The Nerdy Day

It's just a matter of hours before I leave my dorm and head to the bus terminal, which will take my to the airport, which will take me home. I've been here for 98 days now; it's time to go home.

I figured, though, now that the last papers are turn in, our last British tea was had, and I'm just waiting for the time to call the taxi, it'd be a good time to catch up the blog with perhaps one of the most fun days I had in London just this past weekend.

I caught a morning train up from Brighton to meet up with my friend Laura, arriving pretty early in the day. We dashed out of Victoria Station and made our way past Trafalgar Square as we headed towards the West End to purchase theatre tickets later that night. Once they were procured we began our day of nerdy activities and headed for the Underground.

We got off at St. John's Wood and walked up to one of the places I wanted to visit most since finding out I had been accepted at my university for study this term -- Abbey Road.



We got to see the studio from outside the graffiti-covered wall as musicians entered and exited the building to work on recordings. It was really cool, and seeing all the signings on the wall made everything feel connected. We then crossed the road, treading the same place The Beatles had 40 years earlier. It was really surreal.







The next stop was a trip to Abney Park Cemetery, a Victorian cemetery that inspired Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard book.



It was mid-afternoon but the sun sets so early here that we ended up wandering the graveyard mainly in the gloaming. It was beautiful.











It was fantastically old and surrounded by a park. All the graves seem to be getting overtaken by nature, vines and roots climbing all over every headstone, overgrown bushes sprouting from graves, broken and toppled stonework from the gravestones. It was gorgeous. We ended up staying long enough that we were treated to a beautiful view of the moon as we walked through the dark and loamy earth, our breath coming out in puffs from the cold, faces stinging in the wet air.

We then made our way back to the West End to see Hairspray at the theatre. It was absolutely brilliant, such a great performance. Laura and I were really happy with how fun it was.

After all that I had to sadly depart and come back to Brighton because of homework -- final essays needed to be written and I was behind.

I finished them, of course, and turned them in on Wednesday so that I could take the last day off and enjoy myself. I caught up on sleep and finished packing Thursday and now… I'm just waiting to leave in the matter of just a few hours. I suppose I'll be writing again on the other side. I'm so glad to be going home.

A nice place for a picnic...

Oops, almost a week's gone by since I've updated this thing! It's been a pretty busy week so I'll have to play catch-up in two parts. First up, of course, is the trip to Ashdown Forest, the real 100-Acre Woods!

We took a bus ride form US to the forest and it only took about 40 minutes to get there. We disembarked and were immediately confronted by wild English countryside and beautiful views in every direction. We took a small hike to our first destination, the Enchanted Spot, rising up from Gal, where the real-life Christopher Robin used to spend his days staring up at the trees and counting them.



Playing around a bit and taking silly pictures, we soaked up the almost quiet magic in this small gathering of trees. It was a very different feeling within the circle than without and it was a great place to start our trek around the forest.



Soon after leaving the clearing we came upon a wall of earth with a very green looking circle sprouting at the base. Because of the amount of rain England receives, the Heffalump Trap from the books was very much less a hole or a trap and much more a small rain-catcher where the greenest of plants grew from the small reserve of water.



Of course, that wasn't the only thing that Sussex's recent rain has kind of changed in the Ashdown Forest scenery -- it also changed Roo's Sandy Pit to more of a… quicksand pit. It was full of water, too, so we didn't venture down in there, and we certainly didn't even attempt to go to Eeyore's Gloomy Spot because, fittingly, it is mostly a bog, and not a very pleasant place to walk to when it's been wet at all.



We had a picnic in the 'nice place for piknicks' then made our way to Poohsticks Bridge and were treated to some gorgeous bits of nature on the walk there.





Once we got there it was picture time!



And time for a think!



Finally, then, it was time to play Poohsticks! We all grabbed our sticks from the area around the bridge and got in a line atop the bridge. It's essentially letting go of a stick at the same time from one side of the bridge, running over to the other side, and seeing whose stick has reappeared on the other side the fastest once the current has carried it underneath you. All of us played, even (or is especially?) Therie, our professor.

I'm not a ship and not a boat,
I am a twig and I can float.

Happy I'll be, if you choose me,
to float away down to the sea.

I am a twig and can be found,
please look for me upon the ground.

You want to play the Poohsticks game,
so pick me up and change my name.

No more a twig, alone and sad,
I'm your Poohstick and feeling glad.

It's good to play, I hope you win,
count to three then drop me in.

Downstream I float, the game is done.
Poohstick island, HERE I COME.

-The Happy Twig: A Poohem, A. A. Milne

We finished the trip with a visit to the tiny town of Hartfield, at the edge of Ashdown Forest, to visit the small gift-and-tea shop there, and that's where I'll leave you.

