Canal boats and castles and Lord Mayors (oh my!).

This Wednesday, October 1st, I have my very first class as a graduate student. Luckily for me (pictured here with my first pint in the UK as a graduate student), out of the nearly two thousand pages of "recommended" reading, only about 32 are required. Nonetheless, I imagine I'm going to be making a lot of space in my brain for all those words... wish me luck!

In the meantime, I had quite a weekend. I got to add to my list of UK experiences: (a) amazing English hospitality that included the summer camp-esque feel of child-sized bunkbeds, (b) a canal trip in a traditional narrow boat (resulting in many of the pictures you're about to see), (c) the Lord Mayor of Birmingham in full dress robes, (d) one of the worst meals I've had in a long time, especially considering how much I like fingerfood, (e) the hilarity of an English Barn Dance, and (f) some seriously stately-looking castles. One for the books (or at least the blog).

Warning: novel-length entry ahead...

So, this past weekend I joined a bunch of other folks studying in Great Britain and Ireland for a LINK event in Birmingham; basically a chance for all of us to meet and get further Rotarized. The range of interesting and often comical activities they had planned for us definitely provided some good blog fodder.

Friday afternoon at the train station I met up with another American student studying in Leicester, Laura, who's from Pittsburgh and is doing a climate/renewable energy engineering course at Lloughborough University (about 12 miles away). Her course is one that I actually considered pretty seriously, until I realized I'd be up engineering creek with no quantitative paddle. In any event, once we found each other, we proceeded to miss several possible trains to Birmingham before we managed to get ourselves on the right platform at the right time. So our 5:12 pm arrival time in Birmingham became 7:06 pm or so... but we did finally make it.

Then Laura went off on her merry way to meet her host, and I met up with yet another American, Lindsay, who is from Louisiana/Texas (yes, both) and studying literature at the University of Edinburgh. Lindsay and I were both being hosted by the same couple, Philip and Joy, two more examples of wonderful Rotarians. When Philip picked us up, we learned that he and Joy had been guilted into hosting two additional students, and so we squeezed into his already mostly-full car, where we met Lisa, a lovely German girl studying intellectual property law in London, and Juliya, a Russian native who has spent a lot of time in Michigan, of all places, and is studying finance at Exeter.

When we arrived in Warwick (pronounced Warrick) 40 minutes later, we were greeted with an ENORMOUS and delicious meal: wine, chicken in gravy, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and peas, which was followed by a homemade lemon tart with fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and fresh cream, which was followed by a cheese and fruit plate, which was followed (yes, I was in pain by this point, and had a stomach resembling a basketball, but kept eating) by tea, coffee and chocolates. Let's just say that when I squeezed into the lower bunk bed in the room usually reserved for the grandchildren, I only had a few minutes to take in the array of glow-in-the-dark stars and sheep plastered on the bottom of the bunk above me, a mere 18" from my face, before I passed out cold. Good food, good sleep, and a summer camp flashback, despite the slight claustrophobia.

In the morning, Philip and Joy took us out for a tour of Warwick. Right off the bat we learned that their neighborhood was built on the grounds of an old Mental Hospital... we were even shown the huge field that apparently served as the graveyard for the hospital and is full of unmarked graves. Despite being just a little creepy, the old hospital building was quite lovely. Though I must admit I'm happy I never had to live there.

Then we drove to St. Nicholas Park and Warwick Castle, where we only had time to see the outside (from quite a ways away, unfortunately) and take a few pictures of this very impressive-looking castle.
A little historical information for you, from Wikipedia: Warwick Castle was built by William the Conqueror in 1068, has been compared with Windsor Castle in terms of scale, cost and status, was named one of Britain's "Top 10 historic houses and monuments" by the British Tourist Authority in 2001, and is home to the largest and most powerful catapult in the world. According to Philip, the inside has been entirely restored and furnished as it would have been originally, and, even more exciting, is owned by the Madam Tussauds people, so there are wax figures in period dress throughout the place. Might be worth coming back... I bet it's really eerie at Halloween.

Afterwards, we drove into the town of Warwick and visited

St. Mary's Church (built in 1123), which is specifically not a Cathedral (because, I learned, it doesn't seat a Bishop or Archbishop). And because St. Mary's is a church and not a cathedral, Warwick is considered a county town, and not a city. The things we learn! After all this strenuous learning, we rested with cappuccinos in the town center. Whew! Hard work.

