I will write a new post if it's the last thing I do!

Here is the new post that I should've written over a week ago. I've been putting it off over and over because I have not been in the mood to write at all. But it's been over a week, and writing a new post has now officially become this looming chore hovering over my head, which is a pretty good indication that I need to just sit down and write. So my apologies in advance if this post is less than stellar. I will try my hardest to be entertaining!

So, last weekend, along with Tanya, Astrid (flatmate from Bavaria), and Astrid's visiting parents,  I went on a day trip to the Peak District. Our first stop was the town of Bakewell, which is this incredibly picturesque place. Most of you have seen the pictures Tanya took for me (I managed to forget my broken camera at home, completely ensuring that I was unable to take pictures. Just in case it was thinking about working, you know). Our bus arrived in Bakewell at around 10, which was before any of the shops were open. We met our tour guide, who was this really friendly and funny local lady, and she took us on a morning walk around the town. We walked down to the River Wye (pronounced like "why"), and saw some massive ducks. They were like the size of geese. Tanya couldn't figure out why I wanted a picture of them so bad, and was completely confused about my lamenting there was "nothing in the frame to provide a sense of scale." Apparently monster ducks are normal for her. There's a picture up of them, but you can't tell that they're huge. Trust me though, they were.

ANYWAY (though I'm sure you all are rivited by my duck-centric tales -- get it? Ducktales? I dare you to click on that link.), the walk was beautiful, though very cold. It was a gorgeous day — totally clear skies with a bright fall sun. The sun doesn't shine here that often, but when it does, it makes everything incredibly beautiful. It's hard to describe in words, but maybe you can see how vibrant everything gets from the pictures. All the colors are just over-saturated to the point of unbelievability. It's absolutely gorgeous. We saw sheep and cottages, all framed by the green rolling hills of the peaks. I got to talk with our guide a little bit while we were on our walk, (I just strike up conversations with people now; it's this new thing I'm trying.) and she was super nice. She did the hilarious thing that lots of people do here when I tell them where I'm from: "I'm from Oregon, the state right above California." "Oh are you, love? I've got a nephew in Oregon!" {expectant look, like maybe I'll have met him} "Oh, umm, neat!" {disappointed look} This never fails to amuse me.

After walking by the river, we headed up the hill to the Bakewell parish church, which was founded in 920 AD. It was extensively renovated during the Victorian period, however (Victorians liked to renovate things, and generally had zero respect for preserving historical integrity), and therefore looks very gothic. The church is situated on the highest hill in Bakewell, so the view from the graveyard is fantastic. I saw my first real-life celtic cross here, and I was blown away by how beautiful they are in person. Pictures really don't do the intricacy of the engravings justice. There was a big fenced-off one that everyone was congregating around, but I noticed a smaller, more intricate one to the left of the church. I went dashing over to that one, and the guy from the Uni of Sheffield who was in charge of the tour came over, probably to make sure I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't be. They really like you to stay with the group on these tours — something which I am really, really bad at, and don't particularly care to be good at. It turned out that he's doing medieval studies at the Uni, though, so I got out of trouble by striking up a conversation about British history.

We ended our walk by winding through cobble stone streets until we were standing outside of a little bakery, which had a sign claiming that shop as the sole possessor of the original recipe for Bakewell pudding. (According to our guide, three shops in Bakewell claim this). Our group was provided with samples of the pudding, which is actually almond-flavored custard on top of a fruit preserve, baked in a pie crust. For the British, the word "pudding" is pretty much synonymous with "dessert." It's slightly confusing. After sampling the pudding, we were given slices of pork pie, which, I acknowledge, sounds kind of sketch. It was absolutely amazing, however. It tasted like Thanksgiving stuffing and gravy wrapped in pastry. Okay, so maybe that doesn't sound all that good, either. But it was actually super tasty, especially after a freezing morning walk! I got all teary because the taste reminded me so much of home.

