Tower of London!

Well, today was the second day of my two weekly weekends, so I decided to head into the city to see what I could see! Destination: Tower of London.
Verdict: very cool. A few basics first. It is very old. Lots of people died there. It really is the location of the crown jewels, I saw them with my own eyes, and the beefeater tour guide told us they are in fact the crown jewels.
Also of note, this was my first time even walking into Egham (the town my school is in) on my own, nonetheless then taking the train into London and the tube. It all went quite smoothly. 9.50 pounds for the train + an all day tube pass. A little expensive, but not tooooo bad. What killed me was that tickets to the Tower were 14.00 pounds after the student discount. Gag. Knowing I probably wouldn't be able to buy my way back in I spent allllll day there!
So I started with a tour from a beefeater (technically a Yeoman Warder). They are technically the guards of the tower, guarding both the prisoners and the royal treasures within. That's why they are all former members of the armed forces (except the navy for some reason...). In practice they are tour guides and a sight in and of themselves due to their funny uniforms. The most interesting part... they live there! That's right, the Yeoman Warders and their families live in the Tower of London, and every night at 10:00 get locked in!
The tour was actually pretty brief, and focused mostly on death and stuff, but it was interesting. It ended in the Tower's chapel, which serves as the burial place for a bunch of famous people (like Anne Boleyn). Apparently, however, during one past renovation the builders were told to preserve any remains they stumbled across in the floor, and to try to identify them. Turns out they found over 1,000. They could only identify 33. The Tower's kind of a scary place!
After that I did my own wandering. Saw more armor, weapons, etc. Next went to see the Crown Jewels. To settle arguments... yes the Crown Jewels are at the Tower of London, and yes they are the real ones (or so says the Yeoman Warder). The joy of going on a not special Thursday... nobody was there! I just walked right in to see them, bypassing the rows and rows and rows of fences in place to control crowds.
The last part was coolest. I walked the wall (as you have figured out by now I'm sure, the tower is a complex of towers, not just one), and went into a bunch of the smaller towers. In one, the Salt Tower, they have preserved scratchings on the walls from prisoners dating back to the 1500s! About half of them are Jesuit and Catholic symbols. I included a (dark) picture of the most intricate and amazing piece of graffiti though. It is an astrology chart chipped into the wall by a man accused of sorcery (I don't think he helped his case). The level of detail and the perfect lines and circles are awesome!
I should get going to do some reading at this point, since I didn't do any today, but I wanted to share what's up. Tomorrow I have my last two classes (Arid Africa and Geomorphology). Saturday Royal Holloway is taking the internationals into the city to see the National Gallery and take a Jack the Ripper tour, and then Sunday I am sure I will need to catch up on some work!

See ya!

More about classes

I finally got the rest of my academic schedule worked out today, picking up the last geography class that I needed (it is a geomorphology class), and getting the schedule times for my remaining classes. Both are on Friday which means... I have no classes on Wednesday or Thursday! Although that seems awfully nice at first glance, they clearly require significantly more reading here than at home (which seems amazing to me; I read a lot at home).

So now I've got to figure out how to balance my time. My goals in studying abroad were not and are not academic. I think there is more to learn by getting out and seeing things. But old habits die hard. I am going to try to do as much work as I can tonight and tomorrow, and then maybe take Thursday to go in to London, maybe even on my own, to see some museums... not something I would typically do on a Thursday at home!

Suggestions for what museums to see? National Gallery is on Saturday with the rest of the international students, so leave that one out. Either post a comment or send me an email with suggestions!

School and Class

Very brief (hopefully) today...

The pictures you see are of "The Founder's Building" on campus at Royal Holloway. It houses all sorts of officies, the health center, and is even home to a large number of students! It is an enormous brick castle built in the Victorian Age. It used to constitute the entire university. It is impossible to capture just how awesome a building it truly is. The staircase you see... solid stone. All the way up the 5 stories. Incredible.

Today I had my first class. The way things work here, each class has one lecture per week, and then splits into smaller seminars for the rest of the week. So for each class during a week I have a lecture and a seminar. It isn't much class time, but you are expected to do an incredible amount of reading. And they don't tell you what to read either. They have a list of suggestions that is literally like 100 books long, and you are just supposed to read some stuff... it incredibly daunting, especially for a student that isn't really there for the academics, but is looking to travel and have unique experiences with a little schoolwork on the side!

Windsor, and a grocery store!

Hey folks!

I'm finally getting settled here at Royal Holloway. The Brits just started arriving on campus today, as classes start tomorrow, so for now the people I have met are still in the international crowd. Hopefully that will change soon!

Yesterday Royal Holloway organized a trip for its international students to Eton and Windsor. While in Eton we saw the school boys moving between classes in their funny uniforms that can only be described as too formal for a prom, or even most weddings. They looked quite bizarre!

Windsor castle was definitely the highlight of the day though. St. George's chapel was absolutely astounding. I wish I could have taken pictures of some of the ridiculously intricate features inside. The wood working was beyond the realm of belief! It also felt weird to be walking around a building that served as burial chambers for a large number of British monarchs (Henry VIII the one that sticks in my head most clearly). The other rooms of the castle were equally amazing, housing legitimate suits of armor (again, Henry VIII's armor sticks out most clearly; you could tell from it that he was quite a stocky man!), and a huge assortment of weapons ranging from swords and maces all the way through muskets and pistols. There was also a huge collection of artwork, and even many ceilings were large murals. It deserved more than a day, and luckily I will be returning there in the future with a trip organized by Arcadia. Hopefully I can break loose from any tours they may try to force me on so that I can simply explore!

I was getting a little ahead of myself... we started the day actually, by visiting Runnymede, the location where the Magna Carta was signed. Today it is just one big field, but there is a memorial that is entirely underwhelming, and incredibly bizarre. It is located right next to the JFK memorial (no joke... and I have no explanation), and it was built by the American Bar Association. It amounts to nothing more than a stone gazebo with some text about the magna carta. I'm pretty sure, however, that the memorial says "American Bar Association" in more places than it actually mentions the magna carta. Lame.

Finally, today was the last day before classes. In the morning we walked into the town near the university, Egham, to see how the walk was and to explore. After a bit of wandering we picked up some more groceries, then grabbed lunch at a local pub. It was nothing too exciting, but all pretty necessary stuff, and I had a good time. After that I took as much of my class schedule as (I think) I know, and walked campus to make sure I know which buildings my classes are in. It is a long story, but class registration here is incredibly archaic, and I won't feel comfortable with all my class stuff until probably next week...

So for the next week the plan is to stay pretty local; I'd like to get worked into classes, and begin finally meeting some of the natives! I've already put myself on the mailing list for the school's volunteer organization, and tomorrow I am going to buy my membership at the student's union. I'll keep you posted as best I can.

Oh, and enjoy the pictures above... they are from the Windsor trip!