When you travel...

"Remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable..."
---Clifton Fadiman

Wise words.

So, still haven't gotten all my classes yet, so I'm just going to show up at them tomorrow and see what happens! But, even better than classes is that I got to see Warwick Castle with Lana yesterday!

In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't the best day to go, because it was freezing cold. I don't know if I've discussed the British winter weather yet. Now, I'm used to the snow of upstate New York, I'm used to the nippy, bitter cold of New England, but I was unprepared for winter here in England. It's this wet, damp cold that passes through you like a cloud and chills you right down to your bones. It also doesn't help that I've only seen it sunny for longer than a half hour once. It's usually gray and dreary, and the "sun" starts to go down at 3:30.

But enough about the weather--it's much warmer today, and the weather yesterday was certainly atmospheric for a medieval castle. I probably don't even need to say that I loved it! The initial views of Warwick were stunning, as was our entrance into the Great Hall. The castle was fully decorated inside, complete with creepily lifelike wax people, and seperated into different historical eras. So we saw the Warwick of the Late Middle Ages during the Wars of the Roses (my favorite part), the Tudor and Stuart periods, and finally the late Victorian Era. The scariest place by far was the dungeon, where we even saw inscriptions on the walls from people who'd been imprisoned there.

It was funny how the castle was totally biased in favor of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, who led a rebellion against King Edward IV in 1471. There were some audio clips with him declaring "Our cause is just!" Yeah, right. I'm biased in favor of the other side--the Yorkists--but no one can deny that Warwick was an ambitious character. He's called "The Kingmaker" because he helped put Edward into power in the first place, by deposing the incompetent King Henry VI. Then when Edward married a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville, and started favoring the Woodville clan, Warwick decided he could no longer control Edward and could get a better deal by running back to support Henry. Henry never should have held the throne in the first place, because his branch of the family (the Lancastrians) had stolen it from the Yorkists a century before. So just cause, not so much.

Outside we walked all around, even up to the top of the highest tower. I don't know how people managed to get up there without railings--the steps were so narrow and felt like they went on forever. From the castle we had spectacular view of the town, and later we went into the town and saw St. Mary's Church, which has famous nobility buried there, including Earls of Warwick and Robert Dudley, a "favorite" of Elizabeth I. The only slightly off putting part was that the floor was covered in grave markers, so it felt like we were walking all over people's graves, which we probably were. And cobblestone is, unsurprisingly, extremely difficult to walk on, but I had a great time tramping around the castle!

Today I went to church at the Chaplaincy. Again, it was different from what I'm used to, especially the music, but it was nice. And I really enjoyed meeting everyone in the Music Group. It's not a full choir, like at St. Tom's, but a group with pianists, other musicians (flute, guitar, trumpet), and singers.

Continuing the random US-UK observations:

-No ice water at restaurants--you have to buy any drinks you want
-People don't just drive on the left, they walk and push carts at the supermarket on the left as well. I got some dirty looks as I was climbing up the stairs in the library on the right side and people coming the other way had to move to the other side
-Reserve. I've especially noticed it at Tesco's supermarket, where the cashiers are much less (superficially) friendly than Americans. In the US, I've always had cashiers mutter a "Hi, how you?" with the expected response of "Good, how are you?" It doens't mean that they really want to know--and you never admit that you're feeling terrible, actually--but it's a nicety. Here, the cashiers are silent except to tell you how much money you owe, and they don't even say "Have a nice day." I used to say hello, but now I don't even bother.
-Cider. Not like American cider at all. Not good at all.
-Fish and chips don't only come with fish and chips (predictably) but bread and peas as well! Adds some carbs and vegetables to the greasy deliciousness of fish and chips!
-I tried a Galaxy chocolate bar. It was creamy goodness.