On the way home we stopped to see the local canal and get a demonstration of how canal locks work (to raise or lower water levels in order to move a boat upstream or downstream - very cool). We even got to help a boat with one set of locks as it made the journey down the canal. It's slow going, for sure. Good thing the boat owners were retired - they had about 20 to get through!

THEN we drove into Birmingham for the structured part of the weekend with the other 80-some students. First a cruise on a traditional narrow boat through part of the city - the abandoned industrial sector (a bit of an odd place for a tour, we thought) and then the newly revitalized district. Definitely interesting. I personally liked the brightly clad police officers scattered about.

After that we took a walk through the city to the Birmingham Council House, where we received a quick tour before being ushered into the semi-circled Council Chamber (divided into conservative, liberal, and labor sections - I sat in the liberal section by happy coincidence) to meet the Lord Mayor of Birmingham in his full dress robes. Another interesting experience - although the dress robes were flirting with comical.

Saturday evening found all of us at the Clarendon Suites hotel, in a basement level, 1970s styled conference room, waiting for dinner and also waiting to find out exactly what a "barn dance" was and what level of participation would be required. The dancing turned out to be pretty fun... each dance was different, but made up of easy to follow patterns that were repeated several times and involving the entire group. It brought to mind contra or square dancing. They would teach us the pattern for a particular song, then play the song so we could dance the pattern, which got repeated over, and over... so it was fun, and since the evening's main activity was dancing, we danced. I took video. It's worth watching. Though I still can't really categorize the music. Sometimes it sounded Irish, sometimes more like folk, sometimes bordering on country western - and occasionally a combo of all three. If you can tell from the 2 minutes of video I took, do tell me. But it was an experience, for sure.

If the video doesn't play, you can also watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJsnBzVeF8

Dancing was broken up only long enough for dinner. If you could call it dinner. I was told later by Philip that the kind of fare we were served constitutes a "finger buffet" - or a buffet of finger food - and is a pretty common and inexpensive way of feeding a lot of people. He also noted that unless done really well, it is not usually such a great plan. In this case, I would say that Clarendon Suites does not possess the required mastery. We were mainly just confused, as nothing seemed to really go together. Specifically, we ate: mini sandwiches (of the ham, beef, tuna, cheese, and/or egg varieties), fried chicken fingers that looked like fish sticks, fried mushroom balls, fried potato wedges, something with cheese that resembled pizza, fried veggie samosas, cold saffron rice with corn, peas and raisins, sausage rolls, potato salad, and only mayo for dipping it all in. It would have been better, had not most of it been fried AND cold. Bad combo. So I have now encountered one meal's worth of "British" food that I most decidedly did not like (though maybe calling it British is inaccurate... perhaps it's better labeled "hotel" food). Can't win 'um all, I suppose.

We spent one more night in Warwick with Philip and Joy (who sweetly packed us bag lunches for the train ride back to Leicester on Sunday - with crisps, what state-siders call potato chips, and biscuits, their version of cookies) and then went back to Birmingham, but not without a quick detour to see Kenilworth Castle (once again, just the outside... sigh), which I found more impressive and authentic looking than Warwick Castle, even in ruins. You could almost imagine Mr. Darcy walking across the dew covered lawns in his long, sweeping and unencumbered coat... um, yeah, nevermind.

And then it was back to Clarendon Suites for the real orientation (speakers, slide shows, former students, lots of people thanking other people - the required program) before catching the afternoon train back to Leicester. We only missed one train before we found the right platform, I only needed my map once on the walk back to my flat from the train station, and I discovered a cute art gallery/museum on the way. See... progress!

Crossing of the pond successful, bangers and potato hash procured.

Seven hours on a plane, five crossed time zones, three patchy hours of sleep, two overweight bags, one pond jump and a full English breakfast later (not a single partridge or pear tree, however) I find myself across an ocean and in Leicester.

Yesterday afternoon, after three weeks of slow packing and two days of frantic bag-stuffing, I was finally in a position (albeit a slightly frazzled one) to get on a plane. My enormous duffel bags were stuffed to the brim, each coming in at 69.5 lbs. (the limit for free checked bags is 50 lbs. while the absolute limit is 70 lbs., so I'd say that's quite a packing accomplishment), and both earning their well-deserved $50 overweight-bag surcharge. And even though I managed to pack almost everything I thought I might need, the various kitchen appliances I was considering didn't fit, and I honestly can't tell you how I managed to bring 140 lbs. worth of belongings with me.

