The Great European Adventure Part II-Spain!

Unbelievable! It’s been over a month since I was in Barcelona! Time flies when I have very few obligations. Of course, it also flies when I have several obligations… Anyways, the point is: Time flies. Now, it’s probably a bit overdue that I sit down and write about Barcelona.

The Blathering of a Tourist

It really is an incredible city! It was friendly, clean, scenic, varied, eclectic, interesting and safe-well, when there weren’t any riots going on… The whole city had an intoxicating (for me, at least) vibe about it. It felt like it was a city for cultured skaters-maybe that sounds stupid, I don’t really know how else to put it. It felt like the city respected the skaters and the skaters respected the city. All over there were plazas that were perfectly paved for skateboarding, and there were lots of ideal ledges around that seemed to serve no purpose besides to cordially invite skaters to grind and stall on their lovely, smooth surfaces. So, of course the city’s skateboarders took full advantage of this, but they never skated on or defaced anything that they shouldn’t have.

Barcelona was also home to some of the best graffiti I’ve ever seen in real life! Once again, the city seemed to have areas set aside specifically designated for graffiti artists who took full advantage the spots they were given. The Barrio Gotico area of the city was like a jumble of tall brick buildings squashed together in an unorganized labyrinth of stone and street art. Again, it may sound ugly and stupid, but it was incredible!

And of course there was Antoni Gaudi and his world renown flavor of architecture. Gaudi is an architect that has designed several of the buildings throughout the city from random apartments to La Sagrada Familia and he has basically left an indelible mark on the city’s image around the world. Although his work is quite polarizing because it is a bit avante garde, it’s undeniably interesting to look at and really does give the city its own atmosphere and a cool sense of cohesion .

Of course, despite Gaudi’s work being the most renown architecture, it’s not like Barcelona was a one note city. There was plenty of architectural variety. In fact, variety was one of the coolest things about the city-the place had everything! Art museums, history museums, magic fountains, incredible parks, Olympic stadiums, the beach and possibly the greatest store ever, in the history of the world-Norma’s Comics! Seriously, this place was Nerdvana!

Vaga General M29-Aka, the riot

Now, before I get into the riot I think some pre-story is at hand. The day before the riot when I was walking around the Barrio Gotico, I had seen a number of crappy graffiti tags (which were basically the only non-impressive graffiti) that said “Vaga General M29.” I wasn’t exactly sure what this meant so I kind of ignored it, except that in other parts of the city, on random posts and stuff there were posters that said the same thing, but also translated it to say “General Protest March 29.” (I brought one home as a riot souvenir.) I still didn’t give it much thought, as I assumed it was just a bunch of whiny people getting together to whine without considering any legitimate mechanism for social change regarding the thing that causes them to whine.

Well. The next day I was walking around the city when I started talking to a guy who complimented my shirt. As he was leaving though, he turned back and warned me that there was a protest happening today at 6 at Catalunes Plaza but there was talk that it was going to get violent and that I should stay away from that area at that time. So I thanked him and we parted ways. Soooo, then I spent all day long I was wondering whether or not I should check it out.

I eventually decided to go for it, because I was way too curious to not. When I went, it was simply just a bunch of people with different signs and stuff. After a while though, some people started setting off fireworks in the middle of the crowded square… I have no idea why, and they weren’t showing a lot of regard for keeping the fireworks straight. At this point, there weren’t even any police that I could see. Then I started to see a bunch of smoke coming from several yards away, so I started to jostle my way through the crowd to see what it was. At this point there were helicopters flying overhead but still no police on the ground. On my way over, I started hearing loud crashes that weren’t from the fireworks. When I got there I saw that there was a big pile of pitch or gas or something in the middle of the street that people had lit on fire. Then someone threw something else into the fire and it got even bigger. There was another loud crash, when suddenly the entire crowd just started running and screaming! I snapped a pic of the fire and began running for my life with them. Eventually, I turned to see that there were riot police behind the crowd and I noticed one guy running next to me that was holding crumpled beer cans and he was glancing behind also. So I’m pretty sure he was going to try to throw them at the police if they got too close. Finally, the crowd began to run in separate directions and eventually I found that a large group of the mob began reforming in a new location when the police weren’t in sight anymore. This is where I made my long overdue exit and jostled my way out of there and went back to my hostel for the night.

The next day I went back to where the riot had taken place. It was crazy; everywhere else in the city you would have had no idea that anything unpleasant had ever happened there. However, when I got  there, there was a huge burn mark on the street where the fire had been set, and almost all the buildings for about two or three blocks down the main street had their windows smashed. And at the very end, where all indications of a riot seemed to cut off, was a Starbucks that had been set on fire!

When I realized how bad it had gotten, I went to an internet cafe’ to email my parents-just in case they had heard about it. Of course, I was hoping they hadn’t, so that they wouldn’t be worried and waiting for an email, but lo and behold they saw it on the U.S. news and had already emailed me about it. Of course, I turned out fine, but I looked online while I was at the cafe’ and it turns out a few people had been injured pretty badly, but nothing severe and no one was killed-thank God!

