Salzburg

the town of mozart and the sound of music. on our way on eurobus, leaving venice and crossing the boarder to austria and going back to the german language. peter, our bus driver, popped in the sound of music, which we all (well...not all) enjoyed. let's just say there was some singing along.

it was hot in salzburg. i had pants on on the bus and immediatly changed to shorts and was out the door in about 15 minutes. dennis and i decided to take a walk towards the city center and i tried to track down a bank that would let me use my credit card and 2 forms of id to take money out, since i didn't have my pin code for the atm. no luck. jaime and carly m. eventually met up with us and we walked until we found shops and the city center. we stumbled upon a magnificent water fountain and sat next to it, waiting for the wind to pick up and sent drops of water our way. from there we hit up the post office for phone cards and post cards and then we made our way to a square with a small market and lots of people playing chess. there were huge lifesize chess boards and people playing small ones. we even had a piano player over to the side who did requests. jaime and dennis played a huge game of chess and many people came over to watch, which was really neat. i think jaime won...i don't remember. after some more window shopping we made our way back to our hotel for supper. after some food, a group of us got together to "go up the mountain," as there is a big mountain fortress pretty much right in the middle of the city. so dennis, jaime, jill, steph, silus and myself take off and eventually find a funicular up to the mountain, where they happen to be having a mozart concert going on in the castle. it was pretty empty up at the castle, which made it more enjoyable for searching around and enjoying the fantastic views from uptop. it was amazing. eventually steph and i got lost from the group uptop and after about 20 minutes ran into them again. there was a restaurant up there also, so some of the group got drinks and we sat by ourselves, except one other group of 3 guys, looking out over the city, enjoying each others company. eventually the other group looks up at us and asks where we were from. "minnesota" we tell them. "no way! we're from minnesota, too!" what a coincidence that the only other people up there were from minnesota! apparently these 3 guys were playing american football over here (well, really in germany) and 1 of them was coaching young kids too. we ended the night walking down the mountain, instead of taking the funicular, and jaime with his aviator sunglasses, singing top gun songs to us the whole way down. it was so much fun. we also got scared by this statue that looked strickingly real as it sat over in the shadows until jaime threw a coin at it and we were all much better after we heard the coin clank against the metal of the statue. steph also ended up giving jaime a piggy back ride for much of our walk. all in all...it was a pretty fun night.

the next day we woke up and loaded the bus with luggage and then were on our way for our salzburg tour. we saw sights from the sound of music, which causes many re-enactment pictures and we also saw mozarts gebertshaus (birth house) and did a little bit of shopping. some people bought mozart balls but my big buy was my music box that plays edleweiss and has edleweiss on the front of it. i played it a couple of times straight, it's such a pretty song. after a tour of mozart's church, where he was baptised and were he and his father played these magnificent organs (there was 5 organs in the church and the tour guide explained how the back organ, mozarts organ, was so hard to play as it takes 3 seconds for the sound from that organ to reach the other 4 at the front of the church and how the other 4 players had mirrors set up by their music so they could see the rest of the organ players) we were back on the bus. we watched salzburg fade away, drove past the huge abbey where maria got married on the sound of music, and then were on our way to vienna.

