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I have been in Canada for about a week now. Just one final post to summarize the last England activities. On the final day we left Charlbury pretty early in taxi van for London. When we arrived in London Beth and I split from Shawna, who was going back to Canada, and Maria, Mark, Jenina, and Mareika. We took our big suitcases to the International Student Hostel and paid to have them kept there until we got back from Paris. We had some time before our train to Paris so we went to Kensington Gardens to see the Peter Pan statue. It was one of Beth's must see things. It was hidden away in the corner of the park, but eventually we found it. The signs seemed to be leading us in different directions than where the statue actually was. After Kensington Gardens we went to see Buckingham Palace. It was pretty nice and we saw a guard all dressed up and marching back in forth in front of it. There were lots of nice flowers around.

Eventually we made it onto our Eurostar train and went through the chunnel. In Paris we didn't do much the first night because it was kind of late when we got there and was dark. The next day we went to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. After that we walked down the champ elysees and stopped in at a huge MacDonald's for supper. After that we saw the grand palais and the petit palais, went and saw the obelisk before finding a metro.

The next day we went to the louvre and saw all of the cool things there. We spent quite a while in there but eventually Beth got really tired of being there and I had seen everything that I wanted to see (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Hammurabi's Code). After the Louvre we walked along the seine and went to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was really neat because they just started some sort of service just as we arrived. I think I liked St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest more, but I liked Notre Dame in a different way. It has a different style. After Notre Dame, we just walked around exploring, hit the metro, and went to sleep.

The next day we left Paris and headed back to London. We almost missed our train even after arriving with plenty of time because we were waiting at the wrong place. The signs were not the greatest and after some running through the train station and mad scrambling with our papers and the immigration cards we caught the train. Our tickets were not exchangeable or refundable either so we would have been in big trouble if we had missed it. It was SO close.

In London we headed to the ISH and claimed the rest of our luggage. We spent the rest of the night at the hostel rearranging the stuff in our suitcases while watching star trek and eating the excessive amounts of food that we bought with the rest of our British money. The actual travel day wasn't that bad once we left England. It sucked at first because we had to lug around our bags and Beth wasn't actually able to lift her big suitcase very easily. We were fortunate and many people stopped to help her carry it up the stairs when I wasn't able to do it easily. Another complication was the Piccadilly line was partly closed to Heathrow so we had to rearrange. At first we didn't see any other way, but I noticed another express line leaving from Paddington. It cost us 21 pounds each instead of the 4 or 5 pounds that the tube cost us, but we were still on schedule after all of that. The flight was fine. The volume on my tv screen didn't work and I couldn't hear voices so I used Beth's headphone splitter to share her screen and sound with her. Most of the time I played Professor Layton on my DS so it wasn't a big deal that my tv didn't work. It was nice to finally be in Canada again and as soon as we had been through security in Ottawa we were at a Tim Horton's. Shortly after we saw hockey highlights on the airport tv's so we knew for sure we were in Canada. It was nice to be home, but it is way colder and there is no green grass or flowers. Overall the trip was amazing and I hope to visit again sometime.

Completely done

It is Saturday night/ Sunday morning and I can now safely say that the semester is finished. We had our play on Friday night. It had a very good first half and we were feeling good after the interval, but in the second half we made a few more mistakes. The crowd was really into it though ooo-ing and laughing. I managed to get a recording of the second half which I haven't seen all of but I am sure it will be very funny. After the performance we had a celebration party and almost died laughing at some of the footage from the second half.

Today we went to the church in the morning to get it all cleaned up. We had finished by about lunch time and Beth and I went into Oxford to try to print her pictures. We failed yet again and will try to do it in London. On the bright side the weather has been absolutely perfect, 20 degree weather with lots of sun and not a cloud in the sky. It feels like summer. In Oxford we stumbled upon the Oxford Literary Festival. There was a really big white tent which was pretty much a book store which had some book signings and drinks and stuff. It wasn't that great so we just went and walked around down a nice path and down to a river. We walked up the river and found our way through town on a different route than we had ever taken, towards Primark so Beth could get sunglasses.

After Oxford we went walking down a footpath along the Charlbury countryside. It ended up being quite a long and adventurous walk. We almost had to turn back but figured out that we actually were allowed to walk through the fields with the sheep in them. We then came upon a sheep that was trapped on the wrong side of the fence. After much stress and effort we got the gate opened and the lamb through it and reunited with the mother. After that we walked through another field with cows and horses in it. Walked around ponds, saw hills, almost walked through a rich person's backyard (they had an outdoor grass badminton court), walked across a pond on a small plank, climbed a lookout tower thing and did lots of walking. It was an amazing walking adventure and I am very glad to have experienced the English countryside.

