Wearmouth-Jarrow, or Kicking it with Bede

On Saturday, I headed up to Tyne & Wear to visit Wearmouth-Jarrow. But first of all, remember those pictures I posted from along the river? Well this was what that path looked like on Saturday.That's right, that would be it UNDER THE RIVER by the trees. Crazy flooding. Also, I just like this picture because I think the haze is kind of cool. Just ignore that weird spot towards the bottom left; sometimes my camera puts weird spots on things and I can't make it go away.

Right, so back to Wearmouth Jarrow. Wearmouth is home to St Peter's monastery, while Jarrow is home to St Paul's. They were both founded by the same guy and are considered to be essentially two branches of the same monastery. They also happen to be the UK's nominee for World Heritage Site 2010. We went to Jarrow in particular, because the World of Bede, a museum dedicated to arguably the UK's most famous medieval scholar and author, is housed nearby. Also, they were having a Christmas Fair. And that is exciting :)

To get there, we took the train from York up to Newcastle and then the metro out to Jarrow. While signs helpfully directed us the right way out of the metro station, the signs stopped abruptly right outside the metro station. So there was a bit of wandering in what we hoped was the right direction to find the place.

Here's a shot of a portion of the Wearmouth/Jarrow Way, a 12 mile trail connecting the two monasteries. They're only about 6 miles apart as the bird flies, but the roads meander a bit. I still can't believe how green everything still is.

Before hitting up the Christmas extravaganza and free admission to Bede's World, we stopped off at St Paul's and the church there. Ta da! Not terribly impressive from this angle, but then again, churches this old were kind of small, squat, thick-walled things, so that's only to be expected.

The front part is a Victorian addition to the original church dating back to 681. 681! The Anglo-Saxon church (pictured) now forms the chancel of the modern church, but originally seems to have been a chapel to Our Lady, obviously used by the monks of St Paul's. The Anglo-Saxon chapel includes 3 original windows and a tiny stained glass window has been reassembled from fragments found in excavations.

Around to the right are the extant ruins of the monastery, mostly dating to the 11th century. Bede lived at St Paul's in the late 7th, early 8th centuries, but alas that incarnation of the monastery was largely destroyed by the Vikings in 794.

I'm going to refrain from putting up more pictures of the ruins; I really ruins. I think its the archaeologist in me. But moving on.

We then headed up to the World of Bede for some craft/food/toys/etc stall browsing and some "edumacating."

Hee hee!

They had some nice replicas of Franks Casket, illuminated Bibles the size of a bed pillow, monks habits, etc. Can you imagine transporting this thing? I know there's nothing to show the scale, but take my word for it that it is about the size of a pillow, just thicker.

 

The Codex Amiatinus was produced in Northumbria (the medieval kingdom in modern day northern England) in the style of Roman illuminated Bibles as a gift to the Pope (and as a way to show off the skills of the Northumbrian scribes.) The real one is still in Italy and was actually only recently identified as a product of Northumbrian scholarship because the scribes did such a good job imitating Roman styles. It is unusual in that it is a manuscript of the entire Bible. When everything is handwritten on vellum, you can see how big a complete Bible gets. A collection of the Gospels or individual books of the Bible, such as a psalter, were much more common. The Codex is actually believed to be the earliest complete copy of the Vulgate Latin Bible. Go Northumbria. The reason they showcase it at the World of Bede is because it was commissioned and completed at Wearmouth-Jarrow, and it appears that Bede was likely involved in its compilation. Cool stuff :)

After wandering around there and buying Christmas gifts, we ventured out to the Anglo-Saxon replica farm, where they attempt to showcase how farming worked back in the day. Of course it was raining and muddy and most of the animals were taking cover, but it was kind of neat to walk around.

 

After successfully completing our medieval dork pilgrimage to Jarrow, we headed back to Newcastle in search of dinner and hung out at the pub until it was time to catch the train back to York. <3 cheap yummy fish and chips. Advantages to towns along the coast!

Christmas Starts Early in England

Ahh, Christmas. That most wonderful time of the year. Now if only York would stop hitting almost 60 degrees in the afternoon so that we can see it all covered with snow! While in the States, the unofficial start of the holiday season is the day after Thanksgiving, it starts about a week earlier here since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. The city of York kick started the holiday season last Thursday with the First Night Festival, which of course we had to go to.

Buildings were lit up and fairy lights were on the trees.

Shops were also open late, and the outdoor market will be selling Christmas gifts & craft items everyday until late.

And for the kiddies, there's a baby carnival with three really lame rides- a tiny carousel, a train that goes around in a circle, and cars that go around in a circle. Hope you like circles kids. But the booths had some cool stuff to look at, including these really cute finger puppets. Rachel bought some for her 2 year old nephew and we had a lot of fun picking out which ones she got.

In addition to "normal" animals like lions, tigers, monkeys and cows, there were some fun ones like hermit crabs, seahorses, and octopi. There were also vendors selling a lot of woodwork, jewelry, cheese, candy, t-shirts, knit sweaters/hats, etc.

In mid-December, York hosts the Festival of Angels. On First Night, there was a preview of the ice sculpture to come during the festival of angels. Plus all the store windows are all decked out for Christmas, including the Disney Store and the Jorvik Viking Centre.

How cute is that? In case you were wondering, you can in fact buy Viking-themed Christmas gear, including runic ornaments and Santa Viking hats (basically a red felt santa hat stuck on top of a horned Viking helmet.) Anyway, we checked out the outdoor ice rink that opened that night, but passed on skating since it wasn't really cold enough yet and the ice was melting pretty fast. The few people out there were kind of skating in puddles. So we grabbed Italian hot chocolate (what can I say, I'm a total sucker for thick, dark chocolatey deliciousness. Nobody does food like the Italians) and headed out to listen to some Christmas tunes played by a local wind band around the Christmas tree in the square (it was windy, the tree isn't quite as Charlie Brown-ish as it looks.)

We also saw a parade of little ones with glowing stars and their parents led by Santa. I'm not really sure what the significance of the parade was, but it was kind of cute. It looked like the kids decorated their own stars because the colored patches were different on each one.

Churches were lit up in purple (the liturgical color of the Advent season), and even the Minster got involved.

