What I'm doing right now: Not reading the essays on Dickens I'm supposed to be reading, which inhibits me from writing the essay on Dickens I'm supposed to be writing. Oops.
What I'm also not doing: Not updating my Ireland adventures. I have left quite a gap between my last posting and the "to be continued" sequel. But still. My blog. I can do whatever I want. (Less petulantly and in my own defense, I promise that we've been really busy here. More on that below.) Also, I'm not putting up pictures yet. Sorry, Mom.
What we've been doing: We've had so many adventures! We've been to the Globe, to St. Paul's Cathedral, to Hampton Court Palace, to various historical buildings in Oxford, and to The Eagle and Child (C.S. Lewis's pub!). Kalie and I made it down to London last weekend to see Wicked. I've seen Shakespeare's hotel room, his illegitimate son's baptismal fount, and his theatre. (Well, its recreation, at least. Also, I've seen his milkshake bar. But that's not a historical site, in case you were wondering.) We've been wandering the city, exploring and trying new things. We've found meadows and castles and churches and cathedrals, and I'm discovering that there's no way I'm going to be able to fit it all in by the time I leave. Which, although it makes me sad, is only fortifying my resolve to return. This is an amazing place, and I can't say enough about how wonderful Penelope and Francis are. We had tea at their house the other day, and Francis let me hold a compilation of pages from one of Shakespeare's original folios. My knees literally went weak. And Penelope's cooking is surpassingly delicious.
What we do on a typical day: We wake up and eat an English breakfast, which usually consists of toast and jam (I'm never eating jelly again, not after this stuff). Then we book it through the Oxford streets to St. Peter's College, where we have two lectures, punctuated by tea and biscuits. Then, typically, we spend a good part of the day doing homework (or pretending to [I seem to like parentheses a lot today]) and/or exploring. When we get hungry, the five of us--me, Sean, Aidan, Kalie, and our housemate Stephen--combine our efforts to cook dinner. And this provides good times with good friends and good food, and meals are actually one of my favorite parts of the experience so far. We've had some great, intellectual discussions inspired by our lectures and our reading material. One night we sat around our kitchen table with a pot of tea, a package of Hob Nobs (You don't know what Hob Nobs are?! I pity your soul.), and a compilation of Tennyson poems, out of which we took turns reading aloud. It was for class, sure, but it was still incredibly interesting, fun, and food for an English major's soul.
It's been such a wonderful experience so far. I'm being stretched, which I love, and I have the freedom to run around and explore all I want in the best playground I've ever had. And I've learned so much--about this place, certainly, but also about myself and about my friends. We've had a few bad days, but I'm still so glad we're getting to share the adventure with each other. And besides, having a bad day in a new place means you're breaking in a new home. And sometimes the bad days turn out to be your best opportunites to grow--for everyone involved. And even if they suck, you end up pretty grateful for them.
What we're doing tomorrow: Oh my gosh, so much. Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, and a performance of Macbeth. Plus some. I cannot articulate my excitement.
What I'm going to do in about five minutes: Finish this blog post and then take my book to the hill at Oxford Castle, where I will read while I watch the sun set over this city of dreaming spires. As one of my GHP instructors used to say: Peace out, cub scouts!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Thoughts from Places: Newgrange; or, Of Burial Tombs and Battlefields
This is a few days late in coming, but this post is the beginning of the promised Ireland recollections. I've already covered our first two days in Dublin, so I'm picking up on Days 3 and 4, in which we travelled through the town of Drogheda (DRAH-heh-duh--gotta love them Irish) to get to the ancient passage tomb of Newgrange.
You should know, fellow travelers, that Sean and I approached this trip with a very spontaneous mentality. In other words, our travel strategy consisted of hearing of someplace interesting and saying, "Oooh, let's go there!" Remarkably, this strategy actually worked really well for us, and we had no mishaps along the way. We had heard of these passage tombs that pre-dated Stonehenge and the pyramids, and were so intrigued by the idea that we couldn't pass up the chance to visit.
We took a train through some of the prettiest countryside in the world. They aren't kidding when they call Ireland the Emerald Isle: on those rare moments when the clouds peel back and the sun pours out, the grass practically glows in the light. Behind moss-covered stone walls, sheep and cows and horses graze languidly in pastoral quaintness. After stopping at the hostel, which was the prettiest one we'd stayed at so far, we walked the short distance to the visitors' center for the burial tombs.
