We Retake Croft Castle

Sorry to keep you guys waiting for this blog update. I know that you just sit by your computer hitting the refresh button hoping that I've written something new. But no more worries, it's here!

So, last week started out with a midterm and a paper. Yay! I'm sure that you guys want all of the horrific details about that, but I'm afraid I'm going to pass over it. On a more fun note, me and Lindsay were invited to a surprise birthday party in Peckham for one of the guys in our ward (there are a ton of single adults in our ward. It's pretty fantastic). It was Peter Pan themed, so we attempted to dress us but since we only could bring like 5 shirts here we didn't have much to work with. We tried for Lost Boys, but I'm not sure how that worked out. But it was fun anyways and now we have some more friends, which is always a good thing. We even got to play some games and eat cake.

Thursday we started our brief vacation from the real world (aka more tests and papers) with a day trip to Stratford-on-Avon. In Stratford you can meet all of your Shakespeare needs for an entire year between visiting old houses, seeing plays, and eating at places like William Shakes (all shakes all the time). Our program started out the day late by leaving at noon (don't get too excited, we didn't actually get to sleep in. Instead we had a test at 9 in the classroom) and our first stop was Anne Hathaway's cottage (Shakespeare's wife, not the actress in Princess Diaries) where we got to walk through the old Tudor house. We learned various things, like how thatchers (people who make the straw roofs) are apparently very rich and all drive Porsche's. We learned stuff about Shakespeare too, but it didn't involve nice cars, although apparently the Hathaway's were pretty well to do in their time. Then we advanced to Shakespeare's birthplace, where we got to see more Shakespeare stuff and walk where he did and all of that. I have to admit that it was cute and charming during the day, but when we walked past it at night it looked a lot like one of those buildings that should be condemned. But it is like 400 years old, so I guess that's to be expected. We had some time to kill after the birth place, so we got to wander around Statford, which is a really cute town. We ate fish and chips and went into a cool used book store and just wandered around aimlessly until it was time for the show. Oh yes, we went to a show. How could you leave Stratford-on-Avon without seeing some quality Shakespeare performed. And it was really good. Take into consideration the fact that I don't really even like Shakespeare, and that should tell you that it was excellent. We got to see Love's Labor Lost, and it was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is supposed to be like the very best. Berowne (the main guy in this production) was played by David Tennant, who is supposed to be the up and coming star of theater (he was also Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and stuff) and was absolutely fabulous. He plays Hamlet for the company as well, and they're going to be traveling to London in December... Tickets are selling at 300 pounds, but we think it might be worth standing (which is 5 pounds) because he was just that good. So that was fun.

Right after the play came the epic moment of splitting off from the group for good. This past weekend we didn't have class on Friday, so the professors left it open for us to travel in small groups as we wanted. To save time and money Me, Ashley, Annie and Sam decided to just stay overnight at a hostel in Stratford before beginning our adventures. So that was a defining moment when we walked away from everyone else in the program and hopped in a taxi by ourselves in a foreign country for the first time. Don't worry, we totally made it to the hostel alive. And we even had the room all to ourselves, which was a bonus.

The next day is when the action started. Let me begin by saying that the trains officially hate us. We had it all nice and planned out before, had our tickets, got to the station on time and everything. It was after the train started that the problems started. Apparently some train decided that it would be fun to get itself stuck on the track we needed to go on. Long story short, a ride that should have gotten us to Leominster at noon got us there at three, which was twice as long as it should have been. The train even terminated before it was supposed to so the station hired a coach for to take everybody to the station we were supposed to be at, where we arrived minutes late to miss the last train to leave for Leominster in an hour. We spent a lot of quality time on trains and in stations. Nevertheless we did ultimately prevail and made it to Leominster, and eventually we found a taxi (which is apparently just locals doing it for some extra cash because the town is TINY) to get us to Croft Castle.

That's right, Croft Castle. You may have been wondering why we were going through all of this trouble to go to a tiny place you've never heard of and that would be why. It's never too far to go to your own castle. I've wanted to go there forever, since my dad told me that the knight who was given the castle was our great times a thousand grandpa or something. So it was totally awesome to go there and be able to drag a couple of friends with me. It was absolutely gorgeous. Croft Castle is just barely on the border of Wales, and has the most beautiful view of the surrounding farm lands. It was especially beautiful since it was such a perfect autumn day. We got to take a tour of the castle after hearing a brief history, and then we just walked the grounds and stuff. It was fun because there was even a family history chart in there, even though I have no idea where we fit in. The whole experience was just a lot of fun. They had dress up in one of the rooms in the castle, and a bookstore in the stables, and tons and tons of gardens. We might not have been there as long as we would have liked, but it was still great.

