Expedition to Europe: England and Ireland

My parents and my sister, Abbie, came for the first week of my break. Let me just tell you how excited I was to see them: whilst waiting for them in the airport, I was bouncing up and down, talking to myself, and gulping back tears of excitement, and I scared quite a few people away.

They got here on Saturday, and I was happy. We ate lunch:



(Mom was still jet-lagged), and then we took a grand tour of Oxford, which included a tour of Regent's Park:







It was wonderful to take them to church on Sunday, and they also got to see me row, which was a surprise! This is from my church:





On Monday, we went to Salisbury Cathedral:



I know, isn't it gorgeous? The cathedral is in a great setting: there's grass everywhere, and therefore picnics and dogs and flowers and frisbees and happiness. We were lucky to be there on a sunny day, so we ate lunch sitting on the wall surrounding the cathedral:

We drove on to Stonehenge. We'd rented a car, which was quite the experience. Dad, Mom, and I all got to drive on the wrong side of the road, which is bizarre. On the way to Stonehenge, we saw a Texaco, which was...apparently wonderful, because there is now a picture of it on my computer. Don't worry, I'm not posting it; I figure you know what those look like.

Driving to Stonehenge is neat because you crest a hill and see it spread out before you:


It's smaller than you think at first glance, but when you get close, you realize that people who did not have hydraulic lifts or tractor-trailers created it, and then you are amazed. Inspired, even. In fact, Mom and Abbie and I were so inspired that we tried to recreate Stonehenge using our bodies:

A resounding success, I think. Actually, we initially tried to make the part of Stonehenge that looks like a door frame, but Mom and Abbie dropped me.

The Monday that we were at Stonehenge was my parents' 24th anniversary (my parents rock (hey, a pun!)):


On Monday, we continued on to Bath, where we visited the Roman Baths. If you ever go to the Roman Baths, do the audio tour as it is fantastic. I do give this warning, though: Bill Bryson contributes to the audio tour, and as much as I love Bryson's books, his audio tours are sentimental and pretty pointless. I don't know how many times I heard him say, "It's so moving to think..." and then explain how he is moved by an interesting but not tear-jerking part of daily life, like throwing coins in the water or walking down steps. Anyway, the baths were very cool:

We all tried the water at Bath, which is supposed to be healing but was mostly gross.

Yep, Abbie and I felt the same way about it. We ended the day in Bristol, at this B&B. It is called the Coachhouse because, well, it used to be a coachhouse:

The next day was St. Patrick's Day, so we headed to Ireland! But first, we stopped at Cardiff Castle in Wales, which was really neat. It still had the ancient keep:

Plus a bunch of newer buildings that made it this a hodge-podge of different castle styles:

That's Mom and Abbie and me. After the castle, we took a ferry, because there is a large body of water between England and Ireland:

Once in Ireland, we stayed in Waterford, which can proudly claim to have the creepiest and most out-of-place billboard I have ever seen:

Seriously, why? There are no words, no explanations, just a 100-foot-tall elf-child looking depressed. In addition to this billboard, Waterford also has a fast-food restaurant called Supermac's, outside of which they had a stabbing! What a day.

The day after St. Patrick's Day, we kissed the Blarney Stone. You were wondering why this post is so eloquent, weren't you? It's because I kissed the Blarney Stone. Kissing the Blarney Stone was, by the way, terrifying: no one ever tells you that you have to lean out upside-down over a hole in a wall five stories high! Mom will demonstrate:

After Blarney, we went to Dublin, where there is an amazing pizza place and weird television shows about men who wear pink, sing, and drive Barbie cars on their way to build sets for a ballet. Very odd. We spent a while in a bank that used to be the House of Lords, saw Trinity College, and bought souvenirs.

The next day (which was Thursday, March 19, in case you've lost track), we took another ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, and then went to Chester. That pretty much took the whole day. On Friday, we visited Chester's cathedral and wall:

Chester's wall was pretty neat, mostly because it was big and old (not that England has a shortage of big, old things).

