Exam, Christmas Pary and Submitting My First Assignment

Well, last Sunday I went out to lunch with a couple of my flatmates and some friends. I had been studying all weekend for my exam on Monday, so it was nice to get out of the flat and do something fun. Then that night we decorated the flat for Christmas. Two of my flatmates bought trees, so we decorated both. It looks very festive in our living room. (Link to pics further down)

Monday morning was my exam. First we had a lecture on the lower leg, but it wasn't being covered on the test, so a lot of people didn't show up. Then we had an hour break and then the exam. When we got into the room the prof said that he had made the test easier than the last one had been. It did seem much easier. There weren't any bones that I couldn't identify. A few I couldn't side, but then I panicked because the ones I did side were almost all left. But lots of people got that same result, so I guess its okay. But all the time I spent memorizing muscles was a bit silly because there weren't nearly as many on the exam as I thought that there would be. Ah well, I think I did well, so its all good.

Tuesday I got the results back from my animal exam. We didn't get the actual exam back yet, and we couldn't see the answers because one girl hadn't taken hers yet. But I did really well on this one too, so that's good. Then I had to start working majorly hard on my paper. It isn't due until Monday, but I wanted to be done with it and have it turned in by Friday so that I could enjoy my weekend. So I spent a lot of time this week working on that.

Wednesday I spent almost the entire day working on the paper. Pretty boring really...

Thursday we went back to the wet lab in the morning to look at x-rays and the lower body. The x-rays were kind of cool, but unless it was a bone break I couldn't tell what was going on. We did see an x-ray of a pregnant woman though, so that was pretty cool. We also realized that most of the x-rays were from the States. The guy there told us that its because private practices can sell their x-rays. In the UK all that stuff is tied to the NHS (National Health Service) and its very hard to get them. The wet lab stuff was really cool. The leg is just so huge with giant chunks of muscle. And we knew what they were when the demonstrator asked, so that was cool. It did leave us hungry though, because it looks like chunks of beef. Weird, I know. Then Thursday night I had a Christmas party with some of my friends from Corfe House. It was a pot luck, so we had lots of good food and everyone dressed up and looked really nice, so it was really cool. I got a really beautiful bracelet that matched the dress I was wearing and some earrings. Overall it was a good time.

Friday I headed in to school so that I could work on my paper and print it out. I was there until 10pm, but I finished it and handed it in! I'm super excited. It feels really good to have the first assignment out of the way and a clear weekend to do fun stuff.

Saturday I headed into Bournemouth with a few friends to do some Christmas shopping. I got a bit done and then we had crepes. Mine was nutella and banana. It was delicious. Then the girls went home but I had a bit more shopping to do so I stuck around. I tried on a really nice dress for New Years, but I wasn't sure about it so I didn't get it. Thinking more about it though, I really liked it. I may go back and get it this week. Hopefully its still there :/

Today we are having our flat Christmas party. We have a turkey defrosting on the counter and are going to make roasted veg, stuffing and apple crisp. It should be delicious. I'm not sure when I'll next be updating this because my flight back to the States is next Sunday. I'm going to London on Friday to go the some museums, so I probably won't be able to do it early, but I might. Anyway, have a great Christmas and New Year and I'll catch you back here in a couple of weeks.

Goats V. Sheep, Wet Lab and Studying

Yet another week has passed and its now only 2 weeks until I fly home for Christmas! I'm excited to be going home, but I have SOOO much to get done before I leave that its kind of stressing me out. This past week consisted of some really cool stuff and some not so good stuff. So here goes:

Last Sunday night I went out with 2 of my flatmates to Bournemouth to get dinner at a place called Aruba. It was really good food and had a cool atmosphere inside. It was decorated island style, but then also had Christmas decorations up, so it was quite the mishmash of decor. I have pics, but haven't gotten them up yet. I'll do that for next week's entry. Our other flatmates were suppose to come for dinner as well, but backed out at the last minute as usual. It was a fun girl's night out though.

Monday I had human anatomy as usual. We did the pelvic girdle and femur. Again, there was just sooo much to learn about only 2 bones. But on the plus side, because we are one lecture behind we will only be tested on the things from the last 3 weeks, so we don't have to know the lower leg and foot. Woohoo! We have our exam tomorrow so I've spent much of the week studying like crazy. I know a ton of stuff at this point, I just hope its the right stuff...

Tuesday we had animal lab. We were debating the different techniques for differentiating between sheep and goat skeletons. This is a problem in archaeology because people use sheep and goat for very different things, so if you can't tell them apart, you can't necessarily say what was happening at a site. They are also very similar to each other bone-wise, so it is very hard and very debatable to distinguish them from each other. If you would like to know more email me. No need to bore everyone here needlessly :)

Wednesday I was in lab for most of the afternoon. I considered staying into the evening, but just couldn't take it anymore by 5.

Thursday I spent 9.5 hours at school in the lab. At least 8 of those hours were spent studying bones. It was a ridiculously long time, but I really made a breakthrough and learned the muscle attachments of the scapula, pelvis and clavicle pretty well and even made some inroads on the humerus, radius and ulna. So I felt good about the day despite getting home at 9:30 at night :( Who knew that grad school would require this level of commitment and work ;)

Friday was pretty exciting because we got to go to the chiropractor's college to their wet lab to look at cadavers. One of the people on my course has a car, so she drove a few of us over there for it so that we didn't have to take a bus. That was awesome and it was my first time in a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side! The wet lab was really cool. When we first got there the smell was crazy and I thought it might make me sick, but after awhile you got used to it. It was the formeldahyde that they use to preserve the bodies that is so smelly. These cadavers had been dissected so that we could look at all the muscles on the upper body and arms. It was really amazing. The demonstrator there even showed us all the anatomy of the soft tissues like the heart and lungs that we don't generally deal with in class. It was kind of odd that I would do something like this as an archaeologist, but I'm in class with mostly forensic anthropologists who might actually find soft tissue on their murder victims, so it was good for them I guess. But it was really neat to get to see. After finishing there I went, you guessed it, back to the bone lab on campus. I was there for a reasonable amount of time and was home by about 5:30 or so.

Saturday was terrible because I still didn't feel comfortable with the material so me and a friend went to lab again :( But after going through a few boxes of bones of the entire body I feel fairly good about it. We stayed a few hours and then came home. We went and got milkshakes as a reward for all of our studying and did some browsing in the shops. Then we went to the grocery store to get some stuff for dinner. We had turkey curry. It was quite delicious. After that I did a bit more studying then watched tv and went to bed.

Today I don't plan to study much. My flatmates and a few other people are going to the chinese buffet down the road for lunch and then I'm going to try to get a few Christmas things for my secret santa exhanges. When I get back I think I'll read through my notes one last time and put it away until tomorrow morning. My brain can't hold anymore info at this point. Then I think I'll finish addressing Christmas cards and try to get those sent tomorrow. I meant to have that all done by this point, but am behind as usual. Then this evening we are decorating our flat for Christmas. We have garland (which they call tinsel here) and balls and beads, so it should look nice. Well, I suppose that's all I've got. Hope you are doing well. Talk to you soon.

Exam Results, First Paper and Thirst

Well, I hope I'm getting this up early enough for everyone this week ;) I slept a bit late today because I've been getting up early every day this week in an attempt to get a good start on the paper that I have to write for my animal class.

I finally got the result of my human anatomy exam back on Monday. I was really nervous to see it, but I got a 77%!!! I know, you're thinking, "Megan, that's a C. You need to rethink your excitement." But here that's actually a really high score. For whatever reason they write the exam so that a professional in the field would get a 100% and they expect us to get about 60. 50 is a pass, 60 is merit, 70 is distinction and 80+ is high distinction. So I was only 3% away from the highest that you can get. So I'm pretty psyched about that! The average for the class was 60 and quite a few people failed, so I'm feeling good. Now if I just did as well on my animal exam I'll be really excited.

Tuesday I really cracked down on working on the paper that I have to write for my animal class. It isn't due for a few weeks yet, but since I haven't written a paper in a long time I thought I should start early. Plus we have another human exam coming up on the 7th, so I'll have to spend most of my time this week studying for that. Anyway, the paper is a comparison of the data from a site that we had to analyze to other contemporary sites. It would be fine, but its really short, so its hard to fit in everything I want to say and stay within the word count. I've analyzed all the data and started writing, but I'm going to have to do major rewrites next week after the exam is over. Tuesday night a few of the girls went out for Italian food in Bournemouth. The food was pretty good, but I again got wet on my way there. Every time I go to Bournemouth it rains!