Venezia

Venice seems so long ago, but I have to keep going with my updates...Our stay in Venice was pretty interesting. We wake up that morning and walk across the street to the train station where Peter, our bus driver, pays for our tickets to take the train from our town into Venice. The train ride is about 5 minutes, taking us over water into the train station in Venice. We are greeted with the Grand Cannel outside the train station and begin our walk all the way over to the other side of Venice to meet our tour guide. We think that we are being led astray by Peter as we are walking through narrow streets and over funky bridges. Being led like this through strange cities scares us as we are usually left after our tours to find our way back to the hotels. We finally get the the Doge's Palace in Venice, right by the main harbour and at the main square, St. Mark's, which you might recognize from the DeBeer's "A Diamond is Forever" commercial in which the guy and the girl are twirling in this square and he starts yelling "I. LOVE. THIS. WOMAN!" and the girl, embarrassed at him yelling this out, asks him to stop and he said that this will have to do, presents her with a diamond ring, and then she starts whispering, "i love this man, i love this man." so yeah, anyway, that's where i was. our tour that morning was at the doge's palace, where we had a very rude and, well, i have no other way to describe him...non informational? tour guide. he said some pretty off handed and rude comments to some of our members of our group that left us doing a 'did he really just say that?' laugh. and we pretty much learned nothing about the palace or about the doge's because our tour guide was that bad. what we did learn was that carly was mary magdalene and that jaime's new nickname's are machine gun and pedro...and that pedro has 26 kids. interesting. afterwards though, we went to a glass blowing factory and had a demonstration which was the coolest thing i have ever seen. it was absolutely amazing how the glass blower easily molded the glass into a vase. then we went upstairs where they tried to sell their venician glass to us poor college students. it was still quite the experience. returning back to the outdoors of venice, crystal, carly and i walked around venice doing some shopping and eventually we were tracked down by a gandola operator who we paid 90 euros for a ride. he was pretty funny...he ran all over the place just to get his gandola for us...we wanted to yell out to him as he hopped from gandola to gandola to get to his, to calm down...we weren't going anywhere! but we had an amazing gandola ride where we saw the bridge of sighs, casanova's house and marco polo's house. we got to wear our gandola dude's hat and take pictures with him. it was definetly worth the 30 euros i paid. next, the 3 of us, after much confussion, boarded a vaporetto (water bus), which took us out to the island of Lido, where we met much of our group out on the sandy beaches for some fun in the sun. Sand castles were built, sea shells were picked, and let's just say that a bunch of us girls decided that, once we were far out in the Adrianic Sea, that we were far enough away from anyone else so spontananity took place and we went skinny dipping. it was pretty wild. don't worry...suits were put back on shortly afterwards and before we returned back to being able to touch the bottom of the ocean and before shore!

at about 5, we all broke up, heading our separate ways to get back to our hotel. My group (Nic, Crystal, Carly and I) grabbed some gelato (mmmm...ice cream) before finding our water bus. Once we reached the grand cannel, we did some shopping and then boarded the train for the way back. I met up with other people from our group back at the hotel and heard what everyone had been up to that day. Crystal and I ate some wonderful chinese food at a place across the street and then I retreated to my hotel room, turning in early for the night...which didn't last long as jaime came and asked if i wanted to go on a night time gondola ride with a small group. not wanting to turn down an adventure, i went with. grady, fallon, crystal, jaime and i headed back into venice with a time limit...we didn't want to miss the last train back to our hotel. once there we easily found a gondola ride and a reasonable price and where on our way. fallon sang madonna songs the whole ride, hoping that madonna would answer back to her as she has an apartment in the city. many stars do have apartments in the city, as it's one of the most expensive places to live. we sat and joked around and asked our gondola dude questions, but he didn't speak much english. once back on ground, we stopped for our last taste of real italian gelato, which was wonderful. we then retreated to our train, which we had a great deal of fun finding...it might help if we spoke the language...and went back to our hotel, to pack up and get ready to leave for austria the next morning.

gondola rides for the day: 50 euros. or about approx...$65 ish dollars.

don't worry...it was well worth it!

italiano!

italy is one big blast of a time. it's wonderful. we started off in florence, which was alright. we saw the david by michelangelo, which was amazing...he's really, really, really big! i think the best part of was the hotel room. 2 floors of sweet fun in one room! 2 bathrooms, 3 beds, tv, mini bar, badays (however the heck you spell those...as dennis describes them, "it's like a carwash for your behind." no, i have not used one yet and have no itensions of using one)...and our room had one big huge belcony! it was a blast. next was rome, where we almost had a toga party...didn't quite happen, but maybe tonight? who knows. first night in rome, we party under the beautifully lit colleseum...it was so beautiful. the next day we had a tour of the vatican, saw the museum, the sistine chapel, which was slightly a let down. there was so many people there and our tour guide warned us many times before we entered: no pictures, videocamers and NO TALKING. we entered and it was so jammed packed with people screaming at people you would have thought it was wall street. but the paintings by michelangelo were so beautiful...it's not what i imagined the sistine to be, but it was pretty amazing. then we went over to st. pauls (we saw st. peters the night before, equally amazing). the cool thing about st. pauls is that it is so porportioned that you have no idea exactly how big everything is in there. there was writing on the top of the walls that look to be about a foot but was really 6 feet tall! we also saw a dead pope...i can't remember which one, all preserved in a glass case with wax over his face. kind of creepy. we didn't have time to go down and see john paul II, not enough time. from there we excited and got back on, what we affectionatly call "the eurobus" as that's what it's named (it may be sung a couple times in a row). then a couple of girls and i ran around town seeing julius ceasars grave, the mouth of truth and a whole bunch of ruins. then that night we hit up the trebbi (sp?) fountain and the spanish stairs. 3 others and i stayed at the spanish stairs until way into the night as there were many guitar players there and we were so mesmerized. it was an absolute blast. we met germans and sang and clapped along to well known songs. if you go to rome, i advise you to go pary at the roman steps and the fountain one night and plan on staying late...and hit up the colleseum at night when not to many people are there and it's beautifully lit up. today we visited orviato (which is rumored to be where they filmed under the tuscan sun). i wanted desperatly to buy a sunflower, my favorite just to carry around for the day, but they are out of season. instead, i indulged on fresh picked fragola (strawberries) from the market and some fragola gelato (ice cream!) it was fantastic. we made it to venice tonight...well outside of venice. the most expensive hotels in the world are in venice so we aren't staying there. we are a little ghetto-y here at our hotel area, but the rooms are nice. but nothing like our posh places at florence! o well. to lido tomorrow for a beach party! it's so hot here...sorry to hear it snowed at home...what happened with that? we had the cold weather here when you had the hot weather and now it has done a 180. odd. anyways...shower and bed! night!

