Amsterdam

Well, 3 exams to study for and I still decided to go to Amsterdam for a couple of days. At least I studied on the plane ride there and back! We left on Wednesday night and arrived in enough time to wander around the town viewing the night life. Stayed in a hostel on the south edge of the center of town, so large amounts of walking were the order of the trip. The first night we found our way into the red-light district, where apparently I did not go on my 4 hr visit to Amsterdam during a flight layover 2 years ago. Legal prostitution and scantaly clad women in red lit windows as a bit of a shock to my poor mid-western sensibilities. The stretch was basically swarming with American and British tourists. Amsterdam is an easy place to visit for them as everyone speaks English. Thursday, we spent about 3 hours in the morning doing a self guided walking tour of the city. Impressive architecture from several different eras - the traditional tall, skinny houses; occassional double-wide mansions, the huge Dam square where the original dam once stood and there is now the old city council building and WW II monument. All the while you have to keep dodging trams and a plethora of bicycles. Took a nap in the afternoon, and spent the evening at a comedy show and then enjoying a glass of Heineken. The way the Dutch drink their beer would be absolutely illegal in England - it's served in a half-pint glass with about 2 inches of head on top. Pints are relatively unheard of there. Friday morning we stopped by the Rijksmuseum, which unfortunately is under pretty major construction, and the Van Gogh museum, also under construction, and decided that we couldnt afford 9 euros each to visit them. Where are the student rates afterall! We then went to the Heineken brewery for a self-guided tour which included 3 glasses of beer and a free glass at the end. Spent a good 3 hours there, highlights being of course the foosball table and the beer. In the bar at the end, ended up meeting several other Americans and chatting for sometime. The bar tender kept giving us girls free beer upon request, and, as our group apparently looked like drinkers, people leaving seemed to invariably leave their free beer coupons with us. So after we finally got moving, we stuck with the 3 American girls, Jen, Emily, and Helena from Montana and Missouri. Helenas parents both went to Purdue... small world. Making it even smaller, Les ran into some guys he recognized from his University right outside the Heineken place. The afternoon was spent chilling, enjoying an actual sunny day, and stopping by the Anne Frank house. A long trip back, thanks of course to the quality (or rather lack ther of) service of Easyjet. So I'm back in Bath, recovering from such a great quantity of walking and attempting to get excited about my exams.... 10 days left in England!

Wales pics

pictures of the hike in wales are now up:
Pembrokeshire Coastal Path

Overnight to London

Started out on Friday by turning in my huge chemistry coursework! huzzah. then caught the 10:22 train to London. Turns out Jim and Dawn (Americans) were on the same train but headed to Oxford for the day, and Les and his parents (more Americans) were on their way to London as well. So arriving in the city at noon I had a good 5 hours of wandering - went to the British museum for awhile. Overwhelming and full of treasures plundered from all sorts of countries - just the Egypt section was mindnumbing. After that walked around the westside - Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Then over to the houses of parliament and all those necessary tourist things. I met Maree at Piccadilly Circus where we headed over to the East side for a few drinks before the show. Got to meet quite a large group of aussies and kiwis there that are living in london and are friends with Daniel and Maree (kiwis from my scotland tour.) Around 8, we headed over to see the punk show going on that night - Phineas Gage, Four-square, and Ten Foot Pole. Quite a good show, although almost ridiculously loud. You know its bad when I admit that! But anyway, definitely fun to be there with friends, moshing around a bit, but relaxed atmosphere in a kind of small venue. So finished up and back to Maree and Daniels place where I got to take over their couch.

Saturday morning woke up 9ish, met their flatmates, had a huge cappachino. Then went with the boys to a pub in Fulham to watch a rugby final. Very interesting for my first rugby game - Crusaders vs. Brimbees or somesuch. Basically New Zealand vs. Australia. So the bar was full of aussies and kiwis and even got an early license to start selling alcohol at 11am! haha. what a country. At any rate, good game specially being with all the staunch supporters. So did some drinking. Maree and flatmate Lisa got there a bit later and the whole group changed pubs to watch the FA cup final in the afternoon. Also a good game - its basically a soccer match where the best team from the premier league (the best) plays the best team from the first league (2nd best) Almost comparable to the superbowl champions playing the arena football champions. So one always cheers for the underdog. Especially when the other team is Manchester Utd. dang pretty boys! Unfortunately they won as expected, and then I had to say goodbye to my new and somewhat older friends and hop the train back to Bath. Now it's time to get some revision done!