But despite all that-as I’m sure it’s not a common occurrence; Barcelona is a wonderful city and I highly recommend it to anyone planning to travel Europe. Also, Spring might be the perfect time to go because the parks are incredible when the flowers are budding and the weather is absolutely perfect!

And with that I take my leave of blog writing for now.

Adios

The Great European Adventure Part I-France

Weeeeelll… Wow. Sorry, it’s been awhile since I blogged last. I was just; you know traveling throughoutEuropeand stuff. So, for those who don’t know; the Spring Break here in England is a month long…ONE FULL MONTH! This is simultaneously amazing and really ridiculous. It gave me the month of a lifetime, but seriously, people are paying for an education here. Buuuuut on the other hand, it did give me a totally unbelievable opportunity to explore Europe!!!

I got a 21 day Eurail pass which lets you travel throughout 23 countries in Europe as much as you like during your allotted travel days. It also wasn’t THAT expensive, considering how much you would pay for all the train travel I did if I didn’t have the pass. However, if you’re planning to travel throughout Europe it isn’t necessarily the best option to go with because there are a lot of variables that may make flying, train travel without a Eurail pass, or even different versions of the Eurail pass cheaper options. Feel free to ask me for more details if you have any questions.

Oh yeah, but what I was saying before; I was traveling Europe for technically 24 days, since I didn’t activate the Eurail pass at the very beginning of the journey. I started in Paris, and then I went to Nice, France. From Nice I went to Carcassonne, France. I went from Carcassonne to Barcelona. After Barcelona I worked my way up to Florence and then went from Florence to Pisa to Rome! After Rome I worked my way all the way back to Paris for the night before taking a ferry back to Brighton.

Also, since some trains weren’t accessible with my Eurail pass, I had to do get to all my final destinations through a complex maze of other cities. So in all I ended up in Paris, Nice, Cannes, Marsailles, Avignon, Montpeiller, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Latour de Carol, Barcelona, Lyon, Geneva (unfortunately, I didn’t get to see any of it besides the train station), Chambery, Modane, Torino, Milan, Ventimiglia, Rouen and Dieppe!

Seriously, I don’t know how I can write about everything in a blog-so… I don’t know, I’ll just get started and go chronologically, I guess.

Paris:

            So, although I really enjoyed the opportunity to go toParis, surprisingly it was probably my least favorite spot that I actually spent a good amount of time in. However, I think a good part of that was because of the location where my hostel was. It was…shady, to say the least. At all times, day or night the place was surrounded by a colorful mixture of hobos, drunkards and other vagabonds and whenever I entered or left the place I was greeted with a hearty chorus of unintelligible shouts that may or may not have been fully articulated French words; although I’m inclined to think they weren’t.

The other problem about Paris was the overwhelming number and aggressiveness of all the grifters and crappy-souvenir sellers…EVERYWHERE. I’m gonna guess that every tourist in the city was followed by their own personal entourage of three grifters per tourist.

But on a more positive note, it really is a cool place! I went to basically all the major spots and a lot of other random places throughout the city. My favorite places were Montemarte, Notre Dame, Musee’ Dorsay, the Montmarte Cemetary and the Pere Lachaise Cemetary.

Montmarte had an incredible, artistic vibe that was simply wonderful! There was also a small exhibit on Salvador Dali which was awesome! It had some of his actual finished pieces, but actually the coolest thing about it was the fact that it had a lot of his sketches and doodles and stuff, so you kind of got to observe his creative process in a way-which was really inspiring for me. He had also done a number of illustrated Bible’s as well which were featured. That was really cool too, because I really wasn’t aware of just how much influence the Bible had had on him; even though so many of his works feature subtle religious themes and some are clearly Christian.

Notre Dame was pretty much just beyond words. Actually, the surprising thing though was that the inside was actually pretty creepy.

Musee’ Dorsay was fantastic! If you only have money/time for one gallery in Paris I would recommend Musee Dorsay. (Unless you are an avid Dali enthusiast, in which case go to the Dali exhibit.) If you’re into art you will get a much better variety than the Louvre and if you’re not into art you have a better chance of leaving the gallery as someone who is into art than if you’d went to the Louvre. The Louvre is predominately pre-Renaissance sculptures and Renaissance paintings. So yes, it features works by some of the most influential and technically proficient artists ever, but because of the lack of variety it doesn’t offer quite as much as Musee Dorsay which has impressive exhibits on several eras of art history. Unfortunately, I’m mostly a Surrealism kind of guy, and there wasn’t much in that era but it did have lots of the pre-cursor works to Dadaism and Surrealism, so it was cool to see the influences. Also, I didn’t go to the Orangerie, however I heard from a number of people that it wasn’t as good as Musee Dorsay. Some people preferred it to the Louvre though. Of course I couldn’t actually leave Paris without having gone to the Louvre, right?

