Life in Bath

Hello all!

This blog post is going to be dedicated to telling you everything that I have been up to here in my temporary home, starting with the Bath Abbey Tower Tour and brunch at Sally Lunn's! Last Tuesday two of my fellow Education Programme peers and I had the day off since all of our school placements were on their mid-term holiday so we decided to live up the opportunity and make it a touristy day. We started with an 11am brunch date at Sally Lunn's, which is one of the oldest buildings and restaurants in Bath. Their claim to fame rests in their "Sally Lunn Bun"... a delicious cake/bread toasted creation that has it's own secret recipe. I decided on trying both the savory and the sweet buns with a Ham and Cheese toasty and then a bun with cinnamon butter topping. Suffice it to say that I am definitely taking Mackenzie there when she comes to visit and I might have to go back even before that!

Then we were off to the Bath Abbey Tower Tour, which was both amazing because of the view from the top and treacherous because of the 212 itty-bitty ancient stairs that we had to climb! The guides showed us the bell tower and the clock room, but one of the most interesting aspects was standing on wooden structure right above the vaulted ceiling and looking down the seventy-five feet to the Abbey floor.

Waiting with Hadley for our Tower Tour!

The bell room, where all the gadgets and ropes are located for ringing and chiming the bells.

Melanie and I in the Clock Tower... sorry it's a bit dark!

The view of Bath from the top of Bath Abbey.

Cheesing at the top!

Nunes House! I can see my flat from here!

The square in front of Bath Abbey. Normally, when it's not raining, you can find street performers playing in the center of the square.

Looking down on the Roman Baths from the top of Bath Abbey.

Hadley, Melanie, and I at the top!

On our way back down after seeing the top of the Tower.

Other than getting to know the historic aspects of my city, I have been trying hard to get involved in activities that interact with the people who are lucky enough to live here. Perhaps the silliest thing I've done is a dance class that practices the art of Regency dancing... that's right people, all those dances in the Jane Austen novels! Despite many girls' anticipation that they were going to meet their Mr. Darcy at this class, I went into it believing that the entire class would be female. I was actually proven wrong! The class had about thirty people in total with around twelve or thirteen men! I, personally, am not too attracted to white-haired, seventy-year-old men who are barely tall enough to reach my shoulders and wear suspenders... but, I guess if you are into that kind of thing, you could have found your Mr. Darcy :) They were all true gentlemen and I had a blast dancing with them and the other women who came. The dances were actually quite hard to keep straight and all us ASE girls got a crash course in the dancing terminology, but the teacher assured us that the next session would be a bit easier. The harder class was meant to prep the regulars for the ball that was happening over the weekend-- one of the women, who gallantly partnered with me for the first dance when I had no idea what I was doing, told me about the Jane Austen festival in the fall that has a huge Regency ball with the dancing, the music, and the costumes of the Austen world. Too bad I am leaving in May! The class meets every other week so I will try to get some pictures next time!

Classes are going brilliantly; this was the third week of class so after this weekend, I will officially start freaking out about the first set of papers that are due for all my classes in a couple weeks. Three papers all to be turned in within two days of each other... not a problem! :) I am absolutely in love with the Education Programme; it is quite possibly the best opportunity for hands-on experience in a classroom that I have ever been afforded. The kids are all incredibly well-behaved and genuinely excited to come to school, which makes for a giant step in the right direction when fostering a collaborative, productive classroom atmosphere. I am hoping that I will be able to take a couple pictures with my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Ovigne, and with the class, but I will have to ask the Headteacher for permission to be able to post them online. Fingers crossed!

Bonding with the other ASE students has been really fun as well! A bunch of us have gone out to the pubs a couple times--it's cool to be able to legally buy a drink at the bar...the only downside is the price. Eight bucks seems like a pretty steep price for a half pint of cider, but maybe that's just my stingier side coming out. As some of the girls have told me, I need to start getting my flirt on and maybe I wouldn't be buying those drinks myself :) By far the tastiest ASE group activity has been Pudding Club! Pudding apparently refers to all dessert in general, not just the American dessert of pudding. This past week's theme was Chocolate so I made cupcakes while my roommates made brownies and we all stuffed ourselves on at least seven different chocolately desserts! Whoever said you can't have dessert for dinner has obviously not attended Pudding Club on a Sunday evening :) Melanie's brownies even topped them all for a first place win! We had so much left over that we decided to go around and pawn off some of our treats to the other girls in our building; they were more than willing to take some chocolate goodies off our hands! 

