Happy Easter!

Look where I went to church this morning! Ah, the Minster. Today the Most Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, an adorable teensy Ugandan man presided over the service and gave the sermon. And I got to shake his hand on the way out the door! Clearly I'm rubbing elbows with important people! Ok, no, not really.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Anglican church, it is basically a mash up of Methodism and Catholicism. How does that make sense? Well, for a _really_ simplified rundown...

The Anglican church broke off from the Catholic church so that Henry VIII could get married and divorced a lot, but they retained a lot of Catholic liturgical practice, just with no pope. Over the years they leaned more Protestant and after Queen Elizabeth I, the Anglican church (i.e. Church of England) was pretty firmly established as Protestant. Fast forward to the 1700s and you get John Wesley and his buddies espousing a sort of mini-reform of the Anglican church and establishing it both in England and in the American colonies. Well, post-Revolutionary War and the Methodists are firmly established in the US and NOT under the control of the Anglican church (can't really blame the Colonial folk- I wouldn't want anything to do with the national church of the country I just won a revolution against), despite the initial plans of the founders of Methodism. Over the years, American Methodist churches (at least, the United Methodist churches which are the ones I'm most familiar with) have moved further away from some of the Catholic traditions preserved in Anglicanism, but they still have similar prayers, hymns, etc. as the Anglicans. So, since Anglicanism is the halfway point between Catholicism and Methodism, I'm totally not surprised that it resembles both.

For Easter, we began and ended with a procession of various church officials, clergymen, the choir, and a whole slew of people carrying banners, crosses, scepters, books, chalices, etc. Plus loads of incense! (I'm not a fan of the incense.) The other glaringly Catholic-derived aspect was Communion. While they did let any "communicant member of a Christian church" partake, they have you kneel and press a wafer in your hand and hold the cup to your mouth for you to drink. The germophobe in me has always been creeped out by drinking from the same cup as all those people. That's a practice that has been replaced at a lot of Methodist churches, where instead you either dip the bread into the cup and consume both together, or they pass around thimbles of juice/wine. The sharing the cup thing still persists some places, but it isn't nearly as common. And I've never had communion wafer before- always real bread of some sort, often pita bread.

But what surprised me was the Lord's Prayer there. When I learned the prayer when I was young, we happened to attend a church that said "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" instead of "trespasses." A lot of churches have stuck with "trespass" over "sin" because it is more traditional and old school I suppose. But the Anglicans! Now, to be fair, I can't say for certain whether this is a widespread Anglican phenomenon or if the Minster is just really radical and new agey, but somehow I doubt that.

The "standard" (i.e. the way I've always said it) Lord's Prayer:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins/trespasses as we forgive those who sin/trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

The Minster Lord's Prayer:

Our Father in Heaven, hollowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Its in more "modern" English than any version I've ever heard. Still, it was a lovely service, and the archbishop is my new favorite person of the moment. He did an excellent job with making the sermon both relevant to Easter and to modern life and the struggles of modern Christians. I will leave you with a word of advice. If you ever have the chance to go to a service in a grand old cathedral/minster, you should totally do it. But dress warmly because they do not heat those things and it gets FRIGID. Although I'm sure it feels really nice inside in the middle of summer, in early spring & winter it is a major brrr! fest.

After services, I came home to start cooking! A few of us got together for an Easter dinner of roast lamb (hey, when in Rome right?), sweet potato casserole provided by yours truly, roast potatoes & carrots, and asparagus in a garlic cream sauce. Are we classy or what? I totally meant to photograph our feast and took my camera down and everything annnnd forgot. But trust me it was delicious. We modified a recipe for lamb with pomegranate molasses because pomegranate juice was SUPER expensive. So we used cranberry apple instead. I highly recommend it. Super flavorful. And I made 3 new converts to the deliciousness of sweet potato casserole. As I was working on it, one girl was like "I'm more of a squash person than a sweet potato person, but I'm entirely intrigued by whatever it is you're making." She is now a believer :) Another girl announced at dinner, "Excuse me, I have to do something I've never done before and get seconds of the sweet potatoes." That's right. All shall bow down before the sweet potato casserole, cuz it just isn't a holiday without it! Even if it does take about 3 times as long as it should to cook potatoes (sweet or otherwise) on the silly electric stove tops.