Ghosts Don't Haunt Us Here

Friday night we went to downtown Brighton for the ghost hunt (photos from that are here). It wasn't what I was expecting, more of a walking tour and less of an exploring tour, but it was still good because it showed us new parts of Brighton that look like they'll be fun to explore in the future.

The tour didn't end up going into any of the supposedly haunted buildings but we went to a few notable places!

We stood in front of The Cricketers, a haunted pub in Brighton where Jack the Ripper is said to have planned his London murders. Next to it is another haunted pub, the two separated by a haunted twitten (a narrow British alleyway that's betwixt and between the pubs). I'll have to return to that pub as some point, though, because there's a Jack the Ripper room where you can see the pub has paid homage to the unidentified murderer.

We also went by a wall that had obviously been re-bricked in modern times only to discover it was home to Brighton's Grey Lady. This ghost is of a young woman who was studying to be a nun. She had been caught giving a few men naughty glances and her Mother Superior decided to brick her up, live, into the wall of a building. Rumours floated around for several hundred years whether that was a true story or not and finally the wall was knocked down to reveal bones of the young woman. She still haunts the area by walking in and around the alleyways that surround the wall she was put in.

One of the most interesting places wasn't even photographable, or at least worth it, because it was just a public park, or so it would seem. Apparently a tractor was coming in to flatten the park and make it more public-friendly when, about 40 feet into the small area, the tractor immediately plunged 20 feet into the ground, front first, falling into a chasm of sorts. Immediate inspection revealed over 600 skeletal remains of infants and toddlers in the makeshift catacomb, none of which had a record of existing in the town of Brighton. They solved the mystery soon enough, though: all of these children had died of smallpox and Brighton, being a resort town, couldn't let this fact mar the idea of it being an escape, especially when rich Londoners were escaping the smallpox outbreak by coming seaside, so they simply made these lives (and deaths) a secret, creating a small catacomb under the city.

If you were wondering, though… no, we didn't see ghosts. No, we didn't feel ghosts. No, we didn't hear ghosts. We even sat in a graveyard, on the side of tombs, having a chat as our guide gave us stories about the hauntings of this place, and nothing! Not one bit of psychic activity, even! Bah!

By the time we got back most of us flopped into bed because the very next morning was the Stonehenge and Bath trip!



We drove for hours with scenes like the above surrounding us, true English countryside. Needless to say it was gorgeous, huh? This was taken from the bus, too, alongside the highway as the sun rose. I don't know why more people don't live in the country, it's so beautiful!



We got to Stonehenge and it was amazing! …ok, and a little disappointing. I had always pictured great, grand stones that rose up at least 80 feet and… it wasn't. It's much smaller than they'd have you think, in my opinion (kind of like the Statue of Liberty, come to think of it). Plus, who knew, but on one side there was a sheep farm and on the other… well, they put a major highway right next to it! It's shocking, really. It was very cool to see in person, though, and to get to see the light hitting it in all the different ways, being able to tell what month it was by the light streaming through the archways, and knowing people put that there by hand was awing.


The rest of the Stonehenge pictures are here.

Bath was an adorable little city! If it weren't 4 hours away I think I'd return just to walk around the city and check out the little shops and streets! As it turns out, we didn't do a whole lot once we got there: the glass-making studio was closed at the time and all of us are so burnt out on British Literature that a group of us couldn't bear the thought of having to go to the Jane Austen house/museum. We, instead, went and got authentic Italian pizza (we had an Italian girl in our small group to verify this!) and had gelato for dessert. I actually don't regret that decision at all because we were with two US staff members, and then our table was mixed with nationalities instead of being the normal 80% American representation that the SiS program seems to offer.


(2 US staff not pictured, but both were British; a Jamaican man not pictured, US student and friend of the staff) Poland, Italy, US (south western), US (north eastern), Turkey.

We then went into the Roman Baths as the entire 40- or 50-something group and toured around just so we could see the beautiful mineral waters.



The water is dirty, true, but it's actually normally that colour because of the minerals present. The whole area was warm and humid because the waters are form a hot spring, so it was a nice change from the cold rainy days we had been seeing all last week. We all seemed to enjoy running around, looking at the couple presentations, and exploring the city again until it was time to meet back at the bus.


Rest of the Bath album is here.

I've a paper due tomorrow so I've got to go work on that. I'm hoping for sun and warm weather tomorrow, too, because we're visiting Ashdown forest tomorrow and I don't really want to see the 100-Acre Woods all muddy and wet! Plus, that'd ruin our picnic, and I so want to picnic in the forest!

Come on, sunny day!

Trip to the Royal Pavilion... sort of

My presentation on Tuesday morning went really well! And now it's Friday, the stress of the week is over… kind of. I mean, I'm free from having to turn anything in til Tuesday and therefore have a long weekend but, of course, our program's trying to pack as much in as possible.