My chocolately cupcakes didn't win a prize, but that's okay because my flatmates and I polished them all off in about three days. 

Stay tuned for my adventures to Edinburgh and Dublin this weekend! Lots of pictures to come!

Cheers!

Traveling in the UK!

Hello all!

Since a ton has happened in the past week, this blog post is going to focus on the sites I have traveled to recently and then I will catch you up on my continued exploration of Bath in my next post (which will hopefully happen in the next few days before I am off to Ireland and Scotland for the weekend!).

So two weekends ago was spent in Cardiff, Wales with my flatmates, Chelsi, Madeline, and Melanie, and Amy, who lives in Flat 5 above us. Wales is actually incredibly accessible from where we are located in England as it was only an hour train ride from Bath Spa train station to Cardiff Central. Once at Cardiff our group decided to split up with Melanie, Chelsi and I heading off to Cardiff Bay to see the Doctor Who Experience and Madeline and Amy going to peruse the shops and museums. Since I hadn't purchased my railcard yet, which will ultimately get me discounted train tickets, I balked at spending even more money on a bus ticket to get to Cardiff Bay and ended up cajoling my friends into taking a forty minute stroll there as opposed to the fifteen minute bus ride. The scenery was well worth it despite us having to take a detour at the Cardiff Bay Visitor's Center to get further directions about thirty minutes into the walk. I definitely recommend the Doctor Who Experience to any Whovians who have the opportunity to visit Wales :) The first part of the Experience consisted of an interactive tour with us "shoppers" helping to free the Doctor from a Dalek take over; the kids on the tour had a great time especially when they got to fly the TARDIS. The tour then followed through to the exhibition rooms where they have all the special effects creatures and costumes that the actors wore on the show. As someone who is not a die-hard Whovian quite yet (my friends made me watch a couple episodes the night before and I am several episodes into the second season now) it was still pretty entertaining. I am sure I will appreciate the tour more once I am further invested into the Doctor Who show.

The rest of the afternoon took us to a Welsh restaurant for lunch (the chocolate sundae was magical and I would happily travel to Cardiff again just to get dessert at that restaurant!) and onto Cardiff Castle where we successfully climbed to the top of the battlements and didn't fall on our way back down the incredibly steep winding staircases! Although the apartments where the people actually lived were elaborately adorned and just breathtaking, the section of the underground paths used back in the World War II and Cold War days as bomb shelters thoroughly creeped me out. By about four in the afternoon, we decided to head back to the train station, but finding our way back to Bath proved to be a bit more difficult than we anticipated... our train was cancelled due to flooding in the area and we had to catch a connecting train to Swindon, which eventually got us back to Bath in a roundabout way that took double the time it originally took us to get there. For our very first day trip outside Bath, I would say it was a resounding success!

On the train to Cardiff!

In the exhibit room of the Doctor Who Experience, cheesing with the TARDIS!

The original castle inside the outer wall. It had a real moat around it!

From the top of the wall surrounding Cardiff Castle.

The collection of the World's flags on the outer wall.

Just some of the many steps up to the top of the castle!

There were peacocks wandering around outside the apartments of the Cardiff Castle...Amy and I got really excited :)

Some of the amazing ceiling work in the Cardiff Apartments!