After having our samples, we went on to sample cheese at another shop. Most of it was blue cheese —bleh— but I sampled it anyway. It tasted like blue cheese. You all can take that statement as you will. Right beside the cheese shop was a Hallmark store, which I found horrifying. Here we are, in this lovely English village, and there's a Hallmark? Really?  Anyway, after cheese we got chocolate samples, and then headed over to Portland Square (yay!) for our whiskey samples. I'd never had straight whiskey before, so I was a bit apprehensive. (Do you take it like a shot? Am I supposed to sip it like a wine connoisseur? Will I be able to do that without inadvertently spewing it all over?) Tanya was even more nervous about it, however (she won't even drink straight beer; she gets it mixed with soda —it's weird), so I tried to pretend to be a big kid for both our sakes. The whiskey turned out to be really pretty good, though. It was like 70£/bottle stuff, imported from Scotland, so it should have been! I chose the "fruity and exotic" kind, as opposed to the "dark, bold" one. Playing it safe, you know. I tried to sip it, but felt my control over my face failing (I was trying not to make the post-tequila shot face) and drank the rest as quickly as I could without looking desperate. My face got hot, then cold, then super hot, then tingly. It was interesting. I could actually taste the fruity tones, though, so I felt cultured.

After we finished out "taster trail" we had about an hour to wander around in Bakewell and find ourselves something to eat. Tanya and I found an cute old tea shop and got coffees and scones with jam and clotted cream. We had a couple extra minutes after that, so we went back to the Bakewell pudding bakery and got chicken mushroom hand pies for the road. So yummy! We managed to find our way back to the bus, and headed over to Eyam.

Eyam, pronounced "eem"is the cutest place I've ever seen. It's tiny, tiny, tiny, but's it's relatively famous for being "the plague village." The short version of the story (click on the link for the Wiki long version) is that, in 1665, the plague broke out in the village. Once the reverend of the town figured out what was going on, he convinced the townspeople to quarantine themselves instead of fleeing. This effectively stopped the sickness from spreading to any other villages, but a huge portion of the population of Eyam died. Some estimate over half. The graves of the plague victims are still visible in the church graveyard, and the "plague cottages," where the illness started, are still standing and lived in.

There's a bunch of other cool things to see, too, including the original town stocks; a medieval manor, Eyam Hall; and an incredible 8th century Anglo-Saxon cross. The cross was beautiful. To give you an idea of how old and awesome the 8th century is, here's a link to the epic poem Beowulf, which was first written down in the same period this cross dates from, preformed as it was meant to be, in Old English. (CLICK ON THIS) Did you listen to it?? Listen to it. Seriously, it's worth it. It's like the most badass, gruesome poem ever.

"They have seen my strength for themselves / Have watched me rise from the darkness of war / Dripping with my enemies' blood." ~Beowulf, a manly-man.

So yeah, that cross is from the same time that awesomeness was going on.

To continue my story, we got to wander all through the village, and went inside the church. The church has extant medieval murals painted on the walls and beautiful stained-glass windows, but unfortunately they don't allow pictures taken of the inside. :( The graveyard of the church is huge, and is full of lots of fascinating gravestones (we got pictures of some of the best ones). There's sections that are creepily unkempt and where the tree roots have pushed under gravestones to the point where you almost expect to see bones churned up.

On our way back to the bus, we grabbed a hot drink from a tea shop. I got hot chocolate (I'm still on my mysterious hot chocolate kick. No end in sight), and Tanya got a latte. We were late to get back on the bus, but this time it didn't leave us (unlike the Chatsworth bus!).

Our last stop was a viewpoint named Monsal Head, which is situated on a high point above a valley crossed by a 1800's (now-closed) railroad bridge. We hiked down into the river valley, walked along the river, through a forest, and back up around the other side. It was absolutely gorgeous. Muddy, fallish with turning leaves, green, and the perfect walk. My only annoyance was that on the way back up I got stuck directly behind these two girls who were, umm... we'll just say they were not accustomed to walking very much. They spent the entire hike up squealing over the mud, slipping on leaves, and generally walking ridiculously slowly. They were meandering. I hate meandering. I wasn't particularly in a hurry, but I was about 2 seconds away from shoving the both of them up the trail. I controlled my impulse, however, by contenting myself with, as Jane Austen says, "repeating to [myself] some few of the thousand poetical description extant of autumn — that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling" (Persuasion. Read it if you haven't; you won't be sorry).

So we finished our lovely hike, got back on the bus and rode 45 minutes back to Sheffield. I then proceeded to book it home and stay up until 3 in the morning frantically writing an essay on the arguments for cannibalism in the British Neolithic. (As a side note, the arguments are totally legit. 3000BC Europeans ate each other. It's not totally clear if it was widespread, but there's at least two proven instances of it, and one of them was highly ritualized, which argues that it wasn't a one-time, survival-based deal. Crazy, I know.)