We went to London via Stratford-upon-Avon and Oxford. In Stratford-upon-Avon, we were forced into a tour (okay, okay: I forced everyone else into a tour) of Shakespeare's birth home given by a man with a head the size of a watermelon and no sense of humour, unless it came to the "to be or not to be" joke ("So the question for dinner always was: 'to eat, or not to eat?'"), which he told three times. We also found this cool statue:

Our Saturday in London consisted of the London Eye:

We saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was great, although Joseph was roughly the color of the orange spray-on tan. We also rode double-decker buses:

Pretty much, my trip with my family was amazing, mostly because it was a trip with my family! We missed Reid a lot, but he was acing tests and winning basketball games (or something like that) instead of traipsing around England with us. We all got to see things we'd never seen, we stayed in great B&Bs (never underestimate the power of a good full-English breakfast), and we got to see each other!

Coming up next: Italy!

Expedition to Europe: exposition

When considering where on earth to begin in this most epic series of posts (which I have alliteratively and attractively entitled "Expedition to Europe"), I wondered to myself, "Where do I begin?" The answer to my question is found, of course, in that movie which has a wealth of ethical, moral, and philosophical answers: The Sound of Music. As Julie Andrews so aptly sings, "Let's start at the very beginning: a very good place to start."

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then, I got to see the earth that God created.

Let's start with the cities I visited: Salisbury, Stonehenge (okay, not really a city, but I'm counting it anyway), Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Waterford, Blarney, Dublin, Chester, Stratford-upon-Avon, London, Rome, Florence, Venice, Athens, Prague, Berlin, Monte Carlo (not just a casino!), Nice, Paris, Palma Mallorca, Brussels, and Amsterdam. If you're counting, that's 23 cities in 11 countries: England, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Germany, Monaco, France, Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands.

It was amazing.

I want to tell you everything about it, but the logistics are difficult. Thirty-nine days, 23 cities, 11 countries, ten travel companions, 1032 photos, five buses, eleven trains, seven planes... My goal is one post per week of travel, but we'll see what happens.

Spring break!

Prepare to be jealous:

My spring break is six weeks long.

And what will I do with those six weeks, I hear you ask?

Travel. Lots and lots of travel.

Saturday, March 14 is a red-letter day: my Mom and Dad and Abbie fly into London! I am beyond excited to see them. I'm sad Reid won't be with them, but I know he's excited about being at MU while they're here and going to Colorado the week after.

While my parents and Abigail are here, we are taking a tour of England and Ireland! We're hanging out in Oxford until March 16 (shout-out to my parents' anniversary on that day: 24 years! Way to go, Mom and Dad!), and then we leave to visit Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath, and Bristol. March 17 (St. Patrick's Day) is Cardiff and Waterford, Ireland. March 18 is Blarney, Ireland, and Dublin, Ireland. March 19 is Dublin and Chester, England. March 20 is Stratford-upon-Avon and London. My family flies out of London on March 22, and I cry.

It sounds whirlwind-ish, and is, but it's going to be a ton of fun. Even though I've lived in England for five months now, I haven't made any trips to any of these great places, so I'm excited about that. Most importantly, I get to see my family! Happiness is sure to abound.

The rest of break is spend travelling with friends. Jacque and I fly from London to Rome on March 22, and we're in Rome rocking the ruins until March 26. Then we go to Florence until March 28 and Venice until March 30. Thus ends the Italian portion of our trip.

Jacque and I will be in Athens (rocking some more ruins) from March 30 to April 2, and then we go our separate ways. I am meeting Erin...somewhere. April 2-5 is a little up in the air right now. The original plan was Prague, but it takes a long time to get there. We may go to Germany, maybe Switzerland, maybe somewhere else!

On April 5, I meet Ashton and Madison in Berlin. We're there until April 8, when we leave for Nice. I leave Nice on April 10, and meet Bill in Paris. We'll be in Paris over the Easter weekend, which means I get to go to Easter services in Notre Dame!

Bill and I meet Sabrina, Nicole, Erin, and Jacque in Majorca (one of the Spanish Canary Islands) on April 14, and all six of us hang out on the beach until April 18. April 18, Erin and I go to Brussels, and then we get into Amsterdam on April 20. We return to Oxford on April 23.

