London: February 15th & 16th

This weekend I went into London with Lesley, Sarah, and Natalie. After a night of intense Valentine's Day celebrating, I had one of the worst hang overs that I've had yet. Apparently there IS a limit to Jell-O shots-- who knew? Rose was supposed to come with us but she was in worse shape than I was. So we got on the bus Friday at about 11:30, heading for London. We were going to meet up with Sarah's friend from home, Maggie, who is studying in London for the semester with a group of her friends from home. We walked around London for most the day and also took some time to discover what the London Tube was all about. And I have to confess, I loved it. Minus being rammed into the corner during one ride, it was the most efficient mode of transportation that I have experienced thus far. Granted, Oxford isn't big enough to need the tube and the buses are fine, but the speed of the tube is amazing. You had to take an elevator up and down, to and from the tube station, because it was so far underground. The stairs were only for emergencies.

We went to Harrod's to check out what it was all about, and I felt like I was going through different lands in every room. There's sports, clothing, groceries, perfume, candy, etc. It's amazing, we actually got lost trying to find our way out. We stopped at one point to have some tea and it was quite delicious. The waitress seemed really pissed though because we didn't want cream or anything in our tea. Unfortunately for her, her tip was small even when taking into consideration that tip isn't a big thing here. Then we took a trip through Soho, discovering that every street there has a different theme: furniture, clothing, electronics. It was crazy.

We met up with Maggie and her roommates then, but we had a little trouble getting into her dorm without Huron student ID. They weren't letting people in because there had apparently been a knife fight right in front of the door the night before. But we sucked up to the guard and wrote our names down for further verification, but he never checked. Maggie and us went out to a nice Italian dinner, where I had one of the best pesto dishes I've ever had. She and her roommates had also had kind of a rough night the night before, so it took us awhile to get dressed and ready to go out. By the time that we did, the pubs were all beginning to close, so we met up with these guys that Maggie had made friends with and went to a house party. This started out very awkwardly, since it was 2 boys bringing about 8 to some chick's birthday party. We began to ease out the door, which was difficult seeing as to how it was the smallest apartment in the world and there were a ton of people there, but we got stuck in the hallway. Alex (the boy that brought us) kept telling us to stay and grabbing us beer as incentive. Normally I would not be okay with this, but there were so many of us that I felt fine doing it.

And then I stopped feeling uncomfortable. I became the Toilet Monitor, since I was right by the door and people kept asking me if I was "queuing for the toilet?" and I said "no, but you're next!!" They seemed to like that, so I made a few friends, including a girl named Laney who constantly was going to the toilet and boy named Davyyd (pronounced "Dah-VEED", not David, like I had thought) who had a tattoo of his name on his throat. Strange, but helpful. We ended up leaving in the early hours of the morning and walking back through the blistering London coldness. The next morning we woke up late and went to Portabello Market (which was JAM PACKED with people!). I've really wanted to start collecting bracelets everywhere I visit, but I couldn't find one I liked so I got a silver instead. I also tried some REAL fish and chips (amazing, Dad) and then we went to look for the rest of the kids from St. Clare's, who had come in that morning. We went to Trafalgar Square where there was some sort of exhibition of people freeze framing around the fountain for an extended amount of time. There were tons of people taking pictures and it took us awhile to realize it was because everyone around the fountain wasn't moving, but holding poses of ordinary, everyday movements. It was so interesting.

Then we went into the National Gallery, but we were so tired and there were so many people that we left soon after. We met up with everyone at the London Eye (we thought they would be at the gallery but they weren't) and rode on that, which was amazing especially with all the night lights. My camera died, of course, but I plan on stealing some from everyone else. Then Sarah, Lesley, and I caught a bus back to Oxford while everyone else stayed the night in a hostel. Needless to say, we were glad to be back "home". Today we've just been sleeping and grocery shopping, which has been great.

Next weekend is Paris, which I am very excited for, so I need to go finish up my homework before Thursday rolls around!