Our next stop was Birmingham, where we stayed for the night. You might wonder why we chose Birmingham, and the reason would be purely because it was convenient. It turned out to be a ton of fun though. We got in from the train station after all of the stores closed (I swear everything in England closes so early!) so we decided to entertain ourselves at the movie theater, where we saw Eagle Eye. In case you're wondering, it was good. And perfect after an exhausting day filled with train stations. When that got out we had the fun task of locating our hostel in the dark in a city we've never been to, which we actually did very well considering the fact that none of us remembered to bring a map.

The hostel was probably the most exciting one I've been to so far, since all the walls were painted different bright colors. It was definitely my kind of place. Unfortunately it was probably my worst night of sleep since I've been here thanks to a dance party down the street that lasted past 5 AM. Good times. We started out the day with the plan of going to the Cadbury chocolate factory, where I would have bought Tiffany a souvenir, but once again the trains failed us. So we opted for plan B, which actually turned out great. We got to wander around the Bull Ring, which is a really nice outdoor shopping center and the other surrounding parts of Birmingham while enjoying the fabulous weather. They even had an open air market right there. The best was when we got to eat lunch outside at Nando's, that just happened to be right where a music competition called the Festibull was taking starting that day. Apparently four bands play a show everyday, and then people go online to vote who they like the best. The band we watched was the amateurs, and they were perfect with my tasty food.

After the show ended we decided it would probably be a good idea to head over to our highlight of the day, the FOOTBALL GAME! Yep. We got to go to a professional football game. When we were brainstorming things to do on the trip we discovered that there just happened to be a home game for Aston Villa (!) the day that we were there. So we immediately ordered tickets online. It was the best idea we had. From the beginning we knew it would be good-- the tickets came with a note saying that these were tickets for Aston Villa fans only, and that anyone else would be refused at the door. We were very concerned that we would accidentally wear the wrong colors and get beat up. Our seats were definitely only like three rows from the top of the stadium, but I'm sure that just made it so we could see the spread of the field better or something. The best part was watching the fans. All I can say is that they were all very British and that they train them young. They had all sorts of songs that they would break out into (that sounded remarkably like drinking songs) at various times. My favorite would have to have been "The referee's a wanker". It was also funny because everyone (I mean everyone) would do the exact same thing at the same time. No one scored in the first half, and as we progressed through the second half the atmosphere kept getting more and more intense. There was a lot of swearing coming from the row behind me. If the other team had scored a goal I honestly don't know what would have happened. The weirdest thing to me though was the end. The game was so intense because it was still tied at zero, and then all of a sudden the ball went out of bounds and everyone just stood up and left. It was like nothing had even happened. Not one person even said, "well that's too bad." Nope. They were just done. I, however, was sad that Aston Villa didn't win, because they totally should have.

Once that was abruptly over we caught a train back home, where nothing too exciting happened other than the fact that they charged us an arm and a leg to retreat to London. We sulked about how much money it cost while we were on the train and decided to rebel against doing homework.

Sunday night I proceeded to get sick, which I will kindly spare you the details of. Let's just say that I wouldn't recommend it.

Yesterday after a lot of sleeping and such I managed to put myself together enough to go to Swan Lake, which I most definitely did not want to miss. And it was totally worth it. I'd have to say that the royal opera house is probably the swankiest place I have ever been. It looked like it came straight out of a movie. And the ballet was incredible. They were all so graceful and made it look so easy, even though it most definitely is not. The whole production was just beautiful, and there was a full orchestra and everything. I'd go again in a second.

This morning was far less exciting when I got to take a humanities test. And tomorrow I have a paper due for British Studies that I am currently not writing. That could be a problem.

Miss you all!

Oh, and the descriptions for the pictures are on top this time because the internet hates me.

Anne Hathaway's Place

We may have got distracted by the apples there
Shakespeare's HouseWe tried like a thousand times to get a jumping picture in front of Shakespeare's. This was the creepiest.

We have gotten really bored of normal poses

The first view of Croft Castle

They totally had dress up. We had to do it.

The castle again...

More Apples!

Mmm... water in a barrell.

The group photo

Street in Birmingham

The concert in Birmingham from where we're eating

Aston Villa stadium!I swear there is a soccer field behind us.The crowd passed this around and it was cool.We tried to look Swan-like. It didn't work.I mailed my ballot today! Yay!