Chester Trip

well just got back from a very quick trip up to Chester - right on the border of Wales and N. England. After my full day of lectures (2 of them plus a workshop and making sure my bio practical got turned in on time) I hopped on a train headed north. After the incredibly typical yet still painful delays, ended up in the Chester train station. Managed to find Beth, who I originally met back in Greece where she was working as a scuba diving instructer on Rhodes. Since then she's been in NZ and out west in the US as a ski instructer. Went out with her and a kiwi friend of hers that happened to be in the vicinity. A few drinks and now I have a contact in Christchurch who even has a car... Turns out Beth is going to be down under soon too - working skiing in Oz. Maybe meet up again for some free lessons! Anyway, went back to Beth's home near Wrecsam, Wales, met her parents, and slept in today. More gorgeous weather though, so we finally go ourselves moving and into Chester. Walked around town, saw the walls, walked along the river and had an ice cream cone. Good times catching up and so much sun is still a shock. At any rate, trains and more delays but I'm back and obviously avoiding finishing my big chem project thats due on friday morning.... sigh.

concert review

alright, since attending this 'alternative ball' thing is the only even quasi-adventure that i've done in the past week, I thought I'd give ya all a review of the bands there. and if you're thinking "i dont care cause i will never see these random english bands" oh well. ;)

kingskin - described themselves as 'grunge funk = funge' and i would have a hard time putting it better. first couple songs were nirvana-ish but then they moved into more funky beat type songs. good show. lots of enthusiasm. and their bass player had fuzzy tiger pants. that was good stuff.

no comply - hard core ska. female lead singer, screaming added by boys playing horns and guitar. also good show - however i dont know where the hell in england they were from, but i couldn't understand a word the girl said - not in the songs, but when she was just talking. also they had some technical difficulties which was no fun. definitely got the mosh pit going though

million dead - headliners from london. i would describe as heavy rock. a bit of screaming but not enough to annoy me. singer sounds a bit like the at the drive in lead singer. apparently on their way to being big or something. a little on the heavy side for me, but i thoroughly enjoyed the set

so all in all, i figure it was 8 pounds well spent. lord knows i need to get out to things like this more often. i was impressed at the small yet very enthusiastic crowd. the concert was at 'the venue' which is up on campus. probably only 100 people there or so, but a way better audience then we usually manage at the union at purdue. sucked to not know anybody as usual. but such is life. ok. thats all.

more new photos

yep, do it - click on the link to the right. More photos up in the Scotland folder and a few of the adventures incurred with my flatmates.

NOTE: you can now leave comments about any of my posts! so do it up!

Hiking in Wales

Quick update for those of you still checking this out. Headed West to Wales on Thursday morning. Clay,, Les, and I took several trains to arrive at Fishguard Harbor. We got there in the afternoon so had plenty of time to hike up to the village, explore, and settle in at the backpackers hostel there. Quite a quaint little place. Steve, the hostel owner, was full of helpful hints for our planned 2 day hike of the Pembrokeshire coastal path. Next morning we were up early and caught a bus to Cardigan, about 40 min away. Our hike began from the bus stop there out past Poppit Sands where after about 2 miles the actual trail began. It followed entirely along the coast with some spectacular views of the cliffs, caves, and rolling hills that make up the area of Welsh countryside. We took our time and even enjoyed the presence of some curious cows and newly reintroduced welsh ponies along the way. Walking along the path was nearly deserted. Plenty of ups and downs to make it an invigorating 17-18 mile hike. Around 5pm made it to the beach of Newport. The tide was out far enough that we cut a bit of mileage off by hiking on the beach itself - with boots off our toes got a bit of a rest. To finally get up to the village we waded through thigh high (for me at least) very cold water in the slipway. The youth hostel in newport was quiet and nearly empty so we got a home cooked meal and our own room. The 12.5 mile hike planned for Saturday was vetoed due to a knee injury that Clay incured on one of the down slopes an hour or so away from Newport. My semi-sunburn and blistered heel approved of the decision. We slept in a bit before heading to Fishguard on to Haversfordwest where we caught 3 trains back to Bath Spa. A long couple of days but well spent, good company and beautiful scenery. Now back to the work that I have been putting off for weeks!

So not much new really. Random news is that I was running on Saturday while wearing a Purdue shirt of some sort, and two people on bikes came from behind me and yelled 'go purdue' at me. So of course I yelled something similar back, and they stopped to have a chat. Turns out they were a brother and sister from Ft. Wayne of all places and they'd been living in England for the past few years. All of their family has gone to Purdue so it was quite nice to hear a friendly accent.

Sunday I went on the residence halls trip to the Eden project in Cornwall. http://www.edenproject.com/ A VERY long bus ride - about 3.5 hours each way. But I managed to mostly finish my chemistry flash cards. It worked out perfectly since Sunday was the one day of sun in the past week! Spent a good 4-5 hours just wandering the impressive biodomes - one is the largest greenhouse in the world supposedly. The whole thing was worth it just to see what a pineapple plant looks like. Got a chance to work on my English tan while wandering the grounds. Quite a nice day trip, and back for a couple of parties on the floors below mine.

A bank holiday today meant no classes, and I've been attempting to cope with not doing very much. Class on Wednesday and hopefully to Wales on Thursday for some serious hiking.

