Chester then back to Edinburgh

Last weekend, that of the 20th/21st, I went to Chester, England. It's a rather small town about an hour train-ride south of Liverpool. Chester is well known because it used to be a Roman fort way back when Romans settled in Britannia. I really enjoyed all of the architecture and the history of this place. We walked along the wall, went to the amphitheatre, saw a midsummer festival (a pagan tradition celebrating the summer equinox), and so on. There is a castle there but unfortunately it was closed down due to health reasons. Perhaps because of swine flu but honestly I don't know. Either way, it was a fun day trip. The rest of the weekend we just hung out. It was a nice break

This past weekend I went back to Edinburgh for what was suppose to be just one night. I will explain in a bit. We left Friday morning and had an awful train trip. We missed our first train, the earlier train, and so had to take a later one. Then all the way there, people keep reserving seats so we had to get up and move around constantly and a lot of the time we had to stand. Then we all had to switch to another train because the air conditioning unit in the driver's car was broken and so he couldn't stand the 70 degree heat. Hah! So we switched to another train and thankfully got to sit down the rest of the way. We got to Edinburgh, checked into our hostel (which was a nice place, conveniently located), and went to the museum. It's huge and has lots of history in it, including the stuffed remains of Dolly the first cloned sheep. From there we did a little shopping and then went on a graveyard tour. This particular tour takes you to a locked part of Greyfriar's Cemetery called the Covenanter's Prison.

Let me give you a quick history lesson. Way back when in, I believe, the 1700's, Reformation swept across Britain. The king wanted to establish a united church and so wanted to convert all of the churches to this one religion. However, there were many who resisted and gathered within Greyfriar's Church to sign a covenant, some say they signed in blood, to God that they would keep with their current religion until death. Well the king didn't like this very much so he rounded up all these guys and threw them in the prison there in graveyard. They were forced to live in this outside prison through the Scottish winter with little food and practically no shelter. Many, many died terrible deaths from starvation or just frostbite and hypothermia. That is why it is called the Covenanter's Prison.

The reason this place is locked it because there have been hundreds of reports of supernatural activity in the prison. People have claimed to feel nausea, feel ice cold on their bodies, bruises and scratched the appear as if out of nowhere, and over two hundred people have just been knocked out by something unseen. Most believe it is something supernatural. All of this started in 1998, although there have been reports of ghostly encounters in the area for a long time.

The man wholly responsible for the imprisonments and deaths of the Covenanters was a man by the name of "Bloody" George Mackenzie. He has a mausoleum about twenty yards away from the prison. In 1998, a homeless man broke into the mausoleum and disturbed the burial site. He broke into the coffins of Makenzie, his wife, and his daughter, looking for jewels or anything that he could sell. In doing so, he unleashed something. This something is believed not to be Makenzie himself but some poltergeist that was unleashed from the mausoleum and so it was named after the mausoleum and not the man, thus named the Makenzie Poltergeist. Said poltergeist is said to inhabit the Covenanter's Prison, along with hundreds of ghosts of tortured souls.

So we took a tour through their. Unfortunately, I did not experience anything. But I did have a sense of uneasiness throughout the whole tour, perhaps it was just psychological. I am definitely a skeptic but I have heard and seen enough to believe that there are many unexplainable, supernatural things out there.

After the tour we went back to our hostel and watched Michael Jackson videos all night. We had a TV in our room and the channel was playing them as a tribute to the king of pop.

The following day we went to the art museum, which was wonderful (lots of Monet, Degas, and some Van Gogh and Raphael, among others). I climbed the Scott Monument which is a very tall monument in tribute to Sir Walter Scott, one of the most famous literary persons to come out of Edinburgh. There are a total of 287 steps. I climbed 287 steps to the top and then 287 back down to the bottom. The stairs were narrow, as was the staircase itself. I have many pictures to post from this as well as all the other things I've done.

Then after some shopping, seeing St. Giles Cathedral, and lunch with our professor who was there this weekend as well, we went to the Rosslyn Chapel. If you have seen the movie or read the book the Da Vinci Code, this is the chapel that is featured at the end. It is a little different in real life but still wonderful to see. The family that owns it is part of the free masons, so that part is true. They also have ties to Knights Templar. Supposedly the holy grail or King Solomon's gold or the arc of the covenant or many other holy relics are buried beneath the church. It is possible in a way. Underneath is a tomb the same size as the church above. In this tomb is buried the past family members of those who owned the church as well as their families. In fact, they are not buried, they are set out on stone tables, decorated in their armor. This tomb has been sealed for 300 years and no one knows for sure what else is down there. The chapel is currently undergoing renovations to preserve it because it was not built well enough to last, however the architecture inside and out is wonderful. A five minute walk away is the ruins of the Rosslyn Castle. So we hiked down and took some pictures of it. Very nice.

