In the morning I got up to watch the sun rise. I had to get up at 5:15am and I walked out to the east end of the island near the castle. At the point where I stood, the sea was on my right with a handful of fishing boats in in, and on my left was a stone wall with a field of sleepy sheep on the other side. In front of me lay the island castle. Twas a beautiful sunrise! Almost like the movies, but better :) The picture below of the castle I didn't take but on the path where all people are is where I stood, and the tide was in so there were boats in the water to the right.

The next night we had to leave our suitcases on the coach bus and pack stuff in out backpacks for a night because it was a quarter mile walk to our overnight place from where the coach dropped us off. We stayed at Durham University in Durham Hall I think it was. They had pretty nice dorms and wifi. That was the night before our first journal entries were due so a lot of us stayed up late to finish. After we left Durham and before we came to the Lake District, we climbed Hadrian's Wall, which is a wall the the emperor Hadrian built to keep people out of his land or something like that. It was really steep at points but it was totally worth it when we got to the top and saw the landscape. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera operating for a few days so I personally didn't get any pics of this place but others did and when they upload them I will show you! There's this one my friend Corbin took of me where I'm right out on the edge of a drop and the landscape stretches out behind me. It's pretty epic. There were three hills we climbed, all were led up and down by wet slippery rocks placed as steps. A couple of times I wished that mom hadn't told me her "rock shock" story so many times.

After Hadrian's Wall we arrived in the Lake District and settled down in a Christian center in Keswick (remember the silent "w"!). Also a nice facilities, but when we started to do some wash we discovered that there was only one washer and dryer and that it took two hours to wash and two hours to dry clothes, and even then they weren't dry. So a few people did laundry like this, one person even got up at 4am to finish his. My roommate went to do some and came back and told me she found out that all you had to do was turn the setting to "quick" and off of "cotton" and it only took 35 minutes. HAHA. All those people spent time doing laundry for four hours but all you had to do was program it differently. But I suppose that could have happened to me too, but it didn't. We've been doing lots of hiking and sightseeing while we are in the Lake District. The other day we went to a poet's house named Wordsworth. Not the house, the poet. We hiked up six miles to see Castlerigg, a stonehenge type of ruin that is in Keswick. That was actually really pretty and the hike itself was beautiful. I have some pics in my friends' cameras from that trip too. One day, we went to an outdoors adventures place and went canoeing and did archery. It was heavy rain that day so they gave us waterproofs and Wellies (Wellington rain boots) to wear. I AM SO GLAD THEY DID. I still got soaked to the skin but at least I was relatively warm and some of me was dry. The leaders first taught us how to make a raft out of two canoes tied together with ropes and two wooden boards. We had to come up with a paddle chant to keep in time with each other. Our's was the name of our other professor who's joining us later in the trip. So when we were out in the middle of the lake you could hear us chanting "MARK. BRUCE. MARK. BRUCE. MARK. BRUCE." They then had us do a practice figure eight around two buoys just offshore and then paddle halfway around a nearby island. When we got to the other side they had us do some exercises in teamwork and canoe balancing. They made us rotate 360 degrees around the raft from where we were sitting originally by walking from one end to the other then crawling across the wooden plank (over the water, and the plank was like 4 inches wide) to the other canoe and then the same thing again to get back to our original spot. THEN they had us tie two rafts together (four canoes total) and do the same thing and rotate. After this exercise we played a game of "Canoe Polo" in which it was played with a tennis ball and pretty much like basket ball in canoes and on water. The goals were the two leader's small motor boats. We had to pass the ball between team members and toss it into the goal boat. The fun thing was that we got COMPLETELY competitive and thus completely soaked because we would splash each the opposing team to try and make them lose their concentration or give up the ball. It was actually our professor who initiated this form of competitive spirit and began soaking his students with water with the handy use of his paddle. After my team lost this game (2 to 5) we paddle against the wind back to shore but mid paddle we started to gain ground considerably faster than we had been previously paddling. We then realized that we were being pushed from behind by our leader and his boat. He was also pulling our team mates behind him in their raft. It was an extremely fun activity. After we spit into two groups, one who went and did some more deep water activities, and my group who did orienteering and archery. I didn't like the orienteering very much but I LOVED the archery! I got third place in scores at the end and even hit a balloon on the last round with my arrow. We were so tired that afternoon when we came back that we all kind of pooped out and napped or relaxed and made a communal meal of stir fry. 

