1. Going to school in a castle! I can rub this in the face of insane hardcore Harry Potter fans for years.

2. Four-day weeks (maximum, and I've had three-day ones before when my Thursday 8:30AM IDIS 204 (British Studies I) class got cancelled) with three-day weekends that usually have field studies to various sites in London.

3. The slushies machine in the Dining Hall! Especially the blue and purple-pink flavours. Too bad they stopped having it because they thought it was making the students sugar-high and destructive (as opposed to, you know, the Castle pub and its alcohol).

4. British food desserts. Especially trifle, various types of sponge cake, shortbread, and those shortbread/caramel/chocolate triangles.

5. Free museums (well, gambling tax-subsidized anyway) in London, especially the British Museum and Imperial War Museum.

6. London in general, even if it started to get boring after going there every weekend. Oh, how I never thought I would miss you and your nasty pigeons, Trafalgar Square. I liked how easy it was to get everywhere with the Tube system, but I don't miss how filthy those stations and tunnels were.

7. The awesome Castle professors. Dr. Scott, though not British, was my favourite by far and I miss his history class, the fact that he knows EVERYTHING, him putting-up with me auditing the course and still giving him assignments to mark anyway, and going on the Wartling dig with him (he lied about the IDIS 304 (British Studies I) exam being easy though D:). Christian Lloyd is awesome because he is Christian Lloyd (and he had the most interesting lectures -- seriously, he did a lecture on British comedy), and I miss Dr. Gristwood's interesting facial expressions, amazing voice, and fabulous hair.

8. The English countryside and having a huge private estate (with a Castle) to hang-out on. God knows I'll never be able to live on such a property again unless I marry an aristocrat who hasn't lost his money and property yet.

9. ASDA! Sure, it's just a British branch of Wal-Mart, but they had awesome British candy, crisps (lamb and mint flavour!), and it was nice to get off of the estate every once in awhile.

10. The group(s) of friends I hung-out with, including Will, Larissa, Alyssa, Laura, Tamara, Katie, Amanda W. (my awesome room-mate), Anne (it's sad that I'll probably never see her again, as she's from Australia), and probably a lot of other people I am forgetting right now.

11. The fact that I wasn't lazy for once and actually did my readings before class! No, I'm not joking, I actually did my IDIS 304 (British Studies I) and HIST 289 (England Since 1851) readings -- with highlighting and notes in the margins most of the time -- before the relevant classes!

12. The ducks in front of the Castle! Sure, they did crazy things like have violent sex everywhere and became really aggressive after awhile because people kept feeding them, but they were still very much a part of the Castle. And the baby geese, though I don't know why we had Canadian geese there.

13. The English bunnies that were everywhere on the estate, especially around Bader Hall! There was one really cute baby one that was often on the road back to the residence hall.

14. Being woken-up by cows and strange varieties of birds.

15. The rolling English hills in the countryside and the fact that there are sheep everywhere. Insert a sheep joke in here.

16. A4 paper. Much more elegant than letter-sized, I think. I don't miss the hole-punching being two holes in the middle though, as I thought it made the papers slide everywhere in my binder.

17. Roundabouts!

18. Sleeping in the Castle's courtyard on those really sunny and hot days. Well, I only did it once, but it was still fun.

19. I didn't do much travelling, but in theory, easy access to other parts of the UK and Europe.

20. School at a Castle in the UK, dammit!

Well, I got back to Canada on Sunday, and obviously, I haven't done a very good job of keeping track of my time in England in this journal. Over the next while, I'm going to try and either backdate copied entries from my other journals or write-up what I can remember about various field studies -- obviously, with so much time having passed and the fact that I'm not in England anymore, I've probably forgotten a lot of the small details that I wanted to write about and were the reason why I put off writing everything in the first place, but I'll do my best.

Any entries about England itself will be backdated from now on so that everything can be anally in chronological order. Thanks.

Just came back from the Spring 2007 closing ceremonies. Like with everything else at the Castle, I will probably never write about it in full out of laziness and eventually fading memory (I mean, crap, Brighton was six weeks ago and I still haven't written about it yet?), but here are some highlights:

Since it was such a beautiful day outside, we took our Spring 2007 class photograph in front of Herstmonceux Castle. They did something a bit unusual this time though by having the short girls (and Jeremy, the one short guy) at the BACK, but standing on benches. Yes, my high heel predictably got caught between the planks.

