Wells on Wednesday

Hello!

On Wednesday I went to Wells. I took the 173 bus. Google maps says it only takes 45 minutes but I could have sworn it took twice that time to get back (probably because schools were getting out). Round trip was about 7 pounds (6.50 maybe?).

Basically it's a town with a Cathedral and a palace where the bishop lived next to it (aptly named Bishop's Palace), a place for the choir to live on the opposite side (Vicar's close), and a market west of all this. The city grew where it did due to natural "wells" that bubbled up from the ground. Water from the Mendip hills runs underground in a river and at Wells the water is forced to the surface (though I believe most of the river continues to run underground). Inside Bishops palace, there are some pools where you can see it bubbling up. It's probably hard to see, and not the best quality, but I took a really short video of it.

I posted 50 pictures to facebook and took about twice as much, partially because to take pictures in the church you had to pay for a photography permit (3 pounds) and I decided since I'd only paid 1/6th of the suggested donation I'd buy a permit to help out. I was really impressed with the stained glass windows. I was also impressed by the size of the church, considering that it's construction began in 1180. I feel like painting the roofs and putting the decorated bosses up and all that jazz would be pretty dangerous in that time. There was an older medieval and saxon church before the current cathedral was built. There was a garden outside the cloisters where you could see some of the old foundations. If you want to read more about the history of the church, their website is pretty good. They have guided tours at 11 and 12 (and in between too as well I think, there were plenty of guides) but I was content with just walking around, taking photos, and occasionally listening in.

I'm really glad it didn't end up raining all day. The forecast said it was likely to, and it was cloudy for most of the morning, but the sun came out a few times and there was even a bit of blue sky!

Overall it was a nice day trip. My motivation for going was mostly because Hot Fuzz was filmed there, and Brian loves that film. Unfortunately market square looks quite a bit different when there's an actual market going on there, so I wasn't really able to obtain pictures of the "set" that looked good, but I was still there. I also couldn't find the Somerfield Supermarket...(it's in the movie).

That's really all I have to say. I'm not sure how well I'll be able to blog about my trip to Italy next week and Austria and Munich after that. We'll see.

In Harry Potter's Footsteps

Yesterday I went to Lacock Abbey.

You know I really don't feel like blogging about this.

I at least don't intend on making this a formal post. (Read: incorrect grammar and fragmented sentences ahead)

It was a great trip but I need to figure out chemistry but I feel like I need a book to do that because I don't really get what's going on.
I think I shall have one of these "freakingoutwhydoIprocrastinate" introductory paragraphs before I actually go into my post.

Being homesick makes me grumpy. Not having a car makes me grumpy. Not getting sleep makes me grumpy. Eating the same things many times makes me grumpy. What if I just want arby's?? GAH!
I like my digital picture frame though. Definitely one of my favorite Christmas presents even if I don't want to admit it. Hey I got him skyward sword. That is a good game! I miss it.
I am holding back the desire to cuss for the kiddos that may be reading this that are related to me. Oh did I mention I also get grumpy when the third fire drill in 3-4 days wakes me up from bed YET AGAIN.

So this was a nice little daytrip. Didn't take a whole lot of planning. The Abbey didn't open up until 10 or 11. Rode a train (3.50 pounds for a return ticket/there and back) to Chippenham. Explored it a bit. It's a pretty small little town. The main street was shut down for a market. We (Matt and I) walked around St. Andrew's church and saw a couple of tudor-style houses and we walked past a building called The Bear and we found the bus station eventually and we ate breakfast at Gregg's which is this bakery and I had hot chocolate (which really wasn't that good but it was a hot drink) and a bacon and sausage sandwich thing for 2 pounds. It was great. And the bread was fresh.

Well we had 45 minutes until the bus left, so we checked out the Chippenham museum. The two elder gentleman manning the visitor's desk were very eager to talk to us and impart knowledge. They were very friendly, it was a good use of time. The museum itself was alright. We found out Chippenham established the first police force in England. I think Gloucester was not far behind. They told us to eat at the George.

So we got on our bus to Lacock and we got off a stop too early but we walked around and charmed by how cute the little town was and how incredibly English it was. When an American thinks of an English town, the image that comes to their mind is this city. Perhaps it's because a lot of filming is done there.

