France and Wales pics

Paris

Notre Dame

Top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset

Versailles

The tower at night

Wales

Tintern Abbey

castle ruins

Liz, Sam and Melissa in Cheltenham

In the hostel: Me, Becca and Sam

Weekend in Paris

One thing that I love about London is that living here gives me the opportunity to travel to other places. Going to Paris for a weekend is feasible. I left Thursday night right after classes and took the Eurostar to Paris and come back yesterday, Sunday. It was amazing. I really enjoyed the city. The only bad thing about the trip was the fact that I speak absolutely no French. There were a few times that my friend and I got lost not being able to read signs. Once I got used to the language gap though, and began to recognize the area that my hostel was in, it got a bit easier. It was great to be able to spend some time in the city though, I went to the Eiffel tower twice, once at night and the other just before sunset. I also got to go to the Arc de Triumph and all the other major attractions in the city (I can't spell any of them so I'm not even going to try). The city was dirty especially compared to London, but not as bad as I was expecting it to be. But the streets make less sense than London. I would love to go back though and see more of the city and some of the things that I missed. I did get to go to Versailles though. The gardens were huge and well maintained. It was nice to get out of the city, it actually felt like a holiday and not just another day of running around the city. Going away for a bit definitely made me happy to get back to London and relax. The city really has become like home and I'm going to be sad to leave it in just a few weeks. Finals are coming up along with the last papers for all my classes and I'm trying to fit in everything that I haven't done yet. Tomorrow I'm going to go see The Phantom of the Opera!!! I'm excited for it, it was the one musical that I had to see while I was here. I've loved every bit of time that I've spent here, even the going to class part because my profs have so much knowledge to share and Martin seems to know everything about the history of England. Which brings me to one thing that I want to share about the program. I know that for me and a few of the other people not from UO didn't really know what to expect about the program going into it, so I wanted to explain some of the things that I know I had questions about. The program is small, there are two groups that make up the program, the kids going for a semster and those going for a quarter. All of them stay with host families unless they decide otherwise. All of the students at the centre are American and you don't take classes with any British students, however the majority of the professors are Britsh (we have a visiting prof teaching two of our courses). Part of the program is going on excursions. Some of these are in the individul courses so for Art History our classes are often at the museum. Other excursions are for the program so for me, all of the quarter students would go together somewhere, like on Friday when we go to Bathe. But there is a lot of free time to do homework, or explore the city or go away on weekend trips to places. It's a great program that lets students learn a lot.

Parliament

It seems that time is flying by now that midterm break is over. Nearly every night until the end of the program in June is going to be filled with something. This week I've been to two plays and tomorrow night I leave for Paris for the weekend. The following week is more plays and the opera, plus there is actual class work to be finishing. It doesn't seem like I'll have enough time to do everything that I want. There's never a dull moment in London, which is something that I love about this city.
Today though was really neat. Martin took us to Parliament to sit in on a debate. The debate itself was boring, but it was interesting to see how things are done in the government. Also it was neat to be inside the Parliament building. The building is open to the public but you have to go through security. When we were watching the debate there was a really loud man, who seemed a little drunk, that came in. He was disturbing the people watching the debate and the guards in their tailcoats removed him within just a few minutes. It was the highlight of the debate and the people debating didn't even know that it was happening thanks to the glass partition.

Wales

On Wednesday past, the program went to Wales for 3 days/2 nights. It was amazing! Wales was beautiful, it's very similar to the Pacific Northwest with trees and foliage everywhere plus rain. Though the weather held out until the last day for us (Yay!!). Martin and the visiting professor, Cheryl, went with the students. Martin planned out full days of sightseeing for us, most of the time acting as our tour guide (he's incredibly knowledgeable about the history of the UK). We got to see Cheltenham an old Regency spa town, then on our way to our hostel for the night we visited Highnam Church, a small Gothic Revival church that had been entirely painted by its patron. the next day we went to Chepstow Castle and Tintern Abbey and celebrated one of the program girls' birthday. Then, on the last day, we went to Gloucester Cathedral. The tour of the Cathedral was great, it was really interesting, plus the tour guide pointed out the different parts of the Cathedral that had been used in the filming of the Harry Potter Movies. The whole trip was a lot of fun and really interesting. Plus, Wales and England are just very beautiful places so driving around to all these different places was a lot of fun. This half of the term is really busy both with program excursions and with my own trips to different places. next week I'm going to 2 plays, Parliament, and then to Paris for the weekend, the week after to Hampton Court Palace, Bath and hopefully another play. Then, it's already June and the end of the program looms ever closer. It doesn't seem like I'll have enough time to go and do everything that I want. I still want ot see Tower Hill and a football match plus I want to see at least 3 more plays before I go, and then I have to remember to go to classes....

Scotland and Ireland pics

Ireland

Blarney Castle

Blarney Castle

Dublin looking out over the river

Mall in Dublin

Scotland

Becca and I, Glasgow, Bus tour

Glasgow College, Scotland

Small island off of Edinbourgh

The Lockness Monster's brother in Edinbourgh

The beach, Edinbourgh

Bagpiper in Edinbourgh

Midterm Break!

There's one thing that I absolutely love about living in London/Britain; you have the opportunity to go just about anywhere in the world for really cheap. There are airlines and buses and trains that will get you to just about anywhere you want to go. In the past week I've been to Edinbourgh, Alnwick, Glasgow, Dublin, and now Cork. Scotland and Ireland are amazing and beautiful and the people are really nice. My quick trip to these places has made me want to go back and visit other places in Scotland and Ireland outside of the larger cities. It's been really fun to travel around and see all these different places. Ten hour bus rides though, are not very fun, even at night because you really don't sleep no matter how much you try to convince yourself that you will.