Mom's Visit Part 3

AND we went to Glastonbury to visit the abbey ruins, pay homage to the alleged site of King Arthur's grave, wander through various New Age spiritualist shops, and be surprised by a crazy-fun festival swarming all around us. Lots of strange hats. We also ate lunch in the slowest cafe in the world and had to wait forever, as mentioned before, for the 3:12 bus that finally arrived around 4:25. 4:35 if you ask Mom. But we do not dwell. :)
Side note: we had to switch buses in Wells, a quaint little town where apparently the bulk of the filming for the movie Hot Fuzz was done. Sweeet.




This is King Arthur's grave. His original burial site was discovered by monks a little ways away, and he was re-buried here.

Mom's Visit Part 2

We also went to Bath, partly in order to shop at the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, but mostly to take tea at the Jane Austen Center and track down the elusive BathAqua glass-blowing factory. It was a bit cloudy.

Mom's Visit Part 1

On November 13th, my mom arrived for a week-long visit, and we did everything worth doing in Bristol, Bath, and Glastonbury. Well, we did many cool things, at least. We got to spend time with Aunty Rachel, eat in fabulous restaurants, enjoy two movies (In the Shadow of the Moon and Beowulf), shop (of course!), and wait around forever for the slowest bus in the Southwest.
Some pics from Bristol:

Here (again) is the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Always worth a visit. :)







And here on the left is the City Museum right next to the Will Memorial Building, which houses the law department of the University of Bristol.

Remember, Remember...

Happy November 5th! (better late than never)
In honor of Guy Fawkes, Bristol staged a bonfire/fireworks, carnival extravaganza up on the Downs that attracted, believe it or not, around 20,000 people. If failing to blow up Parliament means this much notoriety, just imagine what succeeding... well, better not imagine. :)
Anyway, photos!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't worry, posts regarding Mom's visit are coming soon. I'm just backing up my hard-drive (that's right Dad, on my external thingy, whoo hoo!) and I don't want to jumble up the process. In the meantime:

Picture of Me

In order to please a certain special someone who suggests that too many of my photos are of trees or buildings instead of people, especially of myself, this post is entirely devoted to pictures taken by other people and belatedly gathered from facebook, email attachments, other websites, etc. I will be in all of them, proving that I have in fact visited the places mentioned elsewhere on this site, so if you don't particularly like looking at me, you should probably avoid reading more of this post.










(left top) practising EDM (electronic distance measurement) at Myrtleberry.
(right top) also on Exmoor, standing around a 20th century metal war... thing.
(left bottom) out for the Rugby WC, with my camera-shy flatmate, Caryn.

London

The requisite photo of Tower Bridge.









And here is Collin dressed up as "A Package From Home" complete with bubble wrap and candy.

The Rugby World Cup

Danielle, Cody, Debbie, and Bjarke: fellow post-grads in the Archaeology Dept.







This is Caryn hiding shamelessly behind her South African Springboks scarf.

Rugby and London and Gingers, oh my!

Since my last post, there have been several major happenings: the Rugby World Cup, my successful navigation of the National Express and the London underground, and a Halloween party at which I dressed up as a Ginger Kid. For those unfamiliar with the South Park episode, just know that there exists a theory involving the satanic, soul-devouring characteristics of redheads. Check http://www.gingerkids.org/ for more details. I'm told that my costume was extremely creepy.

But my romp through the wild realms of "gingervitis" was actually the most recent happening (it was last Saturday night at Collin's London flat, well, it really overtook his entire building) so I'll back up a bit. The Rugby World Cup was quite exciting - England was in the final for the second time in a row (they won in 2003), playing against South Africa. If you remember, my flatmate Caryn is from South Africa, so we had a great time infiltrating a pub down the hill, grabbing a couch seat right in front of the biggest TV screen ever, and cheering ourselves hoarse. I'm sorry to report that England lost, but it was a fantastic time and we did beat France in the semi-finals so there's still a bit of bragging power.

