Blogs from Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 7

Although Nottingham has been decked out for Christmas for the last month, we just put our tree and decorations up on Tuesday. We found we had an abundance of decorations in the storage closet in the bathroom and spent a good hour and a half listening to various Christmas music, eating chocolate, and decorating. We now have one large Christmas tree in the living room and one in the hallway. We also have two small Christmas trees, one very Charlie Brown like, in the living room and one in the kitchen. While decorating we also found reindeer antlers, a Santa hat, and angel wings. These were combined with various decorations as costumes. I spent a chunk of time untangling star garland and ended up just taking a scissors to the knot and making one long strand ... read more

Because of limited kitchen and oven space and the fact that we still had to attend class, we had made up an oven schedule which stretched over Wednesday and Thursday. Carrie and I started early because Carrie also had to cook dinner Wednesday night. So on Tuesday night, we gutted, chopped up, and baked a pumpkin in preparation for making pumpkin pie - which neither of us had ever done before- the next day. After class on Wednesday morning, we started mixing up pie crust. We don't have a pastry cutter in the flat so to cut in the shortening we used forks. After mixing the crust we walked to the green grocers and picked up 24 apples, three things of raspberries, and one of strawberries. Before dinner we finished making the berry pie, and after ... read more

So Monday was Guy Fawkes Day. The city had an official bonfire and fireworks a few tram stops away in the Forest so after dinner we headed down. Now, fireworks laws in this country are much different from at home. Almost anyone can buy fireworks and shoot them off wherever they want, which usually means their yards. And I am not talking about the little fireworks, I am talking full-fledged fireworks. And they do not only shoot them off on Guy Fawkes Day. We saw fireworks for a straight week. There was one night when we could watch two fireworks shows, one from our living room and one from the kitchen. On Monday the people across the street were shooting off their batch and they were almost right over our flat. We were a little worried ... read more

Battle practice, which I have decided to regard as weight training (since sports center membership is super expensive), started out with safety today. We were first tested by Sir Bodric on the no-hit zones. Then we armed up and warmed up in pairs with some sparing. I managed to get a few hits in today which is an improvement on last week. I was also given a little more instruction on how to fight and defend myself with a spear, which was good. Then we had safety testing with weapons. Against someone with a sword and shield, we had to get three legal, safe hits in. Having a sword coming at you is slightly terrifying, especially when the guy is yelling at the same time. That will take some getting used to. It took me a ... read more

Today, Kia and I attended the Robin Hood Pageant today at the Nottingham Castle. The pageant is a living history festival complete with homemade crafts, puppet shows, music, jousting, fighting, and falconry. Kia and I wandered around and watched one guy making a bowl, looked at spices, watched a shoemaker, and looked at the goods that were for sale. Kia held a falcon which in her own words was "really awesome". I shot 8 arrows and over half of them hit the target, not necessarily near the circle but they did hit the target. The key, I guess is to keep your hand that is holding the bow relaxed and draw your thumb of the opposite hand back to rest on your jaw bone. I only hit my arm with the bowstring twice which is probably ... read more