Wednesday I pretty much spent the entire day on campus working on the paper. I had woken up with a stiff neck though, so whereas I usually go see a foreign film after choir I just went straight home. I guess it was a good one though, so I'm sad that I missed it.

Thursday was again spent on campus. Some of my classmates were also there, so I didn't get a whole lot of work done, but we did compare some of our analyzed data and saw that we all had the same answers, so that was reassuring.

Friday I got to campus really early and got quite a bit of work done before anyone else got there. By the end of the day I had about half the paper written, but it is way over word count so major revisions will be happening. Ah well, it feels good to have a good start on it.

Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in forever. It felt good to go back. Plus the pool is open over there now, so maybe I'll start swimming. After coming back and showering I went to a cafe to study for the human bone exam that we have a week from Monday. I spent about 4 hours there and then went home for some dinner. Then another girl and I went to see a vampire movie at The Lighthouse, just down the street. It was called Thirst and was very bizarre. I don't really think I'd recommend it, but it was something to do, so that was nice.

Today I have to read a few articles about the differences between sheep and goat bones. We're having a discussion about it on Tuesday in class. I guess its a pretty important question in Europe because goats were introduced later than sheep, but if you can't tell the bones apart then you can't say if goats were on the site or not at certain time periods. I also need to read some articles about bone tools, as that is what I want to do my dissertation on. I talked to my advisors this week and one of them gave me a bunch of books and a reading list. So that's a bit intimidating, but I must do it.

Well, I suppose that's all for this week. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Talk to you later.

End of Tests Partay, Recovery and Sunday Lunch

Well, its Sunday again, so here it goes...We didn't get our exam results back on Monday in class. Apparently they had a few more left to score, so we are going to get them back tomorrow. I thought that class would be getting easier from here on out because we'd already done the skull, but no. We spent the entire lecture on the scapula, clavicle and humerus. And all the muscles and ligaments associated with them. It was rough. Then I went to the animal lab to do a bit of last minute revising before the exam on Tuesday. While we were in there, one of the course advisors came in and had us haul in a bunch of boxes of bones that had been brought over from somewhere in a truck. I'm not sure where they were from or what they're doing with them, but they are now in storage thanks to our efforts :)

Tuesday we had our animal bone exam. We got to take it in the human bone lab though, because with 16 of us our lab is too small to take an exam in. I think it went pretty well. I don't know when we'll get the results of this one back either. Hopefully Tuesday, but as there was a lot to write about each bone it may be the week after. After the exam a bunch of us went out to lunch on campus. Then we planned to meet up later at night to go out and party in celebration of both of our exams being over. Stine and I had to go to Bournemouth from Poole, so we took a bus around 8 to meet everyone downtown. We hung out at a pub for awhile and then headed to The Orange Rooms, which is a club that everyone always goes too. I think my flatmates spend almost the entire weekend there most of the time ;) Because it was Tuesday I thought that it would be really dead, but there were actually quite a few people there. One of the guys in my course brought glowsticks, so we were pretty awesome. There was a lot of dancing and hanging out with people that I never see outside of class, so that was nice. Then around 1:30 Stine and I went home. We had to take a cab because the late bus only runs on weekends.

Wednesday I did a whole lot of nothing. I pretty much didn't even leave my room.

Thursday I was convinced that it was Saturday and was really confused the whole day. I did go to campus and get some work done though. I have all the numbers crunched for the paper I'm working on and I have some of the comparative materials. I'm still going through that though. Basically, we had to analyze a bone assemblage and then compare it to assemblages from other sites of the same time period in south west England. Its kind of interesting, but kind of boring at the same time.

Friday I went to the Lighthouse cafe to study. I got a lot of reading done there, so it was good. I've been reading a lot about antler wear because I may be doing my dissertation on something to do with antlers. Not sure though. If not, I'll just have a lot of weird antler knowledge. I also got some of the assemblage comparisons read. Later Friday night I went out with all of my flatmates to, you guessed it, The Orange Rooms. Baitalikee's friend was in town so we all went out with them. It was a pretty good time. At about 3 I gave it up and went home. I was really tired and needed to get stuff done the next day.

Saturday I headed to the Lighthouse again. I was getting a lot of work done, but then a ton of people started coming in. I think they just came early for the 2 o'clock show, but by 1 I couldn't take it anymore and had to leave. It was starting to rain when I left, which was bad because my flatmate Som and I had planned to go to the Christmas Village in Bournemouth Square that afternoon. At 3 it was still raining so we decided to see if it had let up by 4. It hadn't, but we decided that since it rains all the time we should just go anyway. I swear that by the time we got outside it had started raining even harder. The wind was blowing toward our backs so the back of my pants were soaked by the time we got to the bus. It was slightly less rainy by the time we got to Bournemouth. There were a whole bunch of cool little shops and then there was food. We started with fried potatoes and garlic mushrooms, which were delicious. Then we had bratwaursts and strawberry beer. The beer was good, but really sweet so we couldn't drink the entire thing. We had planned to get crepes for dessert, but by the time we'd eaten all the other stuff we couldn't manage it, so we got a sausage and a crepe to take home to the losers who didn't join the wet adventure and went home. So although we were pretty soaked it was really fun to do and it was nice to hang out with Som because I usually don't get to do that.

I had to venture out again Saturday night because we had tickets to a show at The Lighthouse. It was a local theater company and they did just a whole bunch of songs from all different musicals. It was pretty good. Some of the songs I recognized and some I didn't. You had to pay 2 pounds for a program though, so we just chose not to know the ones we didn't recognize. The show was really good and afterwards we went down to The Slug and Lettuce to hang out for awhile. I know it sounds gross, but its actually a pretty nice place. We all just got smoothies, so the waiter made fun of us the entire night, but it was a good time.

Today I went out for Sunday lunch with a bunch of girls from Corfe House. I had roast beef with gravy, fried potatoes, yorkshire pudding, stuffing, peas, carrots, and brussel sprouts. It was delicious and so filling. Then I had to go grocery shopping on the way back. That was pretty unappealing, but that's probably for the best. Hopefully I can get the last book section that I have to read done tonight and start writing the paper tomorrow. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the week so that I can start on the next one. We'll see how that pans out. I'm pretty much a procrastinator and always have been, but I'm trying to change that.

Side note: I made french toast, sausage and bacon for a bunch of friends last Sunday. I only mention this because the British boys could not wrap their heads around the idea of eating sweet and savor things at the same time. They refused to put the sausages on their plates until they were finished with the french toast. And they even had a hard time believing that you were suppose to put fruit and whipped cream on your french toast. So I'm not sure how much they liked it, but the Norwegian, Thai, Indian and Dutch people liked it :)

So I think that's all now. Here is a like to the few pics that I have taken in the last couple of weeks. And I know I was talking about Ireland in the last post, but it ended up being quite expensive because we couldn't book the tickets until late. Oh well, maybe some other time. Here are the pics.

Test, Thai, and Research

So it is Sunday once again after another semi-boring week. I had my human anatomy exam on Monday morning. I think it went okay, but I haven't gotten the results back yet. I'm not sure when we're getting them either. I'm hoping for tomorrow, but I don't know. Technically they have 3 weeks to get any graded work back to us, but as it was a test where you either got the answer right or not, I don't think it should take that long to grade. It was a pretty nerve wracking experience because there were 40 stations and you had 1 minute at each one to fill out the answer. Most wanted to know what the bone was, what side it was from, and what muscle attached to it. I felt pretty confident with quite a few of them, so hopefully that confidence was warranted :S After the exam I went home and did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day. My brain was fried from all the studying.

Tuesday I had my animal anatomy class. We have an exam in that one this week, so I've been studying for that. I don't think that it will be quite as hard or nerve wracking though because we get 3 hours for 40 identifications and 10 tooth wear analyses. That's just over 3 minutes per bone. There is a lot more to write about each bone, but that also means that if you don't get through all of the bones you can still do well if you are very thorough on the bones that you do get done. Plus we can use all of the reference collections and any notes or drawings or anything else that we want to bring with us to the exam. So its much less stressful. But I'll still be in the lab for most of the afternoon on Monday studying for it.

