Happy almost Thanksgiving!

A lot has happened since my last post! It's been... like a couple of weeks. Most of you have heard about my trips and things, so I'm not going to go into much intense detail about them (as is my norm). I haven't posted lately for lots of reasons, but mostly because I've been too busy with life and especially with school. My three 3,000-word essays have been looming over my head relentlessly, and even though I'm being responsible and working on them, I don't feel like I'm making any progress. So...bleh.

But, on a happy note, I've gotten to do LOTS of fun things since I last posted. I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon, celebrated my 23rd birthday, (It's super weird that I'm that "old." I have to think before answering when people ask me my age.), and visited Bath and Stonehenge. I've had an eventful month.

I went to Stratford, Shakespeare's birthplace, on MY birthday, the sixth, so I had pretty much the perfect birthday trip. My flatmates remembered and wished me happy birthday first thing in the morning, which I thought was super nice. I think Tanja had a lot to do with that; I'm really so lucky that we ended up friends. She puts up with my weird historical trivia and spontaneous archaeological speeches, doesn't get annoyed when I'm anti-social, and just laughs quietly at my complete lack of a sense of direction. I really appreciate her. And it's a good thing she's okay with me spouting facts, because I was on a rollll in Stratford. I couldn't really help it, since it was like Shakespeare central, and I really, really know a lot of random things about him (or at least his work; very little is actually known about the man himself). We went to all the must-see places: Nash's House & New Place, where Shakespeare lived; Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway's cottage; his birthplace/home he grew up in; and lastly his grave. These places are dispersed throughout Stratford, with Anne Hathaway's cottage the farthest away. For some reason I ended up as the navigator on the way to the Cottage — I have no idea how. Or maybe I have a little bit of an idea how. I may have claimed to have figured out, using my map, how to get there. It turned out that I had not, in fact, figured it out, (surprise, surprise) and we ended up weaving through some very picturesque neighborhoods before finally finding the right road. Needless to say, we took a taxi back to the city centre.

My favorite place, by far, was Holy Trinity church, where the poet is buried. I didn't like it as much as I did because of that, though. This may be hard to believe, but, though I love the plays, I'm not all that interested in the almost-worshipful revering of the actual person of Shakespeare. So I didn't spend too much time paying homage to the genius at his grave. I loved the church because it's the prettiest one I've seen, as yet (and I've seen a looot of them). There's pictures of it on my facebook profile, so you can sort of see how beautiful it is. The inside is incredibly historic, with ancestral parishioners buried in the floor and the walls. The local nobility's burial chapel features fantastic stone effigies of Lord and Lady Clopton laid out in death, dating from around 1590. The best thing about the church, however, was the little old British gentleman taking our 50 pence payment for access to the gravesite. He chatted with each person who came by, smiled, and asked where they were from. He had huge stacks of guides to the church in every language — printed, it appeared, using the church's 10-year old printer; apparently church bulletin design is the same, world-round. He excitedly offered my German companions guides in their language, but they declined in favor of English ones, and he looked kind of disappointed. If they had had an Americanese one I would have taken it, no doubt. :) Before leaving the church, I bought a red poppy (sold in a nation-wide initiative to support veterans in commemoration of Remembrance Day) in honour of Grandma Morrison, since she was, after all a WWII veteran.

Besides being the birthplace of Shakespeare, Stratford also has tons of incredibly awesome-looking pubs and fun tiny shops, which would have been cool to look in, but we ran out of time. We only just had time to visit all the essential sites and grab a snack for the ride back. Once we got home, we were all pretty tired, but my flatmates had planned a sort-of surprise birthday for me in the kitchen. They accosted me with cake and presents when I came in to make tea. I can't believe how nice it was. So thoughtful, and it made having a birthday far from home much more bearable. As did the cake mom sent me. :)

More on Bath and other events later.

Enjoying my cake from Mom