Since then we've done a lot of reading, had some class time, and hiked some more. Today I went to Beatrix Potter's house. It was neat but a little anti-climactic. We we met by some women at the door who told us all the rules of the house: your backpacks had to be held in front of you, not on your back or to the side, water bottle had to be removed and left at the door, and there was no photography of any kind inside the house. We ended up leaving our back packs at the door because it was ridiculous to carry them in front of ourselves. They gave us a little slip of paper that had a return number on it and we had to present it to get our back packs back, even though we were the only Americans there and we were the only two who had back packs up front. The  house looked bigger from the outside than it did inside, the rooms were tiny and had lower ceilings than usual. They had some of her original drawings for her books on display which was actually pretty neat. I love Beatrix Potter stories! Especially her drawings, they are adorable! I remembered the video that we had a Grandma's house that had on it a recorded episode of Peter Cottontale and Benjamin Bunny. We also went to see another place that had more of her stuff on display and I bought some postcards to put up on my wall when I get home of her stories. A group of girls and I went to a café called Poppi Red that had attached to it, a boutique type of store that had amazing stuff! Really cute girly/sophisticated/vintage/patterned/rhinestoned and pearled/lacey/vintage/boutique-y/unique stuff all over their walls and on tables and on sewing mannequins and sprawled out everywhere. It looked almost like the bedroom of Penelope in the movie Penelope. It was there that I spied my first real purchase of the trip: an off-white wire-shaped dress jewelry holder. It is shaped just like the necklace mom got for me after I passed my Senior Moves in the Field test and Senior Freestyle but about a foot tall and is beautifully bent so there is swirls and hooks on the dress that are for putting one's jewelry on. Oh! which reminds me, I found my rings that I couldn't f ind before I left in a pocket of my purse a couple days into the trip! They are still with me and I am so happy to have found them again! Anyways, I have been legitimately looking for a wall/desk thing to decoratively hang stuff on since middle school, so it is really cool that I found something in England for just that purpose! The website for the shop is: http://www.poppi-red.co.uk/  Check it out! 

Well, it is almost 2am here and my roommate is sleeping so I'm going to sign off for now, but hopefully I will write again soon. Especially if I've forgotten anything important :) Lots o' hugs!

Thanks for reading!

So... St. Giles Uses Wine for Communion

In case you're worried about the title, don't be. I'll explain later. 

I think the last thing I left you with was about stuff on Thursday morning. That was a bit ago, sorry. Thursday night we went to the Scottish Military Tattoo. NO, I did not GET a tattoo, I WENT to one. This one showed a bunch of military bands who performed a number of pieces. Some were original compositions, some were random pop songs played by musicians in uniforms dancing to the beat and making formation after formation. It was kind of like drum line show or ice show. There were spotlights and projections of images on the castle wall. (oh, sorry forgot to mention it was just outside the gates of Edinburgh Castle) There were fireworks throughout the show and all kinds of performances from bands from Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, and many others. My guess is that they were all countries in alliance or who help out/are part of the Scottish military. Not exactly sure how it works but it was really cool. At the beginning of the show before things got started the announcer got over the loud speaker and welcomed each group of attendants from each of their countries and each country's citizen's cheered when they were announced. Sadly, our England Term group also cheered when the name of Robert Burns was announced, for it is the 240th anniversary of his birth or death. Can't remember. But then again, what do you expect from a bunch of English Lit nerds? (see bottom for video)

A few of Burns' poems were read and dances were done along to the reading. There were also a couple of his poems that were sung by a performer. Oh, and at the very beginning of the show, they very first performance was about a hundred bagpipers marching in formation playing a couple of pieces. It was awesome! I have a video of it and if I can, I will post it. If you guys ever have a chance to go to a military tattoo anywhere, I HIGHLY suggest you go, though you will have to be on the lookout for tickets WAY in advance. We got ours in January and we didn't even have main seats. We could definitely see everything, but I was literally the last person in the middle row on the very end of the stadium.

Friday morning we had class again at Edinburgh University. We had a Robert Burns impersonator/interpreter come in and give a "one man show" of sorts. He gave info about his life growing up and how he got into writing poetry and then worked in some of his poetry into the performance. At one point he got so intense in his recitation that he kind of started foaming at the mouth, but I think it was really just spit from speaking so fast and in a heavy Scottish accent. And about halfway through he asked for two guy volunteers to act out a drinking poem with him. He took them aside and told them what he wanted and then they sat down and started singing one of Burns' drinking poems and "taking shots". One of the volunteers was a theatre major so he really hammed up the drinking of the "whisky", which was really tea. It was really funny! After class and questions to Chris Tait (the Burns guy) we had the day free. Some of the group was going to a professional Fringe play called Iago (a one man show, and a take off of Othello) and the rest of us are going tonight. During the rest of the day I went with a group and my professor Mark Bruce, to the Scottish History Museum where there were a ton of artifacts and these guys playing sweet scottish music. After a while I got a little bored and ventured away with another group to the Elephant House Café where J.K. Rowling first went to write Harry Potter. It was small but nice. You can see Edinburgh Castle from the back window! After that I went back to my flat and chilled, then went to the Metropole Café (where I've been every day this week) and had coffee and did homework and went to bed. 