The cemeteries were really cool too. So many of the monuments were like little houses and they were all arranged like cities. Also, the vast majority of them were really unique and really, really well designed and crafted.

Nice:

After Paris, I went to Nice but only for one day. I’m so glad I got to be here during the Spring! This place was really all about the Chateau which was full of flowers and trees that were in bloom. Of course, there was a lot more than just flowers on the Chateau; there was an excavation site and a waterfall, a park and playground, a bit of a hiking trail and plenty of really pretty little spots scattered around randomly. The places outside of the Chateau had their own charm as well though. There was a Russian Orthodox Cathedral which really stood out architecturally, especially since it was the only bit of Russian architecture that I saw at all on my journey. There is also a permanent Carnival which is kind of kitschy and fun. It’s really a great place for a relaxing vacation, as opposed to a sightseeing vacation.

Carcassonne:

            Carcassonne was quite simply; pure awesome!!! It was essentially a city within a city. The official city of Carcassonne was actually kind of a trashy dump-but when you went up to the walled city you were totally transported back to the Middle Ages! It was a full city on a huge hill within two separate walls with a third set of walls inside the city surrounding a moat and castle! So, basically I was living my childhood dream. The hostel I stayed at was amazing too because it was right smack inside the walled city. I started sightseeing really early in the day so there were almost no people about; which was incredible because not only did it heighten the historical feel of the city but it let me run around and pretend to shoot arrows over the battlements and stuff… I did in fact do a bit of that and got caught at one point. BUT I REGRET NOTHING!

I also just realized that I haven’t really shared any stories yet. But actually, most of the stories fromPariswere kind of unpleasant and really, I didn’t talk to anyone in Nice, but God definitely had a hand over me in Carcassonne.

When I arrived in the actual, residential city in the evening all I had with me was a printed page from Google maps that didn’t have many visible street names. However, the route to my hostel was completely straightforward…I mean, really, really obviously straightforward… But not for me, apparently… Granted, I took a bit of a detour at one point but I still have absolutely NO clue whatsoever how I ended up where I did, which…I still don’t know where exactly that was. But by the time it was dark I was walking along a river nearing a forest… several miles from the street I had detoured from. Weeelll, eventually I found a lady and she spoke a bit of English and I showed her the map and asked where I needed to go but she had no idea. The next guy I asked hardly spoke any English at all but he seemed to know how to get me on the right track. Except when he was explaining the directions he literally said “left” every time he pointed right, and “right” every time he pointed left. And there were lots of lefts and rights that he was trying to tell me about. Fortunately, I think he could tell from the look on my face that I had absolutely no idea where he was telling me to go, so he indicated that I should follow him. Sooo, at first I assumed that he wasn’t planning on leading me deep into the woods to murder me. After about an hour I began to reconsider that thought though. Fortunately, eventually we stopped and he started giving me a bunch of “lefts” and “rights” again before leaving me.

So, yeah, at least he didn’t murder me. But since I still had no idea where to go I was just about as stranded as before. Fortunately, there was a lady right where he left me, so I asked her if she knew where to go. She actually spoke really good English and tried to describe it to me, but as she was talking she decided it was too hard to explain and instead offered to drive me straight to the castle! It was pretty late/early when we arrived at the castle I knew I still had to find the actual hostel, but I knew God had still blessed me tremendously by using the potential murderer to lead me straight to that lady who brought me where I needed to be. Then as I said goodbye, thanked her and left, I ran into a couple that was just leaving the city and I asked them if they knew where the hostel was, and they ended up walking me straight to the hostel door! So seriously, if God hadn’t used those people I would still be wandering around trying to follow the river in Carcassonne right now. Or I would be eaten by bears… Or I would have died some other horrible, gruesome death that could easily be avoided if I had any semblance of wilderness survival skills.

Buuut anyways, this has been a pretty long blog post… and I even think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of condensing myself. So I’ll probably leave this as just a post on France, and then make a separate post for Barcelona, and another for Italy.

Au Revoir!

P.S. I apologize for the overabundance of run-on sentences. I could fix them…But I didn’t. Sorry.

So much awesome!

Hands-Down Best Experience in England so far

Ok, although this entire experience in England has been incredible, I’ve definitely been getting anxious to be involved in some kind of ministry here for a long time now. Unfortunately, there are really not that many ministries to get involved in and even fewer that deal with the essential matter of evangelizing. However, this past Tuesday there was an event called Dial-A-Pancake hosted by the University of Sussex Christian Unionwhich allowed students on campus to text a question about God along with a pancake topping to the Christian Union and they would send someone off with a pancake and the answer to meet them wherever they chose. I had been super excited about this event from the moment I heard about it, up until Tuesday evening when it was actually about time to go prepare for it. I had had a pretty long day and just wanted to go home and kill the evening playing Pokemon or something but I forced myself to go-and it was easily the best experience I’ve had in England so far!

