Let's Hear it for (Regular) York

Dear adoring public (otherwise known as Mom, Dad, and Grandpa),
Yes, yes, I know. I am a terrible, terrible blogger, and I apologize. In my defense, however, my quest to fight off the boredom of the five-day weekend has started to work! This is mostly because I have actual work for my classes, which is a nice change. So I've been reading and working on papers and presentations, continuing to fail grandly at archery (I hit the target more than the floor last week! This is definite progress), I've started yoga to counteract the stress of archery, and I am now in my third week of volunteering at Norwich Castle.
The interior of the Castle is part art museum, part Norfolk history museum, and the learning department does a lot in terms of activities for school groups and families, so I help with different activities and do some preparatory work behind the scenes. It's actually really, really fun. My first week I was there for an Ancient Egyptian themed day, so I spent my day helping eight year-olds make Egyptian collars out of bits of paper. They were excited once they realized that I was American, and I heard lots of stories about cousins, friends, etc...who moved to the States. Last week I was at the museum for an Ancient Roman/Iceni day, so all of the interpretors who I met were dressed either in plaid and blue face paint or in togas. It was great.
I was allowed to follow one of the groups in the morning in order to observe some of the activities. Their first stop was with a woman dressed as an Iceni chief, and she got them to think about how the Iceni lived compared to how we live today, and told them about the Roman oppression of the Celts. As an overarching idea for the day, the kids were supposed to be thinking about whether or not it was fair for the Romans to tax the Iceni so harshly - they took half of what the Iceni grew, raised, or made. The kids had never been exposed to this part of the story before, as the Romans are the ones who wrote history, and they portrayed the Iceni, as well as other Celtic peoples, as uncivilized barbarians. It was really interesting to see where the kids ultimately placed their loyalties. One little girl, fresh from learning about the Roman tax, told "Brutus," the Roman soldier who led the next rotation, that he and his people should just go home because the Celts were perfectly well off without them, thank you very much. He looked bewildered for a moment, but recovered quickly and said, "Kids, I'm going to tell you something about life: it's not fair. You want to know how to make it more fair? Get a sword."
This past week I was at Strangers' Hall, which is a beautiful Tudor hall that has served as a home and meeting place, and is now a museum. We had a group of nine year-olds down for a Tudor day, and they learned all about feasting, dancing, Tudor dress, and weaving. As I've mentioned before, Norwich was England's second city because of the weaving trade that grew up here when the "Strangers" came from the Low Countries. They used Strangers' Hall as a meeting place (fun fact: they also introduced the canaries that gave their name to the Norwich City Football Club) and brought their weaving technology with them. The kids were supposed to imagine that they were Strangers in Norwich in 1565, and during the day they learned about how different people in Norwich would have reacted to them. It was a really, really good program. I helped with the costumes in the morning, so I played lady-in-waiting and laced girls into bodices and petticoats, and then in the afternoon I helped with the craft activity, which was making paper looms and weaving. I had a great time, actually, and I got to spend the whole day in this beautiful Tudor hall, where ten year-old me would have had a field day letting my imagination run wild.
I love working with the kids, and I think that it's so important for them to see history brought to life like this. It's the difference between reading a Shakespeare play in English class and seeing it performed. The interpreters are great, as well. They're so dedicated to teaching students - most of them are former educators - and our lunches always involve several cups of tea and a chat about something historical, such as whether the Romans really were too oppressive and what they contributed to Britain. It's an indulgence for my inner history nerd.
So, excuses aside, we have now come to the travel adventure portion of the blog! The Dickinson Humanities Program, under the sometimes misguided leadership of Professor Qualls, who this time led us through several inches of mud instead of sticking to dry roads, ventured forth in the very early English morning to York. York is a beautiful city, made even prettier by the fact that the sun was shining. Quick historical rundown for you, brought to you by the fine people at Lonely Planet. York was originally home to a Celtic tribe that was then pushed off their lands by the Romans in A.D. 71. Gotta love the Romans. They used York as a garrison and Emperor Hadrian, of wall fame, used it as a base for his northern campaign. It was a very important city - Emperor Constantine was crowned in York in 306, which is pretty impressive. The next few hundred years are a bit of a hot mess - some Anglo-Saxons happened - and then the Vikings took York in 866. They renamed it Jorvic (from the Roman Eboracum) and made it the capital of their trading empire for one hundred years. The next major development in York's history was the arrival of the Normans, when the charming, gentle-hearted William the Conqueror up and torched the city and much of the surrounding countryside in an effort to show northerners that he was boss. Nice guy. The Normans then set about rebuilding York in the twelfth century, and eventually it came to be the beautiful city that it is today.

