Oxford, Punting, and Palaces

Our entire program spent the last week living at University College Oxford.

We took our normal classes with our normal professors (who already are 'tutors' from Oxford), but we lived in the University College dorms and did a bunch of activities.

The most eventful of the activities was probably something called "Punting." It is the picture where I am standing on the back of a boat. The deal is that four people sit in the boat and one person stands on the back and attempts to propel / steer the thing with a really long metal pole. The only issue was that we were only supposed to do it for an hour, but (long story short) we got kind of discombobulated and lost and ended up taking about three. There was even one point where Tessa got out of the boat and Nicole and I took turns sitting in the front, each of us holding an end of the pole as Tessa pulled it along from land.

The food was great in Oxford! Well... not so much at the actual school, but when we went out to eat, it was phenomenal! Our group even got to meet up with my friend Mary (who is going to Oxford this semester) one night for gourmet pizza, which was really nice.

We climbed to the top of the tower on the Church of St Mary the Virgin and got gorgeous views of the entire city.

The last night we had a lovely three course dinner... all fancy and everything. There was goat cheese and roasted figs... followed by steak on baby leeks, potato, and roasted cherry tomatoes... and ending with pear and something desserty thing (that was really really good). We all got dressed up, and attempted to eat with the correct fork and drink from the correct glass all night. It was really nice.

Today we came home, but on the way we stopped at Blenheim Palace on the way. It is a HUGE palace... I am not exaggerating! There is a lake that took a thousand men a year to dig by hand and gold encrusted everything and beautiful paintings. The best part, however, was the gardens! It reminded me of being at the Fells in New Hampshire or the Arboritum in Dallas, TX. Anyway, it was beautiful, and I'm sorry that I'm skipping a lot of details about this trip, but I have to go pack because I leave with my housemates for Italy tomorrow! SPRING BREAK!

Monday

This is the first time in two weeks that I have actually been able to sit down and say that I don't have a paper that I should be writing. I handed in the final one this morning after completing the finishing touches last night at about 1am, and I am so happy to be done with papers for a while! I have developed a very persistent cough, but other than that I am feeling great! I get to student teach twice this week, tomorrow and Wednesday and then on Friday our entire program is off to Oxford for a week. I'm starting to feel relatively at home in this city, which is a very good feeling as well as a slightly scary one... so I think it will be good to have two weeks away from Bath (although I love it, don't get me wrong).

I also just opened my bedroom window for the first time since we have been here! It is about 50 degrees and gloriously sunny. This morning I had Education in England, where we talked about gender inequality in schools in England. Surprisingly, we talked more about the underachievement of boys and how to curb that than the fact that it is becoming a very large trend for schools to be completely staffed (lunch ladies, maintenance, and teachers) by women, but run exclusively by men. I am sure that it is happening in America as well, but it has become more and more apparent to me because my teaching placement school is in that position. Then I had my Jane Austen class, which went really well, considering that I don't usually enjoy myself. We did a close reading exercise called a "silent discussion," where we were in groups of three, each group picked a sentence from a specific part of Mansfield Park, and then we passed the quotes around and everyone made literary comments on them. I found it more interesting than our class has ever been before.

Then we (a few housemates and I) went grocery shopping and made lunch. It really is nice to feel as independent as we are allowed to feel over here. To go grocery shopping for the week, do laundry, clean my room, and know that I am going to be able to get up tomorrow and go to school and at the very least see a tiny glimpse of what the rest of my life might actually be like is wonderful.

To anyone who I haven't written a postcard back to yet, I'm very sorry and I promise that I'll get them out this afternoon. Thank you to everyone who has sent mail, it is so much fun to get!