So there you go, that was my Sunday. It was, needless to say, very eventful, strangely morbid, and unsurprisingly literary.

I hate paper writing...grrr....

Hi hi,
Today I went on my trip to the Peak District, and I'm very shortly going to write a post about it. BUT I don't have time to do it tonight, because I was a bad student and procrastinated a LOT. I now have two 1500-word papers due tomorrow at noon. I still have to write 90% of one of them and edit them both. Oh, and they're worth 40% of my grade. So I'm a liiiitle stressed.

I'm currently taking a break, however, and I thought I'd let you all see what I've made to cheer myself up:

So tired, but so excited for my baked apple. 

I was so happy to be making one that I tried to take pictures of the whole process, but my camera died. So no such luck. Anyway, in case you all would like to have your very own baked apple, I am including the recipe, straight from the expert, Mom. Here you go:

"Core the apple to get out the seeds and put it in something to catch the juices in the microwave. Stuff the center (centre, UK) with raisins and brown sugar on top of that. {I added a bit of butter, too. I was channeling Paula Dean.} Sprinkle cinnamon on the top. Place in the microwave. You can put some sort of lid on top if you have one. Microwave for about 5 minutes and check to see how it is doing. Spoon juices over the center and zap some more until it is done. Overdone, it sinks into the dish and becomes wonderful applesauce. You cannot loose on this one. Enjoy. If you can find acorn squash or similar small squash, you can do the same thing in the center, only cut some apple chunks and add those as well. Delicious and potentially a meal in itself."

I'll post later this week about Bakewell, Eyam, and strolling the moors.

Bye all!

iPhone in space

This is a video taken by a camera a father and son sent into space via a weather balloon. To read the whole story, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/16/father-and-son-send-iphon_n_765369.html

So creative and amazing!


Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Mushrooms, Pigeons, and Bank Rides

This morning when my alarm went off at 7 am, I seriously regretted joyfully agreeing to volunteer at 8:30 am. However, I managed to guilt myself into getting out of bed and was actually only about 5 minutes late arriving at the store. So yay me. Volunteering turned out to be pretty cool, though (I got to wear an apron, and I love wearing aprons), and I'm really happy I got involved. I spent the first few hours restocking shelves, breaking down boxes, and careening down a cobblestone hill behind a dumpster while trying to move it into its proper pick up location. (Always find the safety brake on dumpsters before attempting to "gently roll" them downhill.) As the morning wore on, people started showing up and buying things. It turns out the store's very popular with students on their way to morning classes, since we have tons of pastries and things. So a few minutes before every hour, we'd have like 10 or more people flood the store. Grace taught me how to work the till, and supervised while I stumbled my way through serving people. Everyone who came in was super nice and patient with me once I told them it was my first day, and they all said some variation of "cheers, thanks love!" upon leaving, which was just awesome. 

Around 11 another volunteer named JJ came in, and Grace left me under his supervision. He's a local with a really thick accent, so we had hilarious times trying to communicate. At one point, when we ran out of £1 coins and were discussing who should go to the bank, he said what sounded like, "Well, you can tac me bank." After he repeated the phrase 3 times, I looked at him with confusion and ventured, "bank? You want me to 'take your bank?'" To which he said "yeah, me bank." Me: bank?? 

Him: BANK. Me: Take. Your. Bank. I have NO IDEA what that means. 

At this point he gave up on spoken language and started trying to communicate via mime. I watched his flailing for a while and timidly volunteered "bike?" to which he replied, "YES, YOU CAN TAC ME BANK — baike (attempting to do an American accent)!!" The whole time he had been trying to tell me that, since the bank is far away, I would need to ride his bike to get there. When this dawned on me, I agreed that he should probably go to the BANK with his BIKE, and leave me alone at the store.  