switzerland!

hello all! it's been awhile since i posted but it's been go go go since we left oxford. paris was the most wonderful city ever. we first got to our hotel, opened the windows and we were all hanging out, shouting out to the world that the eiffel tower was to the left. it was pretty funny. we went up the sacre coure the first night to get a feel for the art district and sat in on mass there. they have a great view of the city. the second day we had a bus tour, saw the louvre and the mona lisa and crown jewels and many many tourists. we ended at notre dame which is an amazing cathedral. from there a bunch of us hit up hard rock cafe, which is my favorite. then we went out walking and that night had a great bike tour by fat tire bike tours, which is a bunch of awesomely cool, twenty something americans who just happen to be giving bike tours as their job. we had these old granny like bikes, bright yellow vests and bells. my bike's name was aussie, aussie, aussie, oy, oy, oy! which i thought was fitting...i think of the australian swimmers when ever i hear that! we had some fantastic ice cream, went all over town and through traffic on our bikes and ended with a boat ride and wine while traveling down the seine. the next day myself and 2 friends hit up the monet museum which was the best art museum i think i have ever seen. just fantastic. then we walked around town, saw napoleon's humongous above ground grave and then sat at the very top of the eiffel tower for a really long time watching the sun go down over the city of paris and all the lights come on. we were even on it when it sparkeled at the top of the hour! then we walked down it part way taking crazy pictures. i pretended to slide down on my stomach. it's a great picture. then we went back to the hotel for a little while and then we got wine, went up to sacre coure and just watched the city for a long time. then we walked the red light district coming back, passing the moulin rouge. morning came too soon and we left at 8 and now i'm in switzerland! completely different from france. it's lovely. we went to what i would like to call a switzerland how-down and watched people try their hand at the alphorn, yodeling and traditional dancing. we laughed all night. then we had a great night dancing at a club and today, we have a tour at noon, and right now we are just exploring the whole town of lucern. we're hoping to go up a mountain this afternoon, but it depends on the weather, or basically the clouds. tomorrow it's florence, italy! i'm excited for italy and hopefully some warm weather! i'll try and keep in touch. take care!

19.4.05 april

only 2 more days left of our time here at this lovely town of oxford. we have exhausted our list of things to see and do or oxford to what i need to study and when can i get my laundry doen? i know i'm gung-ho about buying film here from english speaking people - however - i know i would get a better deal with the dollar in france. i also need to hit the internet and get some info on switzerland for my bus tour presentation. maybe i can do that tomorrow, plus study, do laundry and pack. wednesday is test day and thursday 6:30 am, our bus leaves for the white cliffs of dover and by supper we will be in paris (par-ie!) which as they say in 'anastasia' paree holds the key to your hear - with some oo la lalas.

tonight, kent, louise, andy b, dennis and jen h. and i went to the eagle and child for a small part of our assignment overseas: we had to each read a part of our journal to louise so she knew we were keeping one. it was quite interesting to hear others journals and their styles of journal writing. some had short entries, others long, some more detail than others, some more thoughtful. i read my part of my first trip to london. i think that's what my travel essay will be on. then we had fun talking while we sat in the cozy atmosphere. dennis told us how he had a FREE RIDE SCHOLARSHIP TO STANFORD FOR SWIMMING. we all gasp at the fact he gave it up - for love. i am completly jealous. he could have swam int he olympics and with natalie coughlin and i think the kirk sisters go there. amazing. it was great fun. we finished it off with a trip to houssains (more "big smiles!" haha) as, let's face it, supper really wasn't all that great. then we had a cold walk home - and now - to sleep!

