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.

Seeing the Sights

As I enter my last two weeks here in Brighton and the UK in general, I've been trying to appreciate it a little more as far as the history and scenery go. Even if I'm constantly frustrated with the postal system, the transportation issues of the major cities I've travelled to, and the bitter cold that no one raised in the desert could ever learn to love, I still have to admit that it is a beautiful place.

Last weekend I visited London with my friends who I had spent time with in Germany. It was great seeing them and even though it was threatening to snow that weekend, it turned out to be gorgeously sunny in the city notoriously known for being grey and dull.



We visited Buckingham Palace on the way to the Tube station since the line we were going to use was down for repairs. It was a good time of day to be there because the sun was hitting the gilded edges of Big Ben's tower and made the Houses of Parliament that much more beautiful to see rising up to create that eerie skyline they make. We also heard Big Ben strike one, which was a bit of an accidental treat on our detour.



Those classically touristy areas, though beautiful, are always busy. One thing I appreciate in Brighton is that there's all this common beauty nestled in the city without all the crowds of London gathered around.



St. Paul's Cathedral's architecture is beautiful and just one of the old-time churches in the area. It's currently fenced off near the bottom because of falling masonry, a building that wasn't as well taken care of as it ought to have been, evidenced also by the extremely dark bricks. Its stained glass windows are hard to catch light through, but when you do it's gorgeous.



There are tons of small public parks here, all of which were blooming with English flowers and rose gardens just a month ago.





The streets in Brighton are lined with narrow houses, duplexes and flats, lots of empty properties because of the monetary crises going on, but with lots of character nonetheless.



Of course, one of the most beautiful and recognizable things about Brighton is the Pier. It's a proud coastal town and many of the places you go here like to boast that fact. And why not? It's beautiful, especially at sunset.



This was taken from the Main Pier, but on the right you can see the remains of the West Pier, which burnt to just its framework some years ago. They left the barebones architecture and it is now part of Brighton's recognizable ocean skyline.

There's this amazing hour or so during sunset that, if you visit the pier, you experience something unforgettable and moving: the evening dance of the starlings. Thousands of small birds take to the sky and fly in organized lines, clumps of hundreds of birds at a time, circling around, seemingly dancing in the sky. It's a bit surreal and certainly breathtaking. Beautiful to take in.





And then there's the North Laines, my favourite part of Brighton, and the part I'll certainly miss most. It's just small shops, owner-operated restaurants and boutiques, hand-crafted goods, a place of renewal and reuse, and the streets that contain the best food I've had here. It's hard to capture the liveliness here, or the spirit in the streets.

Even if I'm ready to go home, and I'm winding down this grand adventure, I've appreciated Brighton's best moments, too, and the sights it's allowed me to see. I'll miss it, I think.

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. ;)