New Photos

Go look at all the pics I put up! (Link to the right)

Sunshine in England!

Well, nothing quite so spectacular as the three week spring break saga, but here's what I've been up to. As of this week I will only have 2 hrs of class mon and 2 hrs on wed. Apparently since my biology class was meeting an incredible 3x a week, lectures finish nearly a month early. In my biopolymers class, I tend to chuckle under my breath as the lecturer explains DNA replication, PCR technique, and DNA fingerprinting... The class that is somewhat of a worry is synthesis of medicinal compounds - lots of complicated reactions that quite honestly i have a hard time getting enough motivation to memorize. plus a course work of retrosynthesis/synthesis of a compound. ick. having so much free time really just makes it worse if you ask me.
The sun has been shining here, with pleasant weather in the 60's/70's for a record 4 days! Everyone gets a little out of control - just sitting outside all day basically and going out every night. Went to the Bell on Wednesday to hear some live music with peeps from my field ecology course. Thursday went to play poker with the Americans. Friday night my flat had a going away party for Claude who returned to Luxembourg on Sat. Homemade lasagne and sangria made for a quality evening. Most of the rest of the weekend I attempted to spend outside - running, a cookout on Sat., sitting in Victoria Park with the flatmates and pretending to make chemistry flashcards sun. afternoon. Last night went with Mandy to see Kill Bill 2, a quality film indeed even though I probably should've saved my money and gone to some weekday matinee.
Well I'm off to enjoy the sun for as long as it lasts!

Wild in Scotland

Thursday night: arrived in Edinburgh, bus to city center, without trouble found my hostel, checked in and wandered the streets. Went up to the Edinbugh castle which is quite spectacular at night.

Friday: Met the tour group at 8am. While waiting I ran into Sophie and 2 other people from the Ireland tour! Such a small world - they were headed out on a 4 day tour that same day with the same company. I made sure they had my email and wished them well before heading out with my 7 day tour. A bit of history from guide Jack as we drove out of town amongst Easter holiday goers. An interesting group of 16 total, all older then me by 3-10 years, and 3 couples with 2 other individuals engaged as well. Mostly Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, me and one other American. A drive to Stirling for the William Wallace monument and story. Trough Rob Roy country to Glen Coe for lunch and the story of the massacre there. The highlands are beautiful - shrouded in clouds. Past Ben Navis and Fort William. A stop at Castle Eilean Donan and finally the Isle of Skye was in view. We stayed at nearby Plockton in a wee bunkhouse was all ours. I walked with a few others on a muddy trail through impressive, very fairy tale-esque native pine forests. Back for a massive homemade meal and of course trip to the local pub.

Saturday: Drove across the controversial Kyle o Lochash bridge, which has the highest toll per meter of any bridge in Europe, onto the Isle of Skye. A gorgeous place with mountain vistas in every direction and always a blanket of clouds. Stopped at an abandoned church and graveyard to wander and admire the view of the Cuillin range at Elgo. A roadtrip to Portree for lunch. Jack had been swerving to pretend to hit all the sheep that kept wandering in the road and we had already noted his near obsession with feral goats so we got him a very feral looking stuffed sheep (of course name Feral) to be the mascot of the trip. The main road is a very bumpy 2 land and all others are shady single lane buisinesses with 'passing places' North of Portree we stopped for what Jack called a 'proper walk' of a couple of hours. Up to the base of the needle on the Stow. Incredible view! The Cuillins on the Isle and the Torrins on the mainland and clouds had lifted leaving a beautiful sunny day. A visit to kilt rock - didn't look THAT much like a tartan to me... but I am rather jaded having just seen the Cliffs of Moher. We stopped to take pictures of hiary highland cows (coos!) On the way back to Plockton, we wandered into the fabled glen of the fairies. With wee fairy mountains and rivers, I of course made a few offers to keep the brownies (say it broonies if you're Scottish!) on my side.

Sunday: Not only celebrating Easter Sunday, but also the birthdays of Ariane (canada) and Daniel (nz) who both turned 24. We took a while finding all our easter eggs, then headed off to a nearby sea loch - close to Lochlorran - were fisherman Neil MacCray took us out on his boat to help fish for scallops. Once the musles, crabs, numberous starfish, whiskey bottles, and nudabranches had been separated out of the catch we got to try scallops raw and whole. Doesn't get much fresher then that! A picnic lunch while watching seals at Lochlorran. Further on we stopped for a walk and skiped stones on beautiful, clear Loch Marie. Luckily saw some feral goats on the way to Scotlands highest waterfall... not that high! Then on to Ollapool for groceries before arriving at our hostel, a restored manse, in Inchnadamf, land of deer which everyone tried to feed bread. Quite a celebration that evening. Ritual singing of the national anthems then a late night party. Angela taught us a few quite odd New Zealand drinking games.