Tomorrow will be church and making sure everything is packed and then Monday we leave bright and early for London and then Paris.

Finally done, mostly

It has been a while since I have done anything on here because I have been busy writing papers and studying for exams and going on day trips. We went to Rousham Gardens which were very nice and very green and we got to walk on the inside of a giant hedge at one point. Also there was a statue of a lion eating a horse. I actually had to do a write-up of it for an assignment so I don't really need to talk about it as much.

On another day trip we went to Bath. It started off with driving in the playbus and then we went to see a nice looking house that would have been like the one that Sir Walter Elliot moved to in Persuasion. After that we went to the Jane Austen center and looked through the museum there. Bath was a pretty neat place with lots of nice houses and some decent scenery. I tasted a little of the waters at bath but it just tastes like gross, hot, stale water. They are supposed to have mysterious healing qualities. We went to a place that had a dance hall similar to the ones that would have been used in Jane Austen's time. After that we went to a fashion museum. There were some really old gloves there which were pretty cool, but we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.

Those were pretty much the highlights of the Bath trip that I can remember now. At one point we went into a department store restaurant because Doug received a tip from a guy at the Jane Austen center that there was a good view of some building from up there. It wasn't anything too impressive to me and everyone just felt awkward for standing around in a restaurant staring out a window and then leaving. Also there was a neat bridge and water-step thing. The bridge had shops all long the sides and when you were on it you couldn't even tell that it was a bridge.

Exams and papers are all done now and today we are all going to go into Oxford just to wander around. We never really did much touring around outside of at the very beginning when we were given a brief tour by Louise. We were always going to class or to the library so there wasn't much time for fun. The other day though Beth and I went to the Oxford University Press which was pretty neat to see.

On this coming Friday, the 8th of April, we have to perform our play. I don't think anyone has memorized their lines yet, but we have all week to do nothing but that. Then on the 11th we leave Charlbury. Beth and I will be headed to Paris til the 14th, coming back and staying in London for a night and then catching a plane back to Canada on the 15th. It's crazy how time flies.

Leaving Budapest

Today we left Budapest. It was slightly sad to leave, but at the same time it was nice to be in an English speaking country. We left the hostel at 1PM, or 12 England time and arrived in Charlbury up at our houses at 9:30-ish. There were no issues with flights or travels, we just had to do it. It was surprising to see that Mark was here before us. I guess he came back the day before Mareika and Jenina. There really wasn't much interesting that happened and I am tired so I will end it here. Budapest was great. I recommend it to anyone who has more than a couple of days because there is a lot to see.

Budapest: Day 6

This was our last full day in lovely Budapest. It began with breakfast and hopping onto a metro train to go to Parliament to try to get some tickets for a tour. We were able to buy tickets for the 12:00PM tour, but it was only a little after 10AM. We had a bunch of time to kill and to make it worse it was raining and pretty cold. We killed time by exploring some weird buildings and going into a little cafe to eat some vanilla croissants.

We headed back to Parliament for the tour and had to head through a airport style security thing before we could enter. Parliament was large with lots of red carpet and gold everywhere. They told us something about the gold leaves that we so thin that 10,000 of them put together were only 1mm thick. They applied them by rubbing the brushes against their faces and then using the static to pick up the leaves. Apparently the technique is still used today. We were able to see the coronation jewels in one of rooms. There was a neat cigar holder outside of the speaker room and you could tell how well the speaker was by the lengths of the ashes on the cigars in the cigar holder. A very good speaker could be "worth a whole Havana". A pretty much took video for the whole tour so I don't need to say anything more about that besides that it said it was the 3rd largest European Parliament and that some of the pillars in the main staircase were made in Sweden and the other pillars were used in the British Parliament. The British Parliament tour was much more impressive, but it was still really neat to see this one.

After Parliament we headed toward Andrassy utca to see the Opera House. When we got there I was curious to see if anything was playing. We ended up buying tickets to see a ballet at 7PM. After that we continued down Andrassy to the House of Terror. It is a building where they used to hold and torture prisoners, do interrogations, that sort of thing. It was interesting and the basement has been recreated to look like what it would have looked like when it was used as a prison. They were pretty intense with their prisons here. One of the most memorable parts came when I had to use the bathroom and when I got back Beth was sitting on the stairs, asleep.