No one knows what the builders of these tombs--Newgrange and Knowth--intended at the time of their construction. Their size belies the simplicity of the tunnel system in that, though one would expect a honeycombed network beneath the mound, there are really only one or two tunnels. And these tunnels actually only house the bones of a few members of the community. The main point of Newgrange, it seems, was not to be a tomb at all, but a sort of ceremonial monument. The entrance to Newgrange is painstakingly aligned so that the sunrise on the winter solstice casts a perfect column of light in the interior chamber, after the longest night of the year--a reminder that the long winter would end, that the sun would return, and that the seasons would repeat their cycle instead of descending further into the cold and dark. In a time when the world seemed harsher and less predictable (as if it has ever gotten more predictable), the people would gather around this little warm beam of light to receive the hope it offered.
The next day Sean and I rented bikes from the hostel and pedaled out to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, fought between the armies of James I and William of Orange. I was a grouch for a few kilometers because I hadn't ridden a bike in years and it was proving more of a challenge than I anticipated, but I brightened up after I got the hang of it. From thereon out it was only a matter of not getting hit by cars as we biked the six or seven kilometers to the battlefield. We walked through the exhibit at the manor house and then tramped through the fields, past fields of hay and low stone walls, sheep and horses, and the most gorgeous, rolling Irish landscape you can imagine.
What I liked about visiting these places was not just the picturesque quality of the landscape, which was so beautiful you couldn't take a bad picture of it if you tried. I liked to see the way the region's history lapsed into legend, then myth, then history again; it's like looking at the striations in a rock face. Because the tombs were built so long ago, their meaning began to wane in the memories of the descendents of the tomb-builders. During the Christian age, the people who lived on the Newgrange mound used the tomb as a refrigerator because it was consistently cooler than the air outside. People built settlements on top of the mound, and grass crept up the sides, until it resembled little more than an abnormal hillock. The original use of the mound had long faded in the memory of the people by this time. When the Vikings invaded and siezed Newgrange for its strategic placement as the highest hill around, the meaning was entirely forgotten. Sometime in the long gap between this complete erasure of the mound's identity and its rediscovery centuries later, whispers and rumors surrounded the strange geographical formations like mist. They were strange places--perhaps magic, the people thought. They became the fairy mounds, regarded with a suspicious eye by locals as entrances into the Otherworld--not far from their original meaning, as symbolic passages into the next life.
You have to wonder, don't you, what the Norse descendents felt as their children played on these hills with the air of mystery and superstition, threats so very real in their minds back then. What the people of later centuries suspected as they passed the tombs hidden beneath the grass, looming in a twilight that made one think that the fey people flitted just out of the corners of your eyes. What James and Williams' armies must have thought as they forded the Boyne just below Newgrange's hill, holding their guns over their heads and casting nervous glances at the legend-haunted hill that portended some unreadable omen for the battle ahead. It's interesting, isn't it? How one thing can mean so many things at so many different times--and, finally, come to signify all of them, even as it accumulates new ones?
I think it's fascinating.
You should know, fellow travelers, that Sean and I approached this trip with a very spontaneous mentality. In other words, our travel strategy consisted of hearing of someplace interesting and saying, "Oooh, let's go there!" Remarkably, this strategy actually worked really well for us, and we had no mishaps along the way. We had heard of these passage tombs that pre-dated Stonehenge and the pyramids, and were so intrigued by the idea that we couldn't pass up the chance to visit.
We took a train through some of the prettiest countryside in the world. They aren't kidding when they call Ireland the Emerald Isle: on those rare moments when the clouds peel back and the sun pours out, the grass practically glows in the light. Behind moss-covered stone walls, sheep and cows and horses graze languidly in pastoral quaintness. After stopping at the hostel, which was the prettiest one we'd stayed at so far, we walked the short distance to the visitors' center for the burial tombs.
