travels

I got back yesterday morning at 8 am from a week long trip with my Dad through a bit of England and South Wales. Dad had to drive a few more hours from Swansea to London, but I was able to crawl right back into bed. I'd gotten irritatingly sick in the last two days of the trip, with a headache, earache, sore throat, full body muscle soreness, and a slight fever, so I was pretty tired by the end of the trip. That being said, it was a wonderful week.

I took the train and met Dad at our hotel in London after navigating through the Underground for the first time. I checked into the hotel to find that he wasn't there yet. So I waited in our impossibly tiny room by taking a nap, finishing the one book I'd brought, and watching TV. He showed up, and after some dinner, we went to see our first show, Wicked. Which, was wicked. We went to the Tower of London, the Science Museum, the London Eye, walking by Big Ben, and then another show in the evening - The Lord of the Rings. The stage had been altered so that it had broken concentric rings, that could spin and raise and lower their separate sections. A moving, changing landscape that worked so very well with the dramatization. Smeagol was excellently played, an actor/acrobat who seemed never to lose energy. His movements were so fluid and so perfectly suited to the schizophrenic smeagol/gollum. Arwen had the clearest, sweetest voice I'd ever heard, and they used it often.

After our adventures in the London Underground, we thought we were prepared for UK driving, especially since we had our Google maps giving (supposedly) exact directions. Many wrong turns, u-turns, backtracking, swearing, swerving away from the right side of the road, poring over the maps on the side of the road, multiple times around several roundabouts later, we found we were not quite prepared as we thought, the vagueness of all UK directions suddenly making sense. There is no clear way to drive anywhere, and it did not help that signs seemed to change, or just suddenly go missing on their own whims, or that there would be two or three signs for each roundabout.

We went through Stonehenge, which was very, VERY cold. Windy like nothing else. I think it is possible to get frostbite in above zero temperatures in that kind of wind. The stones were smaller than I'd thought they'd be. Brighton and Hove had a very quiet, empty pier. Portsmouth had a tall, white tower and a military naval port. Windsor Castle had an astounding amount of grandeur and excess in it. St. George's Cathedral was my favourite part of it. It is a stunning piece of architecture, especially the memorial near the back, behind the Quorus.

Dad lost his navigator for a while, while I slept. I had many bad sleeps on our trip, except for the one night when I got the big bed and the comfy pillow (Dad got it the next night, and after that, they were all twin beds).

While we got to Bath too late to see anything (also, there was an awful lot of traffic, and we seemed to be going nowhere at all), leaving Bristol the next day got us on time to see Caerphilly Castle in the morning, and then get to Hay-on-Wye in the afternoon. I don't think there was a single corner or stairwell in Caerphilly that I left unexplored. It was the coolest castle, ever. There's the grandeur of Windsor, with all it's posh dining rooms and paintings and gold plated everything, and then there's the utter ruinous stonework of Caerphilly, a castle that was designed to be stormed (or so a friend informs me). The caretakers are in the process of restoring bits of it so that people can go everywhere in it, but it will still be old, falling apart stone. Simply brilliant. Something I would have diiiied to have explored as a child, over and over and over.

Hay-on-Wye we got to nearer the end of the day, and so explored the bookshops as the sun went down. Which it did everyday starting at about 3:30, disappearing by 4:30PM. Rather early in comparison to Canada. But I guess Canada (particularly Edmonton) is higher on the hemisphere. One of the bookshops is called an Honesty Bookshop. 50p for hardcovers, 30p for paperbacks, which you deposit in a locked metal box at the end of one of the shelves. Although I was in book heaven, I didn't enjoy as much as I should've. The cold I'd developed left me with very little energy and a bad headache. I found what I was looking for, though.

Dad and I went through Swansea to take a look at my university (which we couldn't park at) and my place, also so that he could pick up my rollerblades to take back with him. After that we were off to Mumbles, where we had lunch, and then went off to explore the Gower. We walked along several of the high cliffs, one particular one for a long ways, and then went to Rhossili, where the Worm's Head and Rhossili Bay were. We'd timed it brilliantly, the sun going down just as we finished our walk at Worm's Head.

It was strange coming back to my place. It feels a bit less like home than it did before the trip with Dad. Perhaps seeing him just reminding me of the things I'm missing back home. I'm definitely enjoying myself out here and I am going to miss it very much when I back to Canada. I told Dad that being here has done not very much to quell the travel bug, rather, it has shown me how many more places I want to see and know. Maybe being a teacher and (hopefully) having the summer months off will give me the opportunity to travel.

The music society's Christmas concert is this Thursday. I'll be playing cello in orchestra and in the string quartet (which we FINALLY got a violist for!!), bari sax in concert and jazz band, and also doing a bit of conducting. A friend of mine is having a concert on Friday to raise money for a trip of hers to go build schools in Guatemala, and so my quartet is playing for that. I'll also be playing some solo Bach on cello.

The uni martial arts ball is on Wednesday and I have a brand new dress for the occasion! I will justify the purchase by saying that I'll also be wearing it for my convocation in June (!!!!!!). I think that is a good enough reason.

Karate has been going very well, and I went to a mass grading 2 weeks ago that was for the other Bushi-kai clubs that the university one doesn't participate in -- we run our own at the end of term. I went for the pre-grading training session. I was borrowing a yellow belt so I wouldn't get stuck with the whites. I couldn't have graded anyway, because I didn't have a bushi-kai licence (have to send away for it). The black belt who was running my class told me to participate in the grading anyway, just so I could have something to do and get the experience. They awarded the other yellow belts with their orange belts and then all the belts came together for the ending seiza. That's when they were giving out the belts to the people who double-graded. My Shihan called me up and presented me with my new belt. GREEN!!!! The senseis had all picked me out and decided to grade me for my green belt, without me knowing it. The Shihan's wife is the one who makes the licences, and so she did it up for me while I was there.

Term is over in about two weeks, and then I am off with my friend Kim to see Scotland. Scary that it's gone by so fast.

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