BSL

Thought I'd write up a quick blurb about something really cool I'm learning here in York - British Sign Language!

Before I got here, I didn't even realize/hadn't even considered that there were different sign languages.  But thanks to Wikipedia I now know there are hundreds!  Seriously, check this out.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages
Also, just read about sign language, it is fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language

See, you learned something today!  There are also even different dialects of BSL, sort of like different accents.  Crazy. But I've been learning some BSL because one of my friends in the dorm here is deaf, and he and the rest of my friends all sign to each other at meals and whatnot.  I'm able to pick up a bit on my own, they taught me the alphabet (it's different than ASL) and today I finally got a full lesson on some basics.  I've wanted to learn sign for a long time - learning BSL is perhaps a bit counterproductive if I want to learn ASL back at home, but oh well!

Also, rejoice!  We've had short-sleeves and sandals weather here this week.  Cheers!

Titles are the worst

Oh goodness.  I haven't posted in a while, sorry!

Saturday the 12th we went to Lincoln as a class.  This is another beautiful city with a cathedral as well as a castle.  We had a sunny day to explore the city, which felt similar to York.  The cathedral might have been my favorite so far, but I feel like I say that every time we visit a new one! Lincoln's cathedral was very bright and open in the nave, and the chancel and choir were intricate and beautiful as always.  They also had some of the coolest/most colorful stained glass I've seen yet - tall skinny ones along the aisles, as well as three rose windows.  The cloister was sunny and had an interesting modern art display in honor of Lent.
Lincoln Castle is an 11th century castle built by William the Conqueror.  We did a lot of climbing here: up to the walls, up the skinniest spiral staircase I've ever seen to a tower with a 360 view of the city, up to circular sort of walled garden... my legs were tired by the end of the day!

I've had a lot of schoolwork to do lately, papers and midterms and whatnot.  Those are mostly done now though, and I won't have tons of work until after spring break (which is SO SOON!)

It's been fun getting to know the nightlife of York.  Last week we celebrated a birthday of someone in my dorm building.   A popular thing to do here for your birthday is to pick a "fancy dress theme," which means everyone has to dress up according to what you pick.  It was Tim's birthday, so the theme was things that begin with T.   I had the brilliant idea of being Twilight - the actual physical book.  I can't get pictures to load right now, but let me tell you, it was awesome.  We started out at the student union, then went into town to a club called Gallery.  It has two dance floors right on top of each other, which is pretty coooool.  It was also Saint Patrick's Day this past week, so we went out to Slug and Lettuce, a popular chain restaurant with possibly the worst name ever, as well as a bar called Keystones.  We've also been frequenting some of the late-night eateries on the way back to campus - there is nothing better than cheap, piping hot pizza at 1am.

This coming weekend the class is traveling to Hadrian's Wall and some forts nearby.  Should be fun!  Thanks for reading, sorry about the lack of pictures.  Internet connection here is sketchy sometimes.

Birthday Update

It's my first birthday away from home!  I had some nice surprises (cake, candy, balloons) this morning, and I've been granted a beautiful, sunshine-y day here in York. 

I haven't updated in over a week, and it's daunting to look back and try to describe what I did!  Well, pretty much all of last week I had the flu, so that was a bit of a wash. Nothing very exciting to report.  Last Monday (before being sick) we did make it to Leeds for the day.  That was a pretty nice city, especially if you like shopping.  They have tons of fancy malls and markets, very fun.  There was also an awesome museum that was all about war and armor and weapons, etc.  It was full of kids on their winter break and was exciting to be it. It reminded me of a Smithsonian sort of museum - very well-kept and set-up.

This past Saturday was very nice, one of my favorite days here so far (although today is almost winning)!  We took a trip to Fountains Abbey, which is a SUPER beautiful site with huge grounds, the ruins of an abbey, a church, gardens, lakes, streams... ahhh.  It was a gorgeous day, and I could have walked around there for weeks.

This week I'm catching up on homework I missed, studying for our Roman History midterm (blech), and doing a lot of planning for spring break!  I've booked a flight to Paris, a hotel in Paris, and a cute bed and breakfast-y place in Villefranche sur Mer in the French Riviera.  It is so much work and takes such a huge amount of planning (and money!) to put this trip together, but I think it will be worth it in the end.  Hopefully this weekend I'll book our places in Barcelona, Venice, Florence, and Rome (where we'll be for Easter - Easter morning service at the Vatican, anyone?)

Very busy, no time to put pictures here, but if we're Facebook friends you can check out my photos there.  Thanks for reading!

Durham and Lindisfarne

Saturday we took a class excursion to Durham to see the cathedral and to Lindisfarne, on the Holy Island, to see the priory and castle.

Durham Cathedral was beautiful, and has won lots of architecture and beloved building awards.   No pictures were allowed inside so I have to rely on memory, but it was definitely one of the coolest cathedrals I've seen (and I've seen a lot)!

Sidenote: being in England just spurs a lot of Harry Potter trivia.  Some parts of the HP movies were filmed at Durham Cathedral, and this week I learned that Mrs. Norris, the crotchety old cat, is named after a character in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.  The Brits do seem to love HP as much as we do!

We drove two more hours to Lindisfarne.  The Holy Island, as it is known, is only an island at high tide, and we made it back without getting trapped!  We visited the priory, which is a place where monks once lived, and is also the place where Celtic Christianity was first introduced to Britain.  Then we hiked up to Lindisfarne Castle.  We were supposed to go inside, but it was mysteriously closed.  By then the sun had come out and we were in one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, so we were happy to explore the coast and the fields, complete with sheep!