No one knows what the builders of these tombs--Newgrange and Knowth--intended at the time of their construction. Their size belies the simplicity of the tunnel system in that, though one would expect a honeycombed network beneath the mound, there are really only one or two tunnels. And these tunnels actually only house the bones of a few members of the community. The main point of Newgrange, it seems, was not to be a tomb at all, but a sort of ceremonial monument. The entrance to Newgrange is painstakingly aligned so that the sunrise on the winter solstice casts a perfect column of light in the interior chamber, after the longest night of the year--a reminder that the long winter would end, that the sun would return, and that the seasons would repeat their cycle instead of descending further into the cold and dark. In a time when the world seemed harsher and less predictable (as if it has ever gotten more predictable), the people would gather around this little warm beam of light to receive the hope it offered.
The next day Sean and I rented bikes from the hostel and pedaled out to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, fought between the armies of James I and William of Orange. I was a grouch for a few kilometers because I hadn't ridden a bike in years and it was proving more of a challenge than I anticipated, but I brightened up after I got the hang of it. From thereon out it was only a matter of not getting hit by cars as we biked the six or seven kilometers to the battlefield. We walked through the exhibit at the manor house and then tramped through the fields, past fields of hay and low stone walls, sheep and horses, and the most gorgeous, rolling Irish landscape you can imagine.
What I liked about visiting these places was not just the picturesque quality of the landscape, which was so beautiful you couldn't take a bad picture of it if you tried. I liked to see the way the region's history lapsed into legend, then myth, then history again; it's like looking at the striations in a rock face. Because the tombs were built so long ago, their meaning began to wane in the memories of the descendents of the tomb-builders. During the Christian age, the people who lived on the Newgrange mound used the tomb as a refrigerator because it was consistently cooler than the air outside. People built settlements on top of the mound, and grass crept up the sides, until it resembled little more than an abnormal hillock. The original use of the mound had long faded in the memory of the people by this time. When the Vikings invaded and siezed Newgrange for its strategic placement as the highest hill around, the meaning was entirely forgotten. Sometime in the long gap between this complete erasure of the mound's identity and its rediscovery centuries later, whispers and rumors surrounded the strange geographical formations like mist. They were strange places--perhaps magic, the people thought. They became the fairy mounds, regarded with a suspicious eye by locals as entrances into the Otherworld--not far from their original meaning, as symbolic passages into the next life.
You have to wonder, don't you, what the Norse descendents felt as their children played on these hills with the air of mystery and superstition, threats so very real in their minds back then. What the people of later centuries suspected as they passed the tombs hidden beneath the grass, looming in a twilight that made one think that the fey people flitted just out of the corners of your eyes. What James and Williams' armies must have thought as they forded the Boyne just below Newgrange's hill, holding their guns over their heads and casting nervous glances at the legend-haunted hill that portended some unreadable omen for the battle ahead. It's interesting, isn't it? How one thing can mean so many things at so many different times--and, finally, come to signify all of them, even as it accumulates new ones?
I think it's fascinating.
Monday, September 12, 2011
In Which My Excitement Renders Me Somewhat Incoherent
It's been about a week since I last updated. A glorious, whirlwind, amazing week of travel and adventure that I can't wait to tell you about. That, however, must wait for a little while. There are far more important things for me to be telling you right now. For instance, the fact that I am currently lying on my own bed, in my own room, in my own house, in Oxford.
Oxford.
I'm so freaking excited.
This morning Sean and I left the hostel in London, where we had spent the night after returning from Holyhead (which was incredible--details coming soon). We had spent that night wandering around London with my friend Eli and a few of his friends at the college he's attending, and for a few hours we just walked the streets, going up to anything and everything that looked interesting, and generally partaking in holy-crap-we're-in-London giddiness. After spending a night in a hostel room that was blissfully devoid of some of the terrors we've encountered on the trip (i.e. the snoring that shakes the rafters and the restless sleeper in the bunk below), we caught a bus to Oxford. I can't explain to you just how excited we were to finally be getting to the school that has really been the goal all along; we were singing modified versions of the opening to A Very Potter Musical: "Oxford, Oxford--we're finally going back!" By the time we knocked on the door of our program coordinators' home, I was so happy and nervous and fluttery that I thought my feet were going to leave the ground.
The Warners, Frances and Penelope, are wonderful. Penelope is this lively, spunky, maternal woman who seemed almost as excited to have us as we were to be there. She drove us to our houses, talking animatedly, and gave us each a tour of the rooms before going back to her house to pick up Aidan, who arrived shortly after we did. As soon as I got back to my house--alone, because my roommates don't move in until tomorrow--I was so elated that I ran around the house yelling like a hooligan, just because I could.
