Milton Keynes...sort of

    I caught a rather late train into Milton Keynes, was picked up by my kind uncle, and whisked away to Tyringham where my aunt and uncle live. Tyringham is a lovely estate about 45 min away from Milton Keynes and has several cottages and houses (big and little) that I will put up pictures of later.

    My first day there I was taken to a place called Aynhoe Park where one of my cousins was staying, to have lunch and, obviously, visit with them. 

  

         Aynhoe Park is one of the most (intentionally) bizarrely decorated places I have ever seen! It is usually rented out for parties and photo-shoots, but I got to sneak a peak and it vaguely reminded me of a movie called Howl's Moving Castle. 

Secret door! 

These bits of buildings are a collection from all over the world!

    I was expecting the owner to be quite eccentric, but he was very nice and (for lack of a better word) normal. I can't get over how beautiful it was! You could go through the house a hundred times and still miss a small detail--it is a total collage!

This was a notice by the pub--note to self: acquire guard chickens

     We had lunch at a pub, chatted, and then headed home and had a nice, relaxing evening. 

  

Oxford & Yarnton: Day 2 &3

     I had a very nice, relaxing Saturday: bike ride, reading, blackberry picking, had some lovely herbal tea--it felt quite English!

    Sunday, I went to an Anglican (Church of England) service with my cousin to see how it was. It was in a suuuper old church (that I thought I had a picture of but don't) and was very nice. Then, my cousins took me into Oxford for a nice Sunday ramble, and they showed me their favorite shake place: Shakespeares!
It is in a tiny little side ally and there's no way I ever would have found it on my own. The shakes we got were fanTastic! They had so many flavors and a lovely ambiance! I tried a Hob Nob  one and was instantly hooked--in fact I've been craving one ever since!

All I want for Christmas: Hob Nobs!

 Right by Shakespeares is a little path that leads into a covered market. I never once saw it the 5 hours I'd wandered through Oxford earlier! So, I guess the rule in Oxford is to explore any dark alley ways because you never know what gems you might discover!

   I then left to the next stop: Milton Keynes!

Onward to Oxford: Day 1

    I left Kenilworth early so I could have some time wandering around Oxford before I went to stay with some cousins in Yarnton (a suburb outside of Oxford). I had about 5 hours and thus ended up with lots of pictures! Oxford was so beautiful, everything was old--steeped in history. Every pub and building boasted of someone influential or famous who used to frequent them. I walked right by places where Lewis Carroll taught, C.S. Lewis chatted with Tolkien, wars were fought, the cell was discovered, the list goes on and on.

     What surprised me was how different all the Oxford colleges were compared to how I had imagined them. I had pictured a set-up similar to most American universities: a campus with lots of buildings for different departments. However, the Oxford colleges are all separate from each other and spread out across the city. Tourists are not allowed in without having to arrange a private tour, so I just observed them from the streets--there is a very big separation between the colleges and the surrounding city. There weren't very many students around because it was the summer holiday so I have no idea whether or not Oxford has a rockin' social atmosphere. 

        After I dropped off my luggage at a very dodgy youth hostel (great place to stash luggage when you're somewhere for a short period of time) I found out that one of the colleges was open to tour: Christ Church College and Cathedral. For all of you Alice in Wonderland fans, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was a mathematics tutor at Christ Church and Alice Liddell was the daughter of the dean there.  The tour pointed out how Lewis used rooms and decorations in Christ Church in his stories he made up for the Liddell girls and later published.

     I love vaulted ceilings!

    This dining room...does it look familiar to you? Hint: a magical place involving a scarred lad.

Was your guess Hogwarts!? It should have been! SO, because of how cool I am I thought I was getting a tour of Christ Church, but must have stepped through a wardrobe and ended up in Hogwarts...a Hogwarts full of Asian tourists...and non-floating candles...Oh well, it was still exciting!

    The Cathedral was also super pretty! Each college appears to have university buildings and a different church in each one that they're named after (?).

"I know there is truth opposite to falsehood that it may be found if people will & is worth the seeking"-John Locke

   Right outside of Christ Church is a shop:

...that I got very excited about! It ended up being less enchanting than I thought it would be. Quite touristy and "disneyfied" oh well.

10 points if you can guess why one of these shops is exciting 

This plaque is exciting because it's about Robert Hooke the man who made a microscope and first saw living cells!

  

     Then I wandered around some more, people watched, and then headed off to my cousin's place. 

Kenilworth: Day 2

   I started out the day grocery shopping with one of my cousins, and then went on a beautiful walk around Abbey park. It was still nice and sunny--what luck!

      I ended up at the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, and feeling a bit thrifty, didn't want to pay the entrance fee and so I just walked around the outside.

I saw this hole and considered crawling through it.....

....but there was stinging-nettle everywhere (and spiders)!

     After the castle I went for a looong walk around town and stumbled upon the Abbey that the park I mentioned earlier was named after.

The graveyard around it was so mystical and mossy! Note to self: acquire fancy tombstone for later. I think the fancy-pants tombstones make a grave yard so beautiful and somber.