I think that nearly every person I got to talk to; and in fact the vast majority of people that anyone talked to that evening, had some legitimate interest in the question they asked. I think that many people got misconceptions cleared up and questions answered that night and it was an incredible blessing to have been a part of it.

At one point I was with another girl and we were talking to a group of three students. At the very beginning, it seemed that only one of them really wanted to talk with us. The other two kept smirking at each other in the background; however the first boy kept asking fantastic questions. Over the course of a few hours we had covered all of the standard skeptic questions and misconceptions and managed to get into some very deep apologetics and theology. Near the end, the other two were enraptured in the conversation as well.

It was an incredibly renewing experience for me, and I know that God used many of the other members of the CU to share His word to the campus.

Bath and Stonehenge

This past Saturday was also awesome. I went to Bath and Stonehenge on the same day and loved it. Some people had warned me that I might be a bit under whelmed at Stonehenge; saying that you look at it once… and then you’re not quite sure what to do after that. However, I thought that it was actually quite incredible and would recommend that anyone traveling England should make a point to see it.

The infatuation with Stonehenge comes from the fact that due to the massive size of the stones and how long they have been there (since before the pyramids) no one is completely sure how they were arranged. When you visit, you are not allowed to go very close; however this really enhances the overwhelming sense of mystery and beautiful aura of solitude surrounding the stones.

After Stonehenge we went to the nearby city ofBath. The entire trip from Stonehenge to Bath was a continuous display of lovely scenery that built up excitement forBathitself and the city did not disappoint.

Per usual, it’s difficult to adequately describe the beauty of the scene without making this a tedious read, but needless to say it was a wonder to behold. It is also always fascinating to ponder the great human achievements of other people. In this case not only did the architecture blow my mind, but also the Roman’s innovative engineering techniques. I was left with the inspirational reminder that no matter how much I know, or how good I am at something-there’s a billion people that know it and can do it better than me. The beauty in that is that I can be thankful that it wasn’t up to me to engineer a hot running water system during the Roman Empire.

London Super Comic Convention

To top off a fantastic week I got to go to London again on Sunday for the first ever London Super Comic Convention! I had been building up my excitement for this for awhile but when I first arrived, my bubble of childish glee simply deflated. However, it ended up being an incredible experience nonetheless.

It was happening at the same time as the Zumba Instructors Conference and to my dismay there were more people dressed up in ridiculous jazzercising outfits than people dressed up in ridiculous super-hero outfits. It was a huge blow to may faith in humanity to realize that there were more people here who were concerned about entertaining fitness routines than COMIC BOOKS! By the way, that was in fact sarcasm, however; I don’t want to trivialize comics with my sarcasm. After all, they do provide relevant critical commentary on society and are a renewable well of literary and artistic creativity. But anyways…

It was also surprisingly small and there were no official exhibits by Marvel, DC or even Dark Horse. This meant that the majority of booths consisted of individual sellers and a handful of independent publishers. Although it was great browsing the collections of classic comics and talking with the independent publishers I knew that I could never afford anything there and most of the independent publishers would probably fail in a few years.

BUT enough negativity, because the thing that made it incredible was the panel of writers and artists and due to how small it was, you could actually chat with each of them for a bit if you wanted to! Perhaps the most interesting person I talked to (for most of you) was David Lloyd. He was the artist that created V for Vendetta with Alan Moore and the man that designed the iconic Guy Fawkes mask. For those that don’t know, the Guy Fawkes mask is the mask that the character V wears that is currently being used as a sign of protest all over the world. It is the mask worn by Anonymous, many Occupy protesters and various other groups of revolutionaries. I asked him how he feels about the usage of the mask and he is actually quite approving of the way it is being used. Even though some people may be using it without fully understanding the character (in fact, I’d bet that most of the protestors wearing the mask have never read V for Vendetta), he knows that in any piece of art, it is up to the viewer to interpret their own meaning. He also sketched a picture of V for me!

Now verily as I veer from my verbose, vainglorious and vaunting verbiage I valiantly and votively implore each of you with the volition to vouchsafe my diligent request to once again view V for Vendetta to vivify your lives in very valuable recollection of the humble vaudevillian veteran, V.

I THINK that sentence is technically correct. Feel free to correct me.

Football in England…you know, the non-Soccer kind of football.

Well, I recently got a heavy dose of homesickness. This February 5^th I realized how much I missed being in Indy for the Super Bowl. That is until 11:30 p.m. my time when the game started, then I was pretty much too enraptured in the Giants’ march victory to be thinking about anything else. One thing that I couldn’t help but notice though, was the commercial breaks. While Americans were treated to the delightful, multi million dollar battle between companies grasping for our attention, the UK was treated to a charming sit down between an unenthusiastic BBC host and the two most incredibly random NFL insiders they could find. During the breaks, Danny Amendola (Wide receive for the Rams) and some paper journalist from somewhere would explain what happened during each of the previous plays to the BBC host. It was actually really entertaining to hear him try to explain this game because; honestly some REALLY uncommon things happened during the game. This gave them the chance to delve into the deepest recesses of the NFL rulebook and seemed to confuse the host to no end, and keep me in my euphoric state of anti-Patriots schadenfreude as I got to watch each play over and over again.