Of course, about two minutes after he left, a group of 8 to 10 people came in, all wanting things that were difficult to ring up. I managed to figure everything out, except the price of a mushroom that this lady wanted. She was super particular about it, and there was no price posted on the mushroom shelf. (EVERYTHING else in the store had a price on it. She had to pick the ONE thing without one.) So eventually I just guessed what the price was and pretended like I knew. By the time JJ got back everyone was either gone or downstairs in the lounge area of the store, happily drinking their instant coffee that I had had to frantically figure out how to make. I was standing, wide-eyed and traumatized, behind the counter. He asked how it went, and I said, "Oh, um, you know, okay. A ton of people came in at once, and I had to guess how much mushrooms cost." He understandably did not see the connection between those two things, but eventually figured out what had happened. He told me it was fine, as long as I had written down how much I had charged. I of course hadn't, claiming that I thought since it was just one tiny mushroom it wouldn't matter. Apparently, it did. But he was nice about it, and said not to worry. So I'm not. It was just one tiny mushroom, after all. 

After that, things were pretty calm, except for the havoc caused by a pigeon that kept hanging around the store front. It would lurk under the display shelf outside and, when people came up to look at things, it would get spooked and fly out in their faces. It was not a very intelligent bird. At one point it actually wandered into the entrance of the store and almost knocked this guy over when he tried to come inside to buy something. It flew straight at his forehead in an attempt to get out, and he went flailing backwards out of the store. Upon recovering, he walked back into the store, and joyfully announced, "you've got a bloody f*ing pigeon in 'ere!" Much to my relief, he seemed more entertained than angry and he still bought stuff.  

So, other than the mushroom lady, all the customers were friendly and patient. It was so amazing to get to interact with *actual British people* and very entertaining to see how much of a kick some people got out of my accent. I mentioned to JJ that I'd been having a hard time meeting Brits, and he offered to have me over to dinner when he and his friends get together. So all in all I had a really nice time, and I felt like I helped out quite a bit, which obviously is the most important thing. 

Now I'm off to go do more reading for class and to write an essay outline. I hope you all have a great day! 

Hi! I'm still alive!

Hi everyone,
Sorry for not posting for so long. I've been pretty homesick and overwhelmed with school lately, so I haven't been in the mood to write. I haven't gone on any trips or anything, which is kind of lame, but I honestly have not had the time due to essays, reading, class, etc. I still really like my classes, but they take up A LOT of time.

In addition to doing school stuff, I also kind of stumbled into volunteering at this non-profit fair trade grocery store called New Roots. It's on the way to my classes, and I stopped in on Wednesday to buy some bananas, as I was craving them like none other. (I have weird intense cravings here. Like, 90% of the time when I'm at a coffee shop, I get hot chocolate. I'll even be planning to order a plain latte, and then at the last second ask for hot chocolate. I'm barely drinking coffee anymore. I have no idea why this has happened.) The lady at the counter asked if I'd ever been there before, and then told me all about the store: its mission, its origins, etc. It turned out that she — her name was Grace — and her husband, a Methodist Minister, started it up in the 60's as a way to raise money to help the poor in Sheffield and to raise awareness of social justice issues. All the people who work there are volunteers. So I impulsively asked if they needed new volunteers at the moment. Before I knew it I had an appointment to come back on Friday to be interviewed. I passed my interview, and now I'm starting work tomorrow at 8:30 am. I figure it's a great way to meet locals and make friends (maybe?). So wish me luck!

I have to end this here and go meet my flatmates to order pizza. I'll try to write more later about a few other things I've been up to. Miss you all!!

Things I miss about you:

Dad: your "dadisms." I haven't had this much fun since the hogs ate my little sister!

Liz: your amazing sense of humor and being able to hang out with you. You always give me a whole new perspective on life.

Jenny: Talking with you face-to-face! I think we both use facial expression a lot in conversation, so email just isn't good enough!! :)

Chally: having someone to talk with about academia and its ridiculousness. Ruminating over the meanings and validity of various anthropological theories. So... being nerdy together.

Mom: Climbing together, of course. But also just hanging out, playing with the dogs, making fun of the cats, finding random things in nature and being like, "Hey! This is cool!"

Emily: Making dinner together. Coffee together. Everything together!!

Allie: Everything you are. You're just awesome. Your pithy observations on life. You say the things I think. :)

Mark: Your humoring me when I try (and fail) to talk football with you as if I know what I'm talking about.


Okay, more later!

Settling In

Today Tanya and I went over to the botanical gardens. They're like a 5 minute walk away, which is amazing, because they're absolutely beautiful. If it's ever sunny again (today was a really, really nice day) I'm going to go study there. I took my camera, and it decided to work, so I have pictures to document the beautiful scenery. So if you'd like to check that out, follow this link.

