Playing Catch Up

Helllooooooo! Wow, it has been ages. Anyone who can keep up a blog on a weekly, or heaven forbid daily basis is just crazy. I guess I got swept up with school, travel, and hanging out in Newcastle to keep up the blog and it's really gotten away from me. As an early New Year's resolution, I resolve to be better about updating my blog. But first, I need to catch you up with what I've been doing.

I'll start with travel:

• Barcelona, Spain and London
  

In October, a friend of mine from UCLA, who is currently living in London, invited me to go along with him to Barcelona for a weekend. As one of my main goals of studying is England is to see more of the world, I said "of course!" and quickly booked a cheap flight. We stayed in a really nice hostel and walked A LOT! Everything is beautiful there. We took a cable car/gondola type thing up to the top of the hill in Barcelona to see the castle. The view was amazing, though it comes out rather hazy in the photos. We were there for three days, and the first two were cool and rainy, which was a bit of a let down, coming from England. But the third day was gorgeously sunny and warm, so we took a bus tour around the city and sat on the upper deck, enjoying the weather and the sights. We visited the elaborate La Sagrada Familia church, designed by Antoni Gaudi (check out their website http://www.sagradafamilia.cat/sf-eng/index.php for more info). Gaudi is a major architect and designed several buildings and a park for Barcelona. In my photos, if you see amazing and unique architecture, it's probably by him. On the sunny day, we went to Park Guell, also designed by Gaudi. It was beautiful and looked out over the city. It was the perfect day for a stroll in the park. I hope you enjoy the photos (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/alliscott/BarcelonaTrip?authkey=MCi1_p2wxDs#).

After Spain, I flew into London to spend a day there with my friend. I only spent a day there, and mostly I was trying to relax after our high-speed trek through Barcelona (in very uncomfortable shoes, much to my chagrin). We ended up watching two musicals, Chicago and Spamalot. Spamalot was awesome because we'd just see it preformed in Spanish in Barcelona. The performance we saw in Barcelona was the first ever translation of Spamalot and it was really interesting to see how they adapted British humor and idoms to reach the Spanish audience. I, though, do not speak Spanish and also hadn't seen Spamalot when I watched it in Barcelona (though I have see Monty Python's Holy Grail). The Barcelona performance was so amazing, even though I couldn't follow all the nuances of word play. I had to see it in English! So that's what we did. =) It was great, but honestly, the acting was better in Barcelona (don't tell the British).

• York

A couple weeks after the Barcelona trip, I went with my friends Niamh (pronounced Neeve—she's Irish) and Sheila (who's from Ohio!) and the international students society to York. We just spent a day there, it was very quaint and beautiful. It's also one of the oldest towns in Britain, dating back to Roman times. It had a distinct touristy vibe because 1) there were a lot of tourists and 2) we just walked around the shops. I'm sure there were more interesting cultural things to do, but we only had a few hours there. We walked on the city wall and also stopped by their art museum. All in all, it was a very satisfying and fun trip! See the photos here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/alliscott/YorkTrip?authkey=ojAghR53NOE#.

• Castle Keep, Newcastle
  

In an excursion around town, Niamh, Sheila and I went to check out one of the last vestiges of the Newcastle Castle, the Castle Keep. Wikipedia gives a very succinct description of the Castle and the Keep: "Newcastle Castle was a wooden motte and bailey castle built by Robert Curthose in 1080 on the site of the Roman fort Pons Aelius guarding the bridge over the River Tyne. This "new" castle gave its name to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Henry II built a rectangular stone keep between 1172 and 1177 on the site of Curthose's castle. The castle was later developed by Henry III between 1247 and 1250, with the addition of a barbican in front of the earlier north gate of the castle, known as Blackgate." If you would like to find out more history and information about the Castle Keep and Blackgate, check out http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/keep/.

It was great to learn about Newcastle's history and to walk through the various rooms of the keep and reading about how the keep has been used throughout the ages. We learned more about the Keep when we returned there on Halloween night to hear a reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and "The Black Cat" as well as an original piece by a Newcastle performance group. We got to go on a guided tour and learned some interesting things. For example, there once was a rather crazy performer, who would tie a rope to high places and secure the other end on the ground and slide down it head first at high speeds. To make it more spectacular, this performer also had a donkey that he would have do the same thing, tying weights to its feet to keep it balanced down the rope (crazy, I know, but it get's worse!). When this performer came to the Keep, he sent the donkey down, but he gained too much momentum and went hurtling through the crowd of people on the ground, ultimately killing a little girl. CRAZY! On a less grotesque note, the Keep also used to fire off a canon every hour to mark the time. It produced a sound, however, the would break all the glass windows in immediate vicinity. The people of Newcastle got very upset about this, so the council decided that everyone should open their windows right before the canon went off, so as to save the glass from shattering. However, the people had no timepieces and would have no idea what time it was, which was why they had the time-telling canon anyway. *Sigh* They weren't too bright, but eventually the figured that they should stop firing the canon. Anyway, check out the photos! http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/alliscott/TheCastleKeep?authkey=r8KHdOP3OvI#

• Edinburgh, Scotland
  

I went to Edinburgh on Saturday, November 22nd. It is so beautiful, I can't wait to go back. I mainly went to buy some cute Scotish trinkets for my family (they have a lot of stuff that says scott on it, so it makes for good gifts for my scott family =). I went with Sheila and we took a tour of the Castle and also stopped by their heritage museum. It was a day of walking and shopping mostly, until we went underground to check out the vaults!! The BBC said that the vaults are one of the most haunted places in Britain. They are pretty creepy. I could write about my own experience, but it wasn't too interesting (in case you don't know, I'm quite afraid of the dark, so it was scary for me, but not really for Sheila). The wikipedia article, though it doesn't cite any references, sounds exactly like our tour guide (with almost the same creepy tone…hmmm) so it you want to read more, feel free: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Vaults. I only have a few photos and I haven't yet uploaded them, but I will and I'll post them…eventually.

Regarding School:

I've been attending lectures by guest speakers, courses on research methodology, and a weekly seminar of the Children's Literature Unit where students present their work for peer critique and comment. I also just completed a final draft of my first paper and submitted it to my advisor for a quick look over before I submitted it. She said it was really good and only needed a little tweaking…YEAH! That means a lot coming from Kim Reynolds, so I'm pretty stoked. I also have to give a presentation next week to the Children's Lit Unit on my research and my next paper idea. Yikes! Better get cracking.

Regarding Everything Else:

I've been making friends and hanging out about town. I've seen some interesting movies, like an independent film called "Hunger" about the hunger strike of IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. It was well done, but very shoking and awful. I had no idea that any of that went on. I also went and saw "W," the film about George W. Bush. It was an insightful film, very humanizing of G.W., but it's like it takes all the culpability away from him because he's an ignorant figurehead. That might be true, but it was really annoying watching this film that poked fun at the president, and was also seriously criticizing him, but mostly just came off as a comedy (as evidenced when the British audience was laughing and I was cringing the entire time for embarrassment and horror that this man was elected at all, let alone twice. Ugh). I also went to a pub/club the other night called Mr. Lynch's and danced the night away to a really awesome mix of 70s, 80s, and more comtemporary music. I might have to do that again soon. =) Right now I'm compiling a grocery list so that my friends and I can get food for our Thanksgiving. Sadly, we were too busy last week to have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, so we are going to do it this Wednesday, if all goes well.
I think I've got you all up to speed now, and I hope to do better with all this blogging business. And yes (Desiree), I'm aware I've probably made some typos and errors and stuff, but I don't care. =) I have more important writing to edit, namely my paper! And I'm lazy. So deal with it. =P