Paris is comming!

thursday night i will be in paris! (or as i like to call it...paree!) i've been studying hard, getting laundry done and packing up my ever growing collection of stuff that i have accumulated over here. i sent some stuff home yesterday...wasn't all too cheap but i simply didn't have room for an easter basket. just wasn't going to work. so...6:30 am thursday, i'm on a bus headed for the ferry over to france. scarry.

i thought i would leave you with a list of all that i have done that i still haven't mentioned on the blog...a lot of it is trips to london. here you go:

-the trans-international scrabble game between louise and andy. louise won but we had fun with everyone. we had paparazzi there, commentators, official word looker-upper, and official rules person. we had good old fashion fun.

-thursday gloucester green markets. it's a huge rummage sale and all very cool. you can find almost anything, for cheap.

-first visit to london: buckingham palace, outside of westminster abbey (much too expensive to go in), big ben and parliament sightings, trafalger square and beautiful fountains, national gallery of art (van gogh's sunflowers!), show: STOMP! banging on everything including the kitchen sink, double choc flake frescatos...mmm, mmm, good, moving statues, street shows, street paintings, outside british airways london eye (the huge faris wheel)... i heart london!

-2nd trip to london, 1st trip by myself...see posting below

-3rd trip to london: tower of london including seeing the crown jewels (soo soo pretty), the story of the 2 murdered princes and not knowing who killed them, anne bolyn's grave and where she was beheaded and where she was proposed too, learned she was witch like...had 6 fingers! saw the london bridge, pretty depressing, real one is in arizona of all places. HARD ROCK CAFE! they had honey mustard! went into the vault and held jimi hendrix's guitar! saw the huge collection of guitars and could hold what ever i wanted, saw paul lennon's hand written songs, learned how the hard rock was first started as this was the first hard rock: eric clapton used to live by the american cafe in london and went in for his daily drink and someone was in his spot and the bartender argued that that person's money was just as good as clapton's so eric came back the next day with a signed poster and demanded his spot back and then other artist started pouring in other memorabilia and then when the american cafe decided to go international they changed to the hard rock cafe.

-city of bath and the roman baths, the city of burford (cotswald village)

-4th trip to london, 2nd solo trip: Tate Britain art museum, at leister square saw nicole kidman at london premiere of the interpreter, went and saw chicago on stage

-Warwick Castle: old medieval castle, climbed all over it, saw peacock gardens and many old torture devices and elizabeth I riding sadle.

-stratford-upon-avon: saw shakespear's grave, his supposed childhood school, and his supposed birth house (they don't have actual proof but are pretty sure that's where he was born, saw the royal shakespear company's a midsummer's night dream, the guy who played puck was the same guy who was heath ledger's friend in a knight's tale plus a couple (well more than a couple) pounds, AND i fed a swam ice cream. it was amazing

-had to deal with my dog's death. it was hard.

-5th and final trip to london: left really early, kensington palace and gardens, princess diana's dresses and princess margaret's state apartment and king william III's state apartment (it's big), also queen victoria and mary (the queen mum) were born there. i also saw a collection of queen elizabeth II's dresses. london eye ride and how they tell you to "enjoy your flight!", a quick run through the tate modern for jill, and the jack the ripper tour...it's not pretty what he did.

Houssains

Mmmmm...food. I walked a good half mile and arrived at the big trailer with the bright red "Houssains" on the back. they had what i was craving after a dull, icky, dinner at wycliffe hall (i'm going to come out of this trip fat...they have a horrible diet going for us over here of nothing but meat, potatoes and bread or pasta...ick), and that something was a donner. i was psyched. i walked this half mile in the dark, by myself (no one else wanted to go or had just got back). "yes, please," houssain said as i approached as every other worker at a food establishment asked you when taking your order (probably due to the fact that 'yes' and 'please' are the most common known workds in any language). i flashed a precious smile and asked for my favorite - a donner kebab. it's a turkish sandwich in a poscket like break with lots of veggies (lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions), lamb meat (same meat in gyros) and garlic sauce. although not as good as those in berlin (susanna got me addicted), these will do. houssain starts preparing my donner (pronounced derner) and then come back and told me how much. i handed him some coins and then he repeated the price - i was to pence short! i reached to hand him 10 pence and said tha's ok and gave a sneaky look to his co-worker. "just give me 'nother big smile." i flashed him my cheesiest and he said, "alright, very good!" wrapped my donner up and handied it to me, i flashed another cheesy grin and was on my way.