Monday: Lots of driving not good with the rather hung over birthday kids. Especially on the crazy single lane roads in the highlands, so several stops were made at gorgeous, sandy, North Atlantic beaches. Made a loop from Inchnadamf and worked our way along the coast. Stopped at an incredible beach near Durness for lunch and a bit of a run around and sand castle building. Quick look at nearby Smoo caves and we headed further North where the landscape changed from moutains to rolling hills covered in scrub and heather. Our ferry left from Gills Bay for an easy 1.5 hr crossing to St. Margerets Hope on the Orkney Islands. Had the hostel to ourselves and the local pub was conveniently located next door. It was mostly taken over by our group, but it was fun chatting with the locals and attempting to understand the accent. Dave (probably 70 or 80) told us about his time traveling as a diver for the off shore oil companies to Canada, Australia, and S. Africa. Drinking is truely a profession here and he told us that his job isnt for those who care about family or love. "I'm not much for love, I'm more for drinking and smoking." That pretty much says it all. A quality evening of sampling the local whisky - Scapa and Highland Park.

Tuesday: A raw, rainy, windswept day, but you can't let the weather stop you. We drove up from South Ronaldsey crossing Churchill barriers, causeways created during WWII and saw some of the remaining block ships sunk during WWI to keep German subs out of the Scapa flow. A quick stop at the Italian chapel, built by Italian POWs that were here to build the causeways. Northeast on the mainland onto the Deerness peninsula where we checked out the Gloup (blowhole) and had coffee on the VERY windy cliff to send our thoughts into the wind. On the return, we stopped just long enough to steal 4 huge turnips (neeps) from a field for dinner. In the main city of Kirkwall, we went to the cheese making factory to see a bit of action and sample the famous cheddar. Wandered around the pedestrian street and St. Magnus' Cathedral which is made completely of the local red sandstone. As the rain picked up, we headed off to see the neolithic monuments: The stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brogar, Skara Brae and Maes Howe. The first two are made of standing stones nearly 6 m in height. Only 4 remain at Stenness, but the Rigng of Brogar is impressive. Pouring rain and wind - very authentic Orcadian weather. We were all soaked by Skara Brae - a 5000 yr old village that was covered in sand dunes until the late 1800's so is well preserved. The comfort they lived in is impressive - beds, dresers, a hearth, storage, tools, and sewage system. Off to Maes Howe - an ancient tomb of the same era. Huge slabs make up the underground chambered tomb which is covered in Norse runes. 1000 yr old grafitti proclaiming things like 'this is written very high' and 'i'm the best at writting runes with my grandfathers axe.' We headed back to the hostel for a most traditional meel of neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), cheese, oatcakes, and Kranacan (sp?) for desert which is raspberries steeped in whisky and then mixed with cream and yogurt and toasted oats. The boys on the trip had been drinking for hrs but we cuaght up quickly at the local pub. Somehow I managed to get a few free drinks of Scapa - maybe it is an advantage to be the youngest! Slan javar! (scots gaelic for cheers! reapeated rather constantly on this trip)

Wednesday: Slept in before running around a beach on south Ronaldsey. The ferry returned us to the mainland where we stopped at John O'Groats for the obligatory photo op. Then headed on to a castle of our own, Carbisdale Castle, that has been turned into a youth hostel. Spent plenty of time wandering the creepy paintings and statues, looking for secret passage ways. Then watched the celtic vs. Vila Real football match. We all ended up staying up late drinking in one of the lounges and playing a strange variation of Trivial Pursuit.

Thursday: An early start for the long drive back to Edinburgh. Stopped at the battle of Culloden, a very moving place where the last Jacobite rebellion was crushed in 1745 which lead to the repression of the clans, bagpipes, and the Gaelic language. We then did a trip around Loch Ness to hunt for Nessie but no siteings. We all napped in the bus until we stopped at Edradour distillery - the smallest distillery in Scotland. Took the tour and our free dram. Quite a good, and apparently very rare, whisky. Arrived back in Edinburgh around 6:30 and said our tearful goodbyes. A few of us at least were spending the next couple of evenings in town anyway. Mike and Hayley, Aussies working in Edinburgh, had a flat and let me crash at their place for the 2 nights I was there. A whole group of us: Kiwis Zac and Angela and Daniel and Maree, Canadian Ariane, Mike, Hayley, and I all went out for a pub dinner and a few drinks.

Friday: Hayley and I drove to the base of Arthurs seat, and hiked up with just enough time to enjoy the view in the last sun of the morning. Made it back down before the rain started. Met up with the others for coffee and some stovies (mashed potatoes/turnips/somesort of meat) at a pub. Then got to spend some time being tourists and wandering the town. Did a bit of shopping - looked for a CD from The Corries - basically the sound track of our trip. Headed back to Mike and Hayley's apartment where we made a huge stirfry and Daniel, Maree and friend from home Veronica, and Ariane came over to hang out and chat. I went out with some of them for a bit. Just a couple of pubs and a take away place since Veronica had been working out in the highlands for 6 weeks where there are no late night takeaways! Anyway, said our goodbyes, although I've promised to come and visit Daniel and Maree at their place in London for some nights out on the town enjoying the live music scene.