After the class photograph, the photographers wanted some students to use for possible future ISC propaganda brochures. I got put into a scene where Xander and Devon were seated on the ledge of the drawbridge while I stand in front of them -- in short, it looks like I am propositioning them.

Also, I fucking love how we were all wearing FORMAL WEAR. Remember, kids -- we here at Herstmonceux Castle always wear our best ball gowns and pearls to class! It's a good old English tradition.

The dinner was better than the usual dining hall food, and the slideshow was kind of fun, if extremely skewed towards certain cliques who contributed lots of photographs of themselves, almost-naked men, drunken pub-goers, etc. I enjoyed it, but I wish it didn't feel so much like one or two friend groups' personal scandalous photo album. I am very liberal, but I would NOT show this to my parents as an illustration of what my time at the Castle was like. At all.

I was initially so disappointed that so many of my professors hadn't shown-up for the class photograph (aside from Christian Lloyd). Then they said that more professors would show-up at 9:00PM when the dance (which was awesome) started, as there were so many students this year that they couldn't fit the faculty in. Dr. Scott arrived at 9:00PM, but I never got a chance to ask him about today's excavation at Wartling, and I was really sad that Drs. Gristwood (aka looks-like-Hugh-Grant) and Frith weren't there (I already knew Mr. Hughes for classics wasn't coming), but lo and behold, they showed-up at around half past ten.

Anyway, uh, I think they were probably kind of drunk by the time Dr. Gristwood noticed I was sitting nearby, and I was really taken back by how different his voice sounded after consuming alcohol -- it was higher and a lot more nasal than his usual deep and kind of poshy one. Anyway, usual conversation items like congrats on the term (that better mean I got an A in IDIS 304 (British Studies I)), are you traveling or going home after this, etc., and most interestingly, something about how the DJ plays the exact same playlist in the exact same order every year.

Some strange sketchiness when the DJ played Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' as the one last extra song after a lot of drunken chanting on the students' part and Dr. Frith invited me to dance with her and Dr. Gristwood (no harm in that, I suppose), and it was pretty funny to watch. Afterwards, I asked if I would take a picture with then, and they were fine with that, though I'm kind of scared of looking at it because of the potential drunkenness factor. Had a short talk with Dr. Frith about pretty much the same thing I said with Dr. Gristwood, then asked if I should still e-mail the latter to know my participation grade for the course, to which he also added that it was well within the A range. Hooray, for that makes-up for my shitty (but entirely fair) 65% in participation in HIST 289 (England Since 1851), which I am thankfully auditing.

Sadly, I did not get a picture with either Dr. Scott or Christian Lloyd D: D: D: Dr. Scott was always busy talking with someone or taking sketchy MySpace-esque photos with other students, so I'm hoping to catch him tomorrow if we're still getting rides for the Wartling dig. I also had so many opportunities to ask Christian Lloyd for a photograph, and continuously squandered them. And he was wearing a fabulous blue pinstriped velvet blazer (from what I could see) too!

I'll try to upload these pictures to the galleries soon, but right now, I am absolutely fucked in terms of how much packing I still have left to do, so I should work on that and continue printing hard-copies of my class notes.

I just pulled my first all-nighter at the Castle. On the last day of classes.

That said, it was my first true all-nighter in what's probably been years, as I seem to be getting old enough not to be able to do one without taking at least a short nap at some point.

On a different note, closing ceremonies for the Spring 2007 term at the ISC are tonight, and I already miss the Castle. I can't believe that, taking into consideration that I have to leave for Heathrow on Sunday morning at 3:30AM, this is my second last day here. That is terribly depressing.

Just (sort of) got back from watching an opera at Glyndebourne, one of those bastions of the British aristocracy (we were watching the dress rehearsal for free), and it was absolutely AMAZING.