After the House of Terror we went down Andrassy until we came to Heroes Square. It was a about what I expected. Nothing too spectacular and probably holds more meaning in what it represents or something. The statues were pretty large and you can tell in one of the pictures I have with Beth standing beside it. At this point my hands were starting to freeze and we could see our breath (different than the 10-20 degree weather we had been getting) so we had to get moving. We went back down Andrassy utca and stopped at MacDonalds. It is weird because at fast food places over here you have to buy your ketchup and they come in little containers like you would get barbecue or sweet and sour sauce in. At least at MacDonalds you don't have to pay to use the bathroom.

After MacDonalds we headed back to the Hungarian State Opera House and watched a ballet called The Karamazovs or something else that I cannot remember in Hungarian (just looked it up, "Karamazov testverek", you can understand why I didn't remember). It was a good experience to see it, but I think I had more of an idea of what was going on before I started watching it. The music was really good though and I actually recognized some of it because I think I have it on my computer. After the ballet we hopped onto the metro and headed back to the hostel. Tomorrow our shuttle is set to pick us up at 1PM and then our flight is at 4. We are supposed to check out by 11 though. The people said it wouldn't be a problem if we wanted to leave our stuff there until we left. Hopefully everything goes according to plan and we should be getting into Charlbury by 9-ish because Beth wants to see the Peter Pan statue.

Budapest: Day 5

Thursday was rainy. It has been raining all day and made it a bit miserable to do much of anything. We began by going to the market again. We ended up getting langos because I wanted to try it quite badly. It reminded us of a pizza-donut-pretzel type of dough. It was deep fried and salty dough and you can add whatever you want to the top of it. I had cheese and sour cream. It is best not to think about the unhealthiness while you are eating it. It was pretty good and very filling because I had a hard time eating all of it.

After the food we took the metro to Kossuth Ter, which is the station right by Parliament. Beth spoke to one of the guards in french because he was more comfortable with french than english and he told us that the tickets were all gone for the day (again) and that it is best to get there around 8 when the ticket office opens because the tourists buy them all very quickly.

After this we walked in the rain across the chain bridge and went to the inside of St. Matthias church. It cost to enter which is different than the other churches that we have been to. It was very nice but not nearly as nice as St. Steven's and that one was free. We walked back to the market in the rain and bought sausages. I bought a bun downstairs for 45 forint but the sausage itself was 1350 forint. It was a pretty decent sausage but nothing that blew my mind, although I am not the biggest sausage fan anyways. We watched Up in the common room because we were both thoroughly soaked and did not desire to do any more walking in the rain. We have just been killing time with cards, games and reading ever since. I am just waiting for a sink to be free so I can brush my teeth, so I am sitting at the computer with a toothbrush in my mouth.

Tomorrow we will be trying to get a tour of parliament again as well as going to heroes square, and maybe also the house of terror and seeing the state opera house briefly. We also have to remember to call the shuttle people so that a shuttle will be able to pick us up around 1:30 on saturday. I think saturday morning we will try to go to the Bible museum that is not too far away from where we are staying.

Budapest: Day 4

This morning, Wednesday, began with Cave Church. It was really cool because it was cheap, only 400 HUF and it came with an audio tour. You wouldn't think it but the cave is apparently 20 degrees all year round because of underground thermal springs keeping it warm. Like many things here in Budapest, Cave Church was destroyed during Communist rule when churches were not allowed. It is hard to describe because it is just a cave with stained glass, statues, and altars in it. One of the rooms is decorated with extremely detailed wooden carvings. I will try to remember to put some pictures of it on here. There was a video at the end of the tour and at one point they played the main bit from Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars. It seemed strange and out of place, but it was pretty amusing (which I guess isn't a good thing for them because it wasn't meant to be amusing).

After Cave Church we went back to the market to explore for a little while. It was a good trip because we were able to get our lunch at a fraction of the cost of a restaurant. I think we know where we can go for lunch from now on. We are planning on going back to try Langos at some point and I would like to buy a Hungarian sausage. Today I managed to buy a couple of large buns, kind of like kaiser buns for 100 HUF, enough salami for two sandwiches for 190 HUF, a litre of Fanta for 240 (instead of the 320 per glass at the restaurants). We bought slices of cake for dessert at 220 a piece (instead of the 380-450 they charge per slice for the same stuff down the street). Altogether our meals worked out to just over 1000HUF (about $5) for the two of us. Way better than the 3700-4000HUF ($18-20) total that we would have paid at a restaurant for the same amount of food. We ate at the hostel because it was just down the street and there was nowhere to eat it easily without utensils.