Week Six

I'm sorry that I haven't written in so long everyone. This last week and next week are "paper" weeks and I have not been doing anything particularly interesting besides writing papers for my classes. I had Jane Austen on Monday, Patterns of Power on Thursday, and I have Education in England on this coming Monday. The most exciting thing is that I get to go to my teaching placement twice next week instead of just once. I also received news last week that I got the residential life position that I applied for for the 2010-2011 school year, which is very exciting. I will be living in the Northwoods apartments, and I get to pick my housemates (which is a huge bonus). I'm sorry that I don't have anything very exciting to report, but I will keep you all updated! Thank you so much to all of you who are sending me cards, it is really so nice to get mail! Love, Emily

A Weekend in Northern Ireland

This weekend, two of my housemates and I decided to take a trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland! We flew in on Friday (because none of us have class that day). We walked, in the pouring rain to our hostel and were immediately greeted by a hilarious South African man, who runs the place. He told us that there was a "Black Cab" tour leaving in five minutes and that we would be sorry if we missed it, so we hopped on board. The "Black Cab" tour is basically a political tour of the city from a taxi driven by someone who is an ex-convict from one of the sides of the Protestant/Catholic conflict. We rode all around Belfast and saw all of the murals on either side, as well as the Peace Line that divides the city into religious sectors. We learned more about politics in Northern Ireland than I could ever tell you in this blog, but I will never forget that tour! The most important thing that I learned is that neither side is fighting about any particular belief central to their religion, the religions are just a label for political parties, killing each other over money and land. Honestly, the tour was very upsetting... but also extremely educational.

After the tour, we met up with Colleen, who is my very good friend from school and is studying in Belfast for the semester. She took us to a restaurant for lunch called "The Other Place" where we had bacon (which is not like American bacon, it's more like ham), brie, and cranberry sandwiches. Then she had to go to class and Melissa, Shaina, and I went back to Lagan Hostel to take a nap! The hostel was surprisingly nice, moderately clean, and felt very safe. The owner let us lock our passports away in a lock box behind the front desk, but we had our own room with it's own key, so we didn't have to carry all of our stuff around with us. After the nap we went to dinner with Colleen at this adorable French bakery!

Saturday morning, we decided that in order to see all we could of Ireland, we should take a tour of the coast! So, with the help of our host, we booked a tour and hopped on a coach bus for an all day tour for only 17 pounds (about $25).



We drove from Belfast all the way up the Irish coast. We saw two different castles (Carrickfergus and Dunluce). You aren't allowed to go in the castles anymore, because they are falling down, but we got out and looked at them for a few minutes. The main attractions on our tour were the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge and Giant's Causeway. We didn't actually cross the rope bridge, but we climbed up to it and in the process got an amazing view. It was very windy and cold, so we walked fast and wrapped our scarves around our heads as we tried to take in the beautiful landscape unfolding before us. Giant's Causeway is where I got the best pictures. When you get to the fork in the path, you are suppose to go left, down to the coast and the rocks that make up the causeway, but instead we decided to go right and hike up to the top of the cliffs above the coast. It was the single most beautiful thing I have seen in my entire life. You could look to your right and see over the edge of the cliff, down to the ocean, then look to your left and see what looked like the entirety of Ireland stretching out before you. There were green hills with sheep grazing, little farm houses, and snow capped mountains under a bright blue sky all at once. It was truly amazing!

The three of us took the opportunity to call our families and tell them what a beautiful place we were in. Then, we climbed down, trying to burn the image into our minds so that we would never forget it! We went to the gift shop at the bottom (Hannah, you should be excited) and then back onto the bus.

The end of the tour was a stop at the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery. It was the end of the day, so they were closing and we couldn't go on a tour, but we went in and looked at the buildings and bought a few postcards. Then, we were thoroughly exhausted and preceded to sleep the entire bus ride back into the city.

We had pizza for dinner, with Colleen. Mine was BBQ sauce, chicken, spinach, sweet corn, and sour cream. It was fantastic!!!! It was called the Las Vegas at this little dinner place called "Cafe Renoir." We completely lucked out with the weather, because it only rained on Friday and then decided to be sunny for the rest of our adventure!!!!!

This morning we had English breakfasts (made for us by our hostel host) or eggs sunny side up, baked beans, sausage, bacon, and toast. We packed and then met Colleen for brunch, then took a bus, a plane, another bus, and a train back to Linley House!

It was a weekend that I will never forget, but it feels really nice to be home... and get to shower in my own bathroom!