Saturday: got myself up early for the 7 hour train ride back to Bath. I had been dreading it, but it went so easily I have restored my faith in my ability to travel for long periods of time. It was great to finally unpack, go for a run, SHOWER!, do laundry, and catch up with the flatmates I havent seen in 3 weeks! At any rate, congratulations to those who have read the ludicrously long update! Hope it has entertained a few of you at least

Field Ecology in the Gower Peninsula, Wales

Saturday: Made it up to Uni just before 9am. On the bus met another girl going on the field trip, Luisa. Met a few more people on the 3 hour bus ride (alright and took a nap too.) Arrived at the Worms Head Hotel, got changed, and headed straight outside to get working... in POURING rain. sigh, it is Wales afterall. We went from collecting random bus to practicint island biogeography theory by lifting up rocks and counting species underneath, to checking Gorse flowers (gorse is this prickly yellow bush) for the presence of moth larvae. Very wet and cold from the neverending wind, we had a chance to change before dinner, and afterwards we had a seminar session going over the day and expectations for the course.

Sunday: Set off on our longest walk of the trip a bit after 9. A lovely day despite the damn wind. We headed up the gower head, looked at some dung beetles, thought of possible projects, walked further and disccussed different lichens. Walked down through a caravan park into the sandy dunes for our pack lunch. Explored in the sand dunes catching snails to examine polymorphisms in shell banding at 2 sites. My group, Louisa and Sarah (biologists) and Georginia (natural sciences) decided on our project to go to anvils that thrushes use to crack open snail shells to see if the proportions of shells of various banding patterns is the same at all anvils. A 40 min walk back along the beach to examine life on a vertical rocky shore: lichens, barnacles, agi, molluscs, etc. After class that evening, we all went to hang out in the bar a the hotel - the only bar in town. Soon became a place for us to meet, do our work, and get a beer before the evening seminar. I did kindof enjoy being the only, somewhat random, foreign student with 18 English students, and several English profs. I'm sure they enjoyed giving me crap about it, but I got a kick hearing all the random stereotypes and it was all in good fun.

Monday: A short drive to three Cliffs Bay for exercises in the woodlands and coast. In the woods we did some symmetry measurements on wild grlic leaves, spent time looking for cool bus, and did an experiment to determine the % male and female that a buttercup population is. Hiked up, stopped at a ruined castle for lunch and to practice a bit of fractal dimensons. On the beach we tested habituation in edible periwinkles and took data to test for randomness in the number of small snails living in dead barnacle shells. A lovely hike back over rocks, the sun finally came out and I was even wearing short sleeves for a bit!

Tuesday-Thursday: These days we were working on our group projects. We had the longest walk of any group, all the way to the sandy dunes. But it was quite fun to scramble around them looking for anvils and finding all sorts of random things. I ended up making 1 pound 30 plus a credit card, and George found a pretty nice football. Anyway, Wednesday night we did number crunching and worked on finishing our paper. Thursday morning were our 12 min group presentations. Went off without a hitch, and we handed in our group paper and individual report on class exercises just before getting on the bus back to Bath. An entire course done! Arrived back at Uni at 4pm, just enough time to repack and catch my 7:30 flight to Edinburgh.....

Ireland trip continued...

Alright, after the 2 week intermission it is time to finish describing the Ireland trip with my parents.

Wednesday: Heading North from Kilarney to Galway, we stopped mid-morning for an intense Gaelic football rematch game, and then just barely caught the ferry across the River Shannon. Next stop were the incredible Cliffs of Moher - think of the huge, sheer cliffs used in the Princess Bride. An intense wind added a bit to the excitement of crawling on my belly up to the edge and looking over. Lunch was had at Doolin, the capital of traditional Irish music, and we continued on to stop at The Burrens. This area is basically just a large slab of limestone that was pushed up from the bottom of the sea millions of yrs ago. Very little water, and less soil, but somehow an amazing ecological diversity. In Galway, we were celebrating Dad's 50th birthday with style. First at Richardson's pub were dad bough everyone a mini-guinness (a shot of kahlua with baileys on top) and I finally had an Irish car bomb (half a pint of guinness that you drop a shot of whiskey+baileys into.) We moved then to The Keyes for some excellent traditional music. Of course requesting the 2 songs that we had learned on the bus - Sweet Molly Malone and The Fields of Athenrie (sp?) Finally a few of us stopped at a club to dance for a couple of hours. Plenty of good crack (means good times!)