So fun stuff :) Next weekend, there is the St Nicolas Fayre, with more outdoor shopping marts to peruse, as well as a Medieval market. I have no idea what will be at the medieval market, but I'm intrigued to find out more! Then in December, the International Christmas Fayre arrives in Parliament Street, so that will be fun to check out too. York does all kinds of stuff for Christmas- it likes to claim that its the best destination in the UK for the season. Judging by the number of tourists, I'd say that's probably accurate. The number of tourists had dropped down after October, but I guess quaint English Christmas has a lot of appeal.

This weekend, I headed north to visit Wearmouth & Jarrow, the "one monastery in two places" most famous for being the home of Bede, English medieval author/historian extraordinaire. So we checked out the ruins of the monastery at Jarrow, the World of Bede museum, and THEIR Christmas fayre. But more on that + pictures in the next entry.

A Hodge-Podge of Recent(ish) Happenings

First up, I have a special gem to share. I'd meant to post this photo with the Eddie Izzard entry, since that's when I made the discovery of it's existence but somehow forgot to include it. Check out what lives in Exhibition Square (i.e. the area comprised of King's Manor and the York Art Museum) late at night. I don't actually know how often or when it gets there because I've never seen it before or since, but then again, we got back from the train at like 12:30 am the day we saw the comedy show and I'm never out that late, so it could be there all the time and I just don't know. I suppose its like Schrodinger's cat. And yes, I'm aware of how dorky it is to reference that in conversation, but dorky is the new cool! Accept it! :)

Without further ado, check out the Baked Potato Waggon!

It is actually a bit strange, because they usually call baked potatoes "jacket potatoes" here. And they're pretty ubiquitous as lunch options at various sandwich shops/cafes with a variety of filling options. I had one the other day for lunch with "mince" filling; ground beef and peas in some kind of sauce stuff. It wasn't bad. I would kill for a potato with plain old chili and cheddar cheese though. I'm ok with the mince stuff too, but I'm sorry, various forms of curry on a potato just doesn't appeal to me.

You may have noticed that I talk about food a lot. Food is always what gets me first in a foreign country. I like what I like and I miss what I like. And I'm afraid I'm not done with food for this entry yet :)

Last Sunday (wow have I been bad about updating...) I went with a couple other girls to experience a traditional Sunday Roast. Its kind of a tradition here that people go to church and then either go to a pub (or enjoy at home) roast beef with all the trimmings. We attempted one pub that came highly recommended, but everyone else in York apparently also heard that recommendation, so we went to a less crowded pub which was also recommended called the Evil Eye.

Here is what 7 pounds will get you on Sunday afternoons:

Even I don't know what all is on that plate. There's roast beef, cabbage mush, what I think were about 3 different kinds of potatoes, broccoli, carrots, some kind of squash mash, and Yorkshire pudding. The "Yorkie" is a bread that's cooked using the fat droppings from the roast. That's the thing on top that's a bit dark around the edges. Its not bad, but it kind of just tastes like meaty bread. Underneath the Yorkie was something that vaguely resembled what I can only describe as stuffing pureed into baby food (ick.) And of course, gravy over everything. As you may or may not be aware, I have this thing about not liking my food touching, and for exactly this reason. I don't like my gravy getting all over stuff it shouldn't. Case in point, I do not care for gravy on broccoli or carrots. And I don't like cabbage mush to begin with, but certainly not with gravy on it. Gravy belongs on potatoes and meat and that's all. Aside from the kind of weird mushed up stuff, it wasn't bad. Well, ok, the potatoes, meat, and Yorkie were pretty good. I don't know that I'll be ordering another one anytime soon.

Afterwards, we trekked about three doors up the street to Starbucks, where I enjoyed a delicious chai latte. They actually have different flavors here, which is probably to be expected. There's a dark chocolate cherry mocha that is apparently delicious that I'm going to have to try next time I convince myself that I can spend like 3.50 ($5!!) on a small drink. We were pleased to see that UK Starbucks sell proper scones, not those silly little lemon things that the US stores sell. 

And now for something not food related! I'm taking you on a walk with me to the Rougier Street bus stop (where I then caught the bus to campus to spend a few hours at the library.) So from my house, I walk down the street and then cut through some teeny tiny streets and end up walking along the Ouse River, which is pronounced like "ooze."

The Ouse is actually one of 2 rivers running through York, the other being the Foss. These were of course the reason York was historically a major center in England because both rivers are pretty large and allow for shipping access. Later York became a railway hub, continuing its history as transportation center for the North of England. The leaves have only been falling the last 2 weeks or so; temperatures are still ridiculously mild here, considering I'm basically as far north as Alaska. Yay Gulf Stream. We're hovering around 50 degrees during the day, so I'm still just wearing a corduroy jacket (totally the best thing I bought to come here) or a light sweater and a scarf. It does get colder at night though. And night here is basically anytime after 4:30 in the afternoon. It is full dark by then when I get out of class, which is really weird. Because as a girl and living in a city for the last few years, I've had it drilled in to me to be super cautious at night, not to go anywhere alone, etc etc etc, but that just feels silly when its dark in the late afternoon!

Anyway, back to our stroll. Here is Lendal Bridge, which connects a tower on one side (all that remains of the city walls there; also on the market if anyone wants to buy a medieval tower. It is attached to a modern house if that's a concern!) and the city walls on the other.

You can see bright red boats past the bridge. Those are the York Boats, which is on my list of things to do if anyone ever comes to visit me. No one here seems interested. :( 

Here's a little sandwich shop that I've been meaning to try, mostly because I think the building is really cute. I'm a sucker for anything with crenelations. Vocab word- crenelations or battlements are the technical terms for the top part of castles that go up and down sort of like this:

 _    _    _

|   |_|  |_|   | (sorry, that's the best I can do). They allow for arrows to be shot while offering some protection for the archer's body. You can also see the shields on the bridge to the left. I think its pretty nifty.

Finally, here's a shot of the city walls running off towards the train station located just outside the walls.

From here I cross the street, walk past a neon green sandwich shop called Krunchy's which I also kind of want to try (are you sensing a pattern? Lots of sandwich shops) and arrive at the bus stop and await the giant purple monstrosity that services the University route.