After eating we walked down a touristy walking area, mostly Vaci Utca, toward Parliament. There were no more tickets for the tour that day so we had to settle for something else. We walked through a square and found ourselves looking at St. Steven's Basilica. After failing to locate Duna Castle, we headed to St. Steven's. It was really really big and we paid 400HUF to get to the top of it to get a panoramic view of the city. There were quite a few stairs and then an elevator to the top. With all of the walking and stair climbing we should have decent leg muscles. The view of the city was amazing, but it was nothing compared to the inside. I took quite a few videos of the inside of it to try to capture it, but I am sure that it doesn't even come close. There was gold and paintings and arches everywhere. We stuck our fingers into the holy water containers just for kicks. We "saw" the mummified right hand of St. Steven. "saw" because it was in a case and it was kind of dark and you couldn't really see much of anything, but I saw it enough to say that I have seen it - whatever that's worth.

After St. Steven's we started walking back to the hostel. We stopped at two or three churches along the way because they were there and open and free. All of the churches are gorgeous and put any church that I would attend to shame. I am sure that you could spend a whole day just going around to all of the different churches. For supper I ate the other sandwich that I had leftover from lunch and Beth bought a bag of salad so we could have caesar salad. I bought of bottle of juice because it said it has mangosteen in it and I really want to try a mangosteen, but there are too many other fruits in it to distinguish anything. Just recently we have finished playing a couple games of backgammon. The chess/checkers/backgammon game and the set of cards that Beth bought at the market have been put to good use. Now I am going to go to sleep knowing that I am caught up on my blogging, but not certain of what I will be doing tomorrow.

Budapest: Day 3

Tuesday began with uncertainty. We had planned on going to the Cave Church, but ended up getting started a little later and didn't think that it would be open because my Budapest book said it had weird hours. Instead we stayed at the hostel and watched the Revolution Day service out the window. The streets were crowded so I am not sad that we stayed inside. When we left we headed to get some lunch. The waiter seemed to be a bit slow getting to us, but we both enjoyed the food and had strudel for dessert.

After lunch we went to the hostel to plan the rest of our afternoon. We were not certain of where to go because it was Revolution Day, so we went to try to see if the Cave Church was open. We missed the entrance because we were looking on the wrong side of the road, but kept walking anyways and went up a hilly path to a cool looking structure/monument. Buda is very different from Pest because Buda is hilly and has more nature around it. Pest is just like a city, but it has some historical buildings too. From where we were on the hill we could see the Castle District which was our original plan for the day. The Elizabeth Bridge was closed to cars for the day and pedestrians were allowed to walk on it instead of using the regular footpaths (I am actually uncertain if it has footpaths, but I assume it does because the others do). We didn't cross it but went down one of the closed off roads and approached Buda Castle. It was neat from the outside, and also you quickly noticed that it was huge. We had pay to take an elevator to get to the top. The National Gallery and Library are up there inside the palace and because it was Revolution Day we were able to go in for free. It was a good thing that we went to see it.

After the Gallery we walked through a little market until we got to Fisherman's Bastion. There was a really cool looking church there, but we only got to see the outside of it. We walked down the hill toward chain bridge and realized that Buda reminded me more of Halifax while Pest is more like Toronto or London or something. It was dark by that time and all of the city was lit up with lights. Budapest is a very pretty city during the day but it is even nicer looking at night. We explored a little and walked back along the river.

After that we had supper, played some games/read/slept.

budapest: day 2

On Monday we started our morning by going to a huge indoor market that is close to where we are staying. It was pretty neat, and there was a lot of paprika, sausages, and food on the bottom floor and on the second floor there were toys, games, dolls, clothing, and that sort of thing. I bought a set of those funny stacking dolls.

After the market we went out to eat, but the guy took forever getting back to us after he gave us menus so we just left and went somewhere else. I got a bowl of goulash soup and they gave us some bread with it. It was pretty cheap and very filling. For dessert I tried the golden dumplings, and they were good also.