On another happy note, I got to visit Stratford-Upon-Avon recently. This is the birthplace, burial place and long-time performing place of William Shakespeare. Although I certainly could never call myself a devoted Shakespearean, I can’t deny his impact on literature (and storytelling as a whole) so it was actually quite fascinating to be there. Also, while I was there the first big snowfall I think I’ve seen this winter arrived. It was really fun because I was with a girl from Brazil who was seeing snow for the first time. I still think I might have been more excited than her, though. Another awesome part of the trip was when we got to watch a couple of actors that were performing a scene from Hamlet outside. (In the snow!) When they were finished, they asked if anyone had a specific scene, from ANY Shakespeare play they wanted to see, so one guy asked for Act 1 Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet. If you’re familiar with the scene, you’ll know it was pretty funny. Then I wanted to take them up on their bet and I tried to think of the most random scene so I asked them for Act 2 Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then one guy was like “Well, I’ve never done anything from that one before, but I think I could pull it off.” And he did! Almost flawlessly! As soon as it was over I realized that The Taming of the Shrew or The Two Gentlemen of Verona would have been waaaay more random, but I didn’t make them do anymore.

And on an unrelated note; this semester I’m taking a documentary video class and my group and I have recently begun to officially start working on our final project. After ten million concepts were tossed around, we finally decided to focus on a racism and anti-immigration sentiment inBrighton. These sentiments aren’t typical though, in fact the reputation ofBrightonis that it is a very open-minded and diverse place. However, there were actually three separate attacks on Arab immigrants in the general region in the past few months and we thought it provided an interesting juxtaposition of perception versus reality (albeit the reality of only a small part of the population.) However, this got me thinking about domestic violence in the UK and US as a whole, and I realized that it seems like the UK is way less violent than the US. After some statistic checking it looks like the US is indeed way more violent than the UK, so I began trying to figure out why this might be. My first reaction was that it had something to do with the collapse of the family structure in the US, as made evident by the ridiculously high divorce rates. However after comparing it I realized the UK actually has very similar statistics in terms of number of divorces per 1,000 married people. My next inclination is that English folk don’t seem to have the same level of infatuation with violence that Americans have. I suppose rather than delving into an endless analysis of further possible reasons, I’ll just leave it as a thought for those that like to think about it.

Something else I learned this week that was pretty neat, is that Matt Redman goes to St. Peter’s church in Brighton. Everything was going quite typically this past Sunday until after the worship they introduced the speaker-Matt Redman. And sure enough, it was the real life, bona fide Matt Redman in the flesh. I talked with some people about it, and apparently he’s a regular member at St.Peter’s who contributes from time to time with the worship and the services. The service was about the magnitude of God’s power and love and was accompanied by a series of astronomy photographs of the galaxy, stars, nebula, etc. to show the vastness of His creation. On a number of occasions he would show these slides and then give some random fun facts about the subject. It was relevant to me because I’m taking a Stars and Galaxies class this semester. I realized, though that I was kind of hoping and expecting the class to be basically the same thing-showing pictures and giving fun facts; instead I have to deal with finding the main sequence lifetime of stars given only the luminosity! I suppose that’s a first world problem. And I suppose, if my troubles come from the fact that I’m receiving secondary education where millions can’t, I’d say I can just suck it up and figure out the lifetimes of those darned stars.  With that thought, I bid you adieu.

So…How does this work?

Before I begin, I give the following disclosure: As I was writing this blog, I spent a lot of time focusing on things I was trying to learn about England and its culture. Eventually, I realized that my blog had started to morph into a research paper. At that point I realized that an apology may be necessary to some of you who didn’t exactly come to my blog to read a research paper-but I didn’t feel like rewriting/editing it. Hopefully this will be interesting for you.

Well, the more I begin the feel accustomed to British life, I think the less I understand about it. I began making a concerted effort to find out how the Royal Family works, how Dukes and Duchesses are appointed, etc. It’s not going so well. I know that Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen. She’s married to Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip is…the Queen’s third cousin and he was the prince of Greeceand Denmark. He had to renounce those titles…and switch religions to marry her, and now he is His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Also, for his 90^th birthday the Queen made him Lord High Admiral because…she can? Well, I sort of have that figured out. Now…their children are Philip Prince of Wales, Ann the Princess Royal, Prince Andrew Duke of York, and Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex. Prince Philip married Princess Diana, of tabloid fame, and then he married Camilla Duchess of Cornwall who is also the Duchess of Rothesay, the Countess of Chester and the Baroness of Renfrew and…the Colonel-in-Chief of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada… and I think this is where I must admit I’m officially lost. It’s certainly interesting, though-confusing, but interesting.