Then we get back to Edinburgh, have dinner, and get to the train station to find out that we missed the last train back to Liverpool for the night by about twenty minutes. So we panicked for awhile, then we went all over town trying to get into hostels and even hotels but everything was booked, typical for a Saturday night in Edinburgh. Finally, we remembered we still had the number to the guy we couch surfed with the last time we were in Edinburgh so we called him up and begged him to let us stay. He did already have two couchsurfers staying but fortunately we got a room and had a safe, quite night in which to rest.

We made it back safe and sound in Liverpool and that is where I am writing this. All's well that ends well. So no worries.

A Brand New Day...

So this post will catch you up to today, June 10th.

A couple weekends ago I went on a fantastic tour called the "Fab Four Taxi Tour," which drove us around Liverpool showing us where the Beatles grew up. I have seen all of their childhood houses and even went inside Ringo's where a lady named Margaret bought, preserved, and keeps it.

I saw the schools they went to. The next day I went back to Liverpool's City Centre and saw The Cavern. It is now my dream to perform there, even though it's not the original Cavern (the old one was torn down and the pub was moved). I'm also a pretty big Beatles fan now. I'm learning several of their songs on guitar and my friends here have me play them quite often. I've had several sing-alongs and a couple very interesting musical experiences.

I've walked quite a bit around the city centre and been to several museums.


After that weekend, I went to London (this was last week). There I saw all the sights there are to see in the city. I went to the British Museum, Harrod's department store, and several other places. London Tower, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, you name it I saw it. I also went on a Jack the Ripper tour where our very animated guide, Toby, showed us the streets where Jack used to haunt and the locations where the bodies of his victims were found. A very interesting tour, I liked it quite a bit.

I ate in a nice Italian and and a nice French restaurant. Good food, good times. I also saw the musical The Lion King. It was phenomenal. The music and the stage performances were so well done. I am now a fan of theatre as well.

After three intense days in London (I walked and rode the tub (the subway, if you will) all over that damn town), I flew to Cork, Ireland with two companions. We couch-surfed here as well. I should mention that the last night in London we had an emergency couch-surfing experience because we could not get our hotel for a third night. It worked out well but we had to traverse a very ghetto part of London late at night and were given bad directions. But we made. The next day was just as bad trying to get to the airport from the train station but we finally made it.

So we went to Cork, Ireland and couch surfed there. Our host was a very nice guy, he picked us up from the airport and everything. That first day we hung out with Paul, that's his name, and met some of his friends. I played three straight hours of football (soccer to us Americans) with him and his friends, all of us being musicians. It was quite the experience.

The following day I went to Blarney Castle, kissed the Blarney stone, but most importantly traversed the gardens around the castle which were huge and magnificent. Then we went back to Cork and did a little bit of shopping.

The day after that I went to the Jameson Whiskey Distillery and took the tour. I got a free sample at the end and now love Irish Whiskey. Then I went back and just hung out. It was a very wonderful experience. The Irish countryside is beautiful.

This is my last week of classes. The next three weeks, Monday through Thursday, I will be in a British school teaching year 6 (which is like our 5th grade, so 10 and 11 year old kids). Then after that is a full week of travel. I'm excited and anxious about all of this.

I decided not to post pictures in this particular post because there are soooo many to choose from. Instead, all of my photos are posted on my flickr page, organized into sets (which you can browse on the right-hand side there).

http://www.flickr.com/wjclements

Cardiff Days 2 and 3

This particular day we had all planned out. We took a waterbus from the bay area to the city centre where we took a tour of Cardiff Castle. From there we had lunch at McDonald's then walked to the Cardiff Museum. Afterwards we did a bit of shopping--or rather the girls went shopping and I kind of sat around--then we headed back to the bay area for dinner at Eddie's American Diner.

Then we parted ways for the night again.

The following morning we went bowling, one of our group members was adamant about that, and we walked to the train station and left.



Waterbus after arriving at the city centre.



Cardiff Castle Clock Tower



Cardiff Castle Living Quarters



At McDonald's for lunch



This is actually a guy and not a statue. Street performers like this are really interesting. You toss a coin into their bowl and they react. This particular guy interacted with whomever put a coin in his bowl. Sometimes he shook your hand, for girls he spun them around like they were dancing, etc.



This is an actual Monet painting, found in the Cardiff museum.



Eddie's American Diner in the Cardiff bay area.




Next post I will talk about my weekend here in Liverpool. I went on the Fab Four Taxi Tour (Beatles) and spent two days in the Liverpool City Centre.

