Priorities, Priorities

As my cousin Bill was just telling me, it should go: Blog, pictures, THEN classwork. He's probably right considering the snarky text Dad just sent me (thanks, Daddy).

Anyway, here's a grand update: watched V for Vendetta in politics class on Thursday. We're talking about distopias (have been all semester), so it all fit in really well. It was especially cool, though, because the guy who plays Prothero in "V" was also in the productions of Henry IV (parts 1&2) that we saw at the Globe Theater. So we've now seen him on stage AND on the silver screen! Thursday night, Ruthie and I decided to ditch the lazy boys and we went back to the Moonlighting club. And danced our butts off. It was SO much fun. In fact, when we got back to the flat, I continued to dance for at least another hour. Hayes humored me by playing the DJ. It was awesome. Really, we had more fun without the boys; none of them were in a clubby mood, and they would've spoiled it.

Friday  morning we were up early to head off for a grand weekend tour! Started the weekend with a bit of a snag: on our way to Bath, we got pulled over by some police-type inspection people who wanted to weigh the bus and basically do a random check to make sure that everything was honkey-dory with the bus. Ended up that there was too much weight on our front axle, and we spent 25 minutes chilling at this weigh station. Perk: one of the men working there had this really phenomenal mustache.

In all its glory. It took quite a few photos to get one this up-close, and some seriously
creepy stalking on my part. But I think it was worthwhile.

We went to Devon and Cornwall and had the most incredible time. No internet at either of the hotels we stayed at (hence my long absence), but it was absolutely beautiful. Started off on Friday in Bath where we did a city tour for a couple hours, and then went on to see the Roman baths that have made the city the spa destination that it is.

"Water is Best"

Roman soldier guarding the baths



One of the Baths, complete with 2000 years worth of mucky, nasty "don't touch it or you'll die" water.

We stayed in a hotel just outside of Bath on Friday night, and only Hayes and I were cool enough to go out to a pub after dinner. Not that we lasted long; we weren't drinking enough to fit in with the crowd at our chosen pub... not by a long shot... so we ended up going back and heading to bed as well.

Saturday we were up bright and early for a long bus ride on to Dartmoor. We stopped for lunch in a little town whose name escapes me, and I made the mistake of going into a little antiques store. 45 minutes later, I left the store, heartsick because I couldn't buy most of the things I wanted in there. Prices were GREAT, but how does one safely get a Victorian era mirror back to the US safely? Only by paying an arm and a leg. So I shed some tears in my heart, and wrenched myself away. On to the moors.

We did a little hike through some forest-y bits (I don't even know where we were, but Hayes and I decided that the fact that we were hiking in the rain made it automatically cooler), and then were back to the bus to ride up the rest of the way to the actual moors. We stopped at what amounted to a scenic overlook, and had some amazing views. There were three separate rainbows in the sky. That's how much sky we could see. TRY to imagine that. Holy cow.

Forest-y bits

Rainbow 1

Rainbow 2

Rainbow 3

We got back on the bus and continued driving along this scenic sort of road, and we were going to stop in Princeton... until we saw Mount Everest. Or at least that's what we dubbed it. We were all for stopping, but Dr. King wasn't all about it, so we drove on for another mile and a half or so... until I very politely told him that we didn't give a rat's ass about Princeton, and that we'd really rather be mountain goats. So he laughed in my face, and the bus driver kindly turned around and we headed back to the rocks. AKA Mt Everest. And we climbed them!

Dingle's goofy. Approaching Mt Everest

View on the way up

John was tossing fruit snacks from the top to Jack (note the tree frog pictured here).
He ALMOST caught a few. Impressive, boys.

The group

Chase claims this was unintentional. Jerk. I'm posting it anyway.

It was CHILLY.

View

Peak of Everest 1 as seen from Everest 2

Everest 1 with the moon rising

A lot of the pictures from our mountain climb turned out really dark since we were climbing at sunset, but the scenery was gorrrrgeous.