And on the matter of royalty, I went to Windsor Castle recently, and just as most things here have been, it was really incredible! It did however, get me thinking more about a topic that I had always sort of wondered about, but never been too invested in; how English citizens feel about the current monarchy. I began asking around and trying to do a bit of research on who funds the monarchy and how much it costs, and how that is perceived by citizens.

I would say that generally the people I asked seemed to be quite neutral on the subject. Of course, then I went to internet forums-where neutrality doesn’t exist-and got a bit more passionate opinions. On the one hand many people think that the Royal family alone draws in enough tourism that they basically pay for themselves and the taxes that fund the Queen and her expenses are not significant enough and easily worth it for the value of tradition and culture. On the other hand, many people say that the costs aren’t worth it and they are in fact much higher than people are aware because many of their publicly funded expenses don’t get released. They also rebut the tourism claim by saying that tourism exists for the history, culture and architecture. Even if the Royal family dissolved, the state would still maintain the history and culture of the country. They cite Paris as an example, where the surplus generated by tourism goes back to the state fully, without the additional expenses of a monarch.

However, the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011 may change the circumstances of the debate. With this act, the civil list will no longer pay for the Queen-thus no actual taxpayer money goes to the Royal Family. Instead, they will receive 15% of the Crown Estate’s surplus. The Crown Estate is essentially a company owned by the government that owns a significant amount of land, and tourism spots in England. The debate will likely dim down after the passage of this act; however, it will likely not die out.

And just now, I realized that it sounds like I’m writing a research paper. I’m sorry. I did actually do other things this week. I went to St. Peter’s Church in Brighton the last couple Sundays. It has a pretty big student population which was refreshing to see and the worship was almost fascinating. It is a beautiful old Cathedral-I still can’t believe how awesome English architects were/are-but the worship is contemporary. The worship team was incredible, and the lighting and reflections of the sound made it an incredible experience. The service wasn’t quite as deep or significant as I prefer, but it may be geared towards people who haven’t spent as much time studying the Bible as myself.

Also, it’s maybe possible that I ate potentially the best sausages on the south coast ofEngland…maybe. There’s a place nearby where I live that advertises “Probably the best sausages on the south coast!” So, I obviously had to take them up on that sooner or later. Well, after ordering, I instinctively doused it in their hot sauce, forgetting that there is in fact, such a thing as too-hot hot sauce. Well, anyways, they may be the best sausages on the south coast, I don’t know. I would say take them at their word, because after all, why would an advertisement embellish the truth?

Oh, you know…just London and Oxford and stuff.

Has it been awhile since I’ve posted? I would say no, except that so much has happened it feels like too much to write about again. Oh well, suffice to say I’ve been to Stanmer House, Falmer Village, London and Oxford. That’s all you need to know…

Ok, I’m too excited to leave it at that, so elaboration is inevitable. A couple Wednesdays ago, I went with a group of other students to walk around the outskirts of the University. We ended up going into Stanmer Village, which is not so much a village as it is one house, one church and some farmland. However the fantastic thing about it is that Stanmer House is a beautifully preserved mansion that also acts as a café and restaurant! You can walk around the house and look at the preserved furniture and library, and then you can sit down in the dining hall, or by any of the couches, chairs and coffee tables throughout the house, and order as you lounge near a 17^th Century (I think?) fireplace. And indeed, we ordered while lounging by the fireplace.

The next day we went into Falmer village. This seemed a bit more befitting of the name “village” since it consisted of more than two buildings. None of the buildings were quite as delightful as Stanmer House, but there were certain spots that had an uncanny ability to transport you back to the 17^th Century (I’m PRETTY sure I’ve got the century right. No one really said.)

Then came LONDON! I went on a couch with the University’s International program and so I was fortunate to see the majority of the city from the coach. Of course, I was flabbergasted, it was absolutely incredible and already I’m trying to figure out when I can go again. After the coach tour, we were dropped off nearPiccadilly Circusand given about four and a half hours on our own to roam the city. So, some friends and I; being well aware that we couldn’t see the whole city in that time decided to narrow our journey to a couple of spots. We decided to spend a bit of time in Piccadilly Circus before moving on to Westminster Abbey and then capping the day off at the Tate-Modern. Well, a bit of time inPiccadilly Circus translated to about and hour and a half of waiting on me to take pictures of every little thing I saw-fortunately for my companions and unfortunately for me, that’s when my camera ran out of batteries. So we finally began to make progress, heading towards Westminster. Then we saw Hamley’s… Hamley’s isEurope’s largest toy store, and there we spent the ENTIRE rest of our day!