The abbey itself costs about 10 pounds to get into. The abbey is surrounded by gardens, but the crocuses were only just coming up. You could see the purple buds but the only thing that was blooming were a couple of rare daffodils. Some daisies and round pink little flowers were coming up, and some tulips too, though there are not going to be any tulips in the rose garden this year because a badger ate them.
I'd say the 10 pounds was worth it, because then you can go upstairs and stay out of the cold and explore the rooms. There are a lot of interesting things in there because the Talbot's had a lot of scientific interests and collected seashells and books and many other knick knacks. There are paintings of people that lived in the house all over the walls. Some looked quite familiar, but it could have been the style more than the actual painting. There were stone fireplaces everywhere...
Really the whole reason I went was because some Harry Potter scenes were filmed in the cloisters. It's the only part that still feels like it was an Abbey. It was one of the last churches/abbeys to be destroyed by Henry the 8th because it had the most money. To destroy churches, they would strip the lead from the roof. Someone bought the abbey and used it as a home and took down the church, but the cloisters remained untouched and most of the changes were made to the upstairs.

The abbey is also where the first photo negative was taken. It was taken out of one of the windows with a rather primitive camera. I think it was taken by a camera in the style of one of the "mousetrap" cameras in the picture on the right.

And that's really all I have to say. The food at the George was pretty good. It was 7.50 pounds for me to eat fish and chips and a water (Fish and chips always come with peas here), so that's not so bad for a touristy area.

More photos of the Abbey. (The window the first photo negative was taken out a bay window next to the octagonal tower. You can see it in the first photo (farthest left) in the third row down).

 

The following photos are from the great hall.

 These photos are from the garden 

Typical Tuesday

Mom requested that I write a blog post about what a typical day for me is like.
I really only consider Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays typical days. Mondays are too long, I don't have class on Wednesday, and the weekend is the weekend. So I decided I'd tell you how my day went today.

At 8:30, my alarm went off. (Occasionally I wake up earlier than that, around 7:20ish, for a few minutes - maybe my roommate moves around or something. I never really know why I wake up early.) I hit snooze. After all, I'm still on American time a bit with a boyfriend (or an "it's complicated?") at home so I've been up until 3, not so much because he asked me to or I feel like I need to but just because I'm a night owl and I loose track of time. And I'm pretty freakin' lonely. Not that I'm not meeting people, it's just friendship takes time. Today I only hit the snooze once. It's an accomplishment for me. I've been setting the alarm at 8:15 and getting up at 9:15. But today I managed 8:45. That means I was able to get my oatmeal in! I'm getting better at this.

Accomplishment: The sheets match the curtains!

At 9:30ish I'm walking out the door. My first class, inorganic chemistry, is at 10:15. I can make it up the hill now without pausing for breath, which means I also haven't been occupying each bench I come across on the journey up. I've been able to do this for 2-3 weeks now. Stephanie and Sarah still beat me up the hill on Monday though, and they left after I did. I'm not sure if this means that I'm a slow walker, or that I'm impeded by the contents of my bookbag, or what. I am always tempted to just take the bus, but it's a 1-2 pounds.

(Note this is actually a stop for going down the hill, since it's on the right side.)

We get out of class around 11:05 and I hit up Tiki for a ham and cheese toastie (grilled cheese with ham) for 2.50 pounds. Level 1 serves mexican, chinese, italian, and some kind of traditional meals (bangers and mash is cheap but I don't like the sausage, the mashed potatoes are always dry, and when I get the corn, it tastes dried out as well.). They're a good deal because the portions are huge but I don't really approve of the taste. I'd rather have a little more quality for the five pounds I pay. In Tiki, I always pick one of the green chairs because they're large enough to take a nap in. I probably get weird looks but I feel bad when I take up a whole couch to nap in like I did yesterday in Level 1. Junior high and highschool taught me the great skill of falling asleep in any position besides standing up.

(What I really wanted to eat was one of these)

Unfortunately this skill leads to me falling asleep in the last 5-10 minutes of the first lecture and a great deal of the second. I wake up whenever I have to turn a page. The second lecture was physical chemistry, in which we have switched to a new professor. It seems the professors change quite often for each class. The longer I have the same professor, the more able I seem to be able to focus on what they're saying. Perhaps this is all coincidal to when I eat, take naps, and how much sleep I received the night before. I do the problem that's given in the notes, which is the opposite of what I did in inorganic, since I started to doze during the section in inorganic when we looked at questions and answered them. The amount of things we will be expected to memorize seems annoying to me (The periodic table, the conversion from pascals to atmospheres, etc.).

I get out of that class and that's all I have for the day. On Tuesday and Friday I only have two classes. I have a bag in my bookbag that contains stale bread heels that I'd been planning to feed to the ducks for a while and it's sunny today, so on my way down campus I stopped by "the lake" (It's just a pond) and fed three ducks. I walked home to put the milk I'd gotten from Fresh away. I sat in my room for a few minutes, decided to change into a t-shirt and something less warm than skinny jeans, and then headed back out to get rid of the rest of the bread and have an adventure. That's what you have to do when it's sunny and warm after it's been so cloudy and cold (though granted this weekend was pretty nice).