So there you have it. More or less an average day in my life, minus the boring library bits. :)

Why yes, I am American

I've found that it is pretty strange what triggers an overwhelming sense of American identity. In a lot of ways, life in the UK is very similar to life in good ole US of A. Sure, the pronunciation is different and they've got different names for some things, but generally things are pretty similar. But the other day I was walking through campus on my way to the library wearing jeans and a hoodie with my iPod blasting something or other and it dawned on me that in that moment I was incredibly American. Hoodie & jeans are practically the college student's uniform, right? Wrong. I have yet to see a British girl wearing a hoodie around. It is all the international kids that wear sweatshirts and such. It is a bit more common to see guys in sweatshirts though. Also, if you are a British girl attending college, almost without fail you are wearing a short skirt and opaque black tights and heel-less boots pretty much everyday. If you're bored, you might mix it up with a pair of short shorts on top of tights. That's not to say that there aren't girls in jeans, it is just much like the Ugg Boots phenomenon only much more popular. And then there's the iPod, standard accessory for most of us American college kids, but not used in public much here. You'll see people listening to them on the train or something, but very rarely walking around or even in the library. And then there's the ice cream. I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream, which in America is described as Chocolate Ice Cream with Gooey Marshmallow & Caramel Swirls & Fudge Fish. Here, and I kid you not, it is "Chocolate Ice Cream with Marshmallow, Caramel & Chocolatey Shaped Fish." Who knew fish could be shaped like chocolate?

Unrelatedly, I did laundry today and it cost me the equivalent of $10 to do 2 loads of laundry. TWO loads! Sheesh, now I understand why the British tend to be much more lax about wearing clothes more than once.

Bonfire Night part deux

Today I present proof that I did end up seeing some fireworks. Granted, it was through my skylight and on Friday night rather than Thursday, but I'm still going to say it counts.

I've got some other pictures and stories to share, but I have to transfer pictures over to my laptop, so in the meantime, here are some quaint British/medieval-y things.

This is a view down the street just past Bootham Gate, walking towards the Minster. I had to return a book to the Minster library :) Its really true that all the shops have the hanging signs. I really like them, I think they're cute. You may also note that people are walking down the middle of the street. Most of city centre is pedestrians only during the main part of the day. Even bikes have to go a round about way around to avoid the pedestrian only section.

And here is the side of the Minster, as seen from the Minster Gardens, which aren't very big, but nice to walk around. You can also see all the scaffolding on the end- that's the East Window (THE largest medieval stained glass window) and it is undergoing preservation work expected to end in 2014, but our tour guide at the Minster said not to hold your breath for that, so don't expect to be able to see it in all of it's glory anytime soon. But they do have a full-scale banner hanging in the space so you can sort of almost envision what it looks like. Also kind of cool, while preservation work is on-going, they have panels on display so you can see them up close. It is amazing how much detail goes into each frame, especially since the fine detail is completely lost to viewers from the ground. I mean, how could it not be, the thing is the size of a tennis court!

I have no idea what this is, but I think its cool. If/when I find out what it is (I assume a monument of some kind), I'll let you know. Located near the Minster Gardens entrance.

And here is the opposite side of Bootham Gate. I showed you the front in one of my first posts- it has Roman fortress/walls stuff underneath. The city wall runs off to the right and is a medieval addition built on top of earlier Roman fortifications. I was "inside" the city where I stood to take this picture. However, there were walls within walls around walls all over the place in the medieval period. St Mary's Abbey, which is located behind King's Manor had its own set of walls which still stand in sections around Bootham down to where I live. Speaking of where I live...

That's my street. It isn't terribly exciting, especially since they've been doing all kinds of crazy road work and scaffolding has gone up on and down on a bunch of buildings. But it is a nice area. Most of the houses on the street are actually B+Bs. The Bootham area is kind of the Bed and Breakfast zone in York. If you keep walking down this street, go down about 5 stairs, walk across the public parking lot, you arrive at the River Ouse, (pronounced Ooze. And before you ask, no, it is not named because it is sludgy and disgusting, although you can't swim in it. The current is really fast and strong and people (often intoxicated) do drown every so often.) The Ouse will be one of the subjects from my next post, once I upload pictures :)

Anyway, back to my living situation. My house might not be the prettiest or the nicest or the cleanest house ever, but we do what we can with it :)

Procrastination + Bonfire Night

So as you can probably tell, I avoided my reading for like an hour and a half and fiddled with adjustments to the blog template here. If anything breaks or gets wonky, let me know, its still a work in progress.

November 5th is Bonfire Night (also known as Guy Fawkes Day) in the UK. Today we celebrate that wondrous man who absolutely failed in his plot to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The plot's goal was to literally blow up the houses of Parliament while the Protestant nobility (and the Catholic nobility- whoops) were inside as a means of ending the Protestant rule of King James and to end the discrimination against Catholics in England at the time. The plot was foiled when Fawkes was discovered setting up the explosives after officials received an anonymous warning letter. On Bonfire Night, bonfires are lit and effigies of Guy are burned in a tradition dating all the way back to 1605, and fireworks displays go off in a tradition going back all the way to whenever fireworks became the standard means of public celebration. Sounds like my kind of day, right? Well it would be if York, the BIRTHPLACE of Guy Fawkes mind you, did anything for it. They decided a few years back to scrap their Bonfire Night festivities because it was too cost prohibitive to meet all the safety regulations put in place in recent years by various government agencies.

So I have no idea what I'll be doing tonight. Apparently there is a small bonfire in Heslington, the villiage near the main York campus. I'm not sure if fireworks displays from any other cities will be visible or not. Apparently the York Tourism Board is equally disgusted with the lack of festivities, because lots of potential tourists contact them about planning a visit around Bonfire Night but then bail when they hear we don't do anything.

Anyway, the Guy Fawkes legacy lives on. In 2002, he was voted #30 in the list of the 100 Greatest Britons (which is kind of ironic actually, seeing as he a) attempted to bring down the government and b) failed at it) and he has been immortalized in the masks and poem (re)popularized by the movie V for Vendetta.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot,

I know of no reason

Why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

A Proper English Cream Tea

An English cream tea consists of tea (obviously) with either cream or lemon and sugar, and scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream. As I mentioned yesterday, I spent rather a lot of money on groceries which were delivered today, including everything I need for my own cream teas for breakfast :) Now, I went with plain scones because I don't really care for raisins, but really there should be raisins in the scones. Fun factoid, jury is out on how you should pronounce "scone." Most English & Scottish people will pronounce it as if it rhymes with John, however it is also acceptable to pronounce it rhyming with cone. So now you too can sound snooty and British the next time you have a scone and pronounce it the British way! Anyway, in addition to the tea, you have to have a scone topped with jam and clotted cream.