After lunch we went to the Jewish museum/Great Synagogue which was very large and impressive. I had to wear one of those funny little hats that cover your head. After that we just walked around to try to find some of the cool looking churches that are all over the place. The one that we wanted to see wasn't open that day or else we just couldn't figure out how to get in. We were right by the Danube at that point so we just walked up and down the river exploring because it was neat. In one of the squares that we went to there was a guy playing music on a bunch of glasses and I took a video of it because it was quite amusing.

Those are the highlights. There was more walking, and we ate supper, and went to bed.

Busapest: day 1

On our first day we started off by grabbing breakfast. It was nothing too exotic: toast, jam, cereal, the standards. After breakfast we headed off to the National Museum, the largest museum in Hungary, and spent until early-mid afternoon exploring the exhibits. One of the most impressive rooms in the place was the first room that you entered after buying a ticket. I think I have a picture of it on my camera so I will try to remember to upload it here.

The museum took us through the history of Budapest from its beginnings up until around the 1990s. By the end of it we were both Beth and I were tired of reading and getting quite hungry. We went to the hostel and ate some of our snacks because we figured it was too close to supper to get food. Our first language mistake occurred shortly after when we bought six 1.5L bottles of carbonated water. Unless we can manage to find some syrup packs to mix our own fountain pop it will probably remain a casualty of war. It wasn't very expensive and it gave beth and I quite a laugh.

After the water incident we decided to see if the market was open. It wasn't but we decided to check out the Buda side of the city because the bridge was nearby. We found a neat pathway up a big hill and there was a bunch of statues at the top. You could see out over the whole city from up there and was good for exercise. When we came back we stopped at a burger king because it was easiest and something that we recognized. After we were fed we explored some more of the city and then headed back to the hostel.

Getting to Budapest

Our trip to Budapest began at 7:04 when we boarded the train from Charlbury. Mike was nice and drove us to the station which meant we didn't have to get up quite as early as we would have had to before. We arrived at London Paddington Station and discovered that some of the tube lines were closed. It wasn't really that big of a deal and we ended up taking the same route that I had planned beforehand.

When we arrived at St. Pancras we bought tickets to go to Luton Airport. When we got to our destination we had to take a shuttle to get to the actual airport. There were no real problems with the flight there except that it was 20-30 minutes late. At the airport in Budapest we arranged transportation for getting to our hostel. It takes some stress off of everything because the shuttle will pick us up and take us back to the airport when we are going to leave.

By the time we arrived at the hostel it was starting to get dark. So we went and bought some food from a store nearby and packed it in for the night. We spent some time looking at maps and planning the rest of our trip.

Catch-up post

So I am in Budapest right now on spring break and there are a lot of events we have done that I haven't written about. I should probably get those out of the way before I start talking about Budapest.

I went to Blenheim Park one Sunday afternoon with everyone in the group minus Hannah, Sally, and Emma. The gardens (lawns) at Blenheim were extremely large. It is crazy to think that one person can have so much land when everyone else has basically none. The palace at Blenheim was really nice too, but we were not able to go inside. It was a nice day and the sun was shining as I remember it. At one point mark stuck his head into a bush and it was funny so I took a picture of it. Sadly I do not have access to that picture right now so this is a reminder to myself to put that picture up when I get back (or remind me in the comments if you read this and it still isn't up and it is past the 19th). There were some neat fountains behind the palace with lots of statues. There was a crazy amount of poop in the park when we were walking in the grass. I think it is because of the geese. To cap off the event Mark did a front flip down a hill and almost killed himself.

The next trip that we had was to Steventon and Chawton which are places that Jane Austen used to go to. We took everyone's favourite/hated vehicle, the playbus. Favourite because it has Playbus on the side in rainbow letters, hated because some of the seats face backwards and make your stomach feel like it is in a washing machine. Somehow my co-op group was in charge of making packed lunch again. We haven't made an actual meal yet. We headed toward Steventon, but had to go to some lady's house because it was lunch time and also because there was a funeral that morning at the Church in Steventon. We met Doug Mantz and his wife. We ate our packed lunches, and then visited the neighbour's house because it is a heritage site and looks very similar to Anne Hathaway's cottage. You can see outside by looking up his chimney, and the house has a thatched roof. We went to the Steventon church from there which is the church that Jane Austen would have gone to and her father was the Rector. From this point on the trip was super rushed because the funeral was unexpected and pushed all of our times back. We rushed from Steventon church to the cottage that Jane Austen lived in. I didn't really even get to look in all of the rooms because Doug was trying so hard to keep up with the disrupted schedule. After the house we went down to a little conference room and had a lecture given to us by Doug's wife. I think her name is Eileen, but I am not sure. The lecture was supposed to be about Jane Austen with some context of women writers, but it ended up being a lecture about women, how they were oppressed and... oh also Jane Austen wrote stuff. It was very informative, but didn't really seem to fit. After the cottage we hustled over to Jane Austen's brother's house. It was a nice place which is also a library that people can go to if they are researching female writers. After this busy day we headed back onto the Playbus and drove for another hour and a half to get back to Charlbury. Marion gave us a nice surprise because she left some cookies, tarts, and beverages on the bus after we left from the cottage Austen lived in. I guess I knew about it beforehand, but had forgotten.