As for London, I took a coach on Friday afternoon in order to spend the weekend visiting Collin at his Maida Vale flat. He lives with a whole crowd of other Americans involved in his internship/MBA programme, who were very nice to meet. On Saturday, Collin and I explored the Borough Market (located underneath rail tracks and stocked with all the cheese, bread, fruit, veg, cupcakes, mulled wine, and dead pheasants you could ever desire), wandered over London Bridge, and ate kebabs for dinner, which are worth mentioning because unlike American shish-kebabs, they don't come on a stick. Imagine a gyro (or a pita) that's very very yummy and very very messy. On Sunday, we visited Collin's work place (UBS) and the Barbican art gallery to see an exhibit on the representation of sex in art. Don't worry parents, it was very informative and tasteful. There was quite a bit of Greek pottery, so I should be able to write the trip off as a university-related expense, right?

That's all for now... halfway to the horizon is a arch/anthro Halloween party in the dorm common room, a field trip to Gloucester on Thursday, and Guy Fawkes next Monday, and on the horizon is a visit from Mom, so there's plenty to anticipate.

Around Bath

(above) The River Avon and the Pulteney Bridge.




(right) The Bath Cathedral.







(left) The Bath Aviary.






(right) The Royal Crescent.

Around Bristol

(right) The Bristol Council House.







(left) A somewhat creepy
example of Bristolian graffiti/art.

A quick dip and a trip down the rabbit hole

Recap! Saturday Oct. 6 : Molly, a friend from St. Olaf, visited from Germany. We walked around the University district and the city centre, discovered the most fabulously adorable and expensive shop in the city, and went out to dinner with my flatmate Caryn to a restaurant/bar called Las Iguanas. On Sunday we caught a train to Bath (it's a whopping 13-minute trip) and made a pilgrimage to the Jane Austen Centre and did a bit of shopping. Sometimes it's just way too much fun to be a girl. :) We stopped by the Bath Cathedral for evensong before travelling back to Bristol in time to visit the Suspension Bridge despite my inability to efficiently navigate the bus system. Molly left for London on Monday morning, and a reciprocal adventure in Germany is definitely called for.

This week I've had my first classroom classes... not too frightening despite an impressive stack of books to read before next week. Caryn and I attended the International Students Welcome Party last night at the city science museum; I must admit, wandering around the museum for free, crawling through tunnels in the "Alice Through the Looking Glass" exhibit, was much more interesting than the speakers, although the Lord Mayor of Bristol was wearing about 4 tons of bright red robes complete with gold braid and a large feathered hat. They do seem to enjoy a bit of dress-up around here.

The End of the Exmoor Adventure

(right) Not to be left out, the "Alligator of Exmoor." Or maybe it's a crocodile, I never remember the difference.






(left) This is a lovely example of Exmoor's "mini-lithic" stone monuments - it's less than a foot high.








(above) The view from the top of the hill was spectacular. The hill is semi-officially called "Hangman's Hill," although I think that if you made a criminal climb all the way up there, he'd probably tie the noose himself just to save the effort of catching his breath.


(right) Rob made use of all our much-appreciated rest stops to point out possible prehistoric features such as terracing.

Exmoor Out of Breath

(above) Our Med/MALA group at Combe Martin beach on a lunch break. Just after eating, we climbed a very very very big hill to explore a previously unexplored site. Such is the life of a dedicated archaeologist.


(right) A bit more of Combe Martin - the water is salty because the Severn Estuary widens quite a lot before merging with the Atlantic.








(left) Yes, we hiked up that hill. The sheep also thought we were crazy, but at the top is an unsurveyed potential prehistoric site (see next post).

Exmoor in the Sun

(left) Sunshine at last! Exmoor includes uncultivated moorland, farmland, and fenced-in areas for sheep and cow grazing.






(right) Myrtleberry, thought to be a prehistoric hill fort. We attempted to survey the site using both older techniques (tape measures, control poles, and a hand-drawn pencil map) and newer EDM (electronic distance measurement) technology.



(above) I'd just like to point out that this photo was not edited in any way. Spiffy.

And a little less misty now

(above) Porlock Beach on the Severn Estuary, home to a very changeable tide and (allegedly) many flint shards.



(left) Our trusty Land Rover: it never failed us despite the many hills, sharp turns, bumpy roadways, and the world's dumbest pheasants.