That's 39 days of travel in a row, and I'm pretty excited. I'm also slightly intimidated. Please pray for safety and health every one who's travelling. Also, please pray for no stress and lots of fun enjoying this great world that God has given us! I'd really appreciate it.

Row hard, row strong

I have been promising a post about rowing for a very long time now, and here it is!

Last term, I joined the rowing team. We didn't do much last term (which I why I rarely wrote about it) because of the weather. When it rains, the river rises, and it becomes too dangerous to row. Since it rained most of the autumn, the river was generally too high for us to row.

This term, though, we did a lot more! The weather was better, except for the whole snow thing, so we actually got to practice.

Rowing is pretty physically demanding. After our first practice this term, I woke up so sore that I didn't get out of bed, I fell out.

To draw the blade (that's what the oar is called) through the water, you have to push with your legs, then lean with your back, then pull with your arms. Then, to get the blade ready to draw again, you have to straighten your arms, lean forward, and bend your legs. To make that clearer, here's a video (shot by my lovely friend Madison, who was awesome enough to come cheer us on at our timed trial to get into Torpids--more on that later) (as a reminder, to play the video, hit the sideways triangle in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture below):






I'm the one with the bright red sleeves, second from the right.

As you can see, the eight rowers are facing backwards. The ninth person in the boat is the cox (short for coxswain, pronounced 'coxen'). The cox has several important jobs. First, he or she is facing forward and can actually see where the boat is going, and steers accordingly. Second, he or she directs/encourages/yells at the crew. For example, our cox in that video, Ray, would yell things like, "LENgthen those strides, LOOKing ahead, BACKS are straight, PUSH with the legs, enGAGE with the water, HEADS in the boat." Whenever he would emphasize something (as indicated by the caps), that would be when we were drawing through the water. During races, coxes yell when you're getting close to another boat and tell you when to push harder.

Getting the boat in and out of the water is pretty fun. We lift it onto our shoulders and walk it out of the boathouse, and then carry it onto the raft:



Then we lift it above our heads. I don't have a picture of my team doing this, but here's a picture of the boys' team:



Then we sort of roll the boat from above our heads into the water:



Here's what the inside of the boat looks like:



We sit on those seats, which roll back and forth, and put our feet into the velcro-strapped shoes.

What are these pictures of, you may ask? (Or, if you are being grammatically correct, "Of what are all these pictures?") They are from Torpids!

Torpids is the Hilary Term race. Now, at Oxford, races are not like normal races where everyone lines up at the start and then tries to get to the finish first. Instead, this is what happens (to watch this video, hit Play):



What you just saw is the beginning of the Women's Division I race (Regent's Park was in Division V, which is why you can hear Erin and me in the background--we weren't racing). There are 13 boats in each division, and they line up along the bank of the river to begin. A gun goes off (which you may have heard at the beginning), and off they go!

The goal in these races is not to reach the finish line first, but to bump another team. Bumping can be accomplished one of three ways: you can actually physically bump the other team's boat with yours; you can get close enough to the other team's boat that the other team's cox can see you and then the other team's cox concedes; or you can totally pass the other boat. The whistles that you may have heard in the video are coaches warning their teams that they are either about to get bumped or are about to bump. This may make no sense, so let's use a picture (from Men's Division I):



In this photo, the white boat is trying to bump the yellow boat, and they are getting very close. You chase the boat directly in front of you. If you bump another boat (for instance, if the white boat runs into/overtakes/forces to concede the yellow boat), you are finished with the race and you get out of the way. If you are bumped (if the yellow boat is run into/overtaken/forced to concede), then you have to finish the race or bump another boat.

Please don't worry if all of that makes no sense. I didn't understand it until I actually raced.

Torpids was four days long, and started last Wednesday. Regent's Park women did alright overall, but not great. We didn't bump or get bumped Wednesday and we got bumped twice Thursday (which was absolutely depressing). On Friday, though, we finally bumped! This was a literal bump: we didn't run into the other boat, but we did accidentally hit their cox and three rowers with two of our blades. The cox had to go to first aid. Oops. Then, on Friday, we were bumped again.