Everyone was getting sick, including Beth so I feared it would hit me just in time to leave for March break, but I got lucky and avoided it. On the friday before we left we had play practice. It is coming along, but everyone still needs to memorize their lines as well as get their cues and all of that. In the future we will undoubtedly have Glenna stressed to high levels with our lack of readiness. I think we only will have a week and a half or so to write all of our papers when we get back from the break. This final month is going to be nuts.

Day Trip: Broughton Castle

On the Tuesday after our Stratford trip we took a relatively short drive to Broughton Castle. It is not so much of a castle as a really old, really large house, but we were told that it is a castle because it has a turret. So for anyone out there looking to build a castle keep that in mind. The first thing that I noticed about Broughton Castle is that it seemed colder inside then it was outside. The place seemed like a refrigerator. I feel bad for the people that would have lived there a long time ago.

In the first large room the lady let us try on some of the armor. I don't remember the exact year that it was from, but the helmet was neat and I got to hold a sword. I think the sword was a little bit newer than the armor, but still old. It seems like it would have been tough wearing all of the armor because the sword alone seemed pretty heavy.

The other day Beth and I were watching Shakespeare in Love and noticed quite a few of the scenes that were set in Broughton Castle. I think it made me enjoy the movie more because I could recognize the places as being places that I had just recently been standing on.

We were lucky and ran into Lord Saye at the end of the tour. He offered us tea, but we were running behind schedule and had to meet some other people for lunch. It would have been neat to have tea with him. One of the rooms that we were in had a bed from 1990-something which was funny because you would expect it to be really old. Broughton Castle was one of the most enjoyable places that we visited in my opinion because there was a mix of new and old.

Day Trip: Stratford

Today we went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the birthplace and burial site of William Shakespeare. It was pretty neat, but the cold wet weather made walking around slightly less enjoyable. It was nothing compared to weather and temperatures at home though so it really isn't much to complain about. It was cool seeing everything, but one thing that stands out is that a lot of it was not 100% positive on it being correct information. They would say this is probably the site where this happened, so if ten years from now when we discover that it actually wasn't, the money you gave us will have been to see something that isn't actually what you wanted to see or what we advertised it as.

We began at Anne Hathaway's house, went to the Shakespeare birthplace, Nash's house, Hall's Croft, and to the Holy Trinity Church where his bones and the bones of some of his family are buried. It was a very nice and very old church dating back to 1210. It is a church of England now but I think it used to be a Roman Catholic place.

Tomorrow we will be heading to Broughton Castle. It is nice to not have to worry about studying for exams or writing papers anymore, but there are still lots of books and plays for this semester that I have not read yet.

Brief Relief

Exams are now finished so at this point we are 50% done of all of the work that we will do over here. I feel like I did alright on everything, but we will see how I actually did when the marks get back. I had a super productive unproductive day. I made some serious progress on Pokemon HeartGold, finished Portal finally, and watched Black Swan with Beth. I wasn't the biggest fan of Black Swan because it was strange and I could also see the ending coming by about halfway through.

Tomorrow we are going to have a games day at the church and we will get to try Beth's version of ice cream cake as she attempted to make it the way that my mother told her to. She has already given me a warning that it wasn't going to be exactly the same, but I am sure that it will still taste good. It is going to be sad to have to actually do work again whenever our two new classes start. Hopefully they are interesting. I think we have more courses at RPC this time so classes will hopefully be less noisy than when at the church.

Finished, sort of

6967 words later all of my papers are finished for the first half of the program. I have decided to take the night off and relax until tomorrow. Friday and Saturday I have exams to do so I cannot relax for very long.

We are facing a bit of a dilemma because tomorrow the only reason to go to Oxford is for lunch and everything is already paid for, but that requires going in to Oxford and wasting precious study time on travel. My left ear bud has been cutting in and out recently so I might try to look for a new pair of headphones while I am there.

