October Already?

Just realised now that it is October. We dont count by days here, we count by weeks. I hardly notice what day it is, only that it is week 4 or as next week is 5. So I will tell you about my tea last Sunday shall I? It was Angie, Alison, Kevin and me going. We got an e-mail saying that we were examples of the castle and depending on how we behaved judged whether students would be invited back in the future. Well that made us feel comfy so we gave ourselves what we thought was some extra time to walk to her cottage. The instructions were; "it is the Milton house. It is between Milton farm and Mitlon cottage. It will be behind a wall with a fence." We thought we were going to be late but ended up being 10 minutes early. You could tell we had put our game faces on when we went through the gate as we all become automatically extremely cautious about everything we did. We went to the front door, deciding what we should say, wondering if it was the right house and unsure of whether we were supposed to go to the back door. Doreen (the elderly lady we were to be visiting) leaned her head out an upper floor window and told us to just come in the back door and she would be right with us once we were done putting on a different skirt. She had two dogs, one that was obviouly nervous about the safty of its owner, the other just curious about what was going on. One was a small poodlish looking thing, the other one of those small dog, maybe a scottish terrier or West Highland White Terrier or something to that effect. Can you tell I just wikipedia`d Terriers? Well thats something of what it looked like. Anyway Doreen came down and the dogs seemed gentle enough after that. The poodlish one apparently had been ill treated until it came to live with her, so thats why it was jumpy, but loved people as long as Doreen approved of them. It was nice to be with animals again.

Anyway Doreen took us out in her garden and showed us around. We all told stories when she asked questions and she told us stories about her house and the area. She had a fruit/vegetable garden. She grew these beautiful grapes and autumn raspberries. They grow right through autumn and she let us pick the ripest ones to have while we walked. It was nice to have berries again and these were gold and sweet. We dont get a lot of berries at the castle. Anyway after some chats we went inside and she made us tea and cake! Her oven is the most glorious thing I have ever seen! Parents you would go crazy. It has not only the oven parts, but those bread baking lookingthings. It heavy duty, giant and red and beautiful! The cottage itself is a fairly good size, not smalle, but has the wooden beams and uneven floors. Its like a renovated pioneerish looking house you go to on tours. When we went into to sitting room to have tea I saw a good size book case with loads of old books. I asked her about them and you know what she said? She said most of them were her fathers! She is at least in her 80s, that means these books were old! I was dying to get my hands on them but I didnt think she would let me even if I asked. Maybe if I see her again since we all chatted for another 3 hours. She had Rudyard Kipling (huge collection), Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Shakespeare and other authors that I havent heard of. She had a lot of books on Winston Churchill. Now this got us thinking later. We were told that one of the "friends of Herstmoncauex" once worked under Churchill and it was up to us to figure out who. She mentioned that she had worked as a seceratary, but we were kicking ourselves later for not trying to nudge it out of her. One other thing is she had 2 kitties that were obviously outdoor cats, but the terrier chased them away when we came as he isnt used to kitties because he was only being babysat by Doreen. I missed petting kitties!

Three hours later we made our way back to dinner extremely happy with our afternoon of real fruit and pets and company. The rest of the week was mostly school for me. On Wednesday night I watched Remember the Titans with a bunch of people in one of the dorm rooms. It was a surprisingly good movie. Thursday I had my adventures with laundry again. I had only two loads this time as I resolved to just shove everything I could into the machine. I also resolved to use the dryer this time which I think in the end my clothes liked better than being hung or waiting to be hung. They were all warm when I took them out and I sat in my room, turned on my portable DVD player and folded and watched a movie I had rented. It was fabulous. I rented two Vietman war movies by the way. While I folded I watched We were soldiers with Mel Gibson. Very good and very sad. I remembered one of the scenes being showed to us in Grade 11 American History so it was nice to get the back story. I started watching Apocalypse Now before going to bed, but I only got half an hour into it as I got distracted by Kari. We sat in her room for a couple hours chatting about dance. We hadnt had a proper convo with anyone about dance for a while and as she is from Ajax, we know of similar places. Though she was far more into hard core competitive dance. She danced with Blake from season 1 of SYTYCD and that whole inner circle. She is a very mellow competitive dancer I found though, she says she goes out there to have fun and to dance, she seems to love it soo much. It was a nice, I also showed her the video I beleive Leah sent me on youtube (was it you Leah?) about the crazy Chinese version of Swan Lake? I suggest looking it up for anyone who hasnt seen it. Kari had never seen it and went crazy, she has her teaching certificates for dance and has done most of her ballet exams, so she was going ape over the craziness of it. We also looked at SYTYCD videos and stuff.