Though we didn't do just amazingly, I absolutely loved it. I can't wait for next term's race, Summer VIIIs.

Here is the amazing Regent's Park Women's Boat Team:


Ailsa (co-captain), Holly, Erin, Joy, Becky, Ula, Lottie, and Kathryn (co-captain)

And here is the equally amazing Regent's Park Boat Club:

Housemates

This blog is about my life in England. Since I spend roughly 97.36% of my time with my three housemates, I thought a blog post about them would be nice:


The housemate that lives closest to me is Robyn. When I say she lives close to me, I mean that my room has a removable wall, and her room is on the other side of it. We often open up the divider and chat as we "do homework." Here is Robyn:


Robyn is originally from California, but she's lived in Peculiar, MO, since before high school. (I was going to continue this paragraph with something along the lines of "She likes history and Reese's Pieces, loves to laugh, and knows more about composers than most music majors," but I decided that sounded like a bad personal ad. Then I got this song stuck in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdhZwK7cS8. (Disclaimer: in posting this song, I am not supporting infidelity. I am supporting Shrek.))

Robyn takes a very long time to get ready in the morning. No one really knows why. She "gets ready" for two hours, actually puts on her shoes, clothes, and make-up in the ten minutes before we leave, and still looks like a movie star. It's one of those mysteries of life. (Side story: when I was younger, my brother Reid would always take forever to get ready to go, and we didn't know why. My mom finally checked on him one day, and discovered that it took Reid 36 minutes to tie his shoes, because his shoe-tying process went something like: tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie.)

My second roomate is Sabrina. Here she is:


Sabrina lives in Branson, and before that, she lived in Nashville. Her parents have no connection to the country music business, though. Sabrina and I share an affinity for show and Disney tunes. She knows the words to nearly every musical ever made, including the new Legally Blonde musical (seriously. They made it a musical). Sabrina is the over-achiever of the house. If A++s existed in Britain, she would get them. I suspect her tendency to listen to show and Disney tunes while working contributes to her success.

My third roommate is Erin:


Erin, to use a favorite British phrase, is epic. She's a very modern-day renaissance woman. She's from a small town in Colorado, which means she could probably climb Mount Everest while carrying her sherpa. Also, she's a philosophy major, so she talks about things that are so over my head it's like her brain climbed Mount Everest. She also takes award-winning photographs (the awards are yet to come, but I know they will), and someday I'm going to write for National Geographic and she's going to be my photographer (maybe we'll go to Mount Everest, where she will carry the sherpa and me and a huge camera up the mountain). Most importantly to my life, Erin and I have a regular backrub-exchange.

So those are my three housemates. I really enjoy living with them. Quite often, I'll walk into one of their rooms to tell them a quick something, and I'll end up standing there, leaning against their door, talking for an hour about grad school or religion or politics or philosophy (those are short conversations) or food (this conversation happens a lot) or just about homework and how our day is going. We like to dress up, we mostly eat pasta or curry, and we tend to sing songs about America whenever we feel especially patriotic. We sometimes find ourselves all sitting or lying in the hallway, we're pretty good at procrastination, and we have all developed an attachment to "House."

As four girls who live in a (slightly drama-filled) house together, we decided that we were like a very small version of a sorority. So we formed our own: Beta Rho (as in Banbury Road, get it?).


The four of us knew each other at Jewell, but I didn't know any of them very well before I moved in with them. I feel very blessed about how well our living arrangement has worked out. We spend most of our time together, and we get along really well and complement (and compliment, for that matter) each other. We're all kind of mothering each other (since our moms are, sadly, not in the same country as we are). It's been great.

So there's a really important part of my life: the wonderful girls with whom I live.

Also, on a totally unrelated note: I saw an billboard in the London Tube that made me very happy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:


Coming up next: a post about rowing (I know I've promised this post at least twice. I promise it's going to happen next).

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

Thanks to the late (great?) George Carlin for that one.

So, let's talk about the weather here where I live.