I think I have written enough today and in the past few days...

Looking forward to: Day trips to Stratford-upon-Avon and Broughton Castle

Crunch Time

Wednesday at 9PM is the deadline for all things for the first half of the program to be finished. I almost finished my first paper today. I only have to write 300-400 more words and I will be completely finished of it. Monday and tuesday I will be writing my other 2500-3000 word paper. Wednesday until 9PM I will be working on the other two short essays that I have to write. It should be tight, but if I am efficient then it will all be finished on time and be of a good level of quality.

Also it is my birthday tomorrow.

On a strange unrelated note I have been testing out IE9 and it seems surprisingly good so far. It has been a long time since I have used internet explorer and this likely won't change me from chrome, but it is worth noting that internet explorer actually isn't horrible.

Goals for tomorrow:

-finish shakespeare paper

-write 1000-1500 words in drama paper

London

Just got back from London last night. It was a pretty good trip and got to see lots of cool places. Last monday at the SA meeting Beth hit her head on a ledge at Gill's house and gave herself a mild concussion so that was interesting. She wasn't sure if she was going to be able to come to London or not because her head was still hurting, but she came and was feeling much better as the days went by.

On Thursday we traveled to London and went to see the Tower of London. We spent most of the afternoon there. Got to see the crown jewels and where famous old people were buried or executed or imprisoned. Apparently the imperial state crown has 2868 diamonds on it, which seems crazy, but that is the number that I read on one of the information signs. Thursday night we went and saw An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theatre. We were pretty high up and far back, but it was a decent play anyways.

On Friday we went to see the Globe Theatre. It was kind of small, but I think it was basically what I expected it to be. It would be cool to get to see a play there, but they don't start their season until after we are gone. Plays in the winter don't go very well there I guess, because they have no roof to cover them. After that Beth and I ate lunch and then walked over to the Palace at Westminster to get a tour of the place. The walk over was nice (very windy). We got to see the London Eye, something that Beth wanted to go in, but it was expensive. Big Ben was as the title would suggest: very big. I have been to Parliament in Ottawa, and it was cool, but nothing compared to this. Mainly because it is a palace and everything is made of either gold, or shaped like a monarch. It seemed like every inch of space was incredibly detailed and nothing was very plain. The House of Commons was a bit plain, but it was bombed and rebuilt after WWII so it makes sense that they may not have had enough money to make it pretty. That night we went and saw The Rivals at the Haymarket Theatre, it took a little while, but I got into it and enjoyed the play.

On Saturday we checked out, went to Trafalgar Square, went to the National Portrait Gallery, had fish and chips for lunch, and then saw The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre with Beth. The Phantom of the Opera was very entertaining. After supper we just kicked around trying to figure out where people were and then we left for Charlbury. Overall it was a good trip, but it was slightly annoying that everywhere we went there was construction going on.

Almost February

It has been a few days since my last post, but nothing earth shattering has happened so it isn't that big of a deal. On Friday the 28th we had presentations. There was a bit of a mix-up about where the class was being held and when the class was supposed to start we realized that the schedule said we were supposed to be at the other building.

We had already set up at this building and John showed up shortly after. We were told that we had messed up though and that it was going to cost us extra money because we were dumb. It turns out that we were actually in the right building all along because they had changed the original schedule. That wasn't a very fun experience.

Today I stayed at home and read a bit of Macbeth. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays that I have read before so it will be nice to be able to talk about one that I actually know pretty well for once. After supper Mark, Beth, and I relaxed playing DS, and giving the dog belly rubs.

Tomorrow there will be church and pizza with some of the students from RPC so hopefully it will be a good time.

January 24th

The 24th of January began with Beth, Sally, Hannah, and I catching the early train to Oxford. We killed time before class and then discussed The Merry Wives of Windsor until it was time for lunch. After lunch we had an exam talk, which seemed kind of pointless to me, but it was nice that they took the time to explain it to us anyways.

After school business had been attended to, Beth and I looked around some shops for things that we both needed. Beth needed boxes and we both needed to find a way to charge our DS lites. I am told that I can just buy a UK charger and it will work fine, but I want to do a little more research before committing to anything.

Today is the day that we are supposed to take the garbage out at the baptist church, but we forgot to do that on the way by. We were halfway to our homestays and realized that we needed to go back. When we got there it appeared as if Maria had already done it, but one of the garbage bins wasn't emptied and the recycling bin wasn't at the road. At least the trip wasn't all for nothing.