Also, please please please stop asking me to post pictures. I only post a select few here on my blog but I post ALL my photos, with very apt descriptions on my Flickr page. There is a link to the right of the page but also here:

Cardiff, Wales

So we took our trip to Wales. I got up at 6:30 in the morning last Friday and met my group at 7. We had a little trouble finding the right bus and the right bus stop so we asked the security guys. They didn't know the bus but did give us the right stop. So we waited a bit in the cold morning air until bus 79c arrived, a classic English double-decker bus.

From there we took a bus ride to the city centre. We weren't sure where to get off but figured out it was at the Lime Street station, our train station. We then went inside, got our train passes verified and headed over to the customer service desk to figure out which trains to take and what platform they were at. Our journey was in two trips. We took a train from Liverpool to Birmingham where we got onto another train and headed to Cardiff. It was about a 4 and a half hour journey.


At the train station.

On this trip we couch surfed. Couch surfing is an online community where people looking for places to stay get in contact with people who offer their couches, guest rooms, floors, whatever to travelers. We had a group of five so me and two others went to stay with one guy named Robert (he picked us up at the train station and walked back to his place) and the other two stayed with a younger guy named Bub.

So our group traveled to Robert's house where we saw our living arrangement. The two girls shared the fold-out couch and I slept (comfortably I might add) on the floor. Our host was very generous and let us crash in his living room, use his television, and even his computer. He also had breakfast out for us each morning including coffee, tea, pastries, and orange juice.

Then we traveled to the bay area where Robert showed us around the sights a bit. We then traveled to the other host's apartment. His was fancy and overlooked the bay.


View from Bub's balcony.

Afterwards, Robert took our group around the bay some more and showed us all the sights there were to see. He gave us quite a history lesson. The Norwegians occupied the bay, mining coal. Wikipedia it if you're interested in a more detailed expression.

After walking around the bay, we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. Each of us got a different dish. Some chicken, some lamb. Everyone sampled everyone else's and most were good. I particularly liked the lamb dishes. The only downside was that it was a bit more pricey than most of us wanted to spend and there was food leftover. Oh well. Next time we'll share better. We did share rice.


At the restaurant.

We then went our separate ways. The girls and I stayed up planning our trip for the following day and then we went to bed.

That was the end of day 1 in Cardiff, Wales. Cardiff, as I said, is the capital city of Wales.

Also, please go to to see all the pictures I post from my trips. All have descriptions.

Day 2 to come later.

Continuing previous post...

After a long flight and several hours of not sleeping, we arrived at the airport in Manchester. From there we met Paul Cowell (no relation to Simon) who is kind of our advisor/connection to Hope University in Liverpool, which is where we are staying. We took several small busses to the University and got our rooms. They're pretty nice, en suite rooms which means they have private bathrooms. The bathrooms are pretty small, as you can see in the picture below. It's kind of just a small closet: sink, toilet, shower stall. The room is not bad for a single-person one. A nice, comfy bed, a desk and shelf area, and that's about it. Plenty of conveniences.

After arriving here, we got to do whatever for about an hour and a half and then we met up for lunch in the Refectory (cafeteria to those in the US). I took a shower, unpacked, etc. Then we were told how the food worked and such. It's similar but a little different from the food places at Ball State. No swiping ID's or anything. They just kind of know who we are. Each meal is worth about 4 pounds. For breakfast you can get cereal, yoghurt (that's how they spell and pronounce it), orange juice, coffee/tea, and a full English breakfast which is hashbrowns (like those you'd get at McDonald's), eggs (they don't do eggs a thousand different ways like we do in the US, they're usually poached but you can get them fried or scrambled), bacon and sausage. Their bacon is thick like ham, but cooked and tastes like bacon. It's delicious.

The other meals are different. For dinner (our lunch) you can get pretty much anything as long as it adds up to 4 pounds or less. This includes soda, a candy bar, and all kinds of different meals. Chips (fries) are great here. They're always available for dinner and tea (our dinner) and are kind of like steak fries in that they're thicker than our fries back home. I have yet to have a fish and chips meal. Some of their food is great, others not so much. Sausage rolls tastes like pigs in a blanket, their hot dogs taste like breakfast sausage. I had an eclair dessert last night and it was delicious. So basically their food is a little similar to ours but mostly different in subtle ways.

After dinner on Monday we were shown around campus by Paul. Given a library tour, etc. Then a few friends and I walked down the street to where a few shops and the post office was. Exchanging money is pretty easy. There are plenty of ATMs but I haven't needed to use one yet.

I did go to a pub the second night I was here for a drink. I had just one drink, a Bulmer's which is a hard cider. It's good, refreshing, kind of tastes like America's Woodchuck. Met a couple locals. They were nice guys, helpful and all that. They answered our questions and asked some stuff about America. Good people. Speaking of, pretty much everyone here is kind and polite. They always gave us directions if we asked.

The second day we had a short lecture that was bascially an introduction to things and then my friends and I hung out and like I said eventually we went to the pub.