This time, the ISC trip was to Rossini's 'La Cenerentola' (, and seriously, the singing, music, costumes, etc. were incredible. We had standing tickets at first, and then Diana (one of the ISC's musicians-in-residence and a professional opera singer herself) managed to get seats -- unfortunately, I didn't realize that they were for different areas, so while I still had a great seat right in the middle of the second balcony, everyone else was in the first four rows on the stall level. But yeah, I can't go into too much detail in describing it, but it was an incredible experience and it's rather sad that that's the first and only time I'll ever be able to go to Glyndebourne.

On a less sad note, I was able to add another leather souvenir bookmark to my collection, though it makes me regret not getting the ones at the House of Commons, Knole, and the Imperial War Museum (and probably the Globe Theatre) even more. I got two postcards and the program (which, unfortunately, is one big one that covers the whole season instead of just one show).

On a cultural note, the English picnic culture at Glyndebourne was extremely interesting to watch. There were some damn impressive fancy picnic sets there that wouldn't have been out of place in an expensive and poshy restaurant.

Anyway, back to writing about my feelings for my CLST 206 (Roman Britain) field notebook. We went to Pevensey Roman fort on Wednesday as our last field trip, which was great. We visited a church in the nearby village of Westham afterwards, then bought ice cream bars at the convenience store.

So, I'm back from Dieppe, which was absolutely AMAZING. I was a bit skeptical at first because I didn't see why we wouldn't go for a weekend trip to Paris or something, but I'm really glad we did it for our ISC midterm trip. I'll probably write about it in more detail later (ie. never), but a brief rundown of the highlights:

During Dr. Scott's great tour of the area and its history, we went down to the beach and tried running-up it to get a bit of a sense of what it would have been like for the Canadian soldiers on the raid. It was definitely a really interesting experience and while it obviously can't really capture what went on, it did help a lot in terms of getting a better understanding of some of the conditions. I did not take up Dr. Scott's suggestion of throwing rocks in the air to feel what it would be like to be hit by rocks that were blown into the air by artillery, for obvious reasons.

I got to climb into an actual German bunker from World War II. However, I as wearing shorts and flip-flops, so I couldn't go through the actual entranceway like you're supposed to, as the path to it was narrow and lined with stinging nettles. So instead, I had to do it the hard way and crawl and climb in and out through the extremely low and narrow openings for observation and machine guns. It was pitch black inside, so I had to take lots of useless flash photographs to see (and as I was alone in there and didn't have the help of multiple cameras, I couldn't see everything, especially if I didn't want to step in broken glass). Still, what an experience.

While walking through Dieppe, we also visited the main cathedral, done in the Gothic style (of course) in the town. Quite large, very beautiful.

A bunch of us went out for drinks at one of the restaurants that had a kitschy Mexican theme (during which Dr. Scott and another professor walked past us), then some of us went to dinner at a nearby restaurant with a seaside theme. Each of us (there were ten of us) got a three course meal (plus the usual bread) for 14 Euros, which included a started, main course, and either a cheese or dessert. I got mussels for the starter, which were so good AND there were a lot (though they were tiny), skate (a type of fish) in a cream sauce with vegetables on the side, and chocolate mousse. SO GOOD, and the girl's toilet even had seashells in the seat.

Typical French breakfast in the morning at the hotel (eg. baguette, croissant, butter, jams, and some kind of hot drink at the very least), which was a very nice hotel for a three star (the other one was a two star, and not surprisingly, the professors and other staff stayed at the three star one too), even if it took forever for me to figure-out how to open my door, with Christian Lloyd having to do the explanation to the hotel receptionist in French because my French sucked. That said, I started picking-up more of it again while in Dieppe.

The Saturday morning marketplace was awesome -- lots of clothes and food (especially cheese in heart-shaped blocks) on sale. I bought a skirt and some jewelery, which is really odd for me as I don't really wear jewelery (but hey, it was cheap). I also had this awesome egg and sugar pastry that looked just like a starfish, which I'd bought at a bakery -- seriously, it was the BEST pastry I've ever had, both in terms of taste and aesthetics.