Wednesday a few of us went to lunch at the Thai restaurant in Poole. I got dumplings and green curry and it was really good. And we got a two course meal for only 6.95, which is a pretty great deal. After lunch we stopped at some of the shops on the high street on the way home. Then I had to head to campus because I had some stuff to do at the library and then I had choir and then I always meet a friend to watch a foreign film. This week it was Waltz With Bashir, which was really depressing.

Thursday I had to spend the day in research methods classes. We had to go in at 11am for an ethics lecture. The room was a bit small for all the people that needed to fit into it, but we were making due. Then when the lecturer, who is the head of the forensic program, came in he decided that all of the environmental people, museum studies and "osteology" needed to leave because the room was too small. He said he'd try to reschedule the lecture. Maybe for later that day. First of all, my program is not called osteology. I don't think that there is an osteology program offered at this school. Second he was so rude about the whole thing is made everyone really mad. And third, if he had scheduled it for later that day how were we suppose to know about it, was he going to call each one of us and inform us that it had been rescheduled? Only the forensics students were allowed to stay for his talk. The rest of us went off to bitch about him. Later that day we had a lecture about databases and how to use them. It was a bit long, but very useful for me because I will definitely need to be using them. Thursday night I went over to my friend Danielle's flat because we were planning a trip to Wales for this coming weekend. But all the train tickets that we found were really expensive. So then we started looking for other places to go. We looked at Scotland and France, but neither were really doable. Danielle has a friend in Dublin though and we found plane tickets for 75 pounds round trip. So she emailed her friend to see if we could stay with her if we went to Dublin.

Friday we had an even longer day of research methods. We had a 2 hour experimental design lecture in the morning and then a 3 hour statistics class in the afternoon. The first lecture was interesting, but not really that useful. The second lecture was really boring, but did remind me of some of the statistics stuff that I know. I have to look for my old book when I get home for Christmas. Then we had our rescheduled ethics lecture from 4-5. Most people had already skipped by this point so there were probably only 50 people there. He went on and on about the history of ethics and got into philosophy when all we needed were the ethics rules set out by the university on how to do research. Then his lecture ran long. The bus back to Poole only comes once every hour in the evening and it comes at 10 after the hour. So a bunch of us got up and left at 5 after 5 to go catch the bus. I guess it was kind of rude, but after how he had treated us the day before none of us felt bad about it. Friday night I went out with some girls to a pub in Poole. We got nachos and drinks and it was a nice time.

Saturday my flatmate and another friend went out to lunch. We wanted to go to the Chinese buffet, but there was a line out the door just to get a table. So we ended up going to an Indian place instead. Overall it was a pretty awful experience. When we walked in the place smelled a bit funny. We thought maybe it was just at the entrance, but it wasn't. It just all smelled vaguely of wet dog. But we already had menus and stuff so we felt like we had to stay. Then there were two little kids running around and screaming. That was really annoying. The food was pretty good, but when we asked the waiter to pack up the leftovers he refused to give us seperate containers because he said that our food was pretty similar so he'd just mix it together into one container. It was bizarre. Luckily neither me nor Baitalikee had eaten straight out of the dishes and we live together. Then while they were clearing the plates another man that worked there came up and touched the belt that I was wearing and told me it was nice. This was creepy, but I said thanks. Then he went on the say that it was nice because it held my stomach in, which was mostly just insulting and again creepy. Then he just kind of kept standing there. So all in all, it wasn't a good experience and I will not be going back there.

Then we went to the theatre because we were going to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Someone had told me that it was strange and she didn't really like it that much, but I loved it. The people that I went with liked it as well. Two of the girls were then going to see 2012 that evening, but I can't see that one on principle because in the trailers they call the Maya "the world's oldest civilization" Which is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. There are a million civilizations older than the Maya. The Maya were only a few hundred years ago.

Today I have to do a ton of reading so that I can take back all the library books that are due this week. I also have to look over all of my notes for my test on Tuesday. Then this evening I'm hosting Breakfast for Dinner. I'm making french toast with fruit and whipped cream, sausage and bacon. Then after dinner Danielle and I are going to book our flight to Dublin. (Assuming the tix are still available. I hope so!) We'll be leaving early Wed morning and coming back early Sunday morning. So you should have some really cool pictures and stories to look forward to next week.

Well, I suppose that's all I have. I should get back to some actual work. Hope everyone is doing well and I hope to hear from you soon!

Studying, Shopping and Tapas

I'm updating early today because I want to put off the inevitable studying a little bit longer. I have my first exam as a master's student on Monday. Its a spotter test in human anatomy, which means there will be pieces of bone laid out on tables in the lab and we'll have to go around and identify each one and important parts of it and which side of the body it comes from. In the 5 weeks we've been in school we've only done the cranium, mandible, vertibrae and ribs, so that gives you an idea of the level of detail we are working with. I really do feel like I know most of the info, but I'm still pretty nervous about the test. Its 20% of the grade I believe, so not too much but still enough. So anyway, I have to do a bit more reviewing today and then I'm putting away the books until after the exam. I don't want to be completely burnt out before the test.

Due to the test, this was a pretty boring week. I was in lab every day and studying outside of lab a lot of the rest of the time. A few of us took time out on Tuesday though to go to a tapas bar in Bournemouth. Tapas are a Spanish thing where you order a bunch of small dishes that everyone shares. Unfortunately this place was not very good. Nothing had much flavor and the chorizo was almost like jerky :( Luckily we had gone to Bournemouth early so that we could do a bit of shopping before dinner. I found a really cute dress at a little shop there, so the whole night wasn't a loss.

Wednesday I had choir and we are apparently having a Christmas concert with the orchestra. Its going to be on a Sunday night though, so I don't know if I'll make it. Its hard to get a bus to campus on a Sunday and I'm not paying 15 pounds each way for a cab. We're going to perform once before that though on a Thursday night, so that should be fine. I also have a big paper due the day after the Xmas concert, so it may be a bad time for it anyway.

Thursday and Friday were spent doing more studying. On Friday we got out a box of juvenile skeleton pieces so the skull wasn't fused. That way we could see if we were able to identify the bones using real bones. We did a pretty good job of it I felt. So I'm not too worried about the exam, but still worried......Then Friday night we had a group dinner. Two girls from Holland made us soup. One was pumpkin and the other was zucchini. It was really good. I may have to ask for the recipe.

Saturday I went down to the coffee shop near my house with another girl and studied there for about 3 hours. I now pretty much know the muscle attachments on the back of the skull. Or some of them anyway. On the way home from the coffee shop we had to stop at the drug store, so we wandered through the mall. I'd been told there was a library in the mall so we went looking for that. We found it and signed up for library cards. Then we realized that you have to pay for the movies at the library. They are fairly cheap, but still! I guess that's pretty common, because when we were telling people later, they weren't surprised. So on our way out of the mall we passed a shop with boots out front. I've been looking for a pair of black boots because I have a bunch of clothes that won't go with my brown ones, so we stopped in. And I found some nice ones! They are flat, which is awesome, with just a little bit of detail to make them interesting and not crazy. So I was really happy about that. Then we finally got to the drug store and went home. Because the girls had made so much soup the night before, we went over there to have dinner again. It was still delicious and we still couldn't finish it all, so some ended up getting thrown away. After that I came back to my room and watch tv until I went to bed.

Today I must do a bit more studying and then I have to go find a cool hat. One of the other flats is having a hat pot luck next week. I don't know what this entails exactaly, but it definitely means I need a hat. Too bad I didn't bring any of the ones I have at home. Its kind of rainy right now, but hopefully it clears up this afternoon so that I can go out. Otherwise I may have to put off the hat buying until tomorrow.

Well, I suppose that's all I've got for today. Hopefully next week will be a bit more exciting, but probably not because I have a test in my animal anatomy class next Tuesday. Woo! Take care and I hope to hear from you soon.

Salisbury and Halloween

The week started off and usual. I had class on Monday and Tuesday and then I went into the lab on Wednesday before going to choir rehearsal. We were learning about teeth this week in human anatomy. And teeth are gross. Human teeth aren't as bad as animal teeth, but they still aren't nice. We have a test coming up next week in human, so I'm going to be spending every waking moment in lab this week. Sadly... In animal lab we are plugging along with identifying different species of animals, tooth wear, fusion of bones, taphonomy, etc. I feel like I'm learning a lot more useful info in that class than in the human one. Yeah, maybe I can name all the bones in the skull and some of their defining characteristics, but its not anything that I couldn't look up if I really needed it. Oh well.