Yesterday I finally worked up the courage to go climb at The Matrix, the university's bouldering gym. It was nice to get back on the wall after so long, but after not climbing for over 2 weeks, I've lost a ton of strength, especially in my hands. I managed to get myself pretty frustrated by jumping on routes that would've been no trouble 2 weeks ago and falling off on the second or third move. Also, the routes are pretty much vertical and end a good 8-10 ft off the mat. So I resigned to doing some of the easier routes and then left. Better luck next time, I suppose. There's some other gyms in the city that I may try out to see if I like their routes better.

Other than that, I haven't been doing much traveling or exploring lately, as I'm just trying to get settled into my classes and figure out the system. It takes up a lot more time than you'd think. I did go on a mini-adventure to find an organic, locally-sourced grocery store called Beanies that had been recommended to me. Normally I'm not too picky about getting organic stuff, but the produce at grocery stores here has been waaay expensive and terrible quality. For example, about a week ago I bought a bag of 5 or 6 nice-looking apples, and all but two turned out to be inedibly rotten on the inside. This convinced me that I should try local things, so I asked around and was told to go to Beanies.

Beanies turned out to be a very good find. It's a little hole-in-the wall place sandwiched in between houses, but the outside is painted bright, barn-door red, so it's not too hard to find. Most of the produce is grown in the Peak District, and it's über-organic, but more importantly, very good quality. And, even better, it's a lot cheaper than the stuff from the grocery store! It was well worth the 10-minute trek uphill. After I purchased my mushrooms, spinach, potatoes, and fruit, I  wedged it all in my backpack and wandered around the neighborhood. I happened to notice a dilapidated, very old-looking church up the hill and across the street, and walked over to take a closer look. The brickwork was crumbling as a result of prying roots of the ivy encroaching on the walls, the windows were boarded up, and the surrounding land was overgrown. Nonetheless, it was clear that the church must have been very pretty at some point. Though it was small, the architecture was in elaborate gothic-style, complete with a spire, and it was situated right at the top of a large hill overlooking the city. I was very curious about the story behind the church's abandonment, but there wasn't anyone to ask, so I walked a bit down the hill to a park I had passed on my way up. I found a bench to sit on by a pond, nibbled on my dried mango, read about methods of corpse defleshing (it's for class, guys, I'm not a serial killer), and watched the little old men and women walking their dogs back and forth. It was a very nice afternoon.

This week I don't have any excursions planned, as yet, but who knows what I'll end up doing. As always, I hope you're all doing well!

~Anna  

Two nations divided by a common language

While I'm finally getting the hang of the accent here, I was happy to stumble across this American/British dictionary today. It's kind of amusing to click through. http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/141/dictionary.jsp

OH MY GOSH NEW BEST-TASTING THING EVER!

Ok, so I stopped at this little tiny shop on the way home from school today called Fruit-A-Peel, and grabbed this on a whim:

It's so good. It's like mom's granola when it's not all the way cooked mixed with raspberries. So I've found something I like here! Yay! Hopefully more to come! 

Also, apparently this blog will now be made up of pictures of me holding food. Not surprising.... 

Ghost walk pictures

Link!

Sections I and II may be subdivided into subsections 1A, 1C, etc. Please reference Appendices IV-XVII included in the supplementary material for more information.

Hi everyone, sorry for the lag in my posting an update. I've been very busy getting classes sorted out and trying to figure out how the university system works here. The following entry is divided into two sections, for your reading pleasure and convenience. The first is all about classes, and is kind of boring, perhaps, so skip that if you're so inclined. I'll probably never know the difference. The second is all about general happenings of my day-to-day life, like the Ghost walk I went on. So it's probably just a bit more interesting. So. It's like a pick-your-own-adventure. Or no, you know what it's like? It's like the board game LIFE, where you can either chose to go to college and suffer the losses —of time, in this case— but maybe come out ahead in the end (i.e., read Section I), or dive straight into all the fun stuff (skip Section I and go to Section II). I hope it's not too similar to LIFE, however, because I always lose that game. But I only ever play with Liz, who has a "unique" interpretation of the game rules. So make of that what you will. (Love you Liz!!)