Catching Up Part 2: They get snow here?!?

That's right, they do. Or at least they did this year. I missed most of it while I was home for Christmas, but the "arctic blast" as the headlines called it started two days before I flew home and made for adventures getting home for most of us.

The snow started in earnest on Friday, when our essays were due. So I went off in the snow to print my paper and turn it in and by the time I got out, there was REAL SNOW on the ground!

 So Rachel and I went to play in the snow in Museum Gardens. We made a friend :)

A maintenance (that word is tricky to spell...) guy popped out from behind King's Manor and offered our snowman a construction hat but it was too big for his head :(

Then there was general frolicking in the snow and I swung by Borders to pick up some ridiculously cheap books. Border's UK went out of business just before Christmas so the entire store went an additional 10% off every day until closing. When I was there they were down to 70% off and everything was going FAST.

So here's an artsy collection of York in the snow. Haven't seen it since a few days after I got back because it all melted.

You might not be able to tell but the snow was coming down HARD. So it was kind of nice to get inside for the CMS Christmas Party. All the papers were in and free food- who could pass that up?

I had my first mince pie at the party. Mince pies are apparently a treasured Advent tradition here. I can't say I really care for them though. It is basically mushed up fruit plus raisins and spices in a pastry. I guess the closest American parallel would be fruit cake, which I also am not a fan of. And no, the "mince" in mince pie does not refer to ground meat in this case. I spent a long time explaining that to several people who were very confused :)

Anyway, the snow messed with a lot of people's travel plans all over the place. (Especially because it was almost simultaneous with the Nor'easter that hit the mid-Atlantic in the US.) I actually really really lucked out with my travel arrangements.

I didn't fly out until Monday morning (Dec. 21st) so by that time the UK was starting to run on schedule again. People traveling over the weekend had some problems because the trains were really delayed as they tried to get the tracks cleared. And then the storm hit at home over the weekend and flights to Philadelphia and DC were all over the place. Anyway, here's my getting home story.

Sunday night I book train tickets. It cost like 15 pounds (Blogger hates my pound signs, sorry) less to take the 6 am train to the Manchester Airport instead of a 7 am one, so I went the cheap route. So I arranged for a cab to pick me up at 5:30 (no way was I walking the 25 minutes to the train station in the snow with a suitcase). I get up at like 4 in the morning to shower and finish packing. Then around 5, I check my flight status. I was flying US Airways and connecting in Philadelphia. Philadelphia got lots and lots of snow over the weekend. Flights to Philly on Sunday were pretty much all delayed or cancelled. US Airways has you enter in a flight number and either "today" or "tomorrow" for flight status. So I put in my flight number and Today and it shows up "CANCELLED." I immediately begin freaking out. But I figure, well, I've already paid for the train ticket, might as well go down to the airport and beg/plead my way onto a flight going SOMEWHERE in the United States and figure it out from there.

So I get to the train station and get my luggage stowed. I'd requested a forward-facing window seat near a luggage rack. They gave me a rear-facing aisle seat near a luggage rack. Oh well. I learned that I don't get motion sick on trains while seated backwards if it is so dark out that you can't tell what direction you're going. Anyway, about five minutes into the 2 hour train ride, my iPod freaks out: screen freezes blank lit-up white and I can't get it to turn off. I have since looked up how to force it to shut down, but at the time nothing I pushed did anything. I was forced to just leave it on in my purse until the battery drained out. Only took it like 12 hours..! I was stuck with no music for the whole trip. I was not a happy panda. Anyway, 2 hours later I collect my stuff and trundle off across all the moving walkways to the airport proper and find the US Airways Reservations help desk.

The blonde girl behind the counter finally stopped ignoring me and asked if I needed anything, to which I mumbled something incoherent about flight and canceled and Philadelphia and me plane yes please? She was all "Oh, well, there's one leaving today around 1:00, you'll need to wait in the queue to see if there are seats available." And I was like, "Humina what? But I thought today's flight was canceled?" "Oh no, yesterday's flight was canceled. If you were originally scheduled for today's flight, you're fine you'll just need to check in," she said, pointing halfway down the terminal towards the US Airways signs. So off I trundle with stuff in tow and find the "Philadelphia 1:00" sign where a woman sends me ALL the way back to where I had been. That was the end of the line. The only people that got to use the special, clear lane where the buggers that managed to check in online before US Airways disabled web check-in for the flight.