One Cold Yet Sunny Monday: February 11th

It is currently 44 degrees out, with a high of 55 today. I busted out the flip-flops, because the sun has been shining so intensely. I am ignoring the fact that my toes are icicles and just going with how nice it feels to free them from my restrictive sneakers.

I spent this last weekend in Oxford, which was kind of nice. A big group of us went out on Friday night, and I finally used the flexibility of my youth to my advantage, staying out until 3 in the morning dancing at a club and working on my alcohol tolerance. I had so much fun, and was so hung over the next day that I stayed in my sweats and only left the house to walk to the store and purchase a questionable amount of candy, cookies, and Pringles (Sour Cream and Onion, of course). I justified this by saying that I walked, but it didn't really work. I then went down a few doors to Logan House, which is another dorm for St. Clare's students, and watched Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina", which I had never seen before. It was wonderful.

Today I plan on writing up a few journal entries and possibly exploring Oxford a bit. I'm crawling out of my skin from sitting inside-- I can't let the coldness keep me from seeing the sights. I might go on the City Tour bus and discover some more history of the town. We are in Oxford again this weekend, and then virtually every weekend after that is booked for an out of town excursion. Our first one is Paris, which I am psyched for!

Ashmolean Tutorial: February 6th

This morning I went to meet Nick, my Shakespeare/playwriting professor, for my make up tutorial. Wednesdays are my days off, since Jessica made our philosophy class into office hours, but I was kind of excited to share my attempt at a monologue with him. He came into the lobby, said "We're getting out of the classroom today and looking at art for you to write about", and turned back toward the door. I hurried after him to his car, excited that we wouldn't be sitting in a stuffy room upstairs while the day was so beautiful.

We drove to the Ashmolean Museum, which is in Oxford's City Centre. He wanted me to find a piece of art and write about it, either from the perspective of a portrait or about the details around them. But first, we went downstairs to the cafe and had a cup of coffee. Nick is also a gender studies teacher at Oxford (imagine my excitement about this!!) so we had a very interesting conversation about gender related issues, specifically the gender expectations in different cultures. After telling me places to visit when we're in France, he took me upstairs to the paintings to pick one out. Our tutorial period is only an hour, so we had coffee for about 45 minutes of that hour. I picked out a picture and jotted down some notes so that I would remember. He took a picture with his camera phone-- even though he wasn't supposed to-- and is sending it to me.

He dropped me off at my house after that and gave me a book to focus on short story writing. With the art piece, I also can write in any way I feel like. I am so excited about this! And talk about a spin on the normal American professor/student relationship. Every student here has gone out to either coffee or to a pub with their teacher, and I think it's fabulous. Not only do you get to know your teacher on a personal level, but it also helps open you up to their advice and guidance when it comes to your school work. And as an English major, it is very conducive to my learning experience.

I am love love loving this. Can I take this school home, mix it with USD, and live in Oregon?

Edinburgh, Scotland: January 31st - February 3rd

I just got back from Scotland, which turned out to be an amazing trip. I honestly wasn't putting it on my list of places I had to see, but it was our first out of the country trip and it was surprising in many, many ways. Let me explain.

First of all, we took the bus because it was the cheapest route. The bus means that we would take basically 10 hours to get to Edinburgh, after all of the stops were factored in. We left Thursday night, which was difficult for me due to the fact that I had gotten back from London late and I still had homework to do. Getting up early, I went straight through the day until 2:15 and then came back and crashed for a few hours. At about six, I took a shower and Natalie and I gathered up our backpacks and headed to O'Neill's to meet up with the group. And since we are turning into cheapies, we bought a can of beer each to stash in our bags for the bus ride. We got to O'Neill's before anyone else did, receiving a ton of weird looks due to the fact that we had all our stuff and everyone else there was drinking and dancing. We each bought a pint (so much for our cheapness, but Stella always sounds good!) and waited for the others. Our bus was at 10 pm, so we hung out for a bit then went to the bus depot. It was empty and we all got to spread out so that was awesome, we laughed and had fun. An hour and a half into it, we switched buses, and this was the eight hour portion. It was PACKED. We were all forced to wake people up to ask them to move so we could sit and none of us got to sit together. It sucked. It was a long and horrible ride, that we have vowed will never, ever happen again.