When I arrived at Heathrow Airport at the ungodly hour of 6:35 in the morning, two Rotary members from Leicester, Moira and Howard, were waiting for me. They were holding up a large picture of me that I'd sent to them (awesome and just a little embarrassing), and although they were slightly thrown because I was wearing glasses, we managed to connect just fine. And then these incredibly kind people loaded me and my enormous luggage into their little hatchback, took me out for a full English breakfast (pictured above, and let me just say YUM - I'm a huge fan of the English versions of both bacon and baked beans), drove me the 2.5 hours to Leicester AND moved me into my dorm room. If you have to pick up your life and move it to another country for a stint, this is the way to do it. They even brought dorm room essentials (including an electric kettle - the British equivalent of a toaster oven) for me to use for the year. Simply incredible. I was blown away and my life was made exceedingly easy compared to what it could have been, especially considering the jet lag and mild sleep deprivation.My dorm turned out to be pretty nice - basic and clean. The coolest thing, however, is that it comes with it's very own BEANBAG chair. That's right folks, a beanbag chair. How fantastically middle school. And I have my own bathroom, which is also stellar. So far, I have 3 flatmates - Amanda, from Holland, who is studying business; Nick, from South Africa, who is exceedingly tall and studying film and animation; and Zathew (the pronunciation of which I always butcher), from China, who is studying fashion design. Maybe she can give me some tips. But the four of us share a kitchen and "common" area, and they are all very nice. I hear rumor that there is another American in the building, Emily from California, but I haven't met her yet. All I know for sure is that she's guaranteed to be much tanner than I am.

And even though my body was screaming for a nap, I went out for a walk around Leicester and took in a few of the "city center" sights - basically a large square with side streets full of various shops. But there are definitely some cute areas, and I'm looking forward to exploring once I've gotten more sleep and my bearings. I even managed to figure out the whole electricity/plug converter thing and get internet set up so I could charge my computer and let my family know that I was alive. All in all, it was a pretty good day, except for the part where I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet (or the loo, I suppose I should call it). Thank goodness I'm an over-prepared over-packer, since 2 oz of that 140 lbs. of luggage was a spare.

If England is going to be my mixing bowl, I'm bringing my own measuring cups.

This past weekend, after living in DC for just over a year, I packed my life into a 16' Penske truck and drove all of my possessions to my father's house in North Carolina. I now have T-minus three weeks and counting to sort through it all and figure out the bare minimum of what I need to survive in England, in a dorm no less, for an entire year. Three weeks to narrow down a 16-foot-truck's-worth of stuff into what will fit in two duffel bags. Granted, these particular duffel bags are big enough that I could check myself (and a small friend, see photographic evidence) to England - though only if luggage holds were climate controlled and luggage handlers weren't appropriately referred to as "throwers" - but a packing challenge nonetheless.

So far, other than clothing (especially of the warm and waterproof varieties), my list of essentials include:

• book of tried and true/favorite/family recipes
• measuring cups and measuring spoons (according to an Anglo-expert I know, the English don't measure their ingredients in this fashion - so if I want to cook any of my own recipes, I need to bring a set of each... exceedingly helpful advice, especially come Thanksgiving!)
• electric socket adapters
• ipod speakers

Obviously if I can cook while listening to music, I'll be content. On the list of possibilities (and I will happily take your thoughts on these... essential? ridiculous?):

• mini George Forman grill (is it odd that I like to eat turkey and muenster cheese sandwiches grilled with the convenience of a George for breakfast?)
• magic bullet blender (can I live without homemade smoothies for a year?)
• stovetop espresso maker and aerolatte (should I give in and just drink tea, or be a total dork and bring my own latte equipment?)

There seems to be a theme here... (disclaimer: I am exceedingly food-oriented, so I'm probably going to talk a lot about meals and cooking in this blog). Perhaps I can ship all the heavy kitchen-related gadgets to myself? Something to ponder if my bags reach their 50 pound limits without such inclusions. In any event, I solicit your thoughts. Any advice on other essentials I should bring?

The mountain of belongings to sort through in my bedroom is pretty daunting... I'll take all the advice I can get!