Tomorrow we are planning on doing all kinds of research at the Bodleian so we will be ready for our presentations on Friday. Hopefully we can get as much done as we hope to and still make it back to meet with Marion about the London trip.

Looking forward to:

-London trip meeting

-London trip

-researching at the Bodleian

Second Sunday

Today was the second Sunday of our trip and our first service at the baptist church. There was a guest speaker because they are presently without a minister. Some of the timing on the music was off, but besides that it was a pretty good service. After church finished we began the progressive lunch.

I began the progressive lunch with spicy tomato soup that burned my mouth and also bread. It was pretty tasty even though it was quite hot. At this house we discovered that pretty much everyone at the table played a musical instrument and the idea of a jam session was raised. It sounds like a good idea, but sadly I do not have a trombone and I doubt anyone has one to let me borrow. I would still go check out a jam session though.

The next meal was roasted lamb, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, parsnips, gravy, zucchini, etc. It was very tasty. Oh also there were sausages.

Then we had pudding (dessert) which wasn't really pudding at all. It was very good though. Some sort of apple crumble type thing only it was more like cake. Also profiteroles, custard, lemon pie, some thick cream, and yogurt.

I guess you could say that I ate well today. After the final meal all of the hosts and students met at Marion's house for coffee/tea (or fizzy lemonade if you are me and don't like either tea or coffee). To end off the night I read Merry Wives of Windsor for class tomorrow.

Things to look forward to:

-Tuesday with no class (serious Bodleian study day)

-Presentation on Friday (woohoo!)

-lunch at RPC

Week 1

It is already the end of my first week in England. Kind of hard to believe, but I am sure that time slipping by will be a common theme of the trip. I was planning on doing a blog post for every day, but that didn't happen, so in an attempt to get back onto that track I will summarize my first week up until now and highlight all of the cool parts.

First thing that stands out in my mind was being sworn in at the Bodleian library. It was funny because we had to promise not to kindle fire in the library, which I guess would have been a problem back when people used candles, but now it just seems to be there for history's sake and for a bit of comedy. The buildings in the Bodleian library are amazing! Enough cannot be said.

Taking the train to get to Oxford is a new experience. It is nice to be able to have a way to get places if you don't have a car (which is a topic I could discuss at length - they drive fast here). I have figured out how the train system works and also I have a pretty good idea for where all of the essential places are located.

Classes have been interesting so far. It isn't exactly what I expected and it almost feels like they are shoving us into whatever corner of space that is available, but I am studying at Oxford so I will try not to complain too much. As far as the actual classes go, a lot of it is discussion based so it is nothing too different from my communications courses.

Today we went to the Ashmolean museum and saw a lot of neat things there, but sadly the Egypt section is closed until November while they build a time machine or something. The rest of the week so far has been fairly standard and quite frankly I forget a lot of the specifics (part of why I wanted to blog everyday). Overall, I would consider England: Week 1 a success.

Things to look forward to:

-progressive lunch!

-learning!

-walking!

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures, and hopefully consistent blog posts so I can remember what I have done over here whenever I am older!

Day 1

In an attempt to actually remember what happened during my trip to England I am going to try to do a little bit of blogging. If you are reading this then I hope that something cool happens so that it isn't just me writing about common stuff because that way no one in this process benefits.

The trip to England began with the uncomfortable, long flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Beth, Shawna, and I bounced around in airports and airplanes and managed to find our way to the meeting place. Since none of us remembered to print off the directions on how to get there, we had to go based on memory. It all worked out well in the end and it was quite easy to navigate.

I ran into a couple of people and recognized them as Peter and Kay. They directed me to the other group of students who were also in the program and sitting right beside us the whole time.

After everyone finally managed to get to the meeting point we took off in a bus toward Charlbury. We all struggled to keep our eyes open, but not wanting to miss any of the new scenery tried our best to fight the need to sleep.

After winding through the narrow English streets we came upon the Baptist Church, where we ate some pizza and greeted a bunch of new people. They were all very nice, but meeting so many new people while operating on zero sleep just isn't fun. I was very surprised at how narrow the streets were, but it was quite normal for them. After the food we went back to our homestays and continued fighting the urge to sleep until it was closer to nighttime. The sleep that night was the sweetest sleep that I had experience in a long time, and in the morning I woke up feeling refreshed, but still not quite at my best.