check it out

i highly recommend you check out louise's blog, our trip leader. it has more information on what we have been up to, AND pictures! none of me, but pictures none the less. the link is on my side bar, located not at the bottom of this page due to the berlin pictures taking up lots of room. one day it will return to it's rightful spot on the side of the page!

Good Quote:

"No, the long version is 'spoonerific.'"

-leslie, in response to a question on our really long game on elimination SPOONS.

happy silver anniversary!

happy silver anniversary mum (hehe) and dad! it's been 25 years...hope your day is wonderful!!!

happy 21st, carly!!

hope your 21st (on the 10th) was wonderful!!

it's coming...

...the end of our stay in oxford. tomorrow:
-warwick castle
-stratford-upon-avon
-'a mid-summer night's dream' performance by the royal shakespear company at the shakespear globe theater

thursday:
-london and tate britain (more artwork!)

friday:
-another attempt at blenheim palace (more on the first attempt later)

saturday:
-portsmith downs and the dock yard

sunday:
-last trip to london :(

we leave very very soon.....

i tried

i tried to call nate. it didn't work. i don't think i have the right number and booty gave me the wrong number. unless he changed his number and didn't tell me. nate...you should email me your number.

ick

yeah, you guys should be livin it up back home...

it's been nothing but cold and rainy here in oxford.

7-4-2005 april Thursday

i just got back from a trip to london - that i went on ALL-BY-MYSELF!! it was fantastic. didn't worry not even once (well, maybe that i was looking too touristy when i took out my map). i decided to go their on my own for fear ofnot being able to see all that i want tolof london. i boarded thebus right after class and went there, eating my lunch on the way. 2 hours later i was there, dropped off on some london street corner not quite knowing where to go. i needed a bus to tate modern, but these buses wizzing past me didn't show that they were going there. i kept looking, not quite sure what to do. first thing i probably should do is buy a bus ticket, and i found a ticket vender right in front of me, so i purchased a pass. then i started walking untili figured that my best bet would be to go to waterloo station. i find a bus stop and tentatively hop the next bus that says waterloo. good thing i have a street smarts -yeah. moments later i was dropped off at waterloo - and a costa coffee. i think it was a sign from God, him telling me to congratulate myself for getting this far so i ran inside for my favorite - double choc flake frescato. i took that and easily navigated myself through the streets until i proudly stood in front of the grand Tate Modern. i entered and noticed i had an hour and a half to see everything so off i went - first stop - the turbine hall - the gallery used to be an old mill and the turbine hall is a grand opening - pretty much of nothing. every now and then they will fill it was a huge piece of art,but today it was empty except for the sound ofwhat i believe may have been a turbine - to add to the atmosphere - you could hear it grouning as you went up the escalator. i then turned up the next one and entered the first gallery - picasso, matisse, monet, dali, polluck, degas, rodin, rothko - so many, many, many great works of art! i can't even believe how many masterpieces i have seen. i even saw one of my favorites - watterlillies by claude monet, amazed by how huge it was. i even saw some rooms that were a whole piece in themselves. on of the 30 copies of squeak's favorite, 'tiny dancer aged 14,' by degas was there. for some reason i thought it would be larger, but beartiful just the same. then, after the 2 gallery floors, successfully completing the gallery, i ran down tothe gift store and bought favorites that i saw and a poster tube. i was pretty excited about the poster tube. now i have something to put all my posters in and it says TATE and it's blue.

out the door, i crossed the famous millenium bridge to st. pauls, taking pictures the whole way. after many photographs, i hopped a bus to victoria's station - not knowing it was going the wrong way. so i had to wait for a turn around bus, which didn'tlast long, and then i was off, back to victoria. i hopped off early for food, then best i could see was mcdonalds, so i went for a safe bet with chicken mcnuggets. i then put the food in my backpack and went to locate the bus stop for the oxford tube back to oxford. i found victoria's station and circled it - finding nothing. it now started to rain so i ran to take cover andtake out a map. went back, went down another street and successfully located the bus stop. after a long wait, a crabby bus driver, who i lied to, sort of,when he asked if i had KFC in my backpack (he was my pop in my hand). i told him no, and he said that's what he though. i was telling the truth - i had mcdonalds. found a spot on the top deck, got situated and took out my food - enjoyed my peaceful ride back to oxford. feeling more independent than ever.