Exmoor in the Mist

(above) Rob and part of our group standing around a stone circle at Hawkcombe Head. The mist was fairly constant for the first two days and then, quite miraculously, cleared away for Thursday and Friday.




(right) Exmoor is misty and wet as well; we searched these puddles for pieces of flint, which is not native to the area and is thus evidence of ancient activity.

Exmoor

I've just returned from a 4-day excursion to Exmoor and, for the record, I'm strongly tempted to give up the Mediterranean all together and just wander around Britain for the next 20 years climbing over Mesolithic barrows and tripping over "mini-lithic" stone rows and circles. Exmoor is southwest of Bristol - on the map, you travel down along the south side of the Severn Estuary to the almost-invisible green patch. It doesn't have monuments as well-studied or as dramatic as Stonehenge, but I learned a lot about identifying subtle earthworks (mounds, banks, ditches, etc.) and general surveying techniques.

All of the Archaeology/Anthropology programmes went along and split up to study different aspects of the area, but our group - the Meds and the MALAs (MA in Landscape Archaeology) - was by far the best. Our instructor Rob works for the Exmoor conservancy as a resident archaeologist and somehow managed to make us see building platforms, roads, and hill forts (and over-lying medieval ridge-and-furrow agriculture) in a landscape that at first glance looked vaguely bumpy with perhaps a few scattered rocks.

So, combine vigorous trampling over the moor with group dinner at the Exford pub every night with the opportunity to explore Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age sites, and we had, to quote the department head, an utterly "fab" field trip.

Neil Gaiman

Here is my dad with writer Neil Gaiman who happened to be signing books at a Waterstone's in central Bristol. I was off at Int'l Orientation, but Dad is such a swell guy that he attended in my stead.

A Tribute to Leigh

Apparently Leigh owns quite a large tract of land just west of Bristol through which all should drive carefully. This is very unlike the rest of England - there is a lot of whizzing 'round roundabouts, merging from "slip roads" and "filters" from the LEFT, and generally ignoring the fact that many roads barely wide enough to accomodate half a car are officially open to two-way traffic. Also, there are no road signs.

P.S. I know that the cinched-up hood and rolled-up jeans look silly but, as is often the case in England, it was raining.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge

Dad overlooking the bridge, which spans the Avon River Gorge
- the same river that flows through Stratford-upon-Avon.
Clifton is the area just west of the Bristol city centre.

Ah, the Rellys

From left, Aunty Rachel, Dad, Grannie, Me, Gillian, and Uncle Bill.

Day 6/5

Welcome to Day 6, England / Day 5, Bristol. Dad and I arrived last Saturday morning and spent our first hours in the UK renting a car and driving to Bury St. Edmunds (northeast of London) to spend two nights with my aunt and uncle. We managed to haul one of my 49.5lb suitcases (there were three) up to Aunty Rachel's third floor guest room, and then took a much-needed nap before meeting my grannie and godmother for dinner. Much fun of the reserved British type ensued until the second bottle of wine, and then much more fun began.

Sunday afternoon, after more heroic wrong-side-of-the-road, ah! a roundabout! driving by Dad, we arrived in Bristol (southwest England - I'm posting a map for the directionally-challenged). Since then, we've done lots of shopping (including an expedition to IKEA), moved me into my dorm-flat, got lost as little as possible, and sampled lots of Bristolian beer. I've met three of my four flatmates: Caryn from South Africa, Abby from China, and Mathew from India. All of us are curious about our fifth living companion; hopefully it's someone who knows how to pick the lock on the door in our flat that says "Roof Access." Honestly, that's just asking for trouble.

Tomorrow is international orientation day, Saturday is a trip to Cardiff (the capital of Wales) with Dad, Sunday is for laundry, Monday is course registration, and Tuesday is a field trip to Exmoor (southwest of Bristol, a big, windy, wet, moor with that is archaeologically important and has at least one pub). I'm looking forward to it all, of course, and to a visit from Molly next weekend. Fingers crossed I'll find a good nightclub by then. :)

UPDATE:
Have met final flatmate: Harris from Cyprus.
Our little family in flat 29 is now complete.