York Minster, which is the largest medieval cathedral in Northern Europe. It was built between 1220 and 1480 and is second in religious importance only to Canterbury Cathedral. Don't worry - you'll see more of it!


Turns out that Guy Fawkes was born here!


This is part of the Roman garrison that stood at York, as indicated by the red stripe, because apparently the Romans liked that kind of thing. The sarcophagi are also Roman. The Roman wall was then built up by medieval residents, and it's now one of the most complete medieval walls in the country.


The ruins of the Abbey of St. Mary's.


Our tour guide took us along the medieval town wall for a bit - here we are on Robin Hood's Tower. The poor guy had no idea what he was getting into. He told us that there was no reason for the name, but he did not count on having me in his group, or on the fact that I had been reading Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography on the train that morning (it's for a paper, I swear!). So, dear readers, I will enlighten you so that you will be less ignorant than my tour guide. The early Robin Hood ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries actually have Robin's home as Barnsdale, a village in Yorkshire. He frequently meets people coming from York and goes there himself sometimes. His location isn't cemented as Nottingham until later.


Check out these awesome flying buttresses shining in the late aftenoon sun. We climbed the tower in York Minster to see some stunning views of York at my favourite time of day.


What we could see lookiing North - the Yorkshire moors and the Kilburn Chalk Horse! You can't make it out in my picture of the actual landscape, and I could just barely see it, but it was there!


The Shambles, probably the most famous street in York. It used to be the butchers' street, apparently.


Because I strive to put Lord of the Rings references into everything that I do.


The Jorvic Viking Museum, where you could smell real Viking smells! Not that I have the most discerning nose in the world, but to me it smelled like my brother's room after he gets home from basketball practice. I'm just saying (sorry, Little Man). We were all a little bit punchy by this point, and Stephenie bought runes, which we proceeded to read at lunch.

All in all, it was a very successful trip to York, and we had a great time. By a happy chance, Caitlin and Sarah chose the same day to visit York from Durham, so we met up for dinner and a pint, which was a blast. York is an absolutely gorgeous city, and definitely worth a visit.
I know that I've been a horrible blogger of late, and there is much that I have to catch up on still. But now that things have kind of taken off and I've been doing more, time seems to be moving so much quicker. It's gotten to that point where things are happening too quickly, and June seems so much closer now than it did even a few weeks ago. I'm starting to think about what will happen when I have to leave everything that I've built up here, and it's absolutely terrifying. This has been the most amazing year of my life, and there is still so much to look forward to and so much living to be done before June. I just wish that I could press the pause button, because I do not want it to end. Everyone says, "Oh, don't think about it - you have time!" That's all very well and good, living in the moment and all that, and I do try. But it's impossible to ignore that niggling voice in the back of my head. It's made me think, though - society makes it impossible for us to really live in the moment. Even now, when my professors, family, and Global Education office are all telling me to live for the present, I still have to worry about summer jobs, classes for next year, accomodation, thesis topics, graduate school - how am I supposed to stay in the moment with all of that accumulating behind me? It's hard - a kerfuffle, one might even say.
But I have tried really hard this year to appreciate every day and to live in the moment as much as I can, and this is honestly the happiest that I've ever been. In that vein, I'll leave you with some wise words from John Keating in Dead Poets Society:
"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
It's not easy, but this year has shown me that the extraordinary is there, even in the little moments. We just have to find it and shut the door on all of the pressures that want to tear us away. At least for a moment.

"WE GO to Nottingham!"