Now unlike pretty much every other airport I've been in, Manchester didn't really care about the stupidly long line of people trying to check in for this flight. (Think 2 full A330 flights trying to all get seats on one flight. Oh, and they had to reschedule everyone's connecting flight out of Philly because the transatlantic flight was delayed.) Instead of keeping the line/queue in an orderly fashion, they just let people stand wherever, so the line just went straight back across the terminal, blocking access to basically every other airlines' check-in desks. And for some reason every single person decided to cut through the line to the other side right in front of me no matter how far up the line had moved. The British gentleman behind me told me I was too nice to them. And I thought Americans were supposed to be the pushy ones! I think travelers everywhere are basically the same- harried and not terribly interested in being polite.

Anyway, 3 hours later, I make it up to the desk and get tickets and a rescheduled flight to DC from Philly. By the time I make it through security, I had about 20 minutes to grab breakfast/lunch before my flight was supposed to board. So I grabbed a "bacon breakfast roll" which is exactly what it sounds like- a roll that they shove some bacon in and microwave- and scurry off to the gate, where, surprise surprise, boarding has been delayed. By the time I'd finished my sandwich roll thing, they were ready to board. So everyone hurries up and sits down to "make up the delay" and then we sit there until 3, at which point I begin to worry about making my rescheduled connection, since I had a 2.5 hour layover time to go through customs and immigration and if we were leaving 2 hours late... that was going to be tight. But you know, worry about those things when you get to them.

As an aside, if you're looking at international airlines, I've ranked the airline food from some of the carriers I've flown.

1) Aer Lingus. Both the chicken and the lasagna are yummy, everything was recognizable and free Baileys. (granted, this data is a few years old at this point.)

2) US Airways. The pasta dinner entree was pretty good, and REALLY good panini type sandwiches for "lunch".

3) British Airways. Decent tea, yummy breakfast scones, dinner was ok. Weird British sandwiches for lunch. Although that goes for Britain in general. Really, is ham and cheese too boring for you? They do however inundate you with free alcohol if you're into that kind of thing.

4) KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. They told me I was eating chicken. The package said bbq chicken. That was neither chicken nor bbq as far as I could tell. You know its bad when the pile of peppers and corn is better than the meat. (Says the no-veggies girl.) I have no idea what was in the salad (some kind of meat and beans and other things I couldn't identify), you grabbed your own roll off a tray (that puts other people's germy hands too close to my food for my comfort) and I don't even remember what we got for breakfast because the dinner was that funky. Good inflight entertainment selection though.

Anyway, back to the point. Watched Postgrad on the in-flight entertainment, that hit a bit too close to home for comfort. At least I'm not working at my dad's luggage store. At least my dad doesn't HAVE a luggage store. Slept a bit. The plane lands and then proceeds to rumble over snow drifts and ice. That was the bumpiest part of the ride! Got off the plane in a mad rush because I had 45 minutes to make my connecting flight. I get to Immigration and of course I pick the line with the fewest people in it and it ends up being the slowest line EVER. But I get through it and then find I have to wait for my bag to redeposit it on another conveyor belt. Luckily my bag wasn't the last one. Unluckily I had to get clear across the Philadelphia International Airport.

The airport staff getting my bag said I'd be fine, just take the shuttle at the A gates. The shuttle wasn't running out of the A gates- too much snow. I had to run down to the C gates (at which point I'm halfway to my gate anyway...). So I get on the shuttle and we bounce along off-road style over snow and ice that still hasn't been cleared the tarmac and I'm deposited at the gate just as they start to board. So all 12 of us get on the itty bitty plane to DC and then wait some more. Then we roll off to the runway. And wait some more. Finally we take off. The row in front of me has a mom and one two-year old twin while dad had the other one across the aisle. Now maybe I'm crazy, but I would have stopped trying to feed the kid in front of me after the first time he threw up. But not her! Determined mom! Vomit kid! Thank goodness it was a short flight. And thus I got home for Christmas because I always pick the cheapest travel options. If I'd gotten a later train or paid extra to fly home sooner, I'd have had a lot more problems.