In the afternoon, we went to the Chateau Musee, including lounging on the grass field near the top and overlooking the city. Lots of nice paintings, ivory carvings (seriously, these were very impressive), and even a whole gallery room dedicated to artwork featuring fish. After that, some of the girls I was with wanted to go back to the fairy shop we'd visited the other day, and I went to see the little Dieppe raid memorial museum that commemorates the role Canadians played in Operation Jubilee, and a bit on the actual liberation of the town later.

Drive through the French countryside to get to the EuroTunnel station? Gorgeous. The Chunnel itself? Not as nice as the ferry ride across the English channel on Friday morning, but still a really interesting experience, what with the vacuumed-sealed compartment doors that made getting to the bathrooms like running a gauntlet.

So, that's the Dieppe mid-term cultural studies trip in a nutshell. On a very different note, it's extremely depressing that I literally have only seven days left at the Castle, not counting the Sunday when I have to leave by 3:00AM to get to Heathrow Airport. I can't believe a six-week term (which I know is quite short) went by that quickly and I'm really not ready to leave the Castle or England yet. It's all very sad, but not as sad (in a different sense) as the fact that 100% of my CLST 206 (Roman Britain) grade will be determined in three days (oh, how I loathe that class).

So, uh, how much do I also love Christian Lloyd, who's the Field Studies Co-ordinator here at the Castle as well as the English literature tutor for IDIS 304 (British Studies I)? Not only is he an awesome lecturer who covers some really interesting topics (eg. British humour) and knows how to use audio-visual clips effectively and an all-around nice guy, but he's rather funny in this deadpan and/or snarky kind of way. And the thing that makes it even funnier is that he doesn't really seem like the kind of person who would be sarcastic -- this is probably a lot easier to imagine if you've seen him in person, but he comes off as a very serious and slightly anxious Englishman and when he snarks, he still uses the same tone, so it's a bit incongruous.

Anyway, there were two great little moments yesterday in IDIS 304 (British Studies I) -- one was on a newspaper article about new citizenship requirements for immigrants in Britain to reinforce British identity (whatever that is) where points would be deducted for 'anti-social acts, fly-tripping [littering], and criminal behaviour', to which he followed-up with something like 'I don't know why those are included, as they're great British traditions'; the other was when Will brought-up the London 2012 Olympic logo and asked the three tutors what they thought of it, to which Dr. Lloyd was like, 'Well, I hated it at first and now I like it. It's superficial, just like London is' (something to that effect, as I'm not a great paraphraser).

There was also a bit of an awkward moment at yesterday's information session about the tomorrow and Saturday's mid-term cultural studies trip to Dieppe in France. Regarding safety, Christian said something like 'Don't buy drugs from any of the street dealers, as you don't know what you're getting', after which there was an awkward silent pause and Rachel, who's one of the Student Service Co-ordinators, added '... and it's illegal?' Good time, good times.

[More hostels, South Kensington and Knightsbridge, Buckingham Palace and the
Changing of the Guard, Queen's Walk, St. Margaret's and Westminster Abbey,
and traveler's cheques problems.]

[...]

LiveJournal is still completely fucked-up for me and won't let me post any
entries on any accounts via the website, nor can I edit or delete anything
(if you want to comment on the double-posted entry, please do so at the
earlier one), and I really hate posting by e-mail because of the screwed-up
formatting. Anyway, this will do for now -- I'm definitely going to be
extremely behind in covering, in detail, what I did on Thursday and Friday
in London, the Barcombe excavation on Saturday, and London today, partially
because of LiveJournal's problems and partially because I'm going to be
bogged down in assignments this week.

So, London today in a nutshell -- I had a field study for IDIS 304 (British
Studies I), which was a Jack the Ripper walking tour. That was in the
afternoon, so I had free time in the morning. I went to the London Eye first
while there was still practically no line-up -- I had to wait to buy a
ticket, but not to get on. Yeah, it's ridiculously tourist trap-ish,
especially at the ridiculous price they ask for a half-hour ride on a ferris
wheel, but I figured that it was one of those things you have to do when in
London and once you do it once, that's all you have to do it.