Traveling all over the United Kingdom can make one forget that one has other responsibilities, such as essays, reading, and communicating with the wonderful people at home. But don't worry Mom and Dad, I got all of my essays in and finished all of my reading, and now I'm getting around to the communicating business. Just a quick aside about turning in essays in this country: the English impracticality strikes again! Handing in work should be easy, yes? You print it out and hand it to your professor. Apparently this efficient and easy method hasn't reached British shores yet, even though their civilization has been around over one thousand years longer than America. But who's counting? Here you have to take your essay, without your name, because everything has to be anonymous since British professors apparently can't achieve the same levels of objectivity that American professors can, to the school office where you have to fill out a cover sheet with gazillions of numbers, punch it through a date machine, staple it all, take the yellow form for your personal records (like when you bring your car in for repairs), and put it in your professor's pigeon hole (mailbox, in American). So unnecessarily complicated! Okay, rant over. I love this country, I promise, but really! Our family trait of doing things the hard way clearly passed through the English lineage.
On to happier things! The Friday after I returned from Durham was Guy Fawkes Day (also known as Bonfire Night), when English people all over the country put aside their paralyzing fear of fire (there are twelve fire doors in my flat. Have I mentioned that? Twelve. And one opens to the mop closet.) and light huge bonfires to burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. For anyone who is unfamiliar with this fairly barbaric and un-English concept, Guy Fawkes was part of the Gunpowder Plot. He and his cronies wanted to assassinate King James I and replace him with a Catholic monarch, so they planned to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605. Fortunately, they were caught and Fawkes was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but Wikipedia tells me that he jumped from the scaffolding and broke his neck, thus avoiding this lovely fate. Anyway, he is one of the most hated figures in British history, and he even got himself a fun little rhyme:
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason, and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot
Not the best poetry to come out of England, but that's alright. In Norwich this holiday was basically an excuse to set off fireworks for three nights straight, including one public display in Earlham Park, which was fun. I didn't see the bonfire, though, because you had to pay to get into the carnival, and I didn't feel like paying to see some burning wood, no matter what it symbolized. Apologies for my failure at investigative reporting.
The next night, however, Jess and I set off on an epic adventure to search out Robin Hood and his gang in Nottingham. Our train came in late enough that the bus to our hostel in Sherwood Forest was no longer running. In Robin's day, Sherwood Forest stretched over twenty miles northward from Nottingham, but now most of that has fallen prey to deforestation and is farmland. Sad. In an alternate universe, we would have ridden horses up the Great North Road, been stopped by Robin and his gang for our money, explained that we were poor students, and joined the gang to frolick about Sherwood forever. But this being unrealistic, we opted for a taxi instead. Now, you would think Nottingham - Sherwood Forest - a logical association! Apparently not, because our taxi driver had never heard of Sherwood Forest. A good start! Fear not, however, for we made it to our hostel, where we were delighted to discover that all of the rooms were named after Robin Hood characters. There was some jumping up and down and silent screaming (which turned out to be unnecessary since we were the only people in the hostel) in the hallway when we realized that we were staying in the Robin Hood room.
It was a lovely hostel, and we were thrilled to find a) pillows that weren't flattened to within an inch of their functionality, and b) a television in the common room. Apparently the past ten years haven't reached the tiny, quaint village of Edwinstowe, however, because the most recent version of Robin Hood that was available for our viewing was Kevin Costner's ridiculous turn in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Jonas Armstrong he is not...
The next day, when we were due to explore Sherwood Forest searching for the gang (image courtesy of http://www.odvdo.com/index.php?gOo=goods_details.dwt&goodsid=856), dawned cold and rainy. Many times in England you'll wake up to rain, but the sun will start shining an hour later. This was not one of those days! We refused to be deterred, however, so we bundled up to face the elements (miserable) and set off for the forest. The visitor's centre contains a silly gift shop and an exhibit on Robin Hood that Lonely Planet (which is my travel Bible) described as "deeply naff." Although we weren't quite sure what naff meant, Jess and I avoided this exhibit, a good decision. But we did find St. Mary's in Edwinstowe, the church where there are marriage records for Robin and Marian (hear that, BBC? They were married in England! Not Acre!), which is pretty cool. And we found the Major Oak, which is where Robin supposedly had his hideout (even though we know that his hideout was actually a cool house in the ground built by the talented and wonderful Will Scarlet, carpenter extraordinaire). Really, it's just one of the oldest and largest of the Sherwood Oaks, which used to be quite famous and useful for builiding. Sir Christopher Wren used Sherwood oak in the buiding of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Anyway, the Major Oak is impressive today, but would have been a sapling when Robin was stealing from the rich and giving to the poor in 1192ish.