Wait, I lied. I also went to the Palace at Holyrood where the Queen comes to stay when she's in Scotland. It was a loooooong walk there but totally worth it! The palace was amazing! The grounds were huge and there was a gorgeous hill next to it which I did not climb. Others did, but me and my posse were tired from the day and had a lot to carry. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace but I'm sure you can find them online. Me and another friend went to a Fringe show called "How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse". It was a "seminar" on...how to survive a zombie apocalypse. Pretty self explanatory. It was really funny and well written. We finished there and then walked back and went to bed. Yep, I think that's it for Friday. 

Saturday dawned and we had a day trip planned with Mark to another palace and another Castle. Linlithgow Palace was this abandoned old ruin of a castle...HUGE and very, windy. We got to go to the top of one of the turrets and look down. It looked higher once you were up there than when you were down on the ground looking up. Me and a friend had to use the bathroom and discovered they didn't have one so we had to trek down to a public loo and pay ten pence to use it. It was worth it. 

Our next stop was at Stirling Castle. IT WAS SO GORGEOUS. Looked around a little and sat down on a hill to write and look out over the land. Google pics of it, it's so pretty! We got back from that and everyone took naps and got awakened by a loud fire alarm set off by someone's shower steam. Second time that's happened this week. Annoying. We just kinda hung around our flat and made a spaghetti dinner. Me and three others then went to another Fringe show called Broken Holmes which was a take off of a Sherlock Holmes play. Funny for the most part. 

Today (Sunday), I went to church with friends at St. Giles church in Edinburgh. It is a Presbyterian church and a really pretty venue. There was communion and apparently I hadn't thought to think about whether I'd be wine or grape juice. I should have know it'd be wine, but in my little Baptist-grape-juice train of thought, it just didn't come up. So it was only after I tasted it that I realized it tasted a little more...alcoholic than what I was used to. But everything else went well and the church service and "sermon" picked up right where my church back home left off-exactly. Funny how that works huh?

And that leads up until right now, where I am writing this blog and plan to do laundry later and repack my suitcase. It has somehow kind of exploded. So, I think that's it and comment please!

Thanks for reading! More photos to come for the last bit of this entry...didn't upload them from camera yet.

Castle and University of Edinburgh

Yesterday was our first full day of touring around and getting used to using our flat, our keys and navigating Scottish streets. I think we did pretty well! We found our way to the Castle of Edinburgh and down the streets through the Royal Mile which is where the original town sprouted up down the hill alongside the "driveway" to the castle. There are tons of tourist shops and little tours to take and all. It's all very busy and crowded but strangely I kind of felt a little more at home there because I knew everyone else was probably a tourist too. Especially because it is in the middle of the Fringe Festival. The Fringe Festival, for those who don't know ( I didn't until yesterday!) is a huge week long festival of theatre, dance, musical and pretty much any other performance you could imagine put on by anyone and everyone. But the sweet thing is that there are a ton of legit plays and question-answer things to go to! Some are comedy, some are drama, others...well use your imagination. When you walk down the street everyone is dressed in costumes and sometimes performing in the street and sidewalks and courtyards. Everyone is trying their hardest to get you to come to their performance and to pay their entrance fee or even just to get their name and face out there that you get bombarded by pamphlets and people with really weird face paint and costumes. There was even a guy with bat/dracula-like wing walking around on stilts and a guy dressed up in a wizard's clothes singing a song he dedicated to "Sabrina the Teenage Witch". His CDs were selling for £2, and people were buying them. 

And before all this my roommates and I and a few other girls went up to the Edinburgh Castle. It was huge! I think I was still a little out of it from traveling because I kind of felt removed from the experience but I still enjoyed it immensely. There was a gorgeous view from the top in which there was also this shear-ish sort of drop. My favorite parts were visiting the dungeons and seeing the prisoner of war parts of the castle. It was so neat! It was dank and dark, but clean because of all the tourists who pass through daily. Admission was £13. They also had the crown jewels on display as well as the crown and a ceremonial sward and a TON of massive shiny objects we commonly call "diamonds and other precious stones". In the gift shop they had these little bookmark things of all the different Scottish clans and their family crest along with a plaid pattern. Reminded me of Brigadoon :) But of course it would...because I'm in Scotland!