Today has been full of homework.  I wrote a paper about W.H. Auden, whom I love, and read a bit of Boudica, a novel about the native Brits rebelling against Rome that prof. Bratt has assigned us.  This week is looking good, I hope you all enjoy yours as well.

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Manchester

My Mondays, and the Mondays of several of my fellow Knights, are free of those pesky classes, so we decided to take the train to Manchester for the day.  It was great to see a new city, and Manchester felt much more "city-like" than York does.  It felt bigger, had more cars, more noise, more tall buildings, etc. 

We didn't exactly have a plan for the day, which makes my structure-loving self nervous, but I'm definitely learning to go with the flow.  We didn't usually know exactly where we were, but luckily there were quite a few maps and some helpful people around.  We saw the town hall, the university campus, the Manchester Museum, a beautiful church, the John Rylands library,  had some great food (traditional English for brunch, awesome Asian fusion for dinner), and finished off the day with a ride on the super tourist-y Wheel of Manchester - a giant ferris wheel! Seeing the city by night from on high was wonderful.

We managed not to miss/get on the wrong train at all, and it was good to practice navigating stations as that's what I'll be doing all Easter break.

Wednesday our class visited the Yorkshire Museum.  York has a strong Roman history, and many Roman objects have been discovered underground. The museum gave a great impression of what life was like for ancient people living in Eboracum (the Roman name for York). 

I've started my weekend already!  We're going to Durham and Lindisfarne all day Saturday with the class, but other than that I think I'm just going to get ahead on some assignments - lots of novels to read!

Manchester City Hall

Brunch in Manchester

The Wheel of Manchester

Roman mosaic found in York.  You could walk on it and everything!

The ruins of a church near the Yorkshire Museum.

Settling In

I've never been very good at keeping a journal, hopefully I'll do better with blogging.  Nothing very exciting to report here, though.

I had my first Creative Writing class on Thursday.  The professor is Canadian (that's right, I'm in Britain but have zero British professors) and seems great - very young and lively.  We did some writing straight away and then had to read our compositions out loud to a small group. Wasn't expecting that, but the class seems nice enough. Very small, only eight people were there (but maybe some were missing).

Friday night we went to Ken and Laurel's for open house and played games for a while, then stopped by the student union and visited a bar called Dusk.  Both were super busy, we couldn't even sit down!  It's been really interesting to go to bars and stuff here and "observe." The students here are so used to this sort of atmosphere and fun, they think it's hilarious that we Americans are so inexperienced.

Saturday and today I barely left my room. We have to have Mansfield Park by Jane Austen read for Thursday, along with some other homework, so I wanted to get that finished.  Alas.  That is not a short book, folks.  And it's not exactly exciting.  Basically: sexual tension...building...building...I'm too shy to talk to you...building...marriage proposal!...I don't actually love you....I'm pining after someone else....woe is me!  Also, back then when you were tired from walking or horse-riding, they called it being "knocked up."  Tee hee.

Tomorrow I'm going to Manchester for the day with a few others. Train tickets were about 13 pounds total, so we thought it was worth a day trip to see another city.  I'll hopefully have some pictures up from that soon.

Love to you all!

Springtime!

This morning I saw beautiful sun outside my window, but being from Michigan, was not fooled.  Sunshine obviously means that is frigidly cold outside, so I dressed in trousers ("pants" here means underwear!), two pairs of socks, a shirt, a sweater, my winter coat, and a scarf.  I stepped outside and realized I had been fooled!  It was like springtime!  50 degrees (that's 10 celsius, folks) with a light breeze.  I unzipped my coat and headed to the library to get a few novels for my class. 
Needless to say, I changed clothes back in my room, then took a nice walk into the city.  Visited Poundland (everything is a pound!) and finally got a real tube of toothpaste and hangers for my clothes.

I had my first two classes today as well.  First up was Nineteenth Century Writing, where we're reading some Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and the like.  The professor (called a tutor here) seems very cool, she's one of the youngest profs I've ever had, and she's American.  The class should be good, a typical lit class, but definitely less work than I'm used to at Calvin.  Lectures are only every other week with a smaller seminar every week.  We write one paper of 3,000 words and have an exam at the end of the semester.

Then I had Roman Legacy in Britain with professor Bratt (who said we may call him Ken - still getting used to that!)  This is my first history class since sophomore year of high school, and I was definitely overwhelmed by all the dates and city names and whatnot.  I have to turn that chronological/spatial part of my brain back on.  I do love history, though, so I'm excited for that class.  Today we talked about the history of York, which was founded by the Romans in like, 70 AD or something.  So, yeah.  Super old.

Also, best thing I learned today: I always knew that right and left were sometimes called dexter and sinister, but I had no idea why.  Turns out those were the Latin words for left and right!  We were talking about two main roads in the Roman city of York (which still exist as roads today) which were called Via Principalis Dextera and Via Prinicipalis Sinistra. Harry Potter nerd-dom fact: Professor Sinistra teaches astronomy, and the planets in the solar system orbit to the left.

Tomorrow we have our British culture class, and will do some touring of the city, including a walk down under the minster to the crypt to see the foundations of the ancient Roman city.

I'm off to Ken and Laurel's house to watch a movie.  Goodnight (or good afternoon) all!  Hope you survive Snowmageddon 2011.

Monday a few of us walked around the city on the walls. This is the "inside..."

... and here's how they look from the outside

This is the Yorkminster.  Gabe and I went Monday night to the Evensong service here, it was beautiful!