After seeing this lovely tree, we decided to concede to the wind and the rain and go back inside. We were also a bit disappointed at the state of Sherwood - there are really wide gravel paths around the major sites, so it's really hard to imagine what it would have been like hundreds of years ago. And all of the information on Robin Hood is really childish and silly. Maybe my new life goal should be redoing the exhibits at Sherwood Forest to offer an in-depth exploration of the legend of Robin Hood and its many incarnations, especially the one starring Jonas Armstrong. I'm not being funny, but they could have done so much more. Anyway, we were able to see all of the important places, and we bought a picnic lunch, got back into our pajamas, and curled up in front of the television for the day, where we discovered some delightful British programmes and jumped up and down (we knew we were the only people in the hostel by this point) whenever we saw a Harry Potter trailer. It could have been a completely miserable day, but it was actually really fun. Travel buddies make all the difference in the world!
The next day was still grey and cold, but the rain held off. Jess and I said goodbye to our lovely hostel and to the cute little village of Edwinstowe and caught a bus back to Nottingham. We met a delightful sir on said bus - a music student from the University of Nottingham. He started talking to us because we were the only three people on the bus without grey hair, and I think that Jess and I both fell in love a little bit. He assured us that Robin Hood was real. What an excellent busride!
We set off for Nottingham Castle when we got into the city, although we were quickly distracted by the statues of Robin Hood along the route. There were plaques that gave different pieces of the legend and I of course happened to find the one relating to Will Scarlet, who apparently won this name because of his scarlet tights. Jess has since informed me that most of the gang probably would have been wearing red tights (or leggings?), although I'm not sure why. Perhaps there were a lot of severely colour-blind people in Nottingham in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so red seemed like good camouflage in the forest? I don't know, it's a mystery. Anyway, Nottingham Castle itself is a little bit sad. A lot bit sad, actually. The medieval castle that was home to the Sheriff and Guy of Gisborne was demolished during the English Civil War because the Royalists were idiots. Nottingham was the only town in the area that supported Oliver Cromwell, so the Royalists from the surrounding towns decided that destroying the castle would show those rebellious Nottinghammites. Gah! Now I'll never know if there were actually dozens of doors with little squares cut out of them from all of those times that the gang broke in. Sorry, I digress.
The castle was rebuilt by a duke in the Georgian era, and now it's a modern art museum. In the very bottom, and very difficult to find, is an exhibit about the history of Nottingham. I am convinced that this particular exhibit is haunted, because I felt someone tug my backpack while I was reading a text panel only to discover that no one was behind me, and I swear that someone said my name, but Jess, the only person in the entire castle who knew my name, was on the other side of the multi-room exhibit. Clearly it was the spirit of Robin Hood trying to contact me. Speaking of Mr. Hood, you would think that this exhibit would have been an excellent place to investigate the legend and its importance to Nottingham, but it seemed as if the curators were desperately trying to prove that their town did not need legends of Merry Men in order to be cool. There was no mention of Robin Hood until we got to the fire exit and were trying to sneak out. Jess opened the door and immediately a cheery voice yelled, "Welcome, stranger!" She and I both screamed and backed up to the wall, only to realize that the recording was supposed to be Robin Hood welcoming guests to his exhibit. You know, the one that completely ignores him and fails to present interesting educational material about a legend that has become such an important part of British folklore. *sigh*
After our castle adventures, we stopped for a late lunch at a pub called Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. As if the cool name is not enough, this claims to be the oldest inn in England. It was founded in 1189, so I think that it has a pretty good claim. Incidentally, 1189 is also the year that Richard the Lionheart assumed the throne of England, and the pub is built into the cliff that the castle sits on, so maybe Robin Hood ate there! (Shh, I can dream.) Regardless of whether or not it was patronized by any outlaws doing good social work, I loved this pub. The atmosphere was warm and comfortable, just like a good pub should be, and the food was amazing. I got a Yorkshire pudding wrap that was insanely good, and we stayed a long time just enjoying the place.
We checked out the Brewhouse Yard Museum after lunch, which is a fun museum that depicts life in Nottingham from the eighteenth century onward. There was a recreation Victorian street, store and home interiors, and a playroom, so we had fun acting like children and playing with the old cash register in the apothecary's shop. We also met a delightful woman who told us about growing up during World War II and her memories of her Victorian grandparents. She kept bumping into us (it was a small museum) and would tell us to go look at something then proceed to chatter at us until we were out of earshot, and then we found her still talking to us as we came back. She was wonderful! Overall people in Nottingham proved to be much more open and friendly than people in Norwich (not that people in Norwich aren't friendly, it's just much more difficult to engage them).
So even though we didn't find Robin Hood, we had a really great time and I'm glad that I got to see all that I did. That's another thing off my bucket list! There's a Robin Hood festival in August that I really want to go to, however, because I think that it would be hilarious. And this trip inspired me to write my final paper on the legend of the Green Man, a figure that has been passed down from ancient Celtic folklore in many incarnations, including Robin Hood. And I'm serious about redoing the deeply naff exhibits. So much potential.
That's all that I have time for right now - more to follow soon! Remember: "We are Robin Hood!" *cue theme music*