Today, we had two short classes in a room at the University of Edinburgh. One on travel writing, which is not at all what I thought it was. It's more of learning to write articles on how to get around places, what to do in certain cities if you want to make the best of your stay, or where the good places are to visit or even exploring local shops and culture. I thought it was just a fancy way of saying we'd have essays and papers to write on the trip. PSH. We have those due too, as well as journals about our experiences. 

The other class was on some of the reading we had to finish by today. Mainly history of Scotland and some works of John Knox and an article out of Christianity Today about protestants making pilgrimages of sorts. I really liked that one, it was interesting because the author pointed out that we can find something spiritual about everywhere we go and learn and grow from every trip. There was more to it but that was the general gist.  

More to come! Thanks for reading!

I'M HERE!!!!!

I made it safely and soundly through about 8 1/2 hours of flights, two airports and two plane meals (which were quite good actually) and now I am sitting in an internet café with like eight other people listening to live music via a singer and a bass player. The funny thing is that the singer just said that he wrote a song for a very famous stand up comedian in the US...I've never heard of him. 

After leaving Minneapolis we arrived at the Amsterdam airport around 11:00. I got a few minutes of sleep here and there but it's hard staying in one position for 7 hours. There were in-flight movies in front of each person built into the seat back. I didn't watch anything because I was really tired to begin with and then I decided to take a Dramamine so I could maybe get some sleep to set my body's clock closer to the time it should be. I didn't do much other than listen to my iPod (thank you Ryan for the earbuds!!) and sleep. 

The flight attendants came around with a chicken dinner and potatoes, a bread roll with butter, crackers and cheese, and a brownie. All normal drinks were free...it was fun and the food was really good. They closed the sliding things on the windows to block the sunlight so we could sleep. And then in the morning we got some sort of egg and cheese McMuffin thing. Then we had a layover at Amsterdam and had an hour flight to Edinburgh. 

We got picked up from the airport by someone and taken to our campus flats that we're staying in for 3 days or so. We each have our own rooms for the most part or share with one other person in each little apartment. We even have a kitchen and dining room! And my room has two little corner windows that open at the top...no blankets though that I've seen yet...maybe I'll find some later. 

We all had about an hour and a half to grab dinner and get back for a short meeting with the leaders of the trip and everyone else. Me and five other girls wondered around a little bit until we found a pub of sorts that had cheapish food (mine was £6). I ordered "Highland Chicken" which was a chicken breast stuffed with haggis and mashed potatoes on the side with this weird salty, light-colored gravy. It was really good! I'm surprised at how haggis tasted. I don't think I'd order it again but I liked it enough of each about 2/3 of it.

After our meeting we all agreed to check out this wireless café that we'd seen while searching for dinner. And that's where I am now! But I have to let someone else use the laptop now...Pictures and more blogging later! 

Thanks for reading!

Á Travers L'étang

Roughly translated: "across the pond".

So in two days I will be on a plane traveling abroad to study on location in England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and hopefully Italy. I am studying literature, drama, and writing as we travel Western Europe. I don't know when I'll be able to blog when abroad, but my goal is to update whoever reads this thing as often as I have time, an internet connection, and whenever I have something interesting or witty to report. Perhaps I'll meet and become best friends with some international celebrity. That, I will dutifully report. But since travel such as this is all new to me, you may also get the occasional "I accidentally walked into the wrong bathroom!" story or the "Got mugged again. Bummer of a day" too. Read at your own risk.

I'm kinda nervous to fly and to travel in places where I don't know what's going on. I mean, I don't even use public transportation here where I live! But hopefully I will find a travel buddy who knows what they're doing and is not afraid of me tagging along looking like a lost puppy. BUT WAIT! What if I get over there and suddenly have this revelation and I just KNOW what I'm doing and how to navigate the trains? Though highly unlikely in all probability, I'm hoping for the best possible statistical outcome between the two methods of getting from Point A to Point B. 

One thing I am not nervous about is being away from my family. Though I have never been away as long as a semester, (10 days is the longest) I think I tend to do alright on the homesickness scale. I miss people, but only those who I talk to everyday and really depend on for support and friendship. Which may or may not include my family depending on the day. Only kidding. But I think the thing I'm looking forward to the most is just learning to rely on myself and seeing what I can accomplish outside of my home or house. Home=university, house=where I live during summers :)

In conclusion, finally, to sum up, and altogether, I hope that I will be okay and fine on this trip, including growing in my faith and ability to navigate public transport. Also perhaps packing a suitcase. I will try to update as much as possible, but not bore you with the typical stories you hear from travelers like "the airline lost my luggage" and "so apparently it's the rainy season and I don't have a jacket". Also, if you find anything I write interesting or commentable, please let me know by dropping a comment in the box located through the "comments" link at the end of each post. I love to hear from you mysterious few readers! Until next time, au revoir et...

 Merci pour lirez!