Anyway, I was actually rather disappointed in it, especially when the price
is taken into account -- it wasn't THAT high, and while you can get a
gorgeous view of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament, as well as see
landmarks like St. Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace in the distance,
there's not much else to see and it wasn't as impressive as I thought it'd
be. There's especially nothing to see in the south side of London. Luckily
for me though, the 25-person capsule only had 11 people, most of whom were
mature adults instead of screaming schoolchildren. I did NOT buy the
souvenir photograph of us in the capsule, as it was a whopping 7.50 pounds,
though a lot of people did flock to buy those and I'm not sure why,
especially after you've already paid so much to ride it. Oh well, their
call.

After that, I went to the Imperial War Museum again, which I should have
done straight off the bat as I ended-up rushing through things in order to
be able to get to Tower Hill station in time for the walking tour. This
time, I went through most of the exhibits I hadn't seen last time, which
included: large exhibits of things like various tanks, artillery,V2 rocket,
planes, etc. and got to walk through part of a bomber; the submarine
exhibit, which is designed for kids, but a lot of fun; the Victoria Cross
and George Cross gallery (I'll admit it, I cried reading some of the stories
of how the recipients got their awards); the Secret War exhibit, which is
about espionage, namely MI5, MI6, and other undercover fun (and yes, they
did open with a James Bond display); the Holocaust Exhibition, which I had
to rush through, but it was extremely powerful while remaining factual
instead of grotesquely over-the-top like it could have been, and I think
that (letting the event speak for itself) is a big reason why it was so
well-done (and yeah, I cried here too -- seriously, I'm pretty sure that I
cried over the majority of the exhibits in the Imperial War Museum).

Then I had to get onto the Tube to get to Tower Hill station as fast as
possible, and while I was five minutes late, they thankfully hadn't left
let. In short, I expected the tour to be good, but it was AMAZING -- our
tour guide, Simon, was really good and very funny, very into what he was
doing. Obviously, few of the buildings that existed in 1888 are still there
today, but I think that added to the fun. I got complimented for knowing
what 'toff' meant in British slang (upper-class) when he was talking about
Mary Kelly, so hooray for that. Hopefully I can write about it a bit more
fully later tonight.

After the tour was done, most people left, though a few of us followed Dr.
Gristwood to Brick Lane -- we'd been talking about it in the class that Dr.
Frith was supposed to teach last week, until she got sick and Dr. Gristwood
had to substitute -- where we saw the mosque that's changed religions
multiple times and the view of Brick Lane with all of its curry restaurants.
We were then supposed to wander off on our own and he offered to walk us to
the Tube station, but the lot of us walked there as a group alone (on a
completely different note -- I've been wondering what it is about Dr.
Gristwood's appearance, and another student mentioned that he looks like and
has some mannerism of Hugh Grant, which is stunningly accurate, especially
when he smiles).

So we got on the Tube, and everyone else went back to Embankment because
Will wanted something from Starbucks. I went back to the Imperial War Museum
to buy the souvenir guide, a WWII ration book replica, a postcard with the
WWI recruitment poster with Lord Kitchener's face on it, a reproduction of
some advice on health eating from WWII, and a postcard that I'm going to
send to you, dryerase, as I think you're going to get a kick out
of it.

Then we went home on the bus, where we had to put up with Chris (ie. the
ISC's loud and rich alcoholic this term) and his obnoxious inebriated
yelling when everyone else voted for quiet so we could sleep and he refused
to let anyone sleep by constantly shouting, then complaining that the vote
was stupid because no one was sleeping anyway. MAYBE WE WOULD IF YOU SHUT
THE FUCK UP. Eh, I fell asleep after while.

Anyway, that's the LAST field study to London EVER, and I'm actually really
sad that everything is coming so close to the end. It's weird to know that
I'm NEVER going to wake-up before 8:00AM to get a packed lunch with crisps,
a chocolate bar, and bad orange juice and make myself a wrap in two minutes,
ride a coach with other ISC students into London and get itineraries, go on
field studies and have free time, run back to Cleopatra's needle by 5:30PM,
and then go home with a movie playing on the coach EVER AGAIN, unless I go
back to the ISC for spring term again next year, which I seriously doubt
I'll do as much as I like it here.

Oh well. Time to work on a group presentation for HIST 289 (England Since
1851), so I've got to run to that.