Clotted cream traditionally comes from Cornwall and Devon, and there are therefore two corresponding methods for eating your scone. And there can be serious debate about which method is preferable! I personally subscribe to the Devonshire tradition, in which you half the scone and put first the cream and then the jam on top. I feel that it is easier to spread the jam on top of the cream than the other way around. But this is likely because I typically eat Devonshire clotted cream, which is a thicker consistency than Cornish clotted cream. The Cornish method is the opposite; jam goes on first, then the cream. Either way, be sure to slather both on and enjoy.

Now, you may be wondering "what the heck is clotted cream?" Well, I could tell you, but then you probably wouldn't try it. Its a cream spread sort of the consistency of marscapone if you've ever had that. Just, you know, made of cream instead of cheese. There are tea rooms all across the country where you can enjoy a traditional cream tea, or any of a multitude of other desserts or sandwich options. In York, the best has to be Betty's. Its a bit pricey, but totally worth it for the atmosphere. If you get a table along the wall of windows, you score a prime spot to people watch because it is right off a big square. Mom, we're totally going if y'all come visit me!

EDDIE IZZARD!

Last Thursday, Ellen, Brian and I rode the train an hour north to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for Eddie Izzard's "Stripped" show. The show is a two hour "stripped down" account of the history of the world. And it is an absolutely fantastic show. Jesus preaches to the dinosaurs (but not to worry, it is not the same as his bit about that in a previous show) plus an absolutely HILARIOUS section on the limitations of the Latin language. I was basically crying during that part I was laughing so hard.

The show was held at the Newcastle Metro Radio Arena, which looked pretty big- standard arena type stuff on the tickets webpage. But it is actually basically just a hockey arena. Like, say, Walter Brown-sized for those of you familiar with BU. So our seats which we thought were pretty good on the map were a lot closer than we thought they'd be. Of course, so was every other seat in the arena! Fun fact about UK event food- they have the usual not very good burgers, pizza, fries, and soda, but they ALSO sell hot fresh donuts. Hot. Fresh. Donuts. Oh man. I totally wanted some but I refrained. While we were waiting in line to pick up our tickets at the box office, we thought we smelled funnel cake and got really excited and then were very confused when there didn't seem to be anything like that around. And then we saw the donut stall. They looked (and smelled!) pretty good; I'll have to try them if I go to another show while I'm here.

Here's a not very good picture- my camera couldn't really handle the giant screen in a darkened arena thing very well.

And now we come to the not so exciting part of the story. The show was supposed to last 2 hours. The venue listed the show as running until 10:10. The last train back to York was at 10:46 and the station is only about 10 minutes from the arena, so we figured we'd be fine. Well, that would be true if Eddie had followed his lighting cues to wrap up either of the first two times they blinked at him. So at 10:30, we start worrying. But then, miraculously, he wraps up! Clapping, clapping, we can totally make the train! Oh no he's back for an encore. And its about the American space race. Dang it. So we, along with about 10 other college aged people make a beeline out of there and RUN for the train, figuring we're totally going to miss it. We're running, we get there, it is exactly 10:46... and the train is listed as 2 minutes late. Thank goodness. So we didn't get stranded in Newcastle for the night and all was well, except that we missed the last bit of his routine. But the DVD comes out at the end of the week, so one of us will have to get it so we can see what we missed.

If you are at all familiar with Latin, I recommend this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YOmOd40iY for Eddie's take on Latin inefficiencies :)

He'll also be back in the US for an abbreviated tour, so if you're interested, you may want to check that out. So yeah, that's about all that's new. I spent the weekend sick so I haven't been up to much except watching old movies and whatnot in the past few days. Oh, and doing reading for class. Can't forget that...

Today I spent 50 BPDS on groceries at Asda (yay Walmart) and made some interesting discoveries:

1) Asda only charges 3.50 for deliveries during the day, as opposed to Tesco's 5 pounds all the time.

2) Ground beef is "minced beef" here.

3) There is no American or Mexican cheese blends available here. Which is only to be expected, I suppose, but still somewhat disappointing. We have cheddar back home! Show North American cheeses some love, UK!

4) There is no shredded cheese, but there is "grated cheese" as long as you want Cheddar, Gloucester, Parmesan, or Mozzarella.

5) It isn't sour cream, it is soured cream. Which is not quite as appetizing of a name...

6) YOU CAN BUY SCONES AND CLOTTED CREAM! I already had the strawberry jam, so prepare yourselves for some picture spam and poetic odes to the glories of a cream tea sometime soon.

7) US fries = UK chips. This is common knowledge. US chips = UK crisps. Also (semi) common knowledge. The exception: Tortilla chips. Still called chips. However, the UK's idea of corn chips are Doritos. All kinds of different flavors of Doritos. I did find a "lightly salted" flavor that I'm hoping is just regular old tortilla chips.

8) Baileys makes non-alcoholic cream like for coffee/tea. I did not get any but I was intrigued.

9) Technically an old grocery store discovery, but I'm going to share here anyway. They have really good strawberries here year round. They're a lot smaller than the California monstrosities we're used to, but the weather stays good enough year round for sweet delicious strawberries.

10) They do not sell deodorant/antiperspirant in a tube that you twist up and rub on your armpits, unless you buy the stupid expensive (not to mention foul-smelling) organic brand. Everything else is aerosol spray. Weird.

11) You can buy macaroni cheese (they don't put the & in for some reason) in a can. It is apparently disgusting, but you can. No blue box here! :(

12) I did find, however, El Paso Taco Kit! So excited.

So basically half of the battle to finding something resembling what you want is knowing what to look for. I had to search through pages upon pages of "dairy" to find "grated cheese" because I simply didn't think to search for grated rather than shredded. But I'm picking up the differences and I'm sure that by the time I leave I'll have finally gotten everything sorted out!

Blogs are supposed to be angsty, so...