One Wednesday, that's yesterday, we had our first school visit. I'm co-teaching with my friend Christine in a year 6 class (which is equivalent to our grade 5, so 10 and 11 year olds). This is these kids' last year in primary school. They just finished taking the standardized tests (which are nationally based assessments) so this week was more energetic instruction. We didn't teach at all, we just observed, got familiar with the school and students a bit and so on. We also got to see a dress rehearsal-type performance of a school play. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos. It was a version of the 3 Little Pigs and was excellent. It was very entertaining to say the least.

The kids were good. Ours didn't ask us any questions about America and such though like the other students did to my classmates. They'll probably warm up to us when we come back in a few weeks. Next week and the following week is their holiday (break to us, they go year round so this is one of their breaks).

After school I took an interesting trek to ASDA (the European Wal-Mart). We were told it was a 10-15 minute walk from our school. We got directions and ended up walking through a large park that was very confusing because there were no maps of it and several forks in the road. Eventually we got out of there (with some good photos, I might add) and made it to the street where we walked, got onto another street, and eventually made our trip to ASDA, which apparently isn't the same one that everyone else went to by bus. So we got some things, and with a little difficulty figuring out which stop to take, got on the correct bus and made it back just in time for dinner. It was exhausting but a nice little adventure.

After all of this, I had a day of lecture and also my travel friends and I discussed and planned out our weekend trip. We were going to go to Edinburgh, Scotland because we all really wanted to take this first weekend (which happened to be a four-day one because Monday is a bank holiday here in the UK) but we had trouble finding a place. As it turns out, this weekend was the World Rugby Championship or some such thing so nearly everything was booked and there were 60,000 people invading the city so we decided to steer clear. Instead we ended up planning for Cardiff, Wales (the capital city) with a side trip to Swansea (a nearby large city). We also decided instead of staying in a hostel, that we would couch surf.

www.couchsurfing.org

It is this worldwide community where people give their couches (or guest room or whatever) to travelers free of charge. The site is a networking one similar to facebook or myspace where everyone has a page with information about them, as well as reviews and such. Travelers and hosts alike are reviewed. This way travelers can check out their hosts beforehand and hosts can check out travelers before accepting them.

For our trip, we had a group of five so three of us (Christine, Kasey, and myself) stayed with one guy and two others (Jessica and Deborah from my group) stayed with another. I met both hosts and both were very nice. The one I stayed in lived close to the bay and the other lived a little further away.

In my next post, I will talk all about the trip and provide ample photographs.

This post is going to be very long. I have about three or four days worth of information and stories to include in it. The reason being that we were having issues getting connected to the Internet in our dorms and its finally been resolved. I've been waiting to blog because I wanted to upload photos as I talked about stuff, so here we go.

Mom and Dad took me to the airport on Sunday. It was a relatively short trip. Stopped at Cracker Barrel for a nice breakfast. We got to the airport early and waited around for awhile. My friend Christine, who is also on the trip, got there early as well and so we sat together and waited.

Security and baggage checking was a lot easier and quicker than I expected. Actually, it took me longer to wait and get my baggage checked than it did to go through security. I've never flown before and so had no idea really what to expect but everything went smoothly so no worries there.

Our first flight, from Dayton, Ohio to Atlanta, Georgia, was my first ever. The only thing I don't really like about flying is the occasional weightless feeling one gets as the plane makes its ascent. Unpleasant but not unbearable.

Then we touched down in Atlanta where it was a little rainy. Made it through the Atlanta airport (had to take the shuttle/train. I'm not sure the official name of it). Then we got to our gate and had about 2 hours to unwind, get some food, or whatever. I bought a UK to US adapter there that is currently allowing my laptop to charge without any problems. Love it.




This is the plane we took from Atlanta to Manchester, England. It was pretty big, seven seats to a row. I got a window seat for this one. The other plane, which I don't have a picture for, was rather small. It held, I don't know how many few people with four seats to a row. For that one, I didn't get a window but I was close enough.



This is just a picture of the food place I had a slice from in Atlanta. It wasn't bad. Kind of like Sbarro's.



Here's an evening picture of the sky and wing out my window on my second flight. Speaking of, our second flight was about 7.5 hours long but not too bad. I didn't sleep at all until I got here. This past night was the only one I slept all the way through. Still tired though. I was up last night with a couple friends making plans for our trip this weekend which I'll get to in a bit.

Liverpool

I made it safe. One short flight, one long one. Take-off was...interesting. I didn't care so much for the floaty feeling you'll occasionally get but no worries.

Working on the Internet situation in my room, not quite working yet but hopefully will be soon. When it does work, I'll post quite a bit more, including pictures.

Just letting everyone know I'm here and I'm safe.

Take care!