It's time to come home.

Bath & Stonehenge

This is Bath from the bridge that crosses the river.

The King's royal bath. No one bathed in it--well, maybe he did.

The Royal Crescent estates. Every couple pillars, there is a door (entrance to the house). All of them are, by law, white--except one. One of the doors is bright yellow: an act of defiance by... umm... someone important at the time. It's been kept that way since. Rumor has it Johnny Depp has bought a house in this complex.

And now... Stonehenge. Unfortunately, I'm unable to confirm or deny the rumor that it was constructed by aliens because, as I sat in the grass to listen to my audio guide, I put my arm in a thistle weed, and started itching and swelling like nothing I've ever experienced. Fearful that I might be having an extreme allergic reaction causing my throat to close up and whatever other dreadful things happen to people with allergies (--you've heard the horror stories of bees, shellfish, and peanuts--), I quickly made my way to the exit, turned in my audio guide, and hunted down the tour guide at the van. He assured me, though, that I would be fine and the itching and swelling would soon subside. Whew!

Seriously, though... it was an absolutely surreal experience. I still can't believe that I've seen in person this wonder that most people merely read about in books. How lucky am I? Truly.

Trevor reminded me that I "murdered [my] sporadic telegraphs from London", and I feel badly about it, so I'm going to try to do a quick update. Let's be honest... I'm not really doing much else with my evening but trying desperately to open a jar of gherkins. I'll give that a rest for a bit.

I had my heart set on going to Dublin, Ireland this weekend. First, I called up the touring agency I usually travel with and reached a young man who had no idea how to do anything related to booking trips (go figure). This was the same man I reached twice last week, thus causing me to miss the trip to Amsterdam. So, having given up on that plan, I looked up flights and hostels to go with Carly and Becky, who are just going by themselves. It would be about $100 round trip for the flight and there are no vacancies at their hostel, so I'd be staying at a different hostel for about $50. But here's the real issue:

This coming Tuesday, I have one 2500 word paper and one 1500 word paper due. And then, on Thursday, I have another 2500 page paper due. That's a LOT of writing to get done between now and then, and I'm not sure I could get it all done if I left for the weekend. Bummer. Don't they know I didn't come here to write huge papers? I came to see the world.

Ok... now it's picture time.

A couple weeks ago, Thursday (that's the name), a band near and dear to my heart, played at Metro, the club I intern for. It...was...fabulous--in a "oh wow, I feel like I'm reliving the romances of my sophomore year of college (music, independence, and cute tall boys in tight pants) all over again" sort of way.

Carly and Dan
These are the strange kids I associate with. They're allergic to photography.

So are they.

I have no explanation for these two (Brian (l) and George (r)).

This is part of a project (not-so-ironically entitled 'Mood Map') I did for my Neighborhood Narratives class. I plotted my mood every hour for one day on a scale from 1 to 5. Then, I took the grid plot and affixed it over a map of my neighborhood. At each one of the dots, I left one of these cards in a plastic sleeve with the map on one side and a description of my mood at the time (I feel...), a picture taken at that time, and the url to a corresponding blog describing the project. To sum it up... it was a lot of time and stress, but I'm pleased with the results.

These are pictures from The Cotswolds, a beautiful area in West London that I visited last weekend. It's made of a few tiny villages of stone buildings and amazing coutryside as far as the eye can see.

This is the motor museum I visited so I could take photos for the car buffs back home (not because I actually care about a bunch of old cars). hah

A house in Bibury, often described as the most beautiful village in England.


This castle is actually in Wales. We stopped for about 20 minutes to hang out. Can we say, 'shortest trip to Wales ever?'
I think this town is Bourton on the Water. It's the one that has the motor museum.

Pictures of Bath and Stonehenge to come soon. I'm going to finish up my book so I can start another tomorrow.