And I came home to this:

That WAS over 2 feet of snow. It had kind of melted a bunch by the time I thought to take a picture. But you can kind of tell how much it was by using the mailbox as a reference.

Luckily the flight back to the UK wasn't so bad, although I flew back the day after I spent the day curled up on the couch with a fever. And I didn't get to sleep thanks to the baby sitting on the lap of the woman next to me that kept kicking me the entire flight. And then I got the last train to York that afternoon (weather problems struck again apparently. I didnt know, I was asleep as soon as I got back to my room).

Alrighty, so now we're basically caught up! I should do something exciting so that I have something to write about.

In the meantime, you can check out this:

http://www.york.ac.uk/medieval-studies/york-1190/

I'm assisting with the conference prep work. I'm putting together the book stalls so if you're a publisher and you want to come sell books, let me know! ;)

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 :)

Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, oh my!

Ok, first of all, I must start this entry with perhaps the best things ever: Custard Creams. Now, you might be thinking, gee, those are just cookies. Whoop-di-doo. You would be wrong on two counts. 1) These are "biscuits." For a fun (read, frustrating) time, try to explain American southern-style biscuits to a Brit. Here biscuits are sandwich cookies. Something like a chocolate chip cookie would be considered a "cookie." 2) These are delicious. Biscuits are often eaten with tea, and this is really the best way to enjoy them. Yum. :D

Ok, now that I'm done gushing about the fact that I found custard creams in England, let us move on to what I've been up to the for the past few days. I went with a couple of my housemates to the Jorvik Viking Centre. Now, to get an idea of what this entailed, imagine the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World if you've ever been on it. For those of you who haven't, they stick you on a moving boat thing and you ride through various scenes filled with moving animatronic pirates. Got that picture in your head? Now picture the pirates with matty blonde/red hair dressed as Vikings and positioned in a scene of York in the year 876. Now add the smells of excrement, livestock, fish, and ironworking. That's pretty much the Jorvik Viking Centre in a nutshell. Of course, they also have some more traditional museum-y type exhibits once you get off the ride. Now, while it was probably fairly authentic, I could have done without the man in the "privy" (read, hole surrounded by a chest-height fence) moaning and emitting foul odors. But maybe that's just me...

Moving on! Then we did the whole Minster kit and caboodle. A "Do Everything" Pass will allow you to wander around the minster proper and join a tour if you wish, visit the Museum/Crypt/Treasury located in the foundations of the Minster, and climb the 275 uneven stone steps up a tight spiral staircase to the top of the Tower. Of course, we found out on our way out that we could have gotten in for free with our U. of York cards. Oh well. Here's Constantine the Great (who was proclaimed Augustus at the site of York Minster) looking slightly less dignified than usual. Opposite him is a Roman column.

The column comes from directly under the Minster, which, incidentally, is the 5th incarnation of a minster church on the site. During the Roman period, the Roman fortress was located almost exactly where the Minster now stands (About a quarter of the Roman fortress is under the Minster's foundations). During repair work of the Minster foundations in the 60's, the Roman remains, including this column were discovered. Some of the original walls and some artifacts are now displayed in the Minster basement in the Museum. The column was re-erected on the Minster plaza. Good intentions, however, went awry. The column is actually standing upside down. Oops!

Anyway, back to adventures at the Minster, which is quickly becoming my favorite building ever. If you climbe 275 of these:

 you get to the top of the tower where you can see this! PS if the picture looks weird, its because I took it on the way down, not up :)

If you look just to the right of the tower on the left, you can just make out the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. I'm sparring you the close up photo I took in an attempt to not overwhelm this page with pictures.

You can also see these guys. Aren't they cute? :)

I'll put up a whole album of Minster pictures because I've got way too many to share here. Anyway, later that afternoon, we discovered the absolutely deliciousness of a strangely British (and apparently Canadian) food: fries (or chips here) covered with gravy and cheese. Sounds disgusting. I know. But so good. So good. Mmm.

Today, I went on one of the free walking tours of York offered by the York Association of Voluntary Guides. Our tour guide was a really cute older British lady. She took us around some of the Roman and Medieval sights, including the Museum Gardens. While I'd been in there, it was nice to hear some of the history not recorded on plaques or anything around the Gardens. For example, this is the Multiangular Tower, the most complete Roman tower standing. The city also placed several Roman caskets inside, which were discovered during the construction of a hotel elsewhere in the city. Here's a view from the outside that should show why it was named as it was.