Thursday was the exciting day of the week. Danielle and I got up early Thursday morning and caught the bus into Bournemouth. From there we had to catch another bus for a 1.5 hour ride to Salisbury. We were going to see the Cathedral there. (A bit of history about the origins of this trip. My second week in England my course leader took all of us to Stonehenge and some sites around there. Then we went to the Salisbury Museum where a lot of Stonehenge artifacts are kept. To get to the museum we had to walk by the Cathedral, which was beautiful. Someone in the group told me that you could climb the tower of the cathedral and that it housed the oldest clock in England and one of 4 surviving copies of the Magna Carta. So I had to go back and do those things since we didn't have time that day. So I roped Danielle, who is a Museum Studies major, into going with me.) We caught the bus from Poole at 9 so that we could get the student discount. They don't let you get the discount until after 9 for some reason. So we got all day bus passes for only 4.50 pounds. Usually it would have been 7.50. We got to Salisbury at about 11am after seeing signs for some awesome places along the way. Including a waterpark that I suspect may just be a small lake...

As soon as we got off of the bus we found an awesome stationary store. So we spent a bunch of time in there and found some pretty sweet Christmas cards. Almost all of which say "Merry Christmas". It apparently isn't the political craziness here that it is in the States. We then walked the couple of blocks to the Cathedral. It was still amazing. We took a ton of pics of the outside of it and then headed inside to look around. We got a tour from one of the volunteer guides that works there. She was great. We got so much more out of it than we would have if we had just walked around on our own. She told us all about the clock and how it used to ring the bells in the tower, but when they made the tower higher, the ringing of so many bells would have knocked it down from the vibrations. So they built a special bell tower near the Cathedral. Later, the Cathedral was in a state of disrepair, so they brought in an architect called Wyatt and he knocked down the bell tower. He also white washed over the murals on the ceilings and brought tombs in from outside. Then he leveled the rest of the graveyard. He is a very hated man. This was in the 1500's I think, but don't quote me on that for sure. I bought a book about the Cathedral, but I can't be asked to look everything up right now. If you have questions either google it, or ask me via email and I'll look things up in my book for you.

Anyway, after the tour we were starving so we went to a Chinese place that we'd seen on our walk in. They had a set lunch of soup, main and dessert, so we order that. It was really good. I had Sechwan chicken. Mmmm....then ice cream for dessert. Yummy. Then we went back to the stationary store to buy Xmas card since we had time to kill before our tower tour.

The tower tour was really cool. We got to see all of the supports holding the whole Cathedral up and how they built it and the graffiti that the stone masons left hundreds of years ago. Its really weird to think that the Cathedral is older than the entire history of America. Well, white america, anyway... You know what I mean. The main part of the Cathedral was built in the 1200's. The spire was added in the 1300's. There are 333 steps to the top of the towers at the base of the spire. We walked up in stages, but it was still a lot of steps. At each new level the guide explained some the construction techniques or some unique aspects of the level. Finally when we got to the very top we got to go out on the ledge and look around. We got to go out all 4 sides of the tower and look around. It was amazing. We could also see the carving on the outside of the cathedral and the renovated parts that had been replaced in the last few years. It was very cool. Then we even got a pin to prove that we'd made it to the top :) Going down was a bit more rough. We pretty much just went down without a lot of stops, so I got pretty dizzy and had a headache for the rest of the day. But all we had left of the day was a bus ride home. So we got a little lost, but we found the bus station in time for the 4:30 bus back to Bournemouth. (Just to clarify, I live in Poole, which is the town next to Bournemouth. My university is called Bournemouth University, but its actually just over the border of the two towns in Poole. But the university is still a 20 minute bus ride from where I live.) On the way back it was already dark :( Then we saw a big accident on the road going the other direction. A car had flipped and there were a bunch of emergency vehicles all over and traffice was backed up for a really long way. Then when we got nearer Bournemouth our driver got on the intercom and said that there were more accidents so he had to go a different way to go around them. We got to the stop we needed though. Then we had to wait a few minutes for our next bus, but it came pretty quickly and we had about 25-30 minutes on that bus to get home. Overall it was a really great day and I'm glad I go to do it. Danielle and I are talking about trying to do a trip to Wales next month, so we'll see if we can get that planned.

Friday I had to do some studying, so I went to the cafe in The Lighthouse, which is the theater just down the street from where I live. It has live events and movies. The cafe was pretty nice, but didn't have a plug for my computer. So I did get a bunch of studying done there, but I definitely could have done more if my computer hadn't died. Oh well, I did get some stuff done. Then Friday night Stine (from Norway) was having a dinner party. She made risotto and it was delicious! That wasn't a very late night because we all knew that Saturday was going to be long :)

Saturday morning after I got back from the gym I went out and bought my makeup since I had neglected to do it before then. I got some good stuff though. Then I came home and made my belt buckle. I did a pretty excellent job, I think. Then I showered and put my hair up in that silly ponytail to dry in the right position. Then of course I had to paint my nails and make my arm warmers. I started my makeup around 6 and it actually didn't take as long as I thought that it would so I had plenty of time to sit around before putting on the rest of my costume. If you want to get to guess what I was look at the pics now, because I'm going to spill the beans pretty soon. Around 7:30 I finished off my lips and then started getting into the dress. Then I got the belt and suspenders on and fastened the glorious belt buckle on with scotch tape. So that part was a little bit tacky, but what can you do? Then I got the shoes and socks on and I was ready to go! RAINBOW BRITE! It was awesome and everybody knew what I was. Well, everybody who had ever heard of Rainbow Brite anyway, which was a lot of people. So then I headed off to a couple of Halloween parties that were going on on my floor. There were some really great costumes. I took a ton of pics, but I think the costume of the night was Melissa as the Mad Hatter from the new Alice In Wonderland. She was so creepy and hardly even looked like herself. It was really good, but I couldn't really look at her most of the night ;) So that's about it. We went out in Poole for awhile, and then came home. Today I must study and then I'm going with some other people from my class this evening for a group study session at a coffee shop/pub in town. So hopefully that's useful because I'm kind of starting to freak out about this test even though we're only expected to get about 60%. I think that's what bothers me. Even though I know what the expectations are I still feel like I should be striving for 100%. Its weird.

British consideration of the week: Double Decker Buses. They are really only cool if you sit in the front row of the top so that you can see everything as you're going. That's were Danielle and I sat for our ride to Salisbury and it was great. But for everyday going to school I usually just sit on the bottom so that I don't have to go up and down the steps. I guess they get more seats on the bus with two levels, but they lose so many on the bottom level having to put in the steps to the top that I'm not sure how it works out. So that's where I leave you this week. Hope you have enjoyed my rambling and I hope to hear something from you soon. Have a good one!

Fish and Chips and Potluck

Well, this week was pretty uneventful. I went to class on Monday and Tuesday like usual. This week we were learning about facial bones in human and tooth wear ageing in animals. And yes, ageing is spelled correctly. That's how they roll here. So Wednesday I spent a ton of time in the various bone labs learning things. Then I had choir practice. We're working on Little Shop of Horrors and Hail Holy Queen from Sister Act. I know its pop music, but the director doesn't always get the rhythms right and its driving me crazy. I guess I just need to get over it though. The songs do sound good when we all sing together. And they actually come together pretty quickly. But we have about 20 sopranos and 7 altos, so its a bit unbalanced.

After choir I went and saw another foreign film. This one was Swedish and was about vampires. It was pretty good. Creepy in more of a morally and ethically disturbing kind of way than blood and guts. Can't remember the name of it though.

Thursday I didn't go into Uni and went looking for some boots. I found a great pair at Asda, but they didn't have them in my size :( So I ended up at a couple of different stores and finally found a cute pair of gray ones for 8 pounds. They're from a pretty cheap store, so they may not last long, but for 8 I suppose I can live with that. (Sorry, I don't know how to type a pound sign on my American keyboard. If you know, you should tell me.) I also got a couple pairs of tights and a pretty scarf. Then after lunch I went and joined the gym across the street from my flat. Its really nice and has a gym, a pool and classes.

Friday I had to go into uni to pick up a book that I had put on reserve. (Which, as it turns out wasn't all that useful. I'm going to copy a few pages out of it, but I could have lived without them. Oh well....) It was just a quick trip, but I also picked up a few books on bone development and teeth in humans for a paper we have to write. I'm trying to decide which topic to write about as we have 4 options. I'm leaning toward teeth, but I want to read around the options a bit first. Anyway...when I got back I had orientation at the gym. I spent about a half hour learning how to use all the gym equipment. It was kind of useless since I'd been going to the gym back home, but some of the machines were a bit different so I guess it was good.