Hamley’s was whimsical and wonderful to say the least. When you walk in the door there are official bubble blowers that just stand around blowing bubbles at you. Easily one of the best career choices one can make…I even thought briefly about switching majors. Also, scattered around the store were professional toy demonstrators that would show you how to use a variety of nifty and uncommon toys. This was the kind of stuff that will give you about a day of sheer unadulterated joy before ending up in your garage for the rest of your life. Seeing as I am still a child, I obviously loved every bit of it! There was also a stuffed animal petting zoo which pretty much gave me a cuteness overload. Finally; there was the Harry Potter section! Since all of us were Harry Potter fanatics, I believe this is where we spent the single longest period of time on our first trip to London. There was a huge case that included replica wands of almost every character in the movie. There were also Time Turners, Marauders Maps, Chudley Cannon’s posters, House emblems and Wizard’s Chess sets!

My one complaint was that there weren’t more action figures…and that the whole place wasn’t twice as big. But all in all, despite not actually visiting any of the most significant historical sights, not going to any of the free museums and running out of camera batteries in the first hour, I’d say my first trip to London was a spectacular success!

During the course of the next week, I was for the most part limited by homework, but it did not go without its significant conversations or cultural observations… But I’ll save that for another post, since I am on a roll with the tourism theme today.

Speaking of today, I just arrived home from Oxford! Just yesterday I was wondering if London was the coolest city in the world and today I’m wondering if Oxford is the coolest city in the world. I suppose it will only be a matter of time before both of those opinions change, but regardless, they are both amazing!

Fortunately I was able to see much more on this trip including Christ Church, St. Mary’s, Edmond Halley’s old house, Radcliffe Camera, some of the spots where Harry Potter was filmed and most of the colleges. I was absolutely blown away by the buildings, and the beauty of the city. And although I hate the idea of being star-struck, I was still simply taken aback by the sheer amount of literary and scientific genius that inhabited the school at one point or another. Of course, the greatest among them being Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. As a Lord of the Rings fanatic who appreciates Narnia and loves C.S. Lewis’ theology and apologetics perhaps my main goal for the evening was to make it to “The Eagle and the Child”. This is the pub where Tolkien, Lewis and several friends met on a weekly basis to discuss their writings and theology. However, since it wasn’t so high on everyone else’s priority list we didn’t make it there.

Anyways, it’s been a great past week and a half and it has revealed to me a very significant truth about myself; I’m the most obvious tourist alive.

Beginning in Brighton

Well get ready because here comes my next post. It’s been a few days now, and to be honest far too much has happened for you to care to listen to each tidbit. But needless to say, I feel like I’m getting acclimated to living in England! I don’t want to skimp out on all the details though, so I suppose I’ll try to choose highlights.

There were a couple of orientation events for the University on Friday (Jan. 6). It was absolutely nothing like BGR, and of course as a former BGR leader, my biased instincts will tell me that it wasn’t as good. But I’m thankful I was able to go and meet new people. If that Friday were an exclusive indicator of British life, it would seem that everyone in England is American. The vast majority of people I met were from the U.S. one girl was from Chile, though and one from Canada. So…that’s three countries represented. Of course, since then I’ve managed to meet some actual English people!

On Saturday I went into Brighton on my own for the first time to wander around, get lost and pray to God that I would manage to get back home OK. Fortunately it really wasn’t as terrible as my typically horrible sense of direction led me to imagine it would be. Actually, it was a fantastic day! So if I had to choose one highlight…. well obviously the highlight any day always involves Bob Dylan or Reggae and the highlight of this day involved both. There were a number of street performers in Brighton and my favorite were these two hippies that were playing a reggae version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” with a steel drum, ukulele and harmonica!!! I gave them some money and hung around to listen to the end of the song and when they were finished we started talking. Aside from the awesome hippie-ness of them, they were actually quite fascinating. Apparently one of them is Mark Stewart! That’s right…THE Mark Stewart! OK… I didn’t know who Mark Stewart was and I don’t expect you to either. However, after he told me a bunch of fun, hippie stuff about how we’re all family and all we need is love he told me that he used to be a stuntman and was actually Christopher Reeves’ stunt double for Superman 3 and 4. Yeah, I know that isn’t 1 or 2…but at least it wasn’t Superman Returns. I looked him up on imdb afterwords, and apparently he was also Guard #4 in Tron as well as a few other things. Needless to say,  I thought they were awesome and we talked for quite a bit before this other really awkward guy joined the conversation. It was funny, because when the other guy started talking I could see the hippies starting to get squeamish because the conversation was getting too uncomfortable. Of course, maybe they got squeamish because of me, but I like to tell myself it was the other guy.

Sunday was even more incredible. I started off going to the only church by campus. The American stereotype is that so many people in England don’t have a relationship with Christ, and that most of the churches around are more postmodern than Biblical and when I walked in that was my immediate impression. There were about ten people and the service was very multi-denominational, which IMPLIED postmodernism, but after talking with the pastor for a bit I learned quickly that he had a strong relationship with Christ and understood the Gospel clearly. I met with him again today for coffee and we had a nice, long discussion about theology! He said today that God had called him to evangelize through services that can’t be rooted to a specific denomination. But anyways…back to Sunday! So after church I went with the other international students on a coach tour of Brighton, Devils Dyke and the Royal Pavilion!