Thursday: A drive from Galway to Derry through spectacular scenery. We stopped at the Shrine of Knock where the virgin Mary appeared to the locals in the 1880s. Then stopped at a beachfront town in Co Sligo where after a bit of wandering, quite a few of us had seaweed baths. A unique experience: You have a private room where you steam yourself for about 10 min and then jump into a tub of hot water with clean, green seaweed in it. The seaweed has been treated previously so that it gives off all sorts of oils. After sitting in that for about 30 min, you come out all clean, soft, and in my case very pinkish! We then drove through Donegal to arrive in Derry, our first city in Northern Ireland. A town with a sad history. We went on a walking tour of the city to the 'Bloody Sunday' monument, the murals created nearby to honor the hunger strike victims, and along the old city walls to the peace wall that surrounds the small protestant community on the catholic side of the river. Everything in town shuts down at 5:30 and people still disappear from the streets until much later. Back at the hostel it was pizza and homemade punch. A group of us headed out to the Bogside Inn, located very close to the Bloody Sunday monument and apparently a traditional IRA hangout - leave your arms with the barkeep. Definitely a local experience. The walls were covered with pictures of the Troubles, and the locals showed us their gunshot wounds. Next, off to Padder O'Donnells where some Irish music was being played. The parents went home soon after, but I stayed out with a group that tried to get into the club The Metro. Unfortunately, it was closed even though it was only 1ish. We wandered a bit in the streets, didn't see any of the predicted drunken youths throwing things at the walls or police. At any rate, back to the hostel - next to one of the largest police stations in western europe!

Friday: After spending an inane amount of time trying to get the bus out of the street between the hostel and the police station (everyone parks illegally since the police never come out of the station) we had a bit of an accident with a pole in a Sainsbury parking lot. Despite that less then propitious start, we headed straight to the Giants Causeway. An interesting geological formation. Lnch was at a nearby village before driving out to a national trust area and walking across a very old rope bridge to a windy, beautiful island. The ground was soft and good for jumping around on while being blown around by the wind. Then we booked it to Belfast where I made Steve drop me off at the airport (made it at 7 for my 8pm flight) Quite a send off when you can get 30 odd people to wave at you from a bus as you're going into an airport. Made it to Bristol, waited a long time but finally caught a train back to Bath and got in around midnight. Just enough time to shower, repack, and get ready to leave in the morning on a field ecology course!

Ireland trip

First night: We checked into the hostel and walked around downtown Dublin. Admiring the kilts that everyone had on for the Ireland/Scotland rugby match that was on that evening.

monday: We met the paddywagon tour in Dublin, there were 32 of us on our bus. Headed immediately south stopping at Cashel Rock, a couple of castles, and a trip to kiss the Blarney stone. We stopped for the night in Kilarney were we went out for a pub dinner and then many of us headed to The Grand for a couple of hours of excellent traditional Irish musicians.

tuesday: Based from Kilarney, we drove to the Dingle peninsula. Stopped along the way to run around on a few gorgeous beaches. Eventually made it to Dingle for lunch. Spent a couple of hours attempting to attract the attention of the local dolphin, Fungie. Some of the South African boys on our tour (the group was a lot of Australians, 1 Kiwi, 4 Americans, and about 10 South Africans on gap year.) even jumped in the rather chilly water to try to get his attention. We drove a bit more of the Ring of Kerry and stopped at the point of the peninsula. On the way back to Kilarney, our guide let us out to run around and taught us the rules of hurling and gaelic football. The latter became quite popular with our group and whenever we needed to run off some energy we asked to stop and play.

wednesday-fri :sorry but i have to go to wales NOW! i'll finish updating later!

Avebury

Well, this will hopefully be a very fast update. Mom and dad arrived a week ago, met me here in Bath, and we all rented a car from the Bristol airport. A very tense ride ensued as dad practiced staying left and using roundabouts. At any rate, we made it to Avebury unscathed just after sunset. We stayed at an excellent B&B right in the middle of the stone circle there. The rooms were gorgeous and a huge breakfast was included. The next day we spent wandering around the region of the circle. We headed south first, past ancient Silbury hill and visited Longbarrow, an ancient burial site. Once again off-season worked in our favor. Then we followed the avenue of stones on the female side of the circle back to Avebury and explored englands largest stone circle before walking across several hills on a country lane to the quarry where the stones came from. It seems that even most of the stones in Stonehenge came from this area. Avebury was definitey worth the day visit. We drove back to the Bristol airport then and caught our plane to Dublin! I'll try to get a bit of the Ireland trip in here before I leave.....

Week in Review

so yet again way too long between posts...