Later that night I went with my flatmate Baitalikee and a couple of people from another flat to get fish and chips for dinner. I don't generally like fish, but as its fried and breaded I am able to eat this. Its basically fishfry, for those who don't know. And chips here are french fries. Potato chips are called crisps. Weird. So we went to this little shop and got the fish and chips and then walked down and sat by the quay (pronounced "key") to eat them. On the way back home we stopped at the store and got tequila, triple sec and lime juice. We were going to a beer pong party, but I thought I should introduce everyone to upside down margaritas. No one drowned, but I did get alcohol all down my face and neck :( But it was a good time.

On Saturday I had to be up early to get to the class that I had signed up for at the gym. It was called BodyPump and entailed a short bar with weights. We then used it to do a ton of squats, bicep curls, arm extensions etc. My muscles were hurting while I was doing it despite not using very much weight. By the time I got home though I was fine. I read for a good portion of the day and actually got through quite a bit of material. Then I made potato salad for the pot luck that I was attending that night. It wasn't quite right because they don't have pickle relish here. So I had to just cut up pickles. But the pickles aren't quite right either, so it was a bit off, but it tasted okay. At the potluck we had lasagna, home made mac and cheese, macaroni salad, potato salad, bruschetta, garlic bread, quiche, spicy fried squid, and a ton of desserts. There was a bunch of food left at the end so we all got a take home plate.

Today I woke up and ate my leftover quiche with some coffee and orange juice. It was delicious. Then I read for awhile and contemplated a Halloween costume. I came up with Gypsy, but thought that might not be pc. I went out shopping with some other girls for costume stuff and was inspired to try to be Rainbow Bright. So because I was inspired right at the end of the shopping and wasn't sure exactly what I needed to be Rainbow, I came home and looked at some pics and will be going shopping again tomorrow after class. So after that I got a bit more reading done and then went out to dinner with some other archaeology people. We got burgers at the bar across the way. Then I got some profitaroles for dessert. They were filled with ice cream instead of the usual cream. Yummy! Then we came back here and watched Good Will Hunting. I had forgotten that it is actually a pretty good movie.

So let us now consider something British. Roundabouts. The reason that they need them here is that their roads don't meet up at a 90 degree angle. The roads are all curvy and random and may run into each other with two very close together and then far apart on the other side. So having a roundabout makes sense. In the States this isn't true, so we don't need them. But its really cool here because most of them are two lanes. If you are going further around it you stay in the inner lane and if you're just going to the next exit you stay in the outer lane. Its pretty impressive to see all the cars and buses going through and not crashing. Or driving on the roundabout itself as people in Manitowoc had managed to do within 1 day of the thing being open on 310.

I suppose that's about all I have and I'm pretty tired, so I'll wrap up. Oh, also, we changed our clocks back to GMT today. So Wisconsin is only 5 hours behind us for the week until you all change your clocks. So I guess I'll end there. Have a good one and I'll post again next Sunday after Halloween!

One Month

Soooo.....what to say about the last week. Now that I'm in school and have someone of a set routine life is much less exciting. These probably won't get shorter because I can go on and on about nothing, but they certainly won't be more entertaining. Sorry :(

Anyway, Monday I had human anatomy once again. We are doing the cranium, which is actually quite hard. There are a lot of bones in the human skull with a lot of little parts that we must know. I also came down with some sort of bug on Monday. I may have actually started to get sick on Sunday, but I wasn't sure until Monday. After class I went straight home to bed and slept for most of the day. Then Tuesday I repeated the strategy. I think I had a fever that broke over Monday night and Tuesday was rough. I wasn't feeling quite as bad, but I hadn't slept well so it was very hard to concentrate during the lecture. We were learning about taphonomy, which is the process by which bones are changed after they come out of the animal, basically. Luckily I have a little experience with that from my work in Bolivia. So I'm not behind, but I need to spend more time in the lab this week to make up for it.

Wednesday I slept most of the day again and then headed to campus for choir rehearsal. It was fun, but I'm not sure about this choir. Sometimes I wonder how well the director reads music... I may try out the Tuesday night choir this week and see how that goes... After choir I met up with a friend to see a foreign film that was playing on campus. They didn't have the film that was advertised and ended up showing a Spanish film about the right to die. I wasn't too much of a fan.

Thursday I went to campus to spend some time in the labs. When I go to the human bone lab I really don't feel like I accomplish a whole lot since we're just left to do whatever we want. The animal lab is a lot better. My prof leaves tasks for us to do to learn the topic. This week it was looking at bones and identifying how they had been modified. She left a bag of samples of the different modification processes that happen.

Friday I was going to go back to campus, but it was icky out and it was my friend's birthday, so I went to the Poole museum with her instead. It was a very nice little museum of local history. And I felt accomplished because I saw some bones in a display and identified them as sheep before I read the sign. So I'm learning :) Anyway, later that night a bunch of girls went out for a Diwali party. Diwali is the Indian festival of lights and my flatmate invited us all to a party that was happening at a club in Bournemouth. So we headed down to Bournemouth figuring we'd find an Indian restaurant to eat and then head to the club. We couldn't find an Indian restaurant near the club and the man we asked was unhelpful. He mostly just wanted us to eat at a Spanish or Portuguese resaurant. So we walked for a few minutes, but then decided just to head to the Italian restaurant that we had seen. It was called Pinnochio's and was ridiculous inside. Disney may sue if they find out about it ;) It was quite good though. I got lasagna, like always. It was really cheesy and delicious. Especially because I was starving. Everyone else enjoyed their food as well. When we were finished we headed to the club. There was hardly anyone there and the place never filled up. They were playing really repetitive house music and only played two Indian songs the entire night, despite being and Indian celebration. So I don't know what that was about, but it wasn't great. The night was fun overall, and waiting for the bus we met a lovely man who told us all kinds of touristy things that we have to do while we're here.

Saturday I spent the entire day reading. Then at night I went to the flat next door for curry and movie night. The curry was really good and the movies were okay. It was all girls so we watched rom-coms, of course. The Ugly Truth: not that good. Probably don't bother. It was fun overall though.

Today I meant to spend the whole day reading, but I got a call from a friend that there was an open house at the Lighthouse, which is the theater near my house. So I took a break from reading to go to that. We got a bunch of pamphlets about things going on there and then got to see a short concert of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. It was awesome. They perform every Wednesday night. So if I switch choirs I could go to their concerts. Its 50% off for students and they have 5 pound tickets if you do standby. After the concert we went and got coffee and then went to a shop for a couple people to look for water pitchers. While there though, I found my new pet. I've named him Theodore and he's a lovely, feathery, blue bird/pen. When we got back from shopping I got my reading done, found some more resources and feel very accomplished right now.

Other things from the week. On Saturday they sent us an email from our dorm telling us not to use the small light above our beds and desks. Then they sent a man around to take the lightbulbs. Apparently they are exploding and catching fire and they entire socket needs to be replaced. So in the meantime we have no lights in the living room and it is quite hard to read in the bedrooms as the overhead light is not very good. There is no timetable on when we will be getting new lights, but my assumption is 1-2 months if the trackrecord thus far stands. Not much incentive to get you to pay your rent.

On that note, I get to pick up my student loan refund check tomorrow!! The student loan checks came in dollars, so we had to turn them in and then the school had them switched to pounds and then they took tuition out of them. So I don't know how much I'm getting back, but I'll see tomorrow. Then I have to put it in the bank and then I can pay my rent here after the check clears. Which I hear takes 4 business days. So hopefully I'll have money by Friday. Then I can join the gym! Woo!

Well, I suppose that's all I've got. I'll keep you updated on my light situation because I know you'll be dying to know if I can study without getting eye strain or not. But hey, at least here if I get eye strain I can go to the doctor for free! Just gotta look on the bright side... Well then, until next week.

Week 4

Wow, I can't believe that I'm starting my 4th week in England already. Dang! Time has gone by really fast. Not a whole lot to tell about this week, but I'll summarize it anyway.