    I then went inside the Abbey, enjoyed the organ music, and then wandered around for an hour or two and then cooked dinner with one of my cousins. What a fun day!

Dreams of France

  I am loving England, but can't wait for France! I had a dream about two sharks in the middle of the ocean chatting in French (I'm mainly excited that I can dream in what I call French). It went something like this:

Shark 1: Ah, salut, comment ça va?
Shark 2:  Bah, ça va, et toi?
S1: Bon ben, je suis faim!
S2: Moi aussi!
S1: Regard cette personne là!
S2: Parfait! Nous devrions lui manger!
S1: Je suis d'accord!


and then it moved to a different location in English, but I thought the French bit was funny!

Kenilworth: Day 1

    Today my lovely Kenilworth-dwelling cousins took me to see Warwick (the next town over). The town is beautiful! My cousins thought I was a bit mad, taking pictures of pedestrian things like shops and apartments-- but the architecture is sooo pretty--so English!

       It was a beautiful, sunny day and so we decided to tour Warwick Castle!

        I've been to England a few times with family, but really only remember the last trip which was maybe 5 years ago? So, using my previous castle knowledge, Warwick was very different from other castles I've visited in that it is set up to be almost like a medieval theme park. While this made it a bit corny, it was sweet and really made things more exciting. I think if I'd been a bit younger I would have absolutely loved all of the touristy bits instead of just being amused. The reason it was a bit corny was because they had all sorts of shows with people  "reenacting" battles, hunting with raptors (meaning the bird, not the dinosaur), jousting tournaments, Merlins tower, a princess tower and such. However, to counter the corny-ness there were interesting facts sprinkled throughout the dialogue, but it definitely would be more enchanting for kidlets. 

   I  liked the:

and as I promised my girl friends back home I met someone English and male:

Erm....they had run out of knights in shining armor and poets...so...I got what looked like a black plague victim--but he did have a British accent (according to some having a British accent trumps all other attractive qualities)!

     The castle had been inhabited up 'till the 1930's so the lived in bits were in quite good shape. They had wax figures everywhere and great little information posters. I really liked that they showed how the original owners lived up until the 1930's--the change in decor was pretty incredible!

    We then went to a movie One Day starring Anne Hathaway, which wasn't bad, but I must say the ratings are certainly different in England that the U.S. By that I mean that there seems to be very little concern about nudity and other sorts of things that usually make a film a higher rating in the U.S., well, better luck next time!

Disclaimer and Excuses

   I would like to take this opportunity to warn about and apologize for my terrible grammar, and in particular, my abuse of commas. I hope that someday I will figure out how to utilize them in the proper way, but as of now, I have no mother or roommates to correct me and am just putting them wherever I feel like. It's actually a super artistic thing, I am putting commas when I would usually pause for a breath in my natural speech for a more personable affect. I comfort myself in also pointing out that my run-on sentences are not as long as Jane Austin's...except she may have actually made her one's work in a tricky way that made them just really long and and not grammatically running-on? I haven't examined her sentence structure lately, so I'll just pretend. Also, because I don't usually have lots of time to write so I am lazy and just write as I think (dangerous--I know) so I very rarely revise and if you are ever an English teacher and use a sample of my writing to show kids what not to do, I will be demanding royalties. So...hopefully my trips are exciting enough that no one is distracted by cringing over my poor writing. I hope by being in English-land that I will magically understand the use of commas and the subtle differences between the colon and semi-colon and eventually stop writing horrendously long sentences that are really three or four sentences being forced to share a period and learn me some good English skills.

Study Abroad!!!!!!!

    Dear reader,
I forgot to mention that winter semester I was accepted to go on a study abroad to Paris(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I am in the airport, enjoying the free wifi, waiting to board the plane that will whisk me away from the American continent. Because I wanted some extra time abroad, I've left two weeks early to go visit relatives and tour around! SO, here's the next adventure: England.
Love,
Hailey

So, I had thought for 3 months I had packed pretty lightly, but my suitcase had a weight problem and I had to take out some of my books and put them in my back-up bag. This is very distressing to me because I was hoping to travel as lightly as I did in South Africa. However, because I am going for 3 months and I have to pack for weather ranging from summer to winter, I have ended up with lots more than I have ever traveled with before--scary!

Sooooo much luggage!

Also, our group is doing some touring around before classes start so we also needed to bring a small travel bag (hence the back-up bag). My grand plan was to put the travel bag into the big one like a babushka doll, but again it weighed too much so I am having to lug that with me on the plane. I am not very excited to wrestle it onto a coach (a big bus) once I land in London! Here is my plan: fly to Atlanta then to Heathrow airport and then take a coach to the first relative I am visiting in Kenilworth.
       Unfortunately, my flight to Atlanta just got canceled and thus I get to wait an extra 4 hours at the Salt Lake City airport and then will fly to Paris and then to London--a little preview! Sitting at the gate for the Paris flight is super! Most of the people are French and it is so beautiful to hear them speak! I am so super excited to get my French to a point of being comprehensible! I have been reading books all summer to get ready and hopefully all of the culture, advice, and skills I've learned will subconsciously kick in.