We arrived in Edinburgh at about 8 in the morning, exhausted and hungry. It was FREEZING and we were all instantly cranky. We found our hostel fairly easily and set all our stuff down since check-in wasn't until 2, and then forced ourselves to go out and make a day of it. Since we left today, we only had 2 full days to explore and we were not going to waste them.

Here's all the places we went with a brief description and key points, mixed with a few pieces of advice.

Edinburgh Castle: A must see. Gorgeous view, tons of historical buildings, and the Crowned Jewels are there. Phenomenal. We also got to see them shoot off a cannon, which was super cool and exploded our eardrums. Also our first encounter with men in kilts-- not too shabby of a look, I must say. I would recommend the audio tour, even if you have to pay (you will see why shortly).

The Whiskey Tour: Discovered that we all hate whiskey, but the tour guide was so funny and the tour so bad that you almost have to do it for the fun of it all. We got stuck on the little car ride and were forced back into movement after being rear-ended by the people behind us. Laughed really, really hard. Decided that drowning in a vat of whiskey would be the worst death ever. Learned some really (truly) interesting facts about whiskey and Scotland.

Kilt Making Factory: It was how kilts and scarves were made (the plaid ones) and it was actually kind of cool to see. You get bombarded with apparel to buy, but if you are from Scottish descent you might find some pretty interesting stuff on your family lineage.

St. Giles Church: The COOLEST organ I have ever seen in my life. The stained glass windows are beautiful and I took tons of pictures of them (oh by the way, pics not working on PhotoBucket, they're on Facebook!). Takes about 10 minutes to do and it's free so I would recommend it.

After this we went to World's End Pub for dinner and had fish and chips (delicious, Dad!) and decided we were super tired. We checked into the hostel, and we were all put in the room called Star Wars, and each of our beds had their own names. I started out as Luke but wanted the top bunk so I incidentally became Princess Leia. The hostel was really nice (ADVICE: Stay here, it's pretty cheap and the people are great! Royal Mile Backpackers!) and we all bundled up and fell asleep at about 8 o'clock. We woke up early the next day and split into two groups after breakfast. My group saw:

The Elephant House: Where JK Rowling scribbled out Harry Potter on napkins. Amazing atmosphere, a clear shot of Edinburgh Castle (maybe some Hogwarts incentive?), and great food for a really good price. Bought a t-shirt to remember it by.

Holyrood Palace: Where the Queen stays when she's not in England. This is where we discovered that you have to do the audio tours, because if we hadn't done it we would have been bored out of our minds. However, it turned out to be fascinating. Apparently Mary, Queen of the Scots back in the day, was somewhat of a ho. We went into her room and the audio tour told us that it was there that her and her Italian secretary, Rizzio, used to spend many hours in the little nook off to the side, talking and what not. Apparently Darnley, her husband, wasn't into this-- he and a few of his men stormed in one night, held a very pregnany Mary at gunpoint, and dragged Rizzio into the next room, stabbing him 56 times. We now have an obsession with this murder story. Wouldn't have happened without the audio tour. Castle was gorgeous! You cannot see the newer parts; what we saw was mostly used a couple of centuries ago. We also saw the room where people get knighted, and there was mention of Sean Connery being one of those people.

The Majestic Tour: Bus tour around Edinburgh. Not super exciting, but gives a good history of a few places and their connections to artists and authors. It also shows you most of New Edinburgh, which is the majority of the town now it seems. We got to see the river and we also got to see a woman and her husband eat shit by sliding off the vinyl seats on the top floor of the bus. Hurt not to laugh-- they were okay, but the bus driver kept pulling over and coming up to check.