I finally met with my assigned adviser this afternoon. She's nice, and she does kind of religious institutiony type things, so she's a great person to talk to for advice on that kind of thing. And her basic reaction to the discussion of what I'm interested in and think I want to pursue for my thesis and potentially beyond was something along the lines of "wow that's really interesting. but you know you can't really do that in the States, right?" Her take on the fact that pretty much EVERY SINGLE PROFESSOR in the US focuses on the Mediterranean/Spain/Italy is that it isn't cool/politically correct to focus on England. Too much WASP animosity. The modern trend is to decrease association with English heritage and to instead embrace other identities like Irish, Italian, whatever. Plus history is an easy department to force to be multicultural by employing people who study "minority" kinds of areas. And there's no student demand for courses on England. Which I actually disagree with. I think there is a lot of frustration amongst college kids about the lack of courses on Western Europe. That was true at BU and its been true at all of the schools people here went to for undergrad. I think there is actually a void that universities are neglecting to fill, its just that there is no incentive to fill that void by hiring another medievalist. Ok, end rant. Sorry.

So basically her suggestion was to either do a PhD here and get a job here or find a really great adviser in the States and go really broad comparative. She did a PhD here and had planned to go back to the States to teach but was basically laughed at when she said what she focused on. So her options were to come here or to reinvent her academic interests and focus areas.

All of which is, you know, super fantastic. I'm so excited to not have employment options. Grar. So I'm supposed to think about doing a thematic comparative study of religious institutions across England/France/Sicily and perhaps Spain. Not that there's anything wrong with that in particular, I just have basically no background in Sicily or Spain. Although, Frederick II is basically my favorite historical person EVER and he was sort of Sicilian. Try wikipedia-ing him, he's pretty much awesome. Crazy, but awesome.

And I can't stay here, if only because my stomach rebels every time I eat pretty much anything that isn't bread, crackers, Nutrigrain bars, yogurt, rice or cereal. So basically prepackaged boxed items. PB+J has been ok, lunch meat and cheese sandwiches are not. Ditto grilled cheese, so I know its not the lunch meat. Actually, pretty much anything involving cheese is not. I think I just can't handle crazy British cheddar cheese or something. Except that I can eat the chips with cheese from the place down the street. Ok, so make that anything involving cheese from the local grocery store. Now I realize that you can have an adjustment period for food and whatnot in a foreign country, but it has been almost a month at this point, so I don't know. On the upside, only eating like 1.5 meals a day and walking around everywhere/ up 3 flights of stairs to my room means my jeans are at the point where I need to obtain a belt. Or just shrink them in the dryer that is apparently notorious for running hotter than it says it is and therefore shrinking all your clothes.

So basically this amounts to I have a year to kind of re-evaluate what I want to work on and then apply for grad schools for entrance 2011. Of course that also means I'll have to find a job for that year. And apparently I shouldn't go with the woman at BC because I really need to try to move away from political/legal stuff around the Conquest because that won't let me go broad-based comparative. Which is kind of disappointing because BC does pretty intensive "professor training" (teaching you how to develop a curriculum, how to lecture, basics for courses you're likely to have to teach like Western Civ) and they do tuition remainders and a pretty nice stipend for all their grad students. Plus it is sort of in Boston, which I already know and am familiar with. So now I have like no plan for my future and my stomach hurts. Great day. Now I'm going to watch tv and avoid reading. I've got tomorrow off; I'll do it then.

Also, I am officially allergic to dish soap. All kinds of dish soap. It makes my hands very not happy with me.

Whee, Time Change

Britain switched out of daylight savings time today, which meant that I actually woke up at 9:45, not 10:45 (somehow quarter to 10 just sounds like I was more productive/on the ball than quarter to 11... maybe that's just me.) This also means that for the next week, I will only be 4 hours ahead of Eastern time. Just in case any of you were wondering when a good chance to catch me on skype would be. I'm also open to AIM if you don't use skype and want to stay in touch, but I just use AIM express for the express (haha) purpose of tracking down certain people. So take this as the perfect opportunity to get in touch with me if we haven't caught up in awhile, since now I'll be going to bed around 8:30 pm Eastern time so you don't have to interrupt your dinners :)

In other news, the weather was bleh today, so I basically didn't leave the house. I also didn't get nearly as much work done as I should have. But... it'll work out. And now I'm off to read Bede until I fall asleep. Also, I need a Halloween costume for the Halloween party my house is throwing. Preferably something that I can put together fairly easily/cheaply from thrift stores. Comment with any brilliant (or not so brilliant) ideas you have!

Illuminating York Festival

The Illuminating York Festival is an annual event in which, basically, the city puts lights on things. Now, this may sound kind of lame, but it is actually kind of cool. They illuminate various (mostly historic) stuff with various colored lights and hold different exhibitions and some museums offer special "torchlit" (that's by flashlight for us Americans) tours. To the right is an example- a section of the Medieval wall running around St Mary's lit up in blue & green. It is kind of cool because they hold this the weekend before and the weekend of Halloween, so you can go get your spook on with mood lighting! They also do several, well, lightshows for lack of a better word. One, entitled Vespertine, was projected onto one of the courtyard walls at King's Manor (that's where I go to school!) and focused on nocturnal wildlife.

Here's a section from the show featuring predators after a hedgehog. There was also this weird thing in a square where they projected laser patterns down at the ground from a crane way up above. The crane also had a camera and the feed was projected onto a screen, so you saw the crane's perspective of all the little people playing in the light patterns. It sounded really cool on the festival website, but was actually just kind of eh. But, there WAS the world's coolest etch-a-sketch.

This is just the tail end of one artist's session, but basically, people draw on tablet things and it is projected onto the Multangular Tower (which you might remember from a previous post.)

Most of the really fun historic building/museum stuff doesn't happen until next weekend, but hopefully I won't come down with swine flu like everyone else and will be able to go and tell you all about it.

On a complete side note, if you have not yet received a postcard, I swear it is coming, but the UK postal service is on strike, so nothing is being sent out of the country right now. If you would like a postcard and have not yet told me so, please let me know and get me an address to send it to either by facebook or email if you don't feel comfortable posting it here (I wouldn't blame you.)

Today I had the fun experience of talking to Amanda (hi Amanda!) who's in Japan. Fun times with time differences. Also, hearts to everyone who's kept in touch; its nice to have pals from home to talk to :)

First Full Week of Classes

Congratulations to me, first week of classes is done. Since classes are now in full swing, this is pretty much how I spend most of my time. Reading articles/books/etc in my spiffy new York sweatshirt on the bed because if I sit at my desk under the eaves I smack my head into the stupid cross beam every time I stand up.