We also saw an Anglo-Saxon tower built on top of older Roman walls, and took a walk along the medieval/Roman wall from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar.

Along the way, you get a nice view of the Treasurer's House, the Minster, and the Archbishop's House. From there we saw some of the city, including the oldest block of houses in the country. We ended up at the Shambles, the oldest medieval street preserved in the city. It was named because it used to be the butchers quarter, and the shops still have the meat hooks along the top of the shop windows. In Anglo-Saxon, "fleshammels" meant the street of the butchers. Today it and the surrounding area is fun to poke around, and has a hay market with fresh produce & cheap clothes to peruse.

Aside from poking around the city, I went to International Student Orientation yesterday. It was mostly a lot of pointless blathering by various people from various offices ("Hey, do you need to improve your English? Take our ESL classes!" "Plagarisim is bad!" etc.), but I did accomplish pretty much everything I will ever need to do on campus, so that was good. The school scanned my passport & visa so now the government won't come after me for coming into the country as a student and not showing up at school. I registered with the student health centre. I also got an introduction for banking privileges letter, took said letter to a booth set up by my chosen bank (the only one that DOESN'T charge between 5 and 10 pounds per month for the privilege of having a bank account) and opened up an account. I also got my very own University of York student card, so now I can start taking advantage of student specials. Woo!

Meanwhile, I've been brushing up on my Latin skills. Next week we have induction for the Centre for Medieval Studies and language placement tests, so I want to be able to remember SOMETHING about Latin :)

In US news, I'm completely upset that the Red Sox have gotten their butts handed to them by the Angels in games 1 & 2 of the ALDS. This is not acceptable. Dear Sox, please play better. Thank you.

I'll end this VERY long entry with a photo from that market I mentioned, must because I like it and I don't want to end with a rage about the Red Sox inability to hit a baseball.

P.S. Comments are totally welcome. Just sayin'. Especially if you spell like an American!

York at Night

I know I said I'd give you the photo tour of my room, but I'm not anywhere near unpacked, so there's stuff all over the floor, and you really don't want to see that anyway. So some other time. Instead, I've got a few pictures to share from my nighttime stroll through my immediate neighborhood.

This is just a fountain and statue. I thought the picture came out pretty well, so you get to see it. Yaaaay. Ok, now for some more historically/culturally significant ones!

Here's my dad pretending to be cool by a medieval bar. Yes, that's right, a bar. In "medieval speak," a bar refers to a gate, while a "gate" refers to a street. Hence, Bootham Bar was once a gate along the perimeter wall of York, while Marysgate is really just Mary's Street. Many of the roads and intersections of medieval cities have preserved these names. Although these may be confusing for us modern folk, they make perfect sense if you know the history behind the names. Ok, I'll stop prattling on about my fascination with language change. Moving on!


Here we have a not very good picture of a plaque from the bit of original medieval wall right across the street from that arch pictured above. I'll try and replace this with a photo taken during the day soon. In case you can't make out the text, it reads:

"Roman Fortress: This plaque marks the site of the Porta Principalis Dextra or North Western Gate of the Roman Fortress of which the foundations as rebuilt circa A.D. 300 lie just below ground."

Pretty neat, huh? Bet you don't have Roman ruins under your feet. I also came across the Roman Bath Museum during my wanderings today; I'll have to go see what's there sometime.


This is part of a bronze model of city centre (i.e. the Medieval heart of York). Pictured is the York Minster, the second largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, and the largest in England.

In case you were wondering, Cologne Cathedral in Germany is the largest. Fun factoid blatantly stolen from Wikipedia, Cologne Cathedral was the tallest structure in the world until the completion of the Washington Monument in DC.

Anywho, back to the York Minster. Considered the Heart of York (and only partly because the main stained glass window features a prominent heart shape), the cathedral is a treasure trove of medieval art and architecture and really something spectacular to behold. I haven't gotten inside yet because I've been running all over doing errands-- more on that in a later post perhaps-- but I wanted to at least check out the outside. I can see the very top from the end of my street, and it was illuminated by floodlights and was really, really cool. But a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well, here's a few thousand then.