My next excursion this past Friday was with my whole program to the Cotswolds, which according to Andrew Butterworth, our very own Blue Badge Tour Guide... "wold" means an enclosure of sorts and a "cot" is essentially a flock of sheep, therefore "Cotswolds" is the number one place to see a TON of sheep pens! Literally, the view from the coach was just miles and miles of fields with sheep grazing in the pastures. Once we arrived we had a bit of time to look around Broadway Tower, which played a part in World War II as a radio tower; very cool bit of history, but honestly my number one focus was on staying warm with the wind whipping around us like crazy! I was very happy to start moving on our hike down through the countryside so we all could get the blood moving and I could start to feel my fingers again! The English countryside is absolutely gorgeous; the closest that I can compare it to is the hills of farmland in rural Lancaster, but even that isn't an accurate depiction. My favorite part of the hike took us directly through one of the sheep enclosures and I watched some of my friends try to chase down the sheep to pet them :) Honestly one of the most ridiculous things I have seen in my opinion, but they looked like they were having a grand ole time. After our hike we grabbed some lunch and headed off to Painswick to see the snowdrop displays in the famous Rococo Gardens. Apparently these carefully cultured gardens of snowdrops only bloom for about three weeks, so we timed our visit perfectly to see the displays in full bloom. Sorry to all my family and friends in the States, buried under layers of snow, but it was so nice to see flowers in full bloom at the end of February! The weather here doesn't stray too much from the upper forties with at least a thirty percent chance of rain, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Never have I had such a valuable piece of clothing as a raincoat. And I bought my very own wellies (slang for rainboots!), which is a story in and of itself (suffice it to say I completely forgot that the shoe sizes are different for the US and the UK so when I asked the salesman for a women's size eight, he looked down at my feet and gave me the strangest look; turns out I am a size 4.5 here...oops).

Broadway Tower. 

Countryside on our walk down the hill.

SHEEP! 

The snowdrop display at the Rococo Gardens.

Just yesterday Melanie and I ventured out on our first trip to London and spent at least half the day in the British Museum wandering in and out of the Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Africa, and Egypt exhibits. Two of the most interesting rooms for me were definitely the Money Room (dedicated to all aspects of trade and commerce throughout the centuries) and the Evolution of Clocks and Watches Room (pretty self explanatory; my favorite clock was actually gold cast in the shape of a ship!). Since we didn't get out of the museum until around 4:00pm and it gets dark around 5:30, we had to book it around to some of the other touristy sites that were in the area. We hiked over to grab some great pictures of Trafalgar Square, the London Eye, Big Ben, and Parliament Square; I would definitely love to go back there and actually go up in the London Eye--I hope you aren't afraid of heights, Mackenzie!

On the train to London!

The streets of London.

London edition of Madame Tussaud's.

In front of the main entrance to the British museum.

An ancient Greek lyre made of a tortoise shell, wood, and string.

Gladiator's helmet. 

A few of the many Roman busts of all the emperors. 

The African tree of life... completely made out of old weapon parts!

The African pottery. 

The African brasscasting. 

Some of the amazing African hats used in rituals... they give Queen Elizabeth a run for her money :) 

Inside the main hub of the British Museum.

Melanie in front of the Rosetta Stone. Just goes to show how crowded it was. I thought it was incredibly symbolic that in the five minutes we were standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, I could hear a British accent, an Australian accent, someone speaking Chinese, another speaking Italian, and a third speaking Spanish... and then of course you have us Americans!

The closest I could get to the Rosetta Stone.

Ancient Eygptian statues room. 

An Egyptian sarcophagus. 

The Egyptian Gayer-Anderson Cat.

A few of the many mosaics adorning the walls of the staircase.

My favorite clock in the shape of a ship. When it was fully working, the cannons would fire to sound the hours. 

Yoda floating in Trafalgar Square. We had a bagpiper serenading us with the Star Wars theme song as well!

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

Random blue rooster...not quite sure what this was there for... but it certainly caught my attention!

Selfie in Trafalgar Square!

Roomie picture in Trafalgar Square. We both decided to dress a bit more posh than usual since we had just done the whole trekking through the mud thing the day before at the Cotswolds. 

Sherlock is the next British show that I am told I must watch, so Melanie geeked out when we saw this.

View from the Embankment Pier, overlooking the London Eye and Big Ben in the distance.

Whitehall Palace along the walk to Big Ben. 

The London Eye! 

Obligatory telephone booth picture!

Stay tuned in the next couple days for more about my life in Bath, including the Bath Abbey Tower Tour, brunch at the famous Sally Lunn's, and my first experience with Regency dancing!

Cheers!