We have a kitchen, and armchairs, and our own wardrobes, and Penelope told us that there's a cat that likes to loiter in front of the stoop, so we have our own pet (and I am thrilled beyond measure about this--it's not a dog, but I'll take what I can get). And the sun is shining through my window, into my room, in my house, in Oxford.
Term doesn't start officially for a few days, so until then I have time to unpack, do laundry, find groceries, finish reading Bleak House, and catch up on telling you about our adventures in Ireland. So the posts are coming, fellow travelers, if you have any interest in them. I'm pretty happy to have a few days of downtime in which to reflect on them, before we're off again in a very different way.
I feel like I'm only just realizing that I honestly have no idea what I'm getting myself into, coming here to study for an entire semester. And that thrills me more than just about anything else.
Oxford.
I'm so freaking excited.
This morning Sean and I left the hostel in London, where we had spent the night after returning from Holyhead (which was incredible--details coming soon). We had spent that night wandering around London with my friend Eli and a few of his friends at the college he's attending, and for a few hours we just walked the streets, going up to anything and everything that looked interesting, and generally partaking in holy-crap-we're-in-London giddiness. After spending a night in a hostel room that was blissfully devoid of some of the terrors we've encountered on the trip (i.e. the snoring that shakes the rafters and the restless sleeper in the bunk below), we caught a bus to Oxford. I can't explain to you just how excited we were to finally be getting to the school that has really been the goal all along; we were singing modified versions of the opening to A Very Potter Musical: "Oxford, Oxford--we're finally going back!" By the time we knocked on the door of our program coordinators' home, I was so happy and nervous and fluttery that I thought my feet were going to leave the ground.
The Warners, Frances and Penelope, are wonderful. Penelope is this lively, spunky, maternal woman who seemed almost as excited to have us as we were to be there. She drove us to our houses, talking animatedly, and gave us each a tour of the rooms before going back to her house to pick up Aidan, who arrived shortly after we did. As soon as I got back to my house--alone, because my roommates don't move in until tomorrow--I was so elated that I ran around the house yelling like a hooligan, just because I could.
We have a kitchen, and armchairs, and our own wardrobes, and Penelope told us that there's a cat that likes to loiter in front of the stoop, so we have our own pet (and I am thrilled beyond measure about this--it's not a dog, but I'll take what I can get). And the sun is shining through my window, into my room, in my house, in Oxford.
Term doesn't start officially for a few days, so until then I have time to unpack, do laundry, find groceries, finish reading Bleak House, and catch up on telling you about our adventures in Ireland. So the posts are coming, fellow travelers, if you have any interest in them. I'm pretty happy to have a few days of downtime in which to reflect on them, before we're off again in a very different way.
I feel like I'm only just realizing that I honestly have no idea what I'm getting myself into, coming here to study for an entire semester. And that thrills me more than just about anything else.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Leprechauns, Vikings, and People who Aren't From Barcelona: A Review of the Trip Thus Far
So, fellow travelers, I've tried five or six times to begin a blog post about my adventure so far that is detailed enough to keep you informed but short enough to not be considered a novel... and I can't. I can't do it. My thoughts are racing from all I've seen, and my feet (and legs, and back) are aching from all the places they have carried me, and there is just no way I can present to you, in narrative form, a condensed version of our time here.
So, in lieu of that, here are some statistics of our journey.
Country count thus far: Three. Sean and I landed in England on Thursday afternoon and hopped between London and Oxford before settling down for the night in London, not far from Baker Street. Then we rose early and walked to the London Euston station, where we boarded a train to the port town of Holyhead, in Wales. The only thing I knew about Holyhead before I went was that it was home to the only all-women's Quidditch team, the Holyhead Harpies (J.K. Rowling told me so, and she doesn't lie). Once we got there, though, we found it to be a very pretty little place, and had the chance to explore it a bit after we missed our first ferry to Dublin and had to wait two hours for another one. Then, one ferry ride and a cab later, we checked into our hostel on the Emerald Isle.