According to Wikipedia, "England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round, although the seasons are quite variable in temperature. The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather to England regularly from the Atlantic Ocean. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, although it is not that common away from high ground."

Just so you know, Oxford is away from high ground. So is London. Nevertheless, last week, Oxford, London, and the rest of Britain experienced THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL IN 18 YEARS. I'm sure you've heard about it.

This was quite a big deal. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1132144/Its-going-week-Worst-snow-18-years-brings-Britain-slithering-halt--costs-economy-3bn.html (please note that they say Britain comes to a "slithering" halt. What great word choice. Just think of the images that evokes: cars sliding off the road, people slipping on icy sidewalks, snakes on a plane.)

According to The Daily Mail at , this snowstorm cost Britain 3 billion pounds. 6.4 million workers stayed home on February 2, and "London's buses were halted for the first time in living memory - they even continued to run during the Blitz - and the rail network ground to a predictable halt." Heathrow closed both of its runways (snakes on planes, you know), and a shortage of snowplows (which they spell snowploughs) meant that roads were dangerous and sidewalks were sheets of ice.

Now, I saw this snowstorm in Oxford. On February 2, when London was shutting down its buses and the Tube and millions of Britons were enjoying their days at home in front of radiators with cups of Earl Grey and biscuits with blackcurrant jam filling, I was crunching through the inch of snow wondering what the big deal was.

Here's what that "big" storm looked like in Oxford:


And here, to my everlasting joy, is what my neighbor girls did with the snow:


That's right. They made a pirate snowman. I think it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

The big snowstorm didn't hit Oxford until February 5, a Thursday. You could tell it was coming on Wednesday. My rowing team went out to practice on the water, and our boat and paddles iced over as we rowed. It was quite cold. Thursday brought several inches of snow, which made everything look like this:


(PS, this is not my house. I forgot to take a picture of my house.)

And this:


My backyard.

And this:


Making us want to stay in all day like this:


That's Sabrina and Erin.



To the girls in my flat (three of us from Missouri and one of us from Colorado), the four inches of snow in Oxford wasn't a big deal in terms of stopping the world. In Kansas City, every street except N. Tracy would have been cleared and the sidewalks would have been iced or shovelled by 9 am (I say that with much optimism. This is always not true in Kansas City. But hey, when you're away from something, you only remember the good things, right?).

In Oxford, they had no snowploughs. My friend who lives south of Oxford saw some city workers clearing her street by hand: each of them shovelled his own little three-foot-wide strip of road. Where I live, they let the buses pack down tracks for tires. The sidewalks were deathwalks, except where they threw sand (as in, from a beach); then, they were muddy deathwalks.

I complain, but, truly, the snow was beautiful. The Thursday morning after the big snowstorm, my housemate Erin and I woke up at 6:15 and went down to the river (not voluntarily, it's a long story), and we saw the sun rise over brand-new, pristine snow. The sky was still filled with clouds, and so the sunrise reflected these gorgeous pinks and oranges onto the sky over the river. Honestly, beautiful.

Some snow is still here, over a week later. It's been going through a cycle that goes like this: melt, evaporate 5% of condensation, re-freeze; melt, evaporate 5% of condensation, re-freeze; melt...



And that's the weather report from Oxford. Just so you know, this was sort of a quintessentially British post. One of the first things I was told when I arrived here was to converse about weather in order to make friends here. You've heard that the British like to talk about the weather? It's so true.



Coming up next: a post about my housemates.

Procrastinators: leaders of tomorrow

Right now, I'm supposed to be writing a paper. But, see, I just don't care about Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft and how they undermined each other during the pamphlet wars of the 1790s. Seriously, who does care about that? I mean, Paine wrote Common Sense and sort of started the Revolutionary War, and Wollstonecraft had some pretty radical (read: absolutely insane) ideas in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but I don't get to write about either of those. And who, outside of Britain, has ever heard of Edmund Burke?

Actually, maybe if I rant a while longer, I'll just end up writing my paper right here on this blog. However, I will not subject you to a long-winded and short-interest essay. Instead, I figured I'd update you on what's been going on since I got back from break.