After that I went to bed and then today i went to London again. I woke up early and Kari and I basically slept on the bus. We found our way to the Imperial War museum. I only have one or two pictures and i will put them up later when I have the equipment. We werent allowed to take too many photos either because of the certain exhibits. First I lookeda the World War one exhibit. I would like to go back and look at more of each exhibit when I have more time, as we only had the morning. But it was still cool. We went through a remake/makeshift treanch. I thought the statues of soldiers set up were going to move as there was sound effects, thank god they didnt because other wise I would have screamed and burst into tears. It was an intense museum. We also went through a bunch of the WW2 exhibit. There was a lot so you if you have questions about some of the stuff I saw you can message me, but I wont give all details here. Kari and I had some intense discussions about war and politics and other topics of similar sort. It was already very mellowing, but what got us even mroe mellowed was the holocaust exhibit. It was labeled for only ages 14 and up. It wasnt as intense as I thought it was going to be. Kari and I thought they were going to get us crying by the end of it, but we were good and struck up some interesting convos. It was still intense, some of the pictures and info and videos were things we had never heard or seen before. The only time we both got a catch in our throats was near the end when we came upon a picture that was blown up to fit the size of an entire wall. It was of mangeled bodies in a pile. Now we had seen other pictures similar to thins, but this was a little different in some way. I think it was mostly because we couldnt distinguish in the picture whose body was whose, they were all tangled together and only some of their faces were showing an parts. It was beyond grusome, it was overwhelming. So after that we had wanted to see the crimes against humanity exhibit, but that was left for another time, we were running out of time and we decided that we had had enough sobering for one day. Not to mentionedthe exhibit was marked as only ages 16 and up. So we headed down to the gift shop which was ramsacked with elementary aged school kids. We decided to go back another time to get stuff, as they had many interesting war things to consider buying.

We made it down to the National Gallary just on time as our tour started. It was all Renaissance (and some International Gothic) paintings that she was showing, so I felt a little more in my element. We saw works by such as Titian (who`s painting Venus of Urbino I am doing my big essay on), Raphael, Leonardo, Botticelli, etc. When we were given leave to look around I went straight for the art of 1600 to present. I love paintings. I saw real works by Claude (I love Claude), Monet, Degas, Manet, Van Goh, Sisley, Turner (who I hadnt heard much of before but I discovered I really enjyed his works) and other famous artists that I cant quite recollect the names of at the moment. It was another sobering experience for the day.

Not much happened on the way home. The movie they put on this time on the way back was the third Pirates movie. It made me miss Pirates. So basically so far I have seen Once, About a Boy, Pirates 3, Catch me if you can and possibly another that I cant quite remember. This week was also filled with a game called catch me if you can. I didnt play but found myself in the middle of it anyway. So everyone who signed up gets a name and they have to find that person and without anyone else hearing say to them "Gotcha" while touching them on the arm back or something. It has become intense, no one goes anywhere without a partner, especially someone who isnt playing (aka me). Eveyone is looking around corners racing to and from the washrooms. It got intense, let me just leave it at that.

One more ting before I let you go. I find that it is intellectually intimidating while at the same time stimulating being here. In class I find everyone is so cultured and knowledgable and passionate about everything. Every single topic you could think of and they know about it. The only reason I feal inteimidated is that they can think quicker than me, so in class obviously this can become a problem. But when it comes to discussion on feild studies or at meals or wlking places, pretty much anywhere. These I can do well and it is so fresh and thought provoking, its fabulous. Just this week I had an hour long convo at lunch with a group bunch of people about the up coming election, mostly the Canadian one, but a little of the American one. There were about 4 of us that stayed for an hour but other than that different people would come to eat lunch participate for a bit, then leave and another person would come. The best part was that the majority of the people, I didnt know very well, I had only met them a couple times. It was an invigorating convorsation, they all knew their...stuff. Then the other night Kari, Jacinta and I had an intense convo about religion and today kari adn I had an intense convorsation as previously mentioned on war and similar topics. I have had others, but these stand out in my mind. A lot of the people here want to get into Global Developmetn studies and I am thinking that is a direction I might like to follow too, but we`ll see what the year brings.

Thanks for listening! I know this one is a dusey. I should really learn to break these up eh? Please stay tuned for more tales in the future even if they do take a while for me to get out!
`Till next time!