Turning 23 and Stonehenge

Happy birthday to me - if only I had Benedict by my side :-P

It's difficult for someone who loves birthdays to ignore their own.  I found this out when my 23rd came hurtling at me out of no where.  I guess when you are busy with homesickness and culture shock and beginning grad school and adjusting to living in a new country some stuff has the tendency to fall into the background.  But either way, sometime around October 14th I started to get excited for the anniversary of my birth.  This year it was a Friday.  And I didn't have class.  I decided I would go into Colchester for the day.  I bought myself a new coat, ate a banana Nutella crepe for lunch, and then spent the afternoon with Benedict Cumberbatch.  Ha, wishful thinking - I spend the afternoon STARING at Benedict Cumberbatch as he portrayed Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.  (Great movie, by the way.)  Then I ate dinner in a little French cafe on the High Street.  I had been planning on staying in town for a bit after the movie, but it turns out Colchester is DEAD in the evenings.  Yes, even on a Friday evening all the shops are closed and no one is on the streets.  It felt like a ghost town.  In fact, the only reason I ended up eating in the cafe was because it was one of the only places I could find that was open.  So that was that.  Now I'm 23.

The next day was spent frantically doing as much homework as possible because Sunday was the first trip with the Travel Society.  Yay for meeting new people and going places with them!

Sunday started at an ungodly hour.  I woke up at 5 AM.  The meeting time was 7:10, but I had no clue how to get to the meeting point.  I left the Quays around 6:40 and got to the meeting point with a few minutes to spare.  The bus left at 7:30.  (Somehow, on time.  I didn't think that was possible for a group of people my age.)  I sat with Nicole, a girl I met at the first social who is from Chicago.  She is a fresher who is getting her BA here.  She's spending the whole three years (plus one year abroad that is actually part of the degrees here - I know, right?!) at Essex.  By some strange coincidence we ended up sitting across the aisle from two American post-grads.  Ben, from Indiana and Andrea, from New Jersey.  Ben is a Fulbright - which makes me feel unworthy to be in his presence, and Andrea lives in my building up in the sixth flat with the crazy French kid I met during Freshers Week.  The four of us hung out for the day.

Thanks Google maps UK for this handy little graphic
A - University of Essex
B - Stonehenge
C- Bath

The drive to Stonehenge takes about 3 hours and it rained on and off the whole time.  But I guess when you drive that far across a country that is known for its mass amounts of precipitation, that's bound to happen.  Since I come from a place where you can drive for 6 straight hours and still be in the same state, it's strange to drive for four measly hours and literally be on the other side of the country.

Stonehenge itself was great.  We were driving along past open fields, talking about nothing like people do when they meet on buses, and all of a sudden, there was Stonehenge.  It was actually kind of startling.  Turns out it's one of those 'can't get there from here' type of place.  We had to drive through all of these back country roads to actually get to the site.  There was a little area with a gift shop and ticket booth and cafe and then this big long tunnel, and then there you were - Stonehenge.  You aren't allowed to get close to it anymore.  There are little fences to keep you out.  Everyone there just walks along a path in a huge circle taking photos - both cheesy and non-cheesy.  After you walk the path it's back down the tunnel and into the gift shop.  Less than two hours after seeing those iconic rocks from the highway, we were back on the bus and on our way to Bath.

Look how those rocks are balanced - you can't tell me that's not amazing.

It's takes about an hour to get to Bath from Stonehenge and the officers of the Travel Society had us singing campfire songs on the bus.  Most people didn't participate, but what the heck, right?  And I was a Girl Scout.  It takes way more than a measly call-and-response songs to embarrass me.  I actually got up in front of the bus with Mikya, the president, and helped teach the people who would listen 'Baby Shark.'  Seriously.  I have no shame.

Bath was also pretty amazing.  The skies opened up almost as soon as we got there and we had to stand outside in the downpour for way too long, but that allowed us to meet new people as we huddled under shared umbrellas.  I was overly excited to get inside the baths and see all the stuff that I learned about in Latin class because I'm a geek like that.  It was really interesting to actually see the hot rooms and the changing rooms and all the things that we read about in those textbooks.  I like learning in a classroom, but who doesn't like going out and seeing the stuff in real life?  I think a lot more people would enjoy their educations if it was possible to actually go to the places you are learning about or see the things you are studying...

Bath Abbey and entrance to the Roman baths

But anyway, enough of my tangents.  The plan was to go to the Roman Baths and then take a walking tour of the city.  Dinner was supposed to be at 5 and then we would be back on the road by 6:30.  Well, the baths were packed, so the group got all split up.  We four Americans were able to stick together, so we took our own walking tour of the city.  It was absolutely beautiful, even if it was all rainy and wet.  The architecture was amazing and there were all these quaint little side streets and shops.  We walked around the park that borders the river and took way too many pictures of everything.  We planned on meeting up with everyone for dinner at 5, but then the group dinner got cancelled - there were way to many of us to just walk into some random restaurant and be like "Hey, there are 60 of us.  Can we have food?"  The four of us spent a really long time walking around looking for a pub where we could get fish and chips, but to no avail.  We ended up eating at Slug & Lettuce - it's kind of like the TGIFridays of England.  Then it was back to the bus for the four hour drive home.

I was able to sleep for a tiny bit on the way to Stonehenge, but I could not for the life of me fall asleep on the way home.  It was really unfortunate.  I listened to my iPod and stared out the window.  The suckishness of being on a bus for a combined total of 8 hours really didn't hit me until we had about an hour and a half left in the ride.  The bus driver stopped at a rest stop for a bathroom break, and that's when it hit me.  I felt like crap and knew I still had over an hour left of staring out the windows and watching the mile markers and rode signs go by.  Obviously, I made it unscathed, but I was so so tired by the time Tesco came into sight.  Thankfully the bus made a stop at the Quays so we didn't have to walk all the way back across campus to get home.  That was a blessing.  I think I feel asleep the minute my head hit the pillow and I still wanted to throw my alarm across the room on Monday morning.

So, yeah, things are going well.  I have an insane amount of coursework and I'm already freaking out about my first assignment, but that's nothing that I wasn't expecting when I signed up.  I'm pretty settled in food- and amenities-wise.  I'm still trying to navigate the thing with my flatmates.  It's hard to get dinner when your kitchen seems to be in a perpetual state of dinner party - and that's not an exaggeration.  Tonight when I got back from class at 6 the gathering had all ready started.  Here I am now at 11 and I'm just starting to hear some sense of quiet coming from the kitchen.  And I haven't had dinner yet.  When it gets this late, you just start to think - "You know what?  I can wait until breakfast."  Also, I feel like this is worth mentioning.  There are four rice cookers in the kitchen.  If they all cook together and at the same time, why do they need four rice cookers?  That's an honest to goodness question.  Anyone know the answer? ...

-RJ