Tues. 5 April 2005

today was a day of confrontation. well - only this morning before class. laura m. stood up to suggest that vegtarians get to 'cut the que (cue?)' of the lunch line as by time some of them get to the lunch servers, the vegetarian food is all gone and then they can't eat. this is happening due to when someone doesn't like the main course offering and takes vegetarian instead, which the cooks did not plan the food for them to eat vegetarian. and since everyone needs food, we decided that would be the best option.

carly s. stood up next. she also had an issue to bring up. she's very brave, i think, because i wouldn't normally bring this up. this is what she said:

'the bemidji people really like the moorhead people and this isn't a 'we don't like you thing' but we were wondering if we could have alternating nights with the common room becausewe feel like we can't come in there...

or something along those lines.

anyway, it was really sweet what she said. all we wanted was to be able to use the tv room also - or even just watch the news. but when you walk into the commons room, you suddenly feellike a foreigner as they all stare at you. then you turn around and walk out. well, all the moorhead people (well, not all - just the eyes-glued-to-the-tv-ones) are upset. they tried to justify themselves with excuses - but it just didn't work. it was suggested to have people fill out suggestions to the solution on a piece of paper and then turn them into louise. we'll have to see what happens.

this afternoon we went to summertown, a small little shopping town 6 blocks away. we saw a house that was the former home of the writer of the first oxford dictionary (you'll have to excuse me, i don't remember his name right off hand). once in summertown, we hit up some smaller stores, lots of them thrift. nothing really hit my eye. then i spotted a sports store and ran inside for aquick look - and lo and behold - they had swimcaps!! i bought a few - they weren't what we call cheap, but it was well worth it.

on the way back, laura m and i ran into kent and he showed us this cute little street right by wycliffe hall that had quite a few art stores! and beautiful art it was. we both decided that we were going to quit school so we could move to oxford and spend our money there. it would be fabulous.

Good Quote:

"how much did you spend at the pub this last week?"

-louise to silas after he complained about the cost of blenheim palace and it's requirements to the eurospring course.

english boys

one night out at the infamous purple turtle, 2 guys came over to a table of us girls and asked if they could show us a magic trick. after we agreed, they asked for a volunteer and jill stepped forward. they asked for the ashtray and then asked her to hold out her hands, palms down fingers out. they moved her hands out and they asked her to close her fists. they then placed a dot of ash on top of her hand, then they wipped it away. they asked jill to turn her hands over and - tada! - there was ash on the underside of her hand where they wipped ash away on the top side. we were impressed . we sat and talked with them for awhile, they seemed very interested in jill and rachel. i left early however as i was tired and the music was loud.

they invited us out for the next night. one was a manager of a posh (which we found out was a word that originated from the early days of the titanic where the rich people stayed on the Port Of Star Harbor = POSH) bar in oxford. it was a good time there. we love their accents and they can't get enough of american girl accents - how weird. after the bar we walked to the PT ( or the lavender tortoise, urple nurple or anything else that rhymes with Purple Turtle) and crystal and i sat and watched the others get down to some english techno. english boys bring great fun!

avebury, stonehenge, salisbury and the druids

saturday, 2-4-05 april

quite the day of traveling. we boarded our tour coach buses: moorhead bus #1, bsu bus #2. but that was for a good reason. andy browers was giving his presentation on avebury and stonehenge, which he actually changed it to druids - who as dr. chapman told us, did NOT build stonehenge. on friday, at our feildtrip lecture, he was telling us about a tv special he was hosting about stonehenge and he ran into druids at stonehenge. he asked who their leader was and a man shouted, "i am!" chapman asked who he might be. "arfer! king of the druids!" (arfur = arther). the arthur, king of the druids, got in a fight with another druid who apparently thought he was king and chapman, apparently, was not impressed. so - back to andy - he didn't want to give his presentation on the same bus as chapman and we knew he would be on bus 1.

