There and Back Again

Two weeks in "Study Abroad" feels like a month when you're traveling all the time! Here's a quick look, in pictures, at some of the day trips we've been doing in between our major stops at York, London, and Birmingham:

Dryburgh Abbey

Emily Ecklund reads an educational plaque while standing in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, burial place of Sir Walter Scott. Scott was a famous Scottish novelist whose works were published during the early 19th Century; his list of works includs novels like Waverley and Ivanhoe, as well as numerous short stories and poems. (Photo Credit Hannah Gustavson)

 Hadrian's Wall

Rachel Petty, Emerson Boyle, and Kirsten Rice admire the pastoral views around the ruins of a military outpost along Hadrian's Wall as other students look on. The wall began construction in the early 2nd Century AD during the rule of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and was one of two walls built to separate the Roman-occupied Britain from the "Wild" Scottish North. Students enjoyed walking the walls and reading about the ruins on the way to Rydal. (Photo Credit Hannah Gustavson)

 

Sylvia Plath's Resting Place

The group stopped at Heptonstall Church in West Yorkshire between cities in order to visit the grave of American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar and numerous collections of critically acclaimed poetry. (Photo Credit Stacey Torigoe)



We Break for Wordsworth

Rydal  Hall, Photo Credit Carrie Steingruber

Goodbye Edinburgh, hello Rydal! For the past few days, our little EngSem family has stayed at Rydal Hall, a historic manor house in "the heart of the English Lake District" (www.rydalhall.org). The Hall is within hiking distance of the famed Dove Cottage, poet William Wordsworth's home and place of inspiration for about a decade in the early nineteenth century (http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/). Between Croquet matches and nature walks, students have been entertained by bouts of badger watching (a pub nearby is famous for the family of badgers that has taken up residence in close proximity to the building) and generally been enjoying the warm sun and pleasant weather. In the words of Professor Jody Allen Randolph, "It's kinda glorious."

Dove Cottage, home to Wordsworth
from 1799 to 1808

Classes also picked back up again this week, with every class meeting and the entire group coming together yesterday evening for a a special reading of Wordsworth's poetry. Faced with a spotty wireless connection and a poem Wordsworth wrote about the modernization of his own era, our own Professor Paul Delaney even recited his own special version of "The World Is Too Much with Us:"

The world wide web is too much with us; late and soon,

Posting and Skyping, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see round Rydal that is ours;

We’ve exchanged our hearts for IP’s, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The badgers that will be prowling at all hours,

And loom about us now past sleeping flowers,

We virtually view on YouTube or iTunes

It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

A Luddite heaped with technologic scorn

So might I, standing ’neath these tow’ring trees

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Berwick rising near the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

The original can be found here: (http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/736/). Tomorrow our group leaves for York and bids farewell to the Lake District, but our short stay here has already generated countless adventures and many memories of good times. We will all miss it dearly.

A Snapshot

The entire EngSem group waits in the queue to see the outdoor play Decky Does a Bronco on its first day in Edinburgh. It was cancelled soon after due to the unforeseen rain.

A group of students poses for a photograph on their way to a picnic in Edinburgh.

The RSC Courtyard Theatre- Our "Second Home" during our stay in Stratford. We were blessed to see high quality productions of various Shakespearian works, including King Lear, As You Like it, and Romeo and Juliet.

Emerson Boyle and Professor Jody Allen Randolph chat with Irish poet Paul Muldoon while getting their books signed after a poetry reading in Edinburgh.

Greetings from the Fringe!

Greetings from Edinburgh! It's been a long few weeks for everyone, but it's also been a week filled with theatre and dance, music and museums, impromptu bus adventures and artistic discoveries. After seeing several plays done by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, the group's move to Edinburgh was a shock for some and a relief for others.

The main attractions of the moment here in Edinburgh are the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe) and the Edinburgh International Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_International_Festival). These festivals, among others taking place here at the same time, make for a whirlwind of activity and an array of theatrical productions, both mainstream and alternative. Students from our group have been lucky enough to see everything from adaptations and productions of The Glass Menagerie and Our Town (respectively) to more edgy productions like Beautiful Burnout, a physically extreme play about boxing, and The Author, an intense, audience-based play by Tim Crouch that explored the line between appropriate artistic representation and that which becomes ethically dubious.

In addition to the constant opportunities to see both traditional and non traditional theatre, students have been taking advantage of the numerous other attractions the city has to offer. The National Gallery and National Museum both house high quality free exhibits, for example; says Mckenna Mitchell, "I was most interested in the fact that they had such an eclectic range of art; it didn't seem to be primarily Scottish at all. They had a lot of impressionist paintings (Van Gogh, Monet, Degas), and art from other countries  all right next to each other, which I was thought was very interesting. You look at Degas and turn the corner, and a Van Gogh painting is right there. There are no filler artists."

Students have also been taking advantage of the bus systems; convenient day passes allow us to get to any part of the city (and sometimes out of the city) with only a little research and a bus route map. Hannah Rae Moore decided to hop on the first bus she saw, and ended up in a small town outside of Edinburgh. Carrie Steingruber and other friends and golf enthusiasts are already planning a day trip to St. Andrews this coming weekend, and can't wait to explore the world's oldest golf course (not to mention find the beach where they filmed a famous scene from Chariots of Fire).

Lastly, being at the world's largest arts festival has given us unprecedented educational opportunities. We've been to educational lectures and poetry readings by the likes of Hanif Kureishi, Roddy Doyle, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Paul Muldoon, and several students got books signed but Roddy Doyle and/or Paul Muldoon (a novelist and a poet, respectively, whose works we're studying in our classes).

All in all, these past few weeks have been fast paced and had their own unique challenges, but they have been rewarding. Greetings from all of us to all of you, and thank you all for your prayers and encouragement during this journey. We can't wait to tell you more about our adventures as they happen! Peace and Grace!