Headed onwards to Exeter to our hotel there, the Great Western Hotel. Had dinner in the restaurant and hung out all night playing the character game. That's what we've decided to call it, but it probably has a real name. Consists of each person writing a well-known person on a slip of paper, putting the papers in the middle, and each person takes another person's slip without looking at the name on it. Lick the slip and stick it to your forehead. Then it amounts to a game of 20 questions (or more), to try and figure out who your character is. It's really, really ridiculous and fun. So we were doing that with our coasters in the pub for a few hours and had a grand old time. I also had a really interesting conversation with two old men (typical) about transportation in the British Isles, as well as Philadelphia Water Company's ownership of the local water company. Interesting.

Sunday morning we were off again, this time to the coast. While Saturday was on and off rainy, Sunday was picture perfect (actually, not really. It was so bright that a lot of pictures got screwed up from glare. But you know what I mean). We went to Padstow, a little place right on the coast.

John, Chase and Hayes (who posed for me. Note the popped hip)

When I was running towards the water, stripping off my socks and shoes, my phone fell out of my pocket. Oops. Luckily, Hayes picked it up, and took this photo as proof of my idiocy.

Add caption



Hayes, Jack, Ruthie, Chase, Nick and Mandi. We climbed on top of this little castle-y thing.
It was a weekend for climbing adventures.

 Left Padstow, and went on to Tintagel Castle, the legendary birthplace of King Arthur. Hell yeah.

We were getting faces full of sea air from here.

Castle Ruins

View on the way up to the ruins

Ya think?

This is a dramatic rendering of a Merlin/Arthur battle. Hayes clearly wielding a sword, John clearly wielding a wand.

Windy

Me, Dingle, Laura, John, Hayes, Ruthie, Jack

We stayed to watch the sunset.

Left Tintagel and headed back to Exeter for our last night. Hayes, John and I had dinner with Dr. King at Wetherspoons (have I explained that Wetherspoons is a branch of the Shakespeare's Head line of pubs a la the one we go to in London? They've all got the exact same menu, which is boring, but they've also got really cheap prices, which is great). Lovely dinner.

Up in time to leave at 8 the next morning to head back to London. We had to be back in time to see Hamlet at the National Theater at 6pm, and Dr. King told us in no uncertain terms that we would be back in time. He colorfully described the things that he did not wish to experience at Jean's hand if we missed the performance. I don't really blame him; Jean's feisty. We were back in plenty of time to get to the theater.

As for the performance, I LOVED it. I thought the actor playing Hamlet was perfect for the role (side note: he strangely reminded me of my brother's friend Tucker), didn't overact at all, and was perfectly at ease. Wasn't wild about the queen in a few scenes, but on the whole, I thought the performance was just incredible. To keep my attention for 3 and a half hours is no small feat, and they did it soundly. Also had a really tasty lemon cake at the intermission, so that was cool, too. Only problem was that I forgot my cough drops and was struggling to not cough basically every time there was a dramatic monologue. Which, if you're at all familiar with Hamlet's plot line, is a frequent occurrence. So that was a bit stressful, but still didn't impact the overall impression. FANTASTIC.

Class this morning was with Susie, and we were back at the National for a backstage tour. Really, really interesting. The theater has three separate stages, two of which we've seen shows on so far. The third we'll be seeing a performance on in two weeks. So it was neat getting to go behind the scenes of stages that we were already slightly familiar with, as well as the final stage that we hadn't seen before today.

Back to the flat for lunch and reading. We're discussing Riddley Walker (an out of print book about yet another post-apocalyptic world, this time written from the new, deteriorated version of the English language that has managed to survive. Makes reading very tedious, trying to figure out what "Bad Tym it wuz then. Peapl din no if they wud be alyv 1 day tu the nex" or "Eusa wuz a noing man vere qwik he cud tern his han tu enne thing" means. Possible, but tedious. Took a break to head to a costume shop with Ruthie, Hayes and John. Kept thinking of all the costume possibilities I had for things that would go GREAT with things that I have at home. Which is obviously unhelpful. Back to the flat to dawdle about in order to avoid reading more of Riddley, but I guess I can't do that much longer.

Back to the grind.