The Terror Tour: Scared me to death. Learned some interesting history on the old torture devices of Edinburgh, how they burned witches, where they put bubonic plague victims, and how they used to throw shit out their windows. Apparently in the 1600s, when Scotland was fighting with the English, they built walls to keep England out. Instead, they trapped themselves in to an area of 1 mile by 1/4 of a mile, holding 40,000 people. They were forced to build up, and many buildings were up to 12 stories high. They thought stone would be too heavy, however, and many of the top floors began to sag into each other and collapse completely. We went inside to the vaults, which were made of stone and about 20 x 20 feet, with sloped ceilings that didn't reach higher than 8 feet. We learned that being homeless was a crime then, so many people would hide in these places, surviving in the pitch black, because "if you were rich enough to afford a candle, you were rich enough to not be homeless". Since people threw their shit out the window, it would seep through the ground into these places, and since they lived in pitch black, they were forced to live in their own excrement as well. The life expectancy of a healthy man was at most a year, for a child a matter of a few months. Apparently the room we stayed in there was a ghost of a little boy looking for his mother (Gina, our group "mom" due to her motherly nature, decided against that title for the rest of the night). The next room we went into had a circle made of stones in the middle, which apparently held a very angry poltergeist. People that walk through the circle experience scratches or burn marks on their bodies, usually on their necks or arms. Creepy. The last room we went into was one that had held 124 people at one point, who had rushed in their for safety during an intense fire. Trapped in there as the entrance collapsed, they were cooked to death (the rooms are all made of stone) and were found 5 days later, after the stones cooled down, baked together as one. I almost peed my pants.

Up side: We got free coupons for a beer and discovered a great little pub, where the rest of our group met us. We ended up getting very drunk and dancing in the vaults that were open, especially the one right above the room with the angry ghost. It was really... creepy, since the music and the lights and the water dripping off the stone ceiling made me feel like I should have been on acid and attending a rave. Had I not been so under the influence, I probably would have been too creeped out to stay. But we had fun, made it home barely in time before our hostel locked the door for the night, and crashed. Our bus ride this morning was long and lasted until 9 o'clock tonight. Never again.

Also, fun fact: Apparently I give off a lesbian vibe. I've been hit on a few times by girls, but in the pub in Scotland this girl next to me told me that I should throw my hat on stage (I didn't know we would be going out, and my hair was greasy-- hence, the hat). I said "no" politely and with a laugh. She laughed too, but then told me I should and she would run her fingers through my hair. Weird thing was, I knew she was drunk so I wasn't really bothered by this. I just laughed and said "Nah, that's ok". That was basically the end of our conversation. About 20 minutes later, she and her friend stood up to leave. I said, "Oh you're leaving? Well, have a good night!" She leaned over and grabbed my face, and for half a second I thought she was going to plant one on my lips. Instead she sloppily kissed me on the cheek and said (in a very thick Scottish accent) "You have fun tonight!" I smiled awkwardly and she walked away. Turning back to my table, I found all the members of my group staring at me, with a "What the hell was that?!" look on their face. So apparently, I have a girlfriend. Sweet.

Anyway, all in all, Scotland was amazing. I wish we had had more time there but the time we did have was soooo fun and I would definitely recommend it to anyone else. Oh and also, you can hike to the top of this huge mountainous hill, but we didn't because it would have sucked up 3 hours and it started pouring. Still, I bet the pictures/view from the top are breathtaking. I recommend it!