View of Bath from the Bathwick Hill shortcut

The library, the University's pride and joy, open 24/7, and "The Lake"

Ducks (Brian and I had a discussion about whether the ones on the right were ALL mallards)

The cheeky bugger who got mad at one of the mallard after not getting bread. Sore loser. Obnoxious Sore loser.

Now exploring is not normally part of my daily routine, and it's becoming less and less of a thing as the city becomes less and less novel to me. I've taken different routes to and from school, I've gotten turned around plenty of times looking for bars or pubs or grocery stores or just plain walking around, and from doing cotswold way and the free walking tour, that I'm starting to feel like I know this city pretty well now. Today was a search for the bridge in Prior Park.

I started off feeding the ducks in the canal above my flat. Someone got really upset at these two bikers. He thought they were going too fast. He started cussing up a storm and his dog was barking and I thought something was going to go down.

But back to the adventure. I thought you could get to the bridge by walking the Bath Skyline trail. However the trail is not always marked all that well. I ended up walking up the driveway of what appeared to be a nice manor, thinking it was the trail all along. I should have known it was too nice. An older fellow exited the house as I was approaching and set me back on the right path - down the driveway and back up to the right of the gate on the steep path. I feel like I'm going to be well prepared for Innsbruck now. Anyway I was able to photograph deer for the first time, which the man told me lived there...I got the feeling he was hinting that I had disturbed them and apologized for being a disturbance.

(Crocuses and Snowdrops)

At some point I broke off from the skyline trail because it started to annoy me and I ended up on the campus of Prior Park College. Colleges here are for ages 11-18. They're not what we would call a college, they're kind of like highschool. Only they're usually really nice highschools. This one happens to be a boarding school - I'm not sure if all colleges here are like that or not. I knew the bridge I was looking for was in Prior Park, below it on the hill, but I had no idea how to get there. I walked past the traditional entrance to Prior Park and found out it was closed. So I kept walking down the pavement (sidewalk) and got to Church Lane, and took some kind of dirt path around and ended up discovering the delivery entrance to the Park. BRIDGE FOUND! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

"Yeah my highschool is 180 years old."

I probably could have snooped around for a bit but I thought I might be seen from up high on the hill by the person in the gatehouse, so I decided just to go back the way I came. I ended up walking past an old church (they're all over the place really) on the way to Widcombe Hill, one of the hills that leads to school. I like taking this Hill back from school because it's less steep and easier on my knees, but I take Bathwick Hill to school because it's a shorter distance and therefore faster. Widcombe Hill always takes me past a "hobo hangout" (this isn't a british phrase, it's one of mine) which always involves some foul smell that results from the burning of who knows what. It was warm out today (55 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 13 Celsius) and they were still burning something.

See the Smoke?

St. Matthew's

The line of houses at the top of the green hill shows the Bathwick Hill shortcut to school

I came back to my flat again and talked to Brian some and then got ready to head up to the Plug for Trivia Night at 7:30. I was late (I seem to be late to a lot of things these days) and when I got there I found out Nick and Clinton weren't there. So I went up to the bar and asked what I should do, and she directed me to the guy heading the event who also had a microphone, and he asked who didn't have a group of six and three guys raised their hands so I joined them. I have no idea what their names were but I thought it was a rather unique collection of guys. It was like a gradient of nerdom to...crude jock maybe? I don't know how athletic the third guy was, I only know he was a little crude.

I feel I failed a bit as an American. I did not know Barack's father's name. I could not list the past ten presidents (I got stuck after Obama, the 2 bushes and clinton...I should have realized Reagan died pretty recently and that Carter is still alive. When they said Nixon was in the past ten, I came up with Gerald Ford, and they mentioned Reagan and I was like, okay that seems reasonable because he seems newish, and Lyndon B Johnson was thrown out there and I agreed that that one was fairly recent as well. We didn't even think of Carter though.) The point of one of the sections was to name the least commonly known in the category. One was Weasley brothers (I got Charlie but changed it to Bill because I wasn't sure, resulting in a half point instead of a whole. Half-points were given to the second least common.), Undergound stops in London starting with B, States in the US starting with A (I got Arkansas! But I guess the guy spelled it wrong but that's okay!), seven deadly sins (with half a point for wrath...we could name all seven but didn't know which would be the least commonly known), Ten commandments (again we could list all of them but picked thou shall not covet instead of no idols or remember the sabbath), and spice girls (again, all five were named but scary was picked while ginger was the correct answer. I'm indignant about that). I couldn't remember why Mark Hamil was famous and felt really really bad. Luke Skywalker did cross my mind but I wasn't positive. One of their friends came around and told us that and I was extremely disappointed in myself. I didn't know any of the national anthems. The only city I could identify in the picture category was Chicago. I didn't know current events at all. I didn't know which river ran through Philadelphia. I also didn't know the name of the famous street in New York, but one of the guys knew. It ended up being a pretty fun 2-2 1/2 hours. Also apparently most girls here don't drink beer...I keep getting comments about being a girl that will drink it. It's cheap and I've developed a taste for it. I still liked my 5 pound cosmo on Saturday. (When beer is around 4 pounds and cocktails are 5, why get beer then?)