SECTION I

Classes officially started at the University last Monday, but I didn't have class until Tuesday. I can't remember if I've said this before, but the classes I'm in are Neolithic and Bronze Age Archaeology, Funerary Archaeology, and the Writings of Christopher Marlowe. These are all 3rd year classes, which is the highest level you can take as an undergrad. They are therefore all very serious courses and the professors' expectations are very high. A lot of prior knowledge is assumed coming into the courses, and in the case of the archaeology classes, it's knowledge that I generally don't have. That's not really because my education at OSU has been lacking; it's because my archaeological focus has been on historic archaeology in the Pacific Northwest, which doesn't really transfer over much. 

Despite this, I thus far find my classes very interesting. I don't want to go into too much detail about what I'm studying, because I know that my readers may not really have an interest in it. :) So I'll tell you the coolest things about my classes. For my Neolithic class, at the end of the term we have a field trip to the Peak District where my professor, who specializes in landscape archaeology, will lead us around to various sites and tell us about them. The Peak District has many Neolithic sites, such as dolmans, standing stones, and burial mounds. So I'm looking forward to that A TON. 

Funerary archaeology is all about how humans in the past have interacted with death. So this class is NOT about finding out how or why an individual died (I was disappointed about this at first). Instead, it's about examining burial practices looking at what those practices tell us about the culture in question in general.  For example, say a burial is discovered in which an individual is found to have been painted entirely with red ochre. The question asked would be why the red ochre was used: What did it mean to the mourners? Where did they source the ochre from? Why was the person mummified? How? These are questions that are interesting to me, at least, so I'm happy in this class. Additionally, we'll have a whole section on Egyptian cosmology, which is never boring. 

I don't have too much to say about my Marlowe class. There's nothing about it that would be all that interesting to anyone who's not an Elizabethan/Jacobean literature nerd. I'm excited about it because I get to study C. Marlowe, a playwright contemporaneous with Shakespeare, some more. I've studied much of his work previously, but I'm interested to see a different take on it. Right now we're reading Tamburlaine the Great, which is about a Scythian shepherd who rises to rule over much of Asia and the Middle East. There's war, romance, awesome speeches, and great poetry. In Marlowe's time, Tamburlaine was one of the most loved and popular plays around (more popular than many of Shakespeare's), and the character Tamburlaine is an incredibly powerful one. Here's one of my favorite passages, in which Tamburlaine is described by one of his enemies: 

As princely lions when they rouse themselves,

Stretching their paws and threat'ning herds of beasts,

So in his armour looketh Tamburlaine.

Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet, 

And he with frowning brows and fiery looks

Spurning their crowns from off their captive heads.

Tamburlaine is a fascinatingly powerful individual — He's at once cruel; merciful; devout; heretical; intensely romantic and gentle with his love, Zenocrate; intellectual; savage; and brutal. But somehow it works. Anyway, if you're ever wanting to read something out of the ordinary, give Tamburlaine a try. It's worth it! 

I didn't get off to a great start in this class, however, because I wasn't allowed to add it until late in the week. English lit classes here have two meeting times: one early in the week where the prof lectures and no discussion takes place, and one later in the week where you meet in a small group with the prof to have discussion and workshop. I, therefore, missed the first lecture and had no idea what to read in preparation for my discussion group, as I couldn't access the online information. So I merrily showed up for my discussion group, expecting to be able to hide in the back. Much to chagrin, there was no "back" since the "group" was made up of three other people. Throughout the session, I struggled to recall the major plot points of Tamburlaine, as it's been at least half a year since I read it. I was able eventually to say some semi-intelligent things, I hope. The professor was pretty understanding, and she got me all set up with the online system after class. I'm busily reading the play now, in an effort to make up for lost time. I wish I had my edition of the text here, because it's all marked up with notes and insights from my previous class. Oh well, I'll just have to start from scratch, I suppose. 

SECTION II

So now for the interesting stuff. On Tuesday Tanya and I went on a ghost walk around downtown Sheffield. We'd walk along, stop outside of some old-looking building, and be regaled with creepy stories about the ghosts who were no doubt STARING AT THE BACKS OF OUR HEADS RIGHT NOW! I tried to take pictures, but my camera is officially broken, and only took like 4 pictures before dying. I finally got so frustrated with it that at our last stop I began bashing it against things in hopes that it would work. It's logical, okay? I figure it has a short in it or a non-connected something, and maybe hitting it on things will gently reconnect the...things...inside...the camera. yeah. And you know what? It actually did turn on and take a couple of pictures after one particularly violent bang. But then it died again. ANYWAY, that's all to say that I don't have a lot of pictures from this event. 