Last Sunday, I picked up Mr. Andy Butler from the airport and helped him get to Bath. Ditched him the next day to go to all my classes (and a wine tasting seminar...) On Tuesday we departed Bristol airport for Dublin with about 6 other Americans most of whom are studying at Bath too. We rented a pretty nice apartment (meant for 5 people, shared by 8-10) just across the river from the temple bar district. After a short time wandering, we began drinking and bar hopping. Dublin was absolutely packed and in a celebratory mood getting ready for St. Patrick's day. Sampled my first guinness and decided its not bad at all... I might even like it better then beer. Just not the sort of thing you can chug. Well, I did see it done, but only by the Irish. The next day, we somehow managed to wake up and make it outside by about 10:30am.... INSANE! To get really good spots for the parade. But the parade didnt start until a bit after noon, so too much waiting. The parade had a bit of a different style then those I've seen in America. Mainly fewer floats and more groups of children dressed up in costumes, walking, and beating on all sorts of instruments. A lot of the groups were from America - mainly high school marching bands and bagpipe groups. After the parade and a break, a few of us went to the Guinness storehouse, did the tour, and imbibed our free pint of extra cold on the 7th floor with a panoramic view of Dublin. The second night of drinking began, and the entire city was overloaded. Every bar was packed full. In the second to last one we ran into a group of 3 irish policemen who seemed incredibly entertained by the guys in our group. Ended up hanging out with them and getting good stories until about 4am that night. Woke up early again to fly back to Bristol and spend the rest of the day asleep.

On Friday, Andy and I went to London for the day. Coerced him into seeing all the sights and walking across a bit more then half of the city. After dinner went to see "Fame" the musical. Definitely a good show, and I tried my best to remember some of the moves that could possibly be converted to cymbal visuals... haha. The next day I made sure that he made it onto a flight back to the US and returned to Bath via London. Enroute I got to see a huge security alert/bag blown up at Gatwick airport as well as walk by the huge protest march in London. Many group protesting everything from the one yr anniversary of the US invading Iraq to Israel to Blair/Bush to white power to the apparent colonization of Cuba, Venzuela, and Brazil. Lovely to see the communists, anarchists, and hippies all coming together like that....

At any rate, I've been recovering from the week and getting ready for the last week of classes before 'Easter holidays.' Don't worry too much if there is not another update until mid-April since break is 3 weeks long!

The Paris Hitch photos are up - just click the PHOTOS link on the right!

Well this past week has been quite an adventure.

On Tuesday I participated in a pub quiz - quite a common thing over here. My team of 5 came in second and won 75 pounds despite my terrible showing in the nature/science category (I mean, really, they did NOT teach us in bio that a group of frogs is called an army!) At any rate that was enough to get me 15 pounds and our team invited back to some sort of 'championship round' pub quiz in May.

Early this week, I also convinced one of the American guys to hitchhike to paris with me. This is not quite as random as it first appears - the university of bath has a group called RAG which is basically a charity organization and raises money in many different kinds of ways. The link describing the hitch is here: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su4rag/events/hitch/ Think along the lines of Bowling for Big Brothers, Big Sisters type of a charity fundraiser. At any rate, we are supposed to have 50 pounds each of sponsership. This would not have been quite as much of a problem if we had a) decided to do this a month ago instead of the week before and b) we actually knew people here in Bath. As it is, since neither of us have check books, we couldn't write them a deposit. We did spend a lot of time on Wednesday and Thursday wandering around and bothering people for a pound or two, but there is really no chance of us making all the money. Ah well, we will try our best for sure, but as the only two random international students that did the hitch, hopefully they wont get too mad if we dont quite get 50pounds each.

