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.