Rugby

On Sunday there was a Rugby match in Bath. It was Bath v. Worcester and we kicked butt, if I do say so myself. Our whole program met at 1:30 in front of the Huntsman (a local pub) and walked to the game together. It was basically like going to a Red Sox game... except in England. The fans were all really excited and drinking and just generally having a good time. There was a little boy sitting near us who was clearly being taught the rules by his dad or older brother, which was really cute. None of us knew anything about rugby, so Ian (one of our peer helper people) was kind enough to explain it to us. Basically, your team had to get the rugby to the other teams end zone (like football). You can run with the ball, but you can only pass is backward. If you get the ball to the end zone and touch it to the ground you get five points. Then someone has to kick it through those poles for an extra two points (but they have to kick it from hard angles, because the kick begins at whatever spot that the ball crossed the end zone line). If you kick the ball through anytime besides the extra point, it's worth three points. The timer only stops if the ball goes out of play (it does not stop for injuries or for fouls). Then someone throws it in and the guys in play lift each other up by the shorts to try to catch the ball. If there's a foul committed then they make a "scrum" which is basically a bunch of guys lining up and trying to plow each other over for the ball. A person on the team who was the victim of the foul throws the ball into the scrum and attempts to help his teammates to get the ball, while the other team is trying to get it away. The guys on the outside of the scrum have to connect within so many seconds or it's a foul... because if they don't connect the inside of the scum falls in and people break their necks. Ian said he has two friends who are paralyzed from playing rugby, because of that exact situation. Also, you aren't allowed to tackle someone above the neck. There are a lot more rules than that, but those are all that I could learn in one game. All in all, we had a lovely afternoon of watching men try to kill each other, it was great fun!

The Roman Baths

Hi All,

I'm sorry I haven't written all week, but it has just been crazy over here. I had a presentation in my Jane Austen class and then I was teaching and I just haven't had time to put these up, but today was my day off and so I'm ready to tell you all about the Roman Baths. On Friday, we decided that the bus tickets to London were too expensive and that the next best thing would be to go see what our city is famous for.

Melissa, Tessa, and I took a self guided audio tour of the main exhibit (which was much more extensive than I had expected it would be). They also had a children's audio tour which, I'll admit, I probably listened to more than the adult one. This first picture is of Bath Abbey from the ground floor of the Baths. They said that the ground level had been raised so much since Roman times, that when they built the city they had no idea that it was even there. The handrail at the top of the picture is at ground level with the rest of the city. When people found the spring and the baths beneath the city, they were all shocked and amazed.

There were a lot of rock benches all around the baths that people used to sit on, and so we thought that we would join them. Some really nice British girls offered to take this picture of the three of us after we took one of them. Also, there were signs everywhere that read "Caution, this water is not safe enough to drink or even touch" which most of the parents trying to convince their kids to touch the water clearly didn't read.

Inside the building, branching out from the original bath was a large exhibit of what the rest of the Roman Baths probably looked like. I am not a history person, but I tried very hard to imagine all of the people who used to go to the baths and what they would do in the different parts. I actually managed to get pretty into it! This picture is of a man made waterfall that allows the water from the springs to circulate.

Here is my beloved Abbey again, from behind the back of the Julius Ceasar statue. They built statues of all the famous Roman rulers around the first floor (second floor) of the Baths.

Bradford-On-Avon

Today the children of Bath all have the day off from school for winter vacation, so none of the education students could go in and practice teaching. Instead, a few of us decided to take a train to a neighboring town (Bradford-On-Avon). One of our professors lives there he agreed to meet us and give us a grand tour of his town. We got hot chocolate at a really cute café and then he took us around the town. We went to see the Tithe Barn, which is a really old barn that they used to use as a market like about 1000 years ago. The tiles on the roof are made of limestone rocks, it's really interesting. Then we went to see the second oldest church in the country, an Anglo-Saxen church in a really cute neighborhood. When our professor finished the tour, we went a pub called The Dandy Lion for lunch. Today is National Pancake Day in England. I'm not kidding, it is actually a holiday and it's actually kind of a big deal, so at the pub I got a pancake. The first picture is of my lunch, toffee and banana pancakes with whipped cream. It was absolutely amazing! It has been a great day!