I already did Monday in last week's entry, so Tuesday. I had my animal anatomy class on Tuesday morning. It was run a lot better than the human class. (In defense there are only 16 of us in animal anatomy and 56 in human) We got into groups and put together some animal skeletons. My group got a dog. Other groups had a cat, a sheep and a deer. We then compared and contrasted the skeletons of the different animals. Mostly carnivore versus herbivore, but also some differences within the categories. We have pretty much free range in this lab as we are the only class using it. We have the door code so we can go in whenever we want to work with the bones. The human lab is much more restricted because there are a lot of forensics classes here that need to work with those skeletons.

So on Wednesday I didn't have any classes, but I planned to join the choir, which meets at 5pm. I went to campus early and went to the animal bone lab for awhile to do some of the work that our prof had left for us. It was actually pretty easy and I felt good about it, but sheep are a lot like llamas, which I spent weeks working with in Bolivia a few summers ago, so we'll see how other species go when we get there. Then I headed off to choir rehearsal. They didn't have enough copies of the music because they didn't expect so many people to show up and then they gave us just the words to one song and no music. So that was odd, but it was fun overall and I'm planning to go back this week.

Then on Thursday I went with some other girls to the human bone lab to work on that for awhile. We used a plaster skeleton so that we could see how all of the parts are suppose to look when they are whole. It was good to get an overview, but I'm pretty sure we're starting with the skull this week, which will be really hard. There are so many bones that compose the skull its ridiculous. Ah well, I'm sure I'll learn it. After being in the lab for about 2 hours I went to the library to get some more books to read over the weekend. I have checked out my limit of 12 books. I feel so student-like. I haven't even opened most of them yet, but I have them and that's what counts I think ;)

On Friday I didn't go in to campus at all. It was raining again, as it had been every day this week, and I didn't have anything that I needed to do there, so I stayed home and read some of my books and colored some pictures of human bones so that they are easier to reference.

On Saturday we had "Canadian Thanksgiving" Apparently Canada has Thanksgiving this Monday and there are two Canadians that live down the hall so they invited everyone over for a feast. I brought green bean casserole and an apple pie. We also had stuffing, two turkeys, home made gravy, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, salad and mixed veg. It was really good. After dinner we went to Bournemouth to go dancing. As most of you know, usually I wouldn't dance, but I figured I needed to get out of the house and I'm sure work is going to start coming in this week so there will be far less fun to be had after this weekend.

Today I slept late and then had to run and get a birthday present for my friend whose birthday is today. We're having a party for her at 1. Then tonight I'm cooking dinner for my flatmates. One has the flu, so she won't be able to eat, but the others should be around. If not, I'll just eat it myself :) I'm making stuffed chicken breasts, salad and ice cream sundaes since Two Rivers, WI is the home of the ice cream sundae.

On a funny note: My flatmate was going to visit his girlfriend this weekend. So he left on Friday night, but when he went to put gas in his car he put diesel instead of petrol. So he didn't get to leave on Friday. He ended up leaving Saturday, but I really didn't get an explanation of how that happened. Its not like he just got the car.

Well, I guess that's all I have for this week. Shoot me a comment on here or an email. I'd love to hear from you. Until then...

New Week

So I'm going to try to update this on Sundays from here on out. Obviously today is not Sunday, but its close enough. Last update was Thursday....what has happened since then....well, I had a bunch of lectures on Friday about not plagiarizing and no using websites as source in our dissertations. It was pretty lame. Then we learned about this really cool thing called digimap, where you can make maps of your site with multiple layers of information that can be added and subtracted just like those really nice ones in real research papers. We did actually learn how to use it though, so it was a bit of a bust really. If I end up needing to use it I'll have to go in and get some tutoring on it. I've already decided that I'm going to a class to learn excel. I'm going to be a master at excel by the time I'm through here. Friday night a few of us stayed in a watched bad dance movies and drank boxed wine...

Saturday I didn't do a whole lot of anything. That night another American brought beer pong to the Brits and we played in someone's flat. Then I met another group of girls and we went out for awhile. Then we ended up meeting up with the other group at the pub that's near our dorm. Its weird how small Poole is despite how many people live here.

Sunday we had a delicious Indian meal prepared by my flatmate Baitilikee. I helped with the prep and had to grate ginger and onions. Grating onions is just about the worst experience that you can imagine. Don't ever do it if you can help it. The food was great though. I can't tell you what we ate because I don't know how to spell one and I don't know what the other dish was called.

Today was my first day of real class. I had a human anatomy lecture followed by a human anatomy lab. Today was pretty much intro stuff, so we got a skeleton and had to put it together. I was pretty unequipped to do that, but luckily my groupmates were pretty good. After that I found a book that someone else recommended in the library and have marked all of the pages with pictures that I need to make photocopies of. I want to just purchase the book, but its super expensive, so its copies for me. Oh well. A few of us are going back to the lab on Thursday to work on bone identification, so I'll have to get my copies made for then so that I can use them. I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time in that lab. But it will be worth it. I think the human bone stuff will be a good selling point on my resume even if I'm mostly focused on animal bones in my thesis. And really compared to the animal anatomy that I start tomorrow, the human stuff should be a breeze. You already know that its human when you start. With an animal it could be a lot of things.

Some random observations of England: The elevator in our dorm talks to us. It has a lovely girly voice that tells us "Doors opening" "Doors closing" "5th floor" and so on and so forth. Then there are the traffic lights. These are great. They have green for go, yellow for slow down and red for stop, but then just before the light turns green again, the yellow light comes on along with the red one so that people can prepare to go. I think its brilliant. We can also use a variety of coins in the wash and dry machines. Pound coins, 50p, 20p, and 10p. Much better than having to collect a million of one type of coin like we do in America.

Some other things: I eat pretty much the same things that I ate at home. Cereal or toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, fruit, veggies. I found real dressing, so that's cool. I haven't had fish and chips yet since being here, so that's crazy since we're right on the sea, but I have plenty of time for that. If you have any other things you want to know I'll be happy to answer. But I suppose that's all for now. I'll try to update again next Sunday. Until then...

School...

So I've officially been enrolled in school. There is no escaping. I have cashed the loan checks and gotten my student ID card. Monday we had to go in at 9am and listen to a bunch of induction lectures. Most were quite useless, but at least a whole bunch of us were in it together. That afternoon we actually enrolled. That entailed standing in endless lines, getting a photo taken, having to show all of my qualifications again and showing my passport and visa. Then they gave me my counsel tax exemption form (which I'm not sure what I have to do with) and my student ID. Very exciting. Then we met with our program leaders. My leader is Ellie Hambleton, who is a zooarchaeologist. She is very nice and I've been communicating with her since January or so when I was first accepted. We were also introduced to Mark Maltby, another zooarchaeologist and Martin Smith, a forensic archaeologist/human osteoarchaeologist. They told us a bit about the program and what to expect from classes and the codes to some of the bone rooms so that we could go in on our own time to work. We then were assigned our personal tutors. Mine was Mark and I was a bit trepidatious because he seemed a bit gruff. But then I had a one on one meeting with him on Tuesday afternoon and he actually turned out to be quite nice. Although I think he's a bit worried about my lack of experience writing research papers since undergrads here have to write a big paper to graduate. Ah well, I'll show him that I can do it :)

Tuesday I had more lectures in the morning and then hung around in the library and computer lab waiting for my meeting with Mark. I ended up reading an article in Latin American Antiquity. Woo! The library is crazy because, while they have an elevator, it says its reserved for handicapped people. So since archaeology is on the 4th floor, I have a lot of walking to do. Especially because floors here go: ground, 1st, 2nd, etc. Crazy Europeans!

Then Wednesday was our osteoarchaeology trip to Stonehenge. I'd been there before, but it was cool to get to see it again and hear about it from people who really know the archaeology of the area and aren't going to spread crazy conspiracy theories about it. We also walked out to the area beyond the henge and looked at the barrows where people were being buried about concurrently with Stonehenge. Some of them are earlier though. There is also a huge mound back there that is 100 meters across and I think about 1.5 km long. It was built before stonehenge and no one knows what it would have been used for. Very odd, but very cool. Then we went to Woodhenge, which is a lesser known henge a few km from stonehenge. There is also a huge earthen ring there which must have been about .5 miles in diameter in which they are finding neolithic house structures. Which apparently is unheard of in Britain, so its pretty cool. They are also finding a ton of pig bone, which is again odd because cows were the main animal in Britain at the time. This is all being done by the Stonehenge Riverside Project, so they are also excavating by the river Avon (?) and have found evidence of people being down there as well. They hypothesize that people where living within the circle near woodhenge (wood representing the living) and then going to stonehenge for ceremonies and to bury the dead (stone representing death). They would have been making this trek via the river and a pathway that connects stonehenge to the river. I've seen a show on discovery or history about it, so you may have seen it as well. Woodhenge itself is very odd. After excavating and finding where the postholes that would have held the wooden pole were, they put in short cement posts to represent them. It makes for quite the odd spectacle. There was also a burial of a child found in the center of the circles, but not directly in the center. It is undetermined if the child was buried before or after the rings were built. After all that we went to the museum in Salisbury where many Stonehenge artifacts are kept. We got to see some of the human skeletons that have been excavated over the years from the area and talked to another guys who has worked in the area, but also works for commercial companies doing archaeology. So that was quite cool. Then we finally went home and everyone was exhausted. It was a long, but very informative and exciting day.