Overall it was a pretty full day. It's 1:00 am and I still need to do laundry and just finished a ham and pineapple frozen pizza (well I obviously heated it in the oven) but I don't have class tomorrow so it's not a big deal really.

Say Cheese!

I'm going to waste perfectly good introduction space by apologizing for not updating my blog in three weeks and making excuses about how tired I've been and how I've been trying to keep tabs on my social life back home and worrying about expenses and getting my spring break planned. Being an exchange student is hard. I miss home so much...the food tastes different here, and I miss my friends, and the cheap spots to grab beer (You can't beat $2 32 oz. refills of Amber Bock, you really can't.)...I suppose I should try to get more involved here, it's just a bit of a struggle right now.

With all of that out of the way, this weekend I visited Cheddar Gorge! They still mature cheddar cheese there in Gough cave. It's not all too far away, but I don't think I'll ever sit in the back of a bus again. These streets are not straight, they have all kinds of curves, and they're bumpy as well. I never knew I had motion sickness until I got to England. (Well...riding in the car while mom's driving in Chicago might've given me a hint...please don't take offense mom, Chicago traffic is just bad!)

They keep the cheese in cages so that the rats don't get to it.

Gough cave is also famous because Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest complete skeleton, was discovered there. They used to keep the remains in the cave, (and the tour guide joked that whenever it would flood they'd have to look for scattered bones,) but when they realized it's significance they moved the remains to the Natural History museum (in London). Gough cave was alright, but I was really just thinking of Spring Mill's cave the whole time, and I thought a little bit about Wind Cave as well. And maybe of that tiny coyote passage tucked away on a deserted farm in Indiana, in which I discovered that I become claustrophobic in spaces my mind does not declare clean. This cave does have mirror pools, which are pretty interesting, but I believe they are manmade, so the naturalist inside of me isn't quite sure what to think of them besides that they're pretty. The image on the left is Aladdin's cave, which has a mirror pool. It is inside of a cavern called St. Paul's Cathedral. The image on the right is from a cavern called Solomon's temple. The largest cavern, Bishop's Palace, can only be entered by going through the river with special gear (scuba tanks basically), so we did not see it. The one below Aladdin's is also in St. Paul's Cathedral. The remaining photo is a mirror pool by the entrance. Also we learned two ways to remember the different between stalactites and stalagmites. Stalactites cling tightly to the ceiling. I always seemed to remember it just by thinking stalagmites has an m in it, and so does bottom.

Cox Cave is smaller but is also in the gorge. I didn't like it because they had different colored lights and it seemed kind of artificial. They placed weird choral hymn music as well. There was some Crystal Quest adventure thing at the end and I got kind of annoyed because I just wanted to walk through it and there kept being people standing around looking at the plastic statues and I really just wanted to get out and back into the sunlight that was just starting to come out.

Another thing you should know is that goats are all over this gorge.

We went to the Cheddar Gorge Cheese company. A lot of my friends got free cheese samples but I felt bad being in a group of like ten people when I knew no one was going to buy any cheese, so I just had what I think they called a cheese stick...it reminded me of cheez-its but it was really good. (No they do not have cheez-its here. Yes I know, what a shame.)

After exiting Cox cave, the 274 steps up to the start of the gorge rim trail. You could see a long way. I climbed the lookout tower as well but the impressive views didn't really start until I hiked up the trail. It was fun and reminded me of climbing mountains in the Rockies or at Turkey Run. I just haven't come across any natural landscapes that compare to the US, I'm sorry. That vacation in June must've spoiled me. However this is a great place to explore little touristy villages and really old buildings and castles and museums.

Well if we're on this subject, I'd like to say what I miss most is having a car. The public transportation is great here, but it's EXPENSIVE. And I already expressed how I feel about busses. Trains are nice though. Maybe I just need to use my railcard more often.

In the first picture on the left you can see the four layers carved into the rock by the four different ice ages.

  Well I think I still owe a post about the Sunday I spent in London and perhaps one on Cotswold way, but that's all for tonight!