Museums: Four. Today we visited the National Gallery, where we saw lots of art, and the National Museum of archeology, where we saw lots of truly fascinating relics: early church trappings from the influence of the English, weapons and objects of war during the Viking period, cooking utensils and pagan carvings going even farther back than that. They actually had displayed some of the bodies that had been found preserved in the peat bogs, and, while somewhat macabre, it was fascinating to read the stories surrounding them. And yesterday we visited the Chester Beatty library for its beautiful book and manuscript collection, and—just for kicks—the National Leprechaun Museum. And if you want my honest opinion, that last one was my favorite.
Churches: Three. We got to see St. Patrick's Cathedral yesterday, and it's honestly incredible. I've seen a fair few cathedrals—I just got back from Armenia and Georgia, where you can't go anywhere without seeing two or three—but this one struck me as very unique. I've always found cathedrals to be buildings rather full of themselves: gilded and ornate, puffing themselves up to make them seem more important. St. Patrick's is very different, in that instead of insisting you to focus inward on the cathedral itself, it directs your focus outward: on God, on His servants, on the people He wants to serve. The whole place is full of the tombs of civil servants, including Jonathan Swift, who fought fiercely to help Ireland's poor and mentally handicapped with his biting pen and his political maneuvering. And then, of course, the whole place is shadowed by the memory of St. Patrick himself, who—from what I read of him on the displays inside—was incredibly humble, hardworking, and caring. Reading his quotes gave me a sense of a real servant who was devoted to God and God's love for people. The cathedral is beautiful, yes—inside and out, from every angle—but it's also thought-provoking and simultaneously refreshing and challenging for your spirit. One of the memorials inside bears an epitaph declaring its subject to have “exhibited in a useful and devoted life the practical influence of the truth he preached.” I can't think of anything I would rather have carved on my tombstone.
Miles Covered: I have no freaking idea, but I am SORE. We've walked literally everywhere we've gone, and we've covered about a third of the city, no joke. Temple Bar, the quay by the river, St. Stephen's Green (which is the most gorgeous park I have EVER seen), Merrion Square, and Trinity College—and that's not all, folks.
Favorite food: The chips we bought from Leo Burdock's famous fish and chips shop in the medieval area of Dublin. Oh my word. We sat and ate them outside Christchurch Cathedral, feeling like quintessential Dubliners (we're obvious frauds, but so it goes), and I thought I'd bitten into spud-themed heaven. I've discovered that I don't like cod very much, but the Irish—as one would expect—can do absolute wonders with the potato.
The Place: Is amazing. Point blank. And there is so much to see, for whatever kind of nerd you are: literary, historical, medieval, musical. I can tell you from the literary aspect, it's bursting. We've seen the Oscar Wilde memorial and his birthplace, and Thomas Moore's statue, and lots of statues of authors and poets of whom I've never heard, but Dublin sure is proud of them. And James Joyce is everywhere. He has a statue just off O'Connell Street, but that's just the beginning. If you look down as you walk, you'll find little placards sunk into the pavement featuring quotes from his novel, Ulysses, which takes place over the course of one day in Dublin, a date the Dubliners commemorate by dressing up as characters from the book's era and talking in antiquated accents (as if their accents weren't awesome enough already).
The People: Are some of the friendliest I've met in my travels, which was a wonderful surprise. Without fail, if we stand looking at our map for longer than fifteen seconds, someone will come up and ask us what we're looking for and will point us in the right direction. They're helpful, hospitable, and hilarious—they're incredibly open and up-front about joking with strangers (or maybe Sean and I just give off a vibe that we're fun to poke fun at?). We approached one guy for advice on a good fish and chips place, and he responded, “I just came from Barcelona; I know nothing.” After we apologized and thanked him for his time, skeptical but unwilling to be rude, he called us out on it: “Really, with an accent like that, how could I be from Barcelona?” It's a lot of fun. They're a proud people, the Irish, and they know where they've come from, but they've been very welcoming, and I like that.
I don't suppose you can stand to read much more, even though I'm positively bursting to tell you every minute detail. So I'll cut myself off here, and say farewell for now. Next on the docket: the interior of Ireland, the countryside, and the Newgrange burial grounds! Coming soon to a blog near you! (Bear with me; I'm still figuring out how to end these posts gracefully.)
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