Our first stop was outside a pub called The Graduate, which has been around since the 1800's. During that time and until pretty recently, Sheffield was known as the most crime-ridden, violent city in England. According to the guide, this club was the meeting place for the steel barons who ran the city, and they (of course) also happened to be Freemasons (you know, the diabolical good 'ole boys club that runs the world). The gist of the story was that these Freemasons got involved in some messed up stuff in their grasping at power, and sacrificed a barmaid in the basement.  Her bloody, screaming ghost haunts the pub to this very day. He went on to make some claims about how, when archaeologists exhumed the area near the pub they found unmarked sack burials, and could tell from the bones that the victims had been alive for all of these horrific things. I couldn't help but quietly laugh at this a bit, because it's actually pretty impossible to tell if injuries on bone were sustained peri- or postmortem. You can tell if they were sustained like, 2 weeks before, because there would be signs of healing. But there's no way to tell a stab wound sustained a few hours or even days after death from one sustained less than 2 weeks before, no matter what "CSI: Miami" and lieutenant sideways would have you believe (huh, Dad?). So science triumphs once again! 

After three or four more stops, the tour ended at the Queen's Head pub, which has been standing since the 14th century. At that time, Sheffield still had its castle and the pub was the royals' hunting lodge. (The castle was dismantled by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Sheffield managed to make him really angry somehow.) The Queen's Head is haunted by at least three ghosts: a little boy, a washwoman, and a Cromwellian soldier. We got to sit and sip hot chocolate as the guide told us their stories. I had chosen a spot in the far corner of the room, which I thought was very cozy when I sat down. It had been really cold outside, and so a warm corner and hot chocolate (the best I've ever had) was perfect. However, as I sat there, about halfway into the story of the soldier, I started getting really cold. I figured there must be a draft or something. About 5 minutes later, the guide turned, pointed at me, and said, "and there's been many reports that the ghost likes that corner where this young lady is. He sits on people's laps and makes them go cold, or he kicks their feet." I tried to smile neutrally ("oh, haha, yes, soooo scary!"), but I was seriously creeped out. It would be different if I got cold AFTER he told me about the corner, but no, it was before. So make of this what you will. Maybe there was a draft, maybe there wasn't. I had goosebumps, which I suppose is the general goal of a ghost walk. 

Later in the week, on Thursday, I went to an Erasmus social with my German flatmates. I'm not technically an Erasmus student, so I wasn't sure I was okay going, but they claimed it was fine. When we got there, they had a table covered in 3x5 flag stickers that they were slapping on people according to nationality. I thought, "oh, snap, they'll only have European ones and won't have one for me and they won't let me in!" Oh the drama.... So, to their excited query of "where are you from!!??" I went, "ummm... I'm from the US. I bet you don't have one for me *emo hair flip*" The flag-distributer joyfully shouted, "NO! WE HAVE FLAGS FOR EVERYONE!!!" and produced a US flag. The Erasmus students are generally crazy like that. I had a pretty good time at this social and met lots of people. I met a Canadian and managed to insult him by guessing that Ontario was above Oregon and Idaho. Apparently that's really, really wrong, but I haven't cared enough about Canadian geography to look up where it is. (hahaha...) I don't know why Canadians seem to expect Americans to have spent the time memorizing their provinces. I certainly don't expect Canadians to know where anything in the US is. I figure we should know generally where countries are, and beyond that is unnecessary. I apologized, but to no avail. Oh well. I saw all my French friends and met new people from Germany, Holland, France, Finland, etc. All in all, I was glad I went.  

Okay. There's a lot more that's happened, but I'm saving it for another time. Thanks for reading, and I hope you all are doing well. I really appreciate all of your comments and emails!! Let me know if you're around for Skyping, but remember that there's a +8hrs time difference. 

Last thing: Here's a picture of the sad, sad little bag of tortilla chips that took me a 40 minute walk and 2 days of searching to find: 

Ah, the salty, crunchy taste of victory.