Today I had the entire day off, so I slept in a bit and then got my laundry done. Thank god, because I've been wearing semi dirty clothes for days. Then I went out with my Canadian friend Danielle to get her a cell phone. When we got down to the high street there was an entire farmer's market going on all up and down the street it was amazing. So after we got her a phone we bought sausages with cheese and then moved on to jacket potatoes. The sausages were basically just hotdogs with a slice of cheese in the bun. Pretty good, but nothing spectacular. The jacket potatoes were backed potatoes broken open and covered with chili. The I added coleslaw to mine and Danielle had cheese on hers. They were really good, but I couldn't eat the whole thing having already eaten the sausage. Apparently this fair is every Thursday and Saturday, so we'll definitely be back. They also had things besides food, but since we're both waiting for loan money we didn't shop much.

After we got home I decided to try to track down the package that I had mailed to myself before I left. The tracking number said that it had arrived in Poole, but I never got a slip telling me where to pick it up. So I asked at the front desk and they told me to try the post office or the sorting office. I went to the sorting office first, but it was closed already, so I tried the post office. The lady there told me that I had to contact the USPS and find out where the package was. She also gave me the name of another company that does shipping in the UK. So I checked that website and found my package. I thought it was at a location about 2 miles away, so I scheduled a redelivery. But then a woman from that company called and said that the package was at the post office just down the street. So I had to go back there again. The first woman apologized for making me do all that, but she didn't know. So thankfully I now have all my office supplies, shoes and running clothes. Its about time.

And that has been my week thus far. Tomorrow I have more lectures and Monday starts actual class. Although I only have 2 classes and they only meet on Monday and Tuesday, so it won't exactly be hardcore, but I think I will be spending a lot of time in the library and bone labs, so I'll be on campus much more often than that. I'll let you know how it goes. Later!

Settling In

So I left you on Tuesday after we had gone to the beach in Bournemouth. Wednesday I had to get up early and to to a session on academics in the UK on campus. It was pretty useless except for the throwaway line at the end in which the guy told us that 40% is passing. So that's why the first years here can go out and party every night of the week and not flunk out of school. According to the British people we confirmed this with, you just have to pass your first year. It doesn't matter what your grades are. So wow. Then I went to an information session about immigration and students visas and such. It was slightly more useful, but also a bit confusing because the information didn't all apply to me because Americans can travel to Europe without a visa. Then I turned in all of my loan deferment paperwork so hopefully that gets completed soon so that I don't have to keep making loan payments. I'll have to check tomorrow.

Wednesday night flat 501 threw a floor party, so most people from our floor and a few others were there. It was good to get to know some more people from the building.

Thursday I didn't have anything to do. So I slept really late and then went to a few shops for some essentials such as plates, bowls, cutlery, and a cutting board. Then I came back and we hung out for awhile. Later that night we had a flat dinner of nachos and fajitas. It was pretty good. Then my flatmate Som and I tagged along with our other 3 flatmates to a Media school party in Bournemouth. We didn't really fit in there, but we heard some live music and eventually a bunch of us headed down to a club. That was fun and it was nice to spend some time with all of my flatmates. We thought that there was a free bus back from Bournemouth at 2:30, but we never saw it, so then we had to find cabs for all 11 of us that were still out. We ended up in 3 cabs and all made it home.

Friday I also had nothing to do, so I wandered down to the Quay and took pictures. Its really pretty down there. There is no beach, but the waterfront is nice and the shops along there have really cute storefronts. Then I went looking for a sharp knife. We had some knives in our flat, but when we went to cut the chicken and veg the other night, they were all terrible. I had to promise the man in the shop that I wouldn't stab anyone with it, so hopefully its sharp.

At 5 on Friday there was a postgraduate wine and cheese event that a bunch of us went to. It was alright, but we had to pay for it and then we only got 1 glass of wine each. The cheese was pretty good though. Eventually we moved that party to the campus bar and then to a bar in Bournemouth. After awhile some people left for salsa dancing and some of us went to the beach. We stopped along the way and got some alcohol from a shop and some KFC. (They don't have biscuits at KFCs here and they only have one kind of chicken. Its spicier than what we have, but not particularly crispy.) Then we went down to the beach. It was cold. I don't know what we were thinking. A couple of people ended up wading in the water. They claimed it was nice, but the rest of us were sceptical. We didn't stay for a very long time and ended up back home around 10 or 11.

Yesterday I went on a tour of the Isle of Purbeck and the Jurassic Coast. It was pretty awesome. We started by crossing Poole Harbor on a bus on a ferry. Then we were in the Durlston Country Park. We hiked down the path there and saw some amazing views of the coastline and some old quarries. When we got to the end they provided us with cake and we sat around for awhile to rest. Then we set off on the bus for Corfe Castle, which is a really old castle that is in ruins on the top of a hill. Apparently it was an excellent stronghold and was never defeated. People only got in by the betrayal of someone in the castle letting them in through a back entrance. After they had taken over the castle, they destroyed it. It was really cool to see all of the huge walls at odd angles from having been knocked down and settled further over the years. There were a few tall parts still standing, but almost nothing is left of the inside. We had lunch in the town below the castle. I got a ham and cheese baguette and it was the most ridiculously huge thing ever. And they went crazy with the cheese. It was delicious, but its going to take me weeks to work off all of those calories, despite the major hiking we did next.

After lunch we got back on the bus and went out to Durdle Door. We had to walk down a really steep path to get down there. Then if we wanted to get to the beach we had to go even further down. But there was also the option of going up to the top of a big section of rock that goes out into the water. Two of the girls that I was with and I went up to the top. It was really high and really skinny up there. Some cool pictures though. Then we came back down and went all the way down to the beach. The beach was made of various sized pebbles and you are suppose to be able to find fossils down there. We didn't find any though :( Then we had to climb back up all of the steps from the beach and up and over a huge hill to get to Lulworth Cove and the town where the bus was picking us up. That was a ridiculously long and tiring hike. We had to stop a couple of times to catch our breath. The way down wasn't that easy either since you had to be careful not to slip and go tumbling all the way down the hill. When we finally got to town I got some more water since I had drank all of mine during the hike. Some people also got ice cream, but I couldn't eat anything else after that crazy sandwich.

When I got home I wanted to just go to bed, but I knew that I couldn't as it was only about 6. So a bit later I went out for awhile with some of the other people from the floor. We just went to a bar down the street so it was nice not to have to take a bus and all that jazz. Then we wandered down to subway where my friend ordered a meatball sub. Someone else asked what was on that and I replied, just meatballs and spaghetti sauce, so which I got a blank look. Apparently they don't call it spaghetti sauce here. I think its bolognese or something. Just an odd sidenote.

So that brings us to today. I also had nothing to do so I went out shopping with Gemma and Danielle. I didn't need anything, but it was something to do for awhile. Now I'm here and just sitting around. We won't be doing anything tonight because all the Conservation Science kids have to enroll tomorrow. We don't know exactly what that entails or how long it will take, but we all have to be there at 9am. So I'll let you know how that turns out in my next post.

Photos

This is just the link to the few pics I've taken so far.

Intro dos

So on Monday I had to get up early to catch a bus to campus. We had an information meeting in the morning and then a campus tour. The campus is ridiculously small and yet I can't find anything. Seriously, there are about 8 or 10 buildings and the are probably about 5 or 6 floors each. So not overly impressive size-wise. Then there was an information fair to get info about bandks and biking and such. I got some stuff about a couple of banks so I need to read through it and choose one to use. Later we went and looked through the building that I will be studying in and looked into some of the labs. We couldn't actually go inside them, but we peered in through the windows. Then we had a free lunch. So far I think I've only had to pay for about 2 meals. So that's pretty cool. After lunch I had to go to a meeting about my loans. It wasn't super helpful, but I met the lady that's in charge of them so that's good. I also met another girl who's on my program and another forensic arch girl who lives on my floor.

