Two days in Dover

Guess what? We're on break at last! Our paper was due Tuesday, and break started whenever we finished. I got mine done by 4, and then I went to meet Mom and Joe. It was great to see them again. On Wednesday we went to the Dickens House Museum, the Soane Museum, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, and Baker Street. Then on Thursday morning we left for Dover with Adam. After a longish train ride (on which I slept and wrote postcards), we arrived and found our guest house. Then we went out to the beach. It was so beautiful. Seeing the blue-green waves on the pebbled shore made me so happy.

We walked up and along the magnificent white cliffs, with the sea below the whole time. It was incredibly windy, and mostly cloudy, so it was pretty cold, but it didn't matter. It was wonderful just being there, surrounded by beauty, away from the city.

We were so high up. Mom got nervous and Adam freaked out when Joe or I went too close to the edge (Joe was more dangerous than I was). There were wild ponies grazing. We walked a long way, just wandering along. Finally we turned back, left the cliffs behind, and went back to the guest house.

After hanging out there, resting, for a while, we headed out to find somewhere to eat supper. Eventually we decided on a pub. The food was delicious. Midway through the meal we noticed some random superheroes--Spiderman, Ironman, Batman, and Superman. They weren't even together. It was weird.

The next day we went to Dover Castle. It was high up on a hill; the path up was really steep. We went on a tour of the wartime tunnels and then explored on our own. There were all sorts of random ruin-like towers and little tunnels. We couldn't go in the castle keep because it was closed, which was a little disappointing. But it was fun just walking around. We could see all of Dover.

It was especially cold and windy up there, so we stopped in a restaurant and got tea and hot chocolate. The latter had whipped cream and marshmallows. Mmmm. We also got two slices of cake (chocolate and lemon) and shared them.

After a while we went back down the hill and returned to the beach one more time. Adam read aloud the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html), which we'd just had to read for the program. On the way back Mom and Joe got off the train at Canterbury, and I continued back to London with Adam, needing a day of rest, which I certainly got--I slept for 10 hours last night!

Scraps

What follows are bits from e-mails that I've sent since I last posted. I know it's not much, but at least you'll get an idea of what's been going on.

Jan. 29: Last night some friends and I went to see Les Mis--it was amazing! Three of us were in the very front row (the cheap seats). The stage was right in front of us. It was scary when the actors came right up to the edge. But the music was so good. The cast did a wonderful job. It was so cool.

Feb 1: I got an A- on the first paper (about the individual and the state in Greco-Roman culture). I was surprised and happy. :) I only know of one other person who got an A-.

Feb. 21: London is so busy and so much fun. I've been staying up way too late and doing ridiculous things, like going on a walk at midnight and seeing some ghetto-looking kids frantically run by and then seeing the police with a big group of them (that was earlier tonight) and going on a walk in the evening at Canterbury and having drunk people swear at us (maybe these night time walks aren't such a good idea . . .) London is certainly a lot different from Houghton!
This weekend is wonderful because the professors surprised us by not giving us a paper! So we have a completely free weekend; it's great. I got A minuses on my first two papers, which was a surprise. I have gotten the others back yet. Tomorrow we're going to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night; some people saw it tonight and said it was really good. So I'm looking forward to that.
Let's see . . . my favorite thing . . . it's so hard to pick. Going to Bath and Canterbury (they were overnight trips) was really fun because we stayed at nice hotels and had good food (unlike at the Highbury Centre) and had lots of free time, so those were probably what I liked best. My least favorite thing was all the trips to the British Museum, which we had to spend a lot of time at and we all got so sick of. Now we're done with it, though, fortunately. Another bad thing is the papers--they came be pretty stressful. >:(

Now let me update you on a few of the those things: I got my 3rd paper back today and got a B+, which isn't bad but is a little disappointing after doing better on my first two. Also, we didn't actually see Twelfth Night because it was sold out, but we're going to go another time instead. Yesterday was a beautiful day, practically like spring, and we went on a walk by the Thames. Utterly amazing. We've watched a lot of movies and just hung out. Tomorrow, though, it's back to school. :( But I'm still loving the whole experience.