London with Melissa- January 30th

I'm on the bus, heading back to Oxford after spending the day in London. Melissa came in yesterday afternoon to see a little bit of where I live. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had another class and was forced to leave her on the bus on her way to City Centre while I attempted to learn about ethics from an Italian man with the thickest accent I've ever heard. After I got out, I met up with her again downtown and we were going to go shopping, but most of the stores were closing. We headed back to my house, ate some food, then got dressed to go to the pub. Our original plan was to stop at Dew Drop Inn and go out from there, but everyone was already there so we had a few pints each. By the time we met up with Carleigh and Natalie at O'Neill's, it was dead and we were sufficiently drunk. On our way back home, McDonald's sounded so good that we had to stop and eat, saying how disgusted we were with ourselves the entire time. But it was delicious, I won't lie. We woke up today, showered, and headed into City Centre. Since our bus didn't leave until noon, we grabbed some food at Starbucks (what's wrong with me?) and then did some intense discount shopping. It was wonderful. I love Primark. Barely catching our bus, we took the hour and half ride to London. Through beautiful countryside, we had wonderful conversation and I remembered yet again why I love Melissa. When we got into the city, we bought bus tickets for the day and, after backtracking a lot, got on a bus and went to Notting Hill. It was beautiful, and I think that Bath now has a rival for places I would live in England. We went to Portabello Market, but the normal market days are Friday and Saturday so there wasn't as much stuff there. However, there were some good little souvenir shops. I bought two t-shirts, one that is white an has the underground symbol on it that says “London, England” in cool font. The other shirt I bought from this man who was selling very hippie and earthy clothes. It is, of course, a military green shirt with a giant black peace sign on it. I felt very at home, it was amazing. After taking a million pictures and wishing that we could buy everything that we saw, Mel and I took the bus back to town and headed to her hostel. Recommendation for anyone looking for a hostel in London: The Generator. As soon as you walk in, you feel like you're in a space ship. It is awesome. Everything is brightly colored and there are neon lights everywhere (especially at night, I'm guessing). It's under 10 USD a night, which is amazing. Anyway, we ended up talking to two of the girls staying in there, one from Canada who had been in Europe for about a year and a half, and Felicity, a girl from Australia who was traveling around for a month. Since Mel and I were starving, we ran down the road and grabbed some take away (note: it is not called “to go”, it's called “take away”, and it is cheaper to take away than it is to stay in since they don't really tip in Europe and it is added into the eating in charge). Coming back to the room, we discovered that Felicity was a big Harry Potter freak. So the three of us headed to King's Cross Station and took a bunch of hilarious pictures at Platform 9 ¾, where they have conveniently put a cart halfway through the wall (if you read HP, you will get this; if you don't, that's sad). As we were leaving, Mel thought she saw Daniel Radcliffe (HP) so we basically chased down some poor 40-year-old man who looked nothing like DR up close. But it was funny and a good experience. Then we headed to Victoria to catch my bus back to Oxford. While I was waiting (I sent them off, I felt bad that they would have to wait with me for so long after taking me to the station) a man from Dublin came up to me on the verge of tears, asking me if I spoke English. When I said yes, he explained that he and his wife went to Paris for the week and thought they had just enough money to make it back home. However, the exchange rate from euros to pounds gyped them about 5 pounds, which they desperately needed. I spotted him the spare, and he profusely thanked me. I figure, if he was lying, a) he is a very good liar, and b) at least I did my part. While talking to him I missed the driver of my bus coming in and saying that we were loading so when I looked back half the people waiting were gone. I asked the man next to me if they were loading and he said yes so I ran to the bus. The driver tried to open the door but I was standing in the way so he just kind of stared at me with his hand on the button until I moved. I felt like an idiot but whatever, I'm getting really used to it. So now I'm on the bus, ready to fall asleep. I love England. My first trip out of the country is tomorrow night-- we are going to Scotland!!! I'm super excited. I'll update with that when I get back.

Pictures: Up and Running! (I hope...)

I think that this address will go directly to my PhotoBucket. If anyone experiences issues, let me know!

http://s244.photobucket.com/albums/gg13/Saboobies19/

There's more to come, trust me.

First Impressions?

I just returned from my first class of the week-- Philosophy of Love and Relationships. It is already exciting to me, as my teacher is amazing and there are only 2 other girls in my class. Since she decided that our 3rd class of the week will only be office hours, I have no classes on Wednesday. Depending on my work load (which doesn't sound like much), I will probably use that day to explore.

Thus far, Oxford is amazing. It is cold but not nearly as much as I thought. My ears have been hurting from the wind, but the rain is minimal and I've been getting away with wearing a t-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, and scarf. Wonderful!

Must go, Lesley (I've been spelling it wrong-- oops!) and I are going into Oxford to get a bus pass for the rest of the time we are here, then off to ethics class together. I also spoke too soon-- it's now raining outside. I'll update more later, and hopefully get some pictures up!