After that I met up with some other girls from Corfe and we went back to get ready for the big International Welcome Reception that night. We were suppose to dress a bit nicer because there were going to be program administrators, course leaders and board members and such there. So I got to meet my course leader which was nice. Some of the others weren't there, but the osteoarch woman was. She seems very nice and gave us a bit more info about the start of the course. We enrol on Monday and then have some info sessions on Tuesday. Then either Wed or Thur we are going on a field trip to Stonehenge. Then on Friday we start classes with an all day Research Methods class. So that's a bit daunting. But we had a really nice dinner and I got to know a couple of the other American students on the arch courses. Overall it was a nice dinner and I was glad that I went.

Then we went back to our flat and spent a few hours chatting with our flatmates.

Today I had to go back to campus again to go to some meeting about working while here on a visa. It was actually pretty silly. I think it was more geared toward non english speakers, but whatever. After that I met 3 of my flatmates and we crashed the "buddy lunch" so that we could get free food. We were suppose to meet a friend there that was legit, but she wasn't there when we got there. So we all pretended that we had buddies and went in anyway. After we were all pretty much finished with lunch Danielle, the legit girl, and her flatmates showed up. Apparently they had missed the bus. On a side note, we had jacket potatoes. Which are baked potatoes scooped out and then filled with cheese and other stuff. It was pretty good. Then we headed out to Bournemouth Beach. We picked a terrible day for it because its pretty cold and windy today, so the beach was even more so. It was still cool to go though. One of the Canadians actually went swimming. It was really cold though. The rest of us just stood in the water up to about our ankles. We walked along the beach for awhile and then walked through the park that is near it. They have a giant hot air balloon called the Bournemouth Eye. We were going to go up in it, but it wasn't operating today. So we'll have to go back another time.

Walking around Bournemouth was amazing though. Its what I imagine England looking like. Narrow streets with really cool old buildings with fancy detailing. I didn't take pics of that today, but I'll definitely go back some time and do so. Probably when all of the busses are up and running. We only have limitted bus service at the moment so it took us about an hour and a half to get back to Corfe from Bournemouth. So now I'm back here and I'm not going anywhere else today. In fact I'm already in my pajamas and may go to bed soon. But until then I'm watching Strictly Come Dancing because I can't get Dancing with the Stars here :( Its a poor substitute since I don't know any of the stars, but what can you do?

Intro

So I believe that I left off after having arrived and attempted to go to bed. I did get back to sleep eventually, but first I watched an episode of Strictly Come Dancing, which is the original Dancing With the Stars. I didn't know any of the stars though, so that was a bit of a disappointment. I did know Bruno and Len though, so that was fun.

The next day I woke up and went on a walking tour of Poole. We went through the shopping mall and then down the shopping district road. It was cool because there were sections for each thing. Cell phones all in one area, banks in another, etc. Weird. Then we headed down to the quay (pronounced key). The Brits make fun when you say it wrong. There isn't really a beach down there, but there are a lot of big boats and a yacht building company. And apparently there is a great kite flying area down a bit further. After we got back I did a bit more unpacking and then went to get myself a cell phone. I ended up with a lovely purple slider. Its cheap to call the States on, but much more to call Britain, which is odd. I can change the plan later depending on how I am using it, but I still find it strange.

That night was the welcome reception and tea. Two of my flatmates are international students as well so we were going, but then we invited along our two British flatmates. They were a bit put out afterwards since they were the only Brits there, but it was kind of fun. Plus I finally found another girl on my program. She's from Norway. Then we all had to sit with people from our parts of the world to eat. Our table had North, South and Central America and the Caribbean and there were only 6 of us there. It was very sad. But I did meet a girl that lives down the hall on my same floor. She's from Canada and she's in the same school as me, but studying a different course. So after we all got back from the free food shindig we decided to go out and see what we could see in Poole. Turns out we could see very little. The whole town was dead. We ended up in a semi expensive pub where I had my first and probably last Pimm's. Its some sort of liquor, but I'm not sure what. Then its mixed with Coke in a glass with a lemon and a lime. It was pretty nothing. No distinctive flavor at all. So then we switched to a cider, which was a bit sweet.

We decided to try to find a cheaper place so we wandered back toward home. We got to the pub about 10:55 so the bartender wasn't too happy with us. We had to order and pay really quickly to get it in before 11, as that is the time that pubs close here. Crazy! Then they harassed us to finish quickly even though we were sitting outside. I think they were just a bit peeved that we showed up at the last second.

We headed home and ended up in the flat down the hall for quite awhile. All of the people that I was with are very nice and a few are on courses similar to mine, so that's nice. I was going to write more, but its pushing 2am so I think I'll go to bed. More tomorrow.

Arrival

Well, I have arrived in England. It is 12:33am and I woke up from what I had planned to be a good night's sleep, but has turned out to be a 5 hour nap. So I thought I'd try to bore myself back to sleep by getting this up for everyone.

So I left for the Chicago airport at 9am on Friday. I had two giant suitcases, a backpack and my shoulder bag. Which is all I could feasibly bring, but I'm sure I would have brought more given the chance :) We went out for lunch at Red Lobster on the way down and then got to the airport ridiculously early. We hung out for quite awhile and eventually I went through security to wait at my gate. I was pretty sad and nervous, but kinda excited too. My plane left at 5:05pm and it was a 7.5 hour flight to London. Nothing really to note about the flight. I watched The Hangover and Night at the Museum and and airplane food. I also managed to get about and hour or two of sleep, so that was good.

When I arrived at the London airport I had to go through immigration control. There was a separate line just for students so I stood in that for quite awhile. They were making a lot of people in front of me go to the health check area, so I was a bit worried that I'd have to do that too, but they just asked what I was studying and stamped my book. Then I had to pick up my baggage. I almost stole someone else's purple suitcase, but I looked at the tag and realized it wasn't mine so I put it back. Then I went through custom's no problem. I found the meeting point for BU students and there were a few other people already there. It was a long wait with a million other university students in the airport, but eventually we left. We were suppose to leave around 10:30 but didn't actually go until about 11:15. Then there was a big accident somewhere so we were further delayed. I finally got to my dorm around 2 or 2:30. I had to check in and then got to go up. But then of course the key didn't work. It's a magnetic strip key like a hotel, so I had to go back down and have them reprogram it for me. Then it worked and I got in. Another girl who was on the transport with me is one of my roommates. She's doing an MA in film directing. Later another roommate arrived. He's from the UK and is doing and MA in film editing. Apparently another girl is also here, but I haven't met her yet. There is another room in our flat so I assume that will be filled today, but maybe not.

So after I got a bit settled in and unpacked some of my stuff and go the internet going I went to Aldi's, which is right next door, and got a few essentials such as toilet paper, bread, ham, cheese and napkins :) I didn't do a lot of wandering around because I was pretty tired. I plan to do that later today. They have a Poole town tour in the morning so I'm going to go on that to try to orient myself. Anyway, that's pretty much the extent of my first day. I went to bed around 7 hoping to sleep through the night and relieve the jet lag, but that obviously didn't happen. I'll try to go back to sleep in a little while and hopefully make it to a more decent hour. I set my alarm for 9:30 and really thought I was going to need it. Stupid brain!

Well, I took a few pics of my room, but I think I'm just going to wait and post them with the pics of town that I'll take tomorrow. So until then. Good night (hopefully).

Going Away Party

Just a little before I leave update for anyone that's already stalking me :) On Saturday my best friend Sara threw me a going away party. It was a murder mystery party and everyone had to come in costume as their assigned character. Over the course of the evening many details came out and one of the partygoers was murdered. We then had to figure out who the murderer was and why they did it. It was a great time. So a big thanks to Sara and to everyone who came. It was great seeing you all before I left and it was really fun to get to play another murder mystery. I do believe that they are my favorite kind of party.

Test

Just making sure this still works and I can still add new posts. I'll be putting up a new one when I get to England on Sept 19. Hopefully. I may be really tired and won't get it up until the next day, but somewhere around then. Talk to you soon.