Tonight is the Ghost Hunt Tour, which ends at 10PM, and tomorrow is Bath and Stone Henge, which starts at 7AM and is a 13-hour trip. I then have all of Sunday to myself, when I ought to do most of my week's reading because of the busy schedule and I really should go buy some fresh produce since I've been mainly subsisting on cereal, granola bars, and cereal bars.

I sold my tickets for Monday's performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream at the Globe Theatre because we were to leave a 3PM and not return til Midnight, but as I've a paper due at 9AM I thought I better cancel that one, especially considering we have a field trip that day, too, to Ashdown Forest, the real-life Hundred Acre Woods that A.A. Milne drew his inspiration from for Winnie the Pooh, followed by a mandatory film night so that we can watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Missing the performance isn't that bad, though… I had been hoping to catch the French play, Liberté, there instead since the company won't be putting on any of Shakespeare's tragedies while I'm here, all of which I much prefer to his comedies and the lighter viewings they're offering this season.

Today after class was spent taking the bus into downtown, looking at the outside of the Royal Pavilion while we waited for some friends to show up, and then deciding to instead get lunch rather than tour the place. I guess it seems silly, but we were starving, and we found a good Indian food place down the street. I really liked the curried vegetables they had, their naan was fresh and soft, and their aloo pakora was amazing, I know Mom would have loved the last bit… I guess I'll have to convince her to try it at home!

Anyways, that's all that I've been up to lately: school, school work, reading for school, and then being relieved it's the weekend and knowing school can't possibly ask to meet on a Saturday or Sunday.



I should get ready for the Ghost Hunt, now, anyhow. I'll check in with loads of pictures in a few days… if the ghosts don't get me first. ;)

First Few Days Catch-Up

First day as US. The light is pretty intensely bright here. It's cold and blinding, actually, as far as color and intensity, but it's lovely.


The first morning I was here I looked out my window and saw a big bunny hopping across that pad of pavement outside my dorm window. I caught him just as he jumped into the bushes here.

Anyhow, a quick update on what I've been up to the last few days.

I first arrived here on Friday morning and have basically just been getting set up for the term. Friday was spent putting my room together and reading; Saturday was spent shopping for a few homeware items I forgot to bring with me, attending a welcome meeting, attending an awkward alcohol-involved mixer between our professors, US staff, and all of us in the Sussex in September (SiS) program, and reading; and Sunday was spent doing the same. Lots of time spent navigating the bus system, lots of time spent reading because the internet wasn't made available until yesterday evening.

Monday was a completely different experience, though. We went to the grocery at the Marina in Brighton, right at the edge of the sea, and we found out it was a two-story store that still used shopping carts. Intrigued, my friend and I grabbed a cart and ran around trying to find the lift area. Failing that, we had to ask and the woman working there informed us the escalators were right around the corner of the entrance. We looked at our cart and asked if we had to do separate transactions between floors and the returned look was a quizzical one until she realized it was our first time in such a store. She assured us we'd be fine once we got over there so we trusted her. When we got there we sure were surprised -- the British are surely mechanical geniuses! And okay, don't ruin the magic for me… another friend told me that they have these type of escalators in the States, but I've never seen one, so it was really cool! Behold the genius of a shopping cart escalator:



It just locks the wheels right in there, the cart's can't move, and it takes you right up. Convenient and cool! I was impressed, obviously.

We ended up getting all of our grocery shopping done by noon and that left me the perfect amount of time to run to IT services to enable my internet, which would have been perfect except I was drawn into a battle with a Seagull From Hell.

Ok, ok, it wasn’t that interesting, I guess, but I was eating a granola bar on my way across the campus, walking on the paved path and minding my own business when all of a sudden I hear one loud woosh and a nanosecond later I feel wings hitting the back and crown of my head, then a sharp, hot cratch down my face, then it's gone. This seagull apparently decided he wanted my granola bar but instead of grabbing that, which was somewhere between my mouth and my waist, he decided he'd try to affix himself to my head. I turned around to look at the damned bird and he had landed not 20 feet away and was watching me, and as I walked away, glaring at him, he followed me, for a good 50 feet until I made a sweeping motion at him.

I came back and documented my assault:



The important thing here, though, is that the bird didn't get my granola bar.

Also, I am epicly brave and a heroic seagull battler. Just so you know.

A battle against a pen, though? That didn't go so well. I have effectively lost a pair of pants and a thermal shirt now because a pen I just bought broke and spilled all over them. Ugh. That's how my dad started today.

But today was also my first day of class, which went well enough. It was pretty dull, nothing I haven't already heard since it was an introduction to YA Lit., but I really like the instructor. I have tons more reading to do tonight, especially because I have a presentation tomorrow morning at 9AM on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, so I guess this it from me for now. Until next time!

Dorm Room Tour