I think the biggest difference between undergraduate and graduate classes (and I think my fellow grad students will agree) is the amount of reading. We have to read A LOT for every class. It is also different because there's not list of course books that you are expected to go out and buy. In the UK (apparently this is true for both undergrad and graduate courses), they don't expect you to purchase pretty much any books (with the exception of language grammars and dictionaries). Instead, the expectation is that you will get everything from the library. This would be great if I wasn't a 40 minute walk away from the big campus library. King's Manor does have its own library with some stuff in it, but they a) don't have everything that the main library does, and b) only have 1 copy if they have it, so unless you are super aggressive about checking out books before everyone else in your class, no such luck.

All of my classes are once a week seminars, which means that every week I get to track down new loads of books and articles from either the main library, the Minster library, KM library, or the internet. This has led me to question whether it really is more convenient to live in city centre near my classes since I have to trek up to campus for the library all the time or to visit history professors' office hours. I think it is a toss up- whether you live on campus or in city centre, you get to do a lot of walking back and forth. Unless you are made of money and take the bus a lot.

Speaking of money, I have some! I can pay my tuition! Huzzah! Course, according to the online currency converter, my $15,000 USD should have been just over 9000 BPDs, but it came out to 8800 which kind of puzzles me, but at least I have money and will not be kicked out of college.

Here's a brief rundown of what I'm learning about this term.
1) Medieval Latin. The Latin placement test put me into Beginners Plus, which kind of made me sad because I thought I knew more than someone just barely better than someone who knows zero Latin. But after the first class, I heartily agree with that placement. Beginners Plus is ACTUALLY basically Intermediate but with a quick review of all of the grammar structures. I think this works out well because the amount of Latin I remember from the last time I took it is, well, not super (it was better before I went to Italy last spring break. That got Italian all stuck in my head and now I'm thoroughly confused about what is Latin and what is Italian), and because I've only ever worked with classical Latin, so this gives me a chance to run through some of the ways the language changed in the medieval period and in some of the vocabulary that was invented, particularly to describe church related things that classical Latin just didn't have words for. Medieval Latin is a bit nicer because the sentence structures more closely resemble modern English structuring, but they get tricky and do things like write an "ae" ending as just "e." And lets not even go into the abbreviations they used in manuscripts. But I actually like the class, which is good. The teacher is this cute older English woman who's very no nonsense and figures that we can't help our ignorance because teachers today were often taught in the 40's and they didn't care about things like grammar back then. She's pretty funny.

2) Paleography. For you non-medievalists, this is the study of manuscripts, writing, and books basically. We learn how to read different scripts so that we can make sense out of primary resources and actually read all the medieval manuscripts still around. We also learn about standards in form and technique for various types of documents (i.e. a charter is usually written on parchment with specific dimensions, etc.) Right now we're basically just doing an introduction to the field, but later we break into groups to study in depth the documents and scripts used in a specific time period or document type (for example, books are often written in different scripts than documents, which were typically written for the king/court where speed of production was necessary.) The class is taught by an American/Canadian- someone told me she was American, but she went to school in Canada so I'm not sure- who has managed to develop a tinge of English accent. With the exception of one professor who still sounds very American, most of the North American professors have developed a strange hybrid accent. I'm going to come home and not know how to speak properly! I'll be calling things shops instead of stores, and weekENDs instead of WEEKends.

3) Old English. Taught by a PhD student who lives in my house (makes for a handy resource when stumped by homework!), so far all we've worked on is pronunciation. Because with the exception of a few words, it is not anything like modern English. Well, to be precise, we're learning West Saxon, but that was the dominant dialect of Old English in literature/documents after Alfred the Great.

Stolen from Ellen:
Alfred is Good
Alfred is Great
To read his Life
I just can't wait.

Sorry, medievalists humor. This is what happens when you put us in a house together... Anyhoo, it is definitely interesting. I actually think my Italian background is helpful here, which is strange since Italian is a romance language and OE is West Germanic, but I'm used to enunciating all vowels in a word. I don't know if I'll ever get the different "th" sounds, but its only the first week. And after this class I might be able to read through some of Beowulf in the original. Pretty snazzy.

4) Core Module. This is a class all Med. Studies MA students have to take. But, they break it down into various groups, so it isn't like a big lecture class full of all 20 of us or anything. The first few weeks, everyone is either taking Approaches to Archaeology, Intro to Art History, or Reading Published Medieval Texts. This is designed to introduce us to a discipline we don't have much background in. I'm taking Reading Published Medieval Texts, which is sort of a hybrid literature/history thing. I haven't done much with medieval literature, so I figured it'd be a good section to take. In a couple of weeks, everyone will be switching to one of three case studies which we will then look at through various interdisciplinary approaches. This is all designed to help us think and work with multiple disciplines, since that's kind of the point of doing an interdisciplinary masters program.

5) Saints and Sanctity. This class looks at early Medieval religious developments- specifically looking at the rise and development of saints cults. It is definitely interesting. But we kind of got tsk tsked by the professor after the first session. Apparently class was slow and he felt he led discussion too much. I didn't think it was particularly slow, and I don't know how we were supposed to do anything about him leading discussion, since the whole class was basically him posing questions, us discussing them, then him posing some other ones. I'm sure we would have been happy to pose our own questions if he hadn't been clearly leading discussion. But whatever. I'm sure it'll straighten itself out over the next couple weeks.

So yeah, that's what I do. Fun stuff.

Frolicking in the Country and Other Adventures

Sorry, I've been bad about updating when I say I'm going to update. But in my defense, I've become way busier in the last few days. So in no particular order, here's some of what I've been up to.

The Quest for Eddie Izzard Tickets

This all began when either Ellen, one of my housemates, or I quoted Eddie Izzard in conversation, had a mutual "You like Eddie Izzard?!?" moment, and I remembered that Eddie Izzard was on tour in the UK this October & November. Thus we decided that we should go. Brad, another Med. Studies person also expressed glee/interest, so we figured we could get a group together to take the train to one of his shows (he's not coming to York proper unfortunately. Mostly because there isn't really a large venue he could come to.) However, purchasing tickets proved problematic. We couldn't seem to get all of us in the same place at the same time, so Ellen and I just decided to buy tickets ourselves so at least we could go.