so anyway - andy gives his presentation and we are rolling on the floor of the bus laughing. he mentions facts of the druids: "fact: druids built stonehenge with their magical powers. fact:druics spend their nights playing castle and dungeons (or something like that). fact: druids are highly reachable on their mobile phones." anyways. we're all completly ready to be druids for halloween. except crystal w. who says, and i agree - thye look like they are members of KKK.

we arrive at avebury and pile out of the bus and head into town. we must look like a strange site: dr. chapman with many students following him. kind of like papa duck and his baby ducklings. it must really look like that when he heads across the road to hold the gate open on the other side and we wait (60 of us) on the other side for cars to pass.

avebury is one of those mystery rock places - kind of like easter island. it has this circle - that has been interupted by the town of avebury - that is perfectly a half mile across that is marked by these monsterous stones. then there is a deep ditch which then goes up into a hill. we walked around on the hill for part of the circle, dr. chapman lecturing on the way, mentioning to imagine carrying these boulders for 10 miles with nothing but strength and animal hide rope. and reminded us the huge trenches were made from digging with animal bones - probably the shoulder blades of animals. we then took a million pictures posed next to the rocks - climbing them, pushing them, hiding behind them or just posing. we then went into town and hit up a tourist shop. i bought some post cards, as did most others. louise bought a book we will present to dr.chapman: 'arthur: king of the druids.' it's complete with pictures AND - as we found out later - arthurs signature! we are all going to sign it and present it to him.

after avebury, we grabbed some lunch made special for us from the wycliffe hall cooks - just your ordinary bag lunch. heading on the bus for stonehenge, we have to do a u-turn. a road is blocked due to a car accident. a gasp goes through the bus as we see out of tour picture windows a mangled body of a motercyclist laying ont he street. we all knew that he had passed as no one was around him. the bus was quiet for the detoured trip to stonehenge.

we saw stonehenge before we got their - towering over the horizon. it was kind of surreal - seeing this structure that you never would have thought you swould see in your life. we walked through the gates, under the highway and entered the track that surrounds it. as we walked around, we took more pictures. i think i took about 20 panaramic shots of all the different angles of it. i liked watching the birds fly around it - there was something amazing about watching them fly high over the sky and then land on these huge formations with hordes of people standing everywhere. after we had made the round, we slowly walked back, stoping at the souveneir shp to buy, 'henge,' as we like to call it, shirts, rings and post cards. to our disappointment, no druids are spotted.

back onthe bus we head for salisbury cathedral. we no have dr. chapman on our bus. we look for fox hunters with their red coats, horses and dogs as it is now illegal and chapman wants to see someone disobeying the new law that tony blair signed. chapman calls tony blair a control freak. unfortunatly, no fox hunters today, bur there are lots of sheep, flocks and flocks. i remember on our bus when we very first got here, right outside of london. there were sheep everywhere and a murmur went through the bus, "sheep." at that point it could have been "sleep" though.

salisbury cathedral is huge. not as big as i expected, but big just the same. we could see its spire in the distance before we entered the town. we run to stand next to it, not even readhing where the massive windows start. we run around the other side, picture taking along the way. we enter the cathedral and are amazed by its vastness. the folding chairs int he back are a far ways awaay from the altar, which we can't even see due to its being blocked off for a wedding, which we can still hear. looking down at our feet, every tile is a grave stone, which still freaks me out. we head over to dr. chapman who brings us over to what they belive is the world's oldest clock. it does not have a face to tell time, it was built to ring the bells at the top of the hour and is still doing so today. walking towards the front, we pass more tombs - these ones above ground in huge concrete caskets which are carved and engraved. it was kind of different how the church was so vast with different things to look at scattered all around. they even had different toylaties praying altars there to look at.

on your way out, off to a different room, they had one of the few copies of the magna carta that still exist. it was neat to view it, but nothing all too exciting. just a piece of parchment jam packed with old english quill writing stating the placement of the king and parliament with in the UK. there was so many people i didn't even get a chance to read it.

i felt confused leaving, as if there was supposed to be more to see, but i didn't know where to go. amy was on her way out so we both took off for a walk around the church, meeting everyone at the bus stop. everyone slept on the way home, too tired to do anything else. louise said we missed some great scenery.

that night at supper, we got news of the pope's passing. this was one fo the things that we had on our list of "what if this happens while we're over seas?" we will be in rome in less than a month (scary!) and are not sure of how chaotic it will be there. it does seem like we will be able to get in. i guess it is something to worry about at a later date.

that night, we were all to bed early...we were all tired with all the walking we did.