Devils Dyke was really cool. We went-in the middle of January mind you, and there were hang gliders and para sailors everywhere. Oh and the Royal Pavilion…WOW! You may see some pictures of the outside, which are definitely cool, but the outside is absolutely nothing compared to the inside! I can’t do it justice through verbal explanation, but so you get an idea; there was a chandelier that was one TON of gold and Crystal in the shape of a giant dragon, with other dragons, snakes and lotus flowers surrounding it. Just to emphasize that a bit more clearly; ONE TON OF GOLD AND CRYSTAL! DRAGONS EVERYWHERE!!! And that was just one chandelier! The entire thing was extraordinarily ornate and elaborate. So if any political leader tried to do anything like it today I would be furious, but since it’s long past history I’m ok. Also, on the tour aside from learning the history of the Royal Pavilion and King George IV, we saw a bunch of caricature art of King George IV by some of the people that are considered revolutionaries in the early ages of comic strips like George Cruikshank! I think that I’m the only person that cared about that on the tour…probably.

Seeing as this has gone on long enough, I’ll close in saying I’ve been in the city a few more times now and each time has been good. Oh by the way! I started class today with Art History! I think it will be an excellent class and I’ll post again later. Bye!

1st Legit Post

Well, I arrived in London at about 6a.m. (England time) on January 4th which was crazy! I didn’t sleep at all on the plane because I was hoping to stay awake until that night and maybe avoid jetlag altogether; the only hitch was that the night before I only got about four hours of sleep. The arrival was obviously, pretty exciting and I think the excitement is the only thing that kept me going as long as I did. After going through international travel, customs and baggage claim, I needed to wait about three and a half hours before my coach left from London to Brighton so I tried to walk around the airport to keep me going…unfortunately my section of the airport was surprisingly droll. So eventually I sat to read. Then I woke up! I asked the nearest person what time it was because I have literally been without mobile communication, or a time telling device ever since I turned my phone off in Boston. She said it was 9:39, which I understood as 10:39, which was one minute before my coach left for Brighton. So immediately I crammed my cart somewhere, grabbed my stuff and hobbled off as quickly and awkwardly as possible to get to the bus station on time. I actually managed it, and even got onto the bus without realizing it was an hour earlier than I was meant to leave and they let me on without a word about that. Of course once on the bus, I ended up falling asleep again before we even managed to get past the airport, so I missed all of London at that time. However, I did wake up before we got to Brighton and I got to see it. It was AWESOME! It was like a cool American port town, like Fort Myers or Plymouth but way more of it! There is a palace there that was built for King George the IV which is awesome, and I know I’ll love exploring Brighton Pier!

Eventually, when I got dropped off, I asked someone for the time. When they told me it was about 11:30 I couldn’t believe how early I’d arrived, until my distinct recollection of the woman in London telling me the time was 9:39 began to make sense. I decided to wait another hour so as not to disrupt the time that I told my host family I would be there. I found out later, after meeting her that it would have been no trouble for me to just call her from a pay phone when I arrived.

Regardless, the waiting was still pretty exciting because I was near the Pier and I could see a lot of cool shops and stuff. Then I met my host family and learned, to my delight, that they are also really awesome! There is a mom, dad, two sons that are currently living there, and another exchange student who is a PHD student from India and has already been living with the Halvatzis family since the beginning of the school year. One of the sons will be leaving Monday, since he is headed to Uni in Knottingham. That’s how they say heading to school/college-heading to Uni-so that’s some cool new lingo I’ve learned already!

Today, Jeanie  the Indian PHD student took me to campus and helped me get some of my things taken care of before she had to leave, so that was really cool! The campus is really nice, but honestly I love Purdue too much for it to compare, but it is really small and I already think I can pretty much figure my way around.

So everything I’ve mentioned previously is mostly just circumstance and my daily activities as opposed to stories. Of course my first actual story of England has to do with the bathroom. While I was exploring on my own I stopped in a small bathroom in one of the buildings to relieve myself. After I’d done my duty (or should I say “doodie” hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa…hahahahahahahahaha…Ok enough) I began searching for the handle or button to flush (buttons are common in England) I couldn’t find either, so my best guess was a red, handled string hanging down near the toilet. Upon pulling the handle, the bathroom filled with flashing lights and blaring horns…and immediately afterwords I saw a handle to flush the toilet… After doing that successfully, and washing my hands I found a “reset” button for the alarm and tried repeatedly to turn it off. Eventually I gave up and had to go find the nearest person I could to save me. It was a girl working in a cafe located in the building so I explained the situation, and she actually went to the bathroom, went in, pressed the EXACT SAME RESET BUTTON THAT I TRIED LIKE 10 TIMES, and bid me farewell. So that was awkward…

Regardless, though, I’d still say it’s been great so far, and with that I bid you all good day.

First Post!

Well, here is my first ever blog post! So…Enjoy it.