For his show in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Thursday the 29th, there were three seats available on Ticketweb in the second section back from the stage. Like, ridiculously good seats to be on sale this close to the date. Catch was, you had to buy the group of three; they wouldn't sell just two of them. But literally while we were looking at them and comparing available seats for the Friday show, they disappeared. We figured we'd missed our chance. So we turned to that dreaded evil, Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster, however, will only mail your purchased tickets to your billing address. Neither of us had changed our billing address to the UK. So rather than have the tickets sent back to the states, we decided we'd walk down to the local Tourist Info center which is also a ticketmaster retailer. So we go down, standing in line while the woman working there made hotel reservations for various people, etc. Finally the computer frees up so she can look at tickets for us. Except that their ticketmaster access password was declined. And so was the one at the TI down at the train station. They were going to try to get that fixed yesterday (our ticket adventure was on Saturday), but we didn't want to chance waiting that long. So we grabbed ice cream from the truck across the street- full fat cream makes for WAY better ice cream- and trudged back home and up the three flights of stairs to our rooms. But as luck would have it, the three seats were back on ticketweb! So we deliberated for all of 10 seconds and just bought the three. We figured we'd sell one to Brad or somebody.

The tickets are still being sent back home to Virginia, but we called them and they said that we should call back three days before the event and they could put a set for will call at the arena box office. Score. Except that over the weekend Brad came down with swine flu. So we might have to find some other Eddie aficionado to come with us. But YAY! He's totally my favorite comedian like ever. And this show, Stripped, is supposed to be a two hour, "stripped" down version of the entire history of the world. Should be good fun. If any of you Americans are interested, he is taking the show on a 6 city tour in the US in January. I know he'll be in Boston, Chicago, NY, and I think LA, but I'm not sure what the other two cities are. 'Course, tickets are like $70 which is way (EDIT: more! apparently I wasn't paying attention and accidentally put less) than I paid!

Frolicking in the English Countryside. Kind of.


On Friday, me & two housemates walked the 40 minutes to campus for a mandatory fire safety briefing. Typical don't burn stuff down and don't walk along the River Ouse in the city centre if you're blithering drunk talk. While it is kind of bothersome trekking out to campus (alternatively spending 2.50 to ride the bus there and back), campus is pretty.

There's a big man- made lake that everything is built around, so there's bridges connecting various portions and providing shortcuts. There's also lots of cute ducks, not so cute geese, and some kind of funky looking black swans. Supposedly they're the last pair of black swans in England. Plus, lots of pretty willow trees. Anyway, on the way back, we decided to try an intriguing path that led through a field. Didn't really know where it led, but we figured we'd go see. It was a nice afternoon. So we walked along Walmgate Stray as it is called, back towards the city. Walmgate Stray is literally just a small paved walk/bike way through some fields and past some cows. I mean literally past some cows. Like, there is no fence separating you from the cows.

See? Of course, when you come out of the field, you walk through an infantry base. It's kind of bizarre, you literally step out of a field and into a very military-looking zone. Big concrete buildings with chainlink fences and barbed wire.

Then you walk along the river for a while and eventually come out in town and then back at my house. They run a couple different YorkBoat cruises down the river that look really cool. There's the daytime one with historical commentary, and evening one with music & captain's banter and various meal cruises as well, but a) I don't think that's the kind of thing you can really do by yourself without being weird, and b) I have to hoard my money until I finally get more!

The Epic Saga of How the UK Refuses to Take My Money
Long story short, it makes the most sense to pay my housing and tuition fees from a UK bank account. Long story short, after much harassment, I finally have a UK bank account. Here's where the story gets long again.

To wire money to my account, I get charged like $60 from both my US and my UK banks. This obviously sucks. The UK bank, Lloyds, which is incidentally the ONLY bank in the UK that won't charge International students 5-8 pounds per month for the privilege of having an account, told me I could write a check no problem, it would be processed in 6-8 days, and I'd only get charged their 30 pound currency conversion fee. So I write them a check for an ungodly amount of money (goodbye, college fund...) and figure I'm all set because now I'll be able to do a direct debit to pay for my school fees. Well, not exactly. Yesterday, I received a phone call from the bank. Turns out it will take them 6-8 WEEKS to get me my money. Do I still want to go ahead with it or shall they send the check back to me? Yeah, no, that won't work at all, since my fees are due on the 30th. Accommodation was supposed to be due the 24th but I called the fees office and got an extension since the bank was being difficult. Now of course, this was not my favorite thing to hear, so I promptly decided that it was a chips/gravy/cheese for dinner night.

So now I'm back to wiring money. Of course, my US bank requires me to fill out a paper form, sign it and send it to them to initiate a wire transfer. Oh, and since my dad is listed as a joint account owner, he has to sign it too. Which means that I had to fill it out, sign it, send it to my dad so he can sign it and send it to the bank. Ahhhh. Dad somehow worked it so that I could sign it, scan it and email it to him, have him sign it and get the process going quicker, and then the original paper copy would get there as soon as various mail deliveries were made. Sounds good, right? Well, that leads me to...

The Quest for the Holy Scanner (it is like the Holy Grail, only more technologically advanced.)

Now, I had planned ahead and brought one paper copy of the wire transfer form with me. So I had filled that out already. But Dad wanted me to send him multiple signed forms so that if I have to transfer money again, we can cut out one leg of the mail delivery wait. Which makes sense, but is easier said than done. Off to campus I went today in search of a printer and scanner. So first I went to the library to print out a clean copy of the form, fill it out, make copies, and sign it. This of course necessitated paying for print quota and then buying a copy card. Wooooo. Then it was off to one of the PC Classrooms scattered around campus in search of a scanner. Two rooms have them. One in Langwith, and one in Alcuin. (York is on the residential college system, which means that each college is made up of 4-5 buildings linked by covered pathways around a central courtyard and provides dorm rooms, as well as office/classroom space. Departments are also housed in various colleges.)

I figured I'd try my luck in Langwith because they were supposed to have 2 scanners, while Alcuin just has one. So I made my way over to Langwith and promptly got very lost. The room was listed as Langwith 117, but when I went up to the first floor, the numbers only went up to 112. I went back downstairs and asked the porter. He directed me through a set of double doors, across a courtyard, and into the next building and up the stairs there. After making a brief confused detour through the cafe which was also through a set of double doors, I found the room. No scanner. But according to a poster on a bulletin board there, there was ANOTHER PC room in Langwith and that was where I needed to be. Fantastic. Of course, 138 was not on that floor. I thought, well, numbers seem to go up the further away from the central building you get... So I tried the next building over and sure enough, found it.

