Further Up and Further In

Chapter House in York Minster The title is my somewhat tongue-in-cheek conception of York during the 4 days we were there. The city does exist, if you go and visit Yorkshire, England, you will find a lovely old city. But we had the equivalent of “finals week” over the period of 3 days while we were in York so between studying for exams, writing papers, working on group presentations and having to walk 30 minutes into the downtown area, we saw very little of the historic city, at least, I did. On Sunday morning, we went to York Minster for service which ended up being 2 and ½ hours long, 30 page bulletin, because it was a special service for deacon ordination. While it is great that people are being ordained to work in specific positions in churches, we were already tired and it was a VERY long service. I did walk around the city a little bit after church, mostly poking around antiquarian bookstores. So TANGENT. One of my favorite things about the trip as a w...

Punting past King's College 19 is just an awkward number in general. When you're counting, you're almost to 20 but you stop at this weird number inbetween the divisible number of 18 and the lovely round number of 20. Being 19 years old is therefore just kind of weird. 18 is exciting because you are a legal adult in the US and 20 is leaving behind your teens and continuing the process of growing up. But poor 19 gets to be the awkward age in the middle. Not much generally happens on your 19th birthday because what do you celebrate? Well, personally, I never thought that I’d be celebrating my 19 th birthday in England going punting on the river Cam in Cambridge. But that’s what happened! We did group punting down the river and I did try my hand at it. It is harder than it looks (as many things are) and takes more strength than you would think. I forget how difficult it is to pull things through water. I don’t have any pictures of myself but here is one of my friends punt...

The gorgeous Jurassic Coast The title is a trick question. The answer is both! But for all intents and purposes in this post, I am referring to the latter. Two weeks in the picturesque English countryside, that sounds lovely, does it not? That's what I thought as our large coach bus squeezed through the small roads of Beer and the townspeople popped out their heads to watch us go by. We dragged our luggage up a very steep hill and beheld our cozy youth hostel completes with a scenic view and a lovely breeze. As Celia in As You Like It said, "I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it." Two weeks of intensive classes ensued with 17th Century Literature, Jane Austen, Travel Writing and Literature in Place picking up at full speed. I started reading Paradise Lost by John Milton, re-watching the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice (for class, see my last post), trying to compose a coherent travel essay about cathedrals and having intelligent di...