The weekend after I got back, my friend Jacque came to visit for three days. We visited several places, including Christ Church. Here I am, with my Harry Potter scarf on, in the Great Hall. Sadly, it does not have an enchanted ceiling like in the movie:



And here is Jacque on steps which you may recognize from The Sorcerer's Stone (Draco Malfoy: "Think my name's funny, do you?") or The Chamber of Secrets (Dumbledore: "Is there something you'd like to tell me, Tom?"):


While Jacque was here, my flat decided to do pedicures. I only mention this so I can post this picture:


Which makes me happy. Those are, from left to right: Robyn's legs, Sabrina's legs, Jacque's legs, my legs, and Erin's legs.

As I reminded everyone, my birthday was a week after I got back, January 16. I decided to give myself a birthday present, which was a trip to London on January 15 with my housemates Sabrina and Erin to see the musical Billy Elliot:


That's me with Erin. Billy Elliot was phenomenal: the kid who played Billy was a pretty good singer and oh man, could he dance. Sabrina and Erin and I were left speechless by the show: the songs were great (although the language was...appropriate to the 1980s British mining town in which it was set), the set was so cool and puzzle-like, and, again, the dancing rocked. Literally, rocked.

Anyway, we saw the matinee of Billy Elliot, and when we walked out, we saw the sign for Wicked across the street. We decided, on a whim, to see if there were tickets left for that night...and there were! Wicked is also amazing. So, happy birthday to me, I got to see two great shows in one day!

The next day, my birthday, I got woken up by my family via Skype, and then I opened the gifts they had sent me. I was pretty psyched to get a bunch of CDs, all of them movie soundtracks, and three out of five of them Disney soundtracks! I also got flowers sent to me again! I really love flowers. (Also, thanks to all of you who sent me birthday cards via e-mail or snail mail! I really appreciate it!)

That night I went to an Indian restaurant with my friends Erin, Brett (beard), Bill, Lena (next to me), Madison (white hat), Robyn, Lydia (green scarf), Ashton (big earrings), and Sabrina:


Then, a week after my birthday, Jacque visited again, this time accompanied (side note: I cannot pronounce that word, and I am always impressed by people who can) by our friend Nicole:


Nicole has this problem with opening her eyes in pictures. This is a chair made out of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake sailed. The wood of this chair is something like 500 years old.

That photo was taken in Oxford's Divinity School, where I learned something very important that I would like to pass on to you: British tour guides are so much better than American tour guides.

An American tour guide will take an awesome building, and proceed to tell you about the kind of rock it's made out of, where the rock was quarried, how many men carried the rock from the quarry, how much money it took to build the building, who gave the money, why they gave the money, the number of children they had, where they lived, how far that is in miles and kilometers from the building in which you're standing...basically, American tour guides, with few exceptions, talk until you feel as bored as the square stones you've been staring at for the past ten minutes. American tour guides have a script that they had to memorize, darn it, and they're sticking to it until they or (more likely) everyone on the tour dies. Don't deny it, you know it's true.

Conversely, a British tour guide tells you that the building is "typical British architecture, that is," that it's better than French architecture because French architecture is "more flamboyant," that one of the symbols in the stone is a pagan symbol, points out the Virgin Mary on the ceiling, then leaves you to contemplate the splendor of the building and ask whatever questions you have.

The next day, January 25, was the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's (Burns'?) birth. Robert Burns was a pretty cool guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns. To celebrate, we had dinner with our neighbors, the Mills family. We had traditional Scottish food--including haggis--read a Burns poem, and listened to Martin Mills address the haggis (as in, "hello, haggis," except poetically).

And then it felt like term officially began, because my tutors gave me homework. I have two tutorials this term: English Literature 1740-1832, which I have once a week; and Andrew Marvell (a seventeenth-century poet), which I have once every other week. I'm enjoying both so far, although I've discovered that seventeenth-century poetry is a bit over my head (which isn't hard to do, right, Reid?).

Coming up next: the rowing team, and an in-depth comparison of dinner in Jewell's cafeteria versus in Regent's Park's dining hall.