Problem. Each scanner is hooked up to ONE computer. One was not being used, so I tried that. Except that it won't accept logins. The guy on the next computer over was all "Yeah, that one doesn't seem to be working properly." The other computer was being used. The girl using it said she was almost done and then I could have it, so I used another computer while I waited. Score! Finally! Scanned and emailed. Victory. Of course, the program to scan text wasn't working, but I got it scanned using a Corel graphics program, so all is well that ends well.

So those are some of my recent adventures, not including class and Lords of Misrule, which I'm still kind of on the fence about. While it seems like it would be lots of fun, and the people are all really great, I just don't know that I want to commit the time to it. They're running Beowulf for three nights plus a dress rehearsal during the last week of term, i.e. when final essays are due. And I know that I'll procrastinate no matter what, and I just don't think that it would be wise for me to commit to not having any time in the evening that whole week to work on things. So I'm kind of thinking that I'll volunteer to work on props, but not actually be in the production/have to show up all the time.

I've also been trying to plan for after this year. I've come to the conclusion that I really just can't go straight into a PhD program when I finish here. My dissertation is due September 25th, and American programs all start end of August/early September, so I just don't think it will be feasible. Plus, most want 3 recommendations, and I can't ask professors that I've only known for 2 weeks at this point to write a rec for a December or early January deadline. So, I'm thinking that I'll take a year off and work and try to take a couple language classes. That way I can concentrate on applications after I finish my masters and have ~3 months to get those done. I've also been searching for a program/adviser that would be a good match.

I've run into the problem of having to chose between a really well-recognized program and an adviser with interests similar to my own. Notre Dame has probably the best Medieval program going on right now, with a bunch of California Schools- UCLA, USC, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley- also offering a really good program with a lot of success in placing graduates in jobs. This is good. However, none of the professors at  these schools are really doing the British Isles / France in the period I'm looking at. If they study the British Isles, they tend to do super early Medieval period. Not what I'm interested in. If they do my time period, they work on the Mediterranean or Muslim/Christian/Jewish interactions and Crusades. I can't win.

But in some other schools, I've been able to find a few scattered professors that are generally interested in social/religious history of the High Middle Ages, which is at least the area and time period I want. I did find one person at BC that does Ango-Saxon/Anglo-Norman stuff, is interested in history/archaeology as sources, and does some stuff with religion. She's far and away the closest match I've found interest-wise, but I don't know if I'd be better off studying under her or at one of the bigger/better/shiny-er programs. But hey, I've got a year to figure it out, right?

Lazy weekend

So today's highlights include eating baklava procured Friday at the "Continental Festival: Bringing the Tastes of the Continent to York" that's happening this weekend down town, reading Peter Brown's The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, taking an hour-long bath while reading Peter Brown, and convincing Hulu that I am geographically located within the United States. Shh, don't tell. This of course required a few hours spent catching up on my American tv shows. Yay 30 Rock! Also, I'm really digging FlashForward; hopefully that will continue to be good. Bones is <3 of course, now if only Booth & Brennan could admit it! But far and away, the best show this season has to be Glee. Awesome music and hilarious characters combine to make for a thoroughly entertaining hour of television. And now I'm going to go make Uncle Ben's ready rice and a salad and read the Life of St Martin.

Later this evening when I've moved pictures over from my camera, I'll share my adventures in the British countryside and close encounter with some cows. Bet you can't wait ;)

Beginnings

I'm really sleepy, so I'm going to bed basically right now. But, I felt like I should at least write a short entry. The picture is part of the King's Manor complex. It isn't the oldest/original building on the site (that actually holds the library and porters lodge among other things). But the Centre for Medieval Studies is headquartered in this building. I had sort of my first class today. Real classes start next week, but I went and met the professor, got what passes for a syllabus here, and had a mild heart attack at the amount of reading. If I were feeling more industrious, I'd take a picture of just what I'm supposed to read for next Thursday to show you. Also, its like a 10 person class (which, to be fair, the professor was not expecting. There's only about 6 of us registered through CMS to take it, but Medieval Lit and Medieval History folks registered later and showed up today as well) and the university's various libraries generally have about 1 copy of the books between them. Now, the professor could have put things on reserve as part of their key texts program, which keeps one copy at the library and it can only be checked out for a 4 hour period, thus allowing multiple people to use an item without one person checking it out and keeping it for weeks. But no, we're to work together and communicate to share readings. Yeah that's going to end well. I think graduate training, more than anything else, is meant to teach us how to fight to the death for rare books at the library! I did manage to track down copies of 2 books (but there's a whole lot more. A whole lot. Like, it took an entire page to write down everything we're to read for next week.) but some of the other major works for next week are already checked out. So I'm hoping that whoever has them is going to be a nice person and like me plans to read what they've checked out quickly and return it promptly so other people have a chance to read it.

In other news, I put in a Tesco order with a couple other girls to be delivered tomorrow. Hooray for groceries to my front door with little effort on my part! But online grocery shopping is kind of hard when you don't know the brands and products. For example, it took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to search for laundry detergent. You don't search for laundry detergent. Or laundry soap. A search for just "laundry" mostly turned up laundry tablet things. I wanted liquid so that I could hand wash things since 1 load of laundry costs 2 pounds to wash and another 2 pounds to dry (that's like $7!). They also do this thing here where they call fabric softener "laundry conditioner" and it is totally not clear on the bottle what laundry conditioner does. We finally figured it out, but it was just rather comical that it was that complicated to find laundry detergent.

Tonight was also the audition/interest meeting for Lords of Misrule. This semester's play is Beowulf. Several of the other new MA's and I agreed that it sounded fun but we weren't sure about the time commitment. So we "auditioned" for a small or non-speaking part and said we could help out with some of the crew stuff like sets/costumes/props. We'll see how that goes.

We're also trying to organize a trip to see Eddie Izzard's new show Stripped. He's a really funny comedian and he's doing a UK tour basically right now. There's shows about an hour away by train next Thursday and Friday and tickets aren't too bad, so we're trying to get a group together to go. I hope it works out because that would just be so much fun.

And now, as previously mentioned, I'm sleepy and going to bed. Goodnight!