So anyway, the hitch! Started on Friday morning.. way way too early. Got to the uni and signed out around 7:45am. We were given these bright red t-shirts reading paris hitch 2004 and info for when we were in france. With giant red t-shirts on, Les and i proceeded to the hill down from campus. In retrospect, I am still amazed at how fast we were able to move while in England. We actually caught a ride down the hill, and then after about 10 min of walking towards the M4 motorway got a hitch all the way to Reading. Driver was Dave - a mechanic at the Porsche factory in Reading. Did a pretty steady 110 mph all the way there - a measure of how much people here ignore the speed limits, but are more polite drivers in general. Dropped off at the roundabout, we made a sign to get to the M25 that goes around London. Couldn't have been more then 10-15 min when we got picked up again by Mike and Mandy in a BMW. Leather seats and driving a stead 90 mph, they even took us around the M25 to a spot they thought would catch any traffic going from London to Dover. Mike, retired, had had a rather important postition at Disney and got to spend some time Eisner bashing. Incredible how nice the people were that picked us up. Well, unfortunately, the spot was not as good as anticipated since it was kindof hard for people to stop and it seemed like no one was going to Dover. And it had started raining a bit too, but we were under a bit of an overpass which helped. A little over half an hour trying to get a ride, we were reconsidering our strategy when a lorry driver pulled over for us. Our third ride was a french guy who spoke very little english but who was going all the way to the ferry docks in Dover. Lorries are slow, but we were happy just to have been picked up. He dropped us off right where we entered to get on the ferry. On the ferry, we ran into two other groups doing the hitch. When we phoned into the university of bath to tell them we were leaving the country, we found out we were the first batch to make it to the ferry, and since Les and I had left last, we were technically ahead of everybody. Trouble was that it seemed like no one was going to Paris from Calais, or even to the highway that leads toward Paris. After scouring the boat, one of the groups got an ok from a family in a car that barely had room but would take them all the way. Although they told us not to get off the ferry at Calais without a ride, we thought we might have to do just that. There was an English lorry driver, however, that was going within 45km of Paris, and was nice enough to let all four of us that were left squish into his cab. Quite an entertaing 3.5 hr drive with Steve - got to dispense with some of the stereotypes of Americans, and generally have a good time with Steve and the other team. Steve had to drop us off when he turned off of the A1 and this happened to be just past a toll in the road. Now we had problems since it was getting dark, it was nearly impossible to get any of the cars to see our signs, there were now 4 of us instead of 2 groups of 2, and hitchhiking is illegal in France. At any rate, we spent an energetic 20 min trying to get a lorry or slow car to stop when some of the road-crew workers came by and told us that we had to stay farther out of the road or the police would arrest us. As we re-grouped on the side of the road, a bus just happened to pull over... A miracle for sure! Turns out that, there had been about 3 teams on the ferry from Dover that went an hour after ours and that the only way close to Paris had been in this empty bus that the driver Neil was taking to Charles de Gaul airport. The driver had just happened to see our shirts and pulled over to make the bus half full of paris hitch people. At the airport, only 25 km from Paris, we almost gave into the temptation to take the bus or train into town like a couple of the teams. But to do this proper, we had to hitch a ride at least to somewhere we could catch the metro. We headed to one of the arrivals terminals and stood outside near the lines of taxis. Every single person that was getting in a taxi we asked... or at least pointed to the french phrases that were in our info packet - for a ride. In a surprisingly short amount of time, a french guy agreed to let us hop in on his taxi. His English seemed relatively basic, and I'm sure that didnt fully grasp what the heck we were doing, but it was a ride into Paris! After a flat tire on the way (it would only happen to us you know) we were let out right at a metro stop. Then it was just a matter of getting to the Eiffel tower - no problem! We signed in at about 12.5 hours or so. Not bad at all really. The people with the fastest time ended up being the team that caught the one car going to Paris when we were on the ferry. Probably beginners luck helped a bit too... We had made it to paris in 6 rides, and some people had had 6 rides just trying to get to Dover. Turns out that by 2:30am on Saturday, all but 3 teams had made it and they were all going to spend the night in Dover.

So dinner, and then a night in a hostel. Yesterday was spent walking - from the Bastille near where our hostel was along the river via Notre Dame, the Lovre, and the arch de Triumph to the Eiffel Tower. It can be quite hard to kill 14 hours without spending tons of money. Around 7, we headed back to the Tower and met with quite a large group from Bath that was just hanging around. Went to the grocery store to get some celebratory 92 cent wine (!!) cheap alcohol at last! And everyone spent the remainder of the time in Paris boozing it up in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. After the group photo, we finally got on the coach for the ride back around midnight. Caught the 6am ferry to dover, and arrived back in Bath around 10 this morning. Well, as that is the longest post EVER I'll just end it by saying I'll try to update the photos soon.

Another week gone by... Nothing incredibly significant happening on this side of the pond. Still in search of a job. Trouble is that in a few weeks I'll be off traveling for 3 weeks straight... so now I'm searching for temping type positions. Wednesday night went out with a bunch of british management post-grads. Definitely hanging out with a different crowd here then I would at home. Quite honestly I miss my network of fellow science majors. Since my chem classes meet just once a week it's been hard to meet anybody more or less gain confidants that would cover/take notes for me if I were gone. At any rate, the real excitement came on Thursday when it snowed! As I have no classes on Thursday, I got to watch it from the comfort of my room and enjoy the view. Apparently it was chaos outside. Less then an inch, which all melted by the next day. But they shut down buses to/from the university at 5pm, everything closed early, my flatmates that drove home where in the car 1.5 hours to get back as apparently a bus had slide off the road and blocked traffic. The next day headlines all read 'Chaos in the Snow!' haha. Obviously these English are not quite used to snow. So this weekend the goal is to search for a temp job, enjoy my reading, and make a bit of headway in writing my senior honors thesis for dr. waser. I suppose I should make the best of this afterall... this is the last time for a long time that I anticipate doing such great quantities of nothing....

What you've all been waiting for - I got my pictures back today! They should be up on the internet. Obviously I didn't quite know what I was doing, so every picture taken thus far is in the same gallery. Sorry if it causes problems for those with slow internet connections....

So go here: http://www.edoud.fotopic.net/