Under Stars and Over Seas: Rainy Days and Castle Walls

I had plans to go to the Bodleian library today, but it's been raining since this morning, so I made the executive decision to not walk thirty minutes in the pouring rain and go tomorrow instead. Which just means I'll be finishing up my other papers in an attempt to stay productive.

It's been a mixed week in terms of productivity; I've gotten two papers mostly finished but had a few social outings as well. Saturday was a day trip to Warwick Castle, known as one of the finest medieval castles in all of England, due to its incredible preservation. The castle played a big role during the War of Roses when the Duke of York, King Edward, was held captive there.

The castle itself is beautiful, and we were able to explore all of the grounds, the interior rooms, and climb around the walls. There were these gigantic, beautiful eagles there, and a peacock garden where the namesakes of the place just kind of wandered around avoiding small children. There was also a trebuchet that we got to see launch a ball of fire several hundred feet (which honestly wasn't as cool as I was hoping it would be, but still a nice way to spend Valentine's day).

The interior of the castle wasn't as cool as Hampton Court Palace, but that may have just been because the rooms all had wax figures of maids and butlers in them that looked six kinds of creepy. I was walking through one of the rooms with a lot of figures when one of the workers suddenly walked in and scared me so badly I screamed and hit my roommate beside me. The worker felt bad, but everyone else laughed so I figured nobody minded too much.

I think my favorite part of the castle was getting to walk along the wall and look out over the town and grounds of the castle. I've always thought castles were really cool, but before my trip here I'd never really gotten to see any, so to be here and literally climbing the walls of castles built in the 900's has been incredible.

The town outside the castle walls was actually kind of adorable. It had a very impressive church called the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, which had this beautiful organ and the most colorful stained glass windows I've seen here. I was especially excited to see Green Man carvings there, which was something I'd hoped to run into at some point. For those of you who don't know, the Green Man is a little bit like the Bigfoot of England. Kind of. He's a figure that represents humanity's connection to nature, and is carved to look like a man-shaped figure growing leaves. He's not like a harmonious woodland creature though, he's more of a reminder that nature is more powerful than man and that we are dependent on it for our survival.

We stopped at a little tea shop in town as well, and I tried a pot of peppermint tea. It wasn't bad, which surprised me, and I felt very fancy with my own little teapot and tray.

A couple of days before the Warwick trip, a group of us study abroad students all went out to celebrate one of my roommates' birthdays. We went to an Irish pub and had a wonderful time laughing and eating. I tried bangers and mash and found it to be really good, and then topped off the visit with an enormous ice cream sundae. It was a nice break from writing papers, and it was really good to have a night to eat out instead of butchering my way through making dinner (though I have gotten better at making unimaginative meals like pasta and burritos).

The weather hasn't been too bad lately, but it hasn't snowed since last week. I've been told by multiple people that February is the month of snow, but halfway through has yielded only one snowy night and shown that we probably won't get much snow this year. Today was the first day of rain in a while, and we'd all gotten quite comfortable with the cool but dry weather, so all the study abroad kids are hunched inside writing papers and glaring at the water falling from the sky.

It's been in the 80's back home, so I'm a little envious of the sunshine, but I'm really enjoying my time here, so I figure I can put up with clouds for this.

I'll hurry and post this while the internet is working, so good evening Oxford and good morning California!

Sam