     The flight was long, but not as long as the one to South Africa! There was a super nice French couple next to me and the lady kept looking over my shoulder while I was doing some french grammar practice books and correcting me--loved it! I thought I was doing pretty well at not looking touristy...but as the journey wore on and I got more tired I got clumsier and clumsier. My misdemeanors include: tripping someone with my bag, running over someone's child, spilling my water on the plane, shooting my eraser at someone, shooting my pencil at someone, saying "sorry" to an excessive degree, and hogging a corridor with my bag. American tourist. Well, better luck next time?

Afterward

 
     So there it was: a trip of a lifetime. I really had so much fun in South Africa and hope to be able to go back again someday. I learned and observed so many things--and have so much to say about all of them, but how can you possibly write about so much material if you are as lazy as I am? It doesn't help my laziness that I am currently sitting in an airport waiting to start a new adventure. I aspire to document the next much better than the last...but we will see!

Johannesburg

       Johannesburg was also more "Africa" feeling--much more dry than the Cape. We had heard all sorts of horror stories about the crime in Jo'burg so we were a bit more nervous than we had been in all of the other places. We stayed with some friends outside Jo'burg in a place called Benoni. I have to say that I really did prefer the Cape to Jo'burg as far as aesthetics go, although it might just be because we stayed in the Cape longer. Also, Jo'burg is a mining city and so there are massive piles of discarded earth from old mines everywhere as well as rubbish and bits of building materials on the perimeter.

      My mom had remembered going to a place called Gold Reef City when she was little and getting to go down a mineshaft and seeing how gold was melted into bars. Our family decided that sounded exciting, so we headed over there and discovered that you couldn't just do the mineshaft tour, you had to purchase a ticket that included the amusement park bit as well. As tragic as that was, we decided that seeing as we didn't really have anything else planned we would suffer through an amazing amusement park.

    The mine was super interesting--I can't imagine having to work in such a noisy, hot, dark, treacherous environment! We walked around a bit, came back to the upper-world and then rode a couple roller coasters (I love roller coasters!!) and finished off with a gold-melting tour.

      We also visited the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints temple. It was so beautiful--so calm and peaceful compared to the busy city surrounding it.

     We then visited more relatives, and headed back to Benoni. The next day we packed up, visited more relatives, and then went to a very swish shopping center called Brightwater. We had lots of fun looking at all of the shops and booths, bought our last curios and then left to the airport. We had a super long wait (our flight had been moved a couple of hours back) and then a super long flight, and finally we were back in the good ol' U.S.A. just before we were thoroughly sick of being travelers.

Howick

     We went to Howick to stay with more cousins! There was fantastic food (all of our South African relations were fantastic chefs), and then and we watched the funniest comedy show I have ever seen. I usually don't like comedians and sigh inwardly whenever I get stuck watching someones favorite comedian for hours on YouTube (I find most comedians to be so full of themselves it makes me queasy). However, this guy was very funny (and slightly less narcissistic). His name is Trevor Noah and although he was a bit naughty, I was so excited to get most of the South African social commentary jokes!
    One of the days we spent there we went to Howick Falls which was very beautiful:

We then shopped around a bit and then our cousins showed us a local shoe factory--it was so quaint! There was a very well-designed sun dial outside which was of the elves and the shoemaker story:

       The next day we were shown a pig farm, which changed my mind about consuming pork...pigs are kinda yucky (except when they're babies).

    We also were shown a polo-horse farm, went on a beautiful drive, and then went to Michael House School ( a posh private school--gorgeous), then went to a very cute place for tea.
    We then left the next day for Johannesburg!

St. Lucia

     We got to St. Lucia just in time to take a sunset river tour. We saw a water monitor, kingfisher, fish eagle, ibis, a couple of smallish crocodiles, and tons of hippos! I was super excited to see hippos outside of a zoo and also because one of my favorite books when I was little was Hot Hippo and I felt all cool, because I already knew most of what the guide was saying about hippos from it.

       We got so close that the ferry almost bumped a hippo! They were enormous and quite cute...in a sort of grotesque way. It made me really want to go and watch Disney's Fantasia, so I could see the one bit where the hippos dance around in tutus. However, hippos are not all cute, they are very dangerous! In fact, they are thought to be the 5th most deadly animal, killing approximately 300 people a year. Although they look fat and lazy, that's because they are nocturnal and at night they may walk about 6 miles to graze, so there were warnings all over town telling people to stay indoors at night. I was glad to be in a fairly large ferry!

       We had been lucky enough to not only make the last tour but also have that last tour be a sunset one! This was not only pretty, but the hippos were waking up and getting ready to get out of the water and munch.

I am excited about this picture because it was taken with my broken camera

The lighting was absolutely stunning, and it was a very romanticical idea to be on the water with the sun setting, a slight breeze, and "exotic" animals.

After our tour we searched around for accommodation and the next morning we had a market adventure (just f.y.i. the markets in St. Lucia are a bit of a rip-off, it would be far more economical to shop at the little stands on the sides of the road leading to the town) and then were off again.