This weekend I went to Penrith, England for a family homestay weekend. I really didn't know what to expect, but it turned out awesome. Two other American students and I stayed with a farmer named Eddy and his wife Jane. Eddy picked us up in his little tiny white car at the bus stop. I soon realized that I'm still a conditioned American when I walked up to what I thought was the passenger side seat on his car, only to realize that it was the driver's side. Everyone laughed, but I was forgiven. When we got to his house, we met Jane, who had pasta bolognese and sticky toffee pudding hot and ready for us.

We woke up the next morning, ate hot breakfast and listened to Eddy talk a little bit about his life, house and some local history. Eddy had lived in Penrith his entire life and was born in the same 12th century house that we were staying in. The house and land that Eddy was responsible for all belonged to Lord Lonsdale, who allowed Eddy and Jane to rent the property from him. Lord Lonsdale still lives in a picturesque castle about five miles away from Eddy - and the land, castle and various other estates will be passed down through the royal family for the foreseeable future.

Besides lords and ladies, Eddy explained that the village of Penrith was home to the last battle between the Scots and the English, and the site is commemorated by a small plaque on the side of the road...

Saturday brought a huge adventure. Another host dad drove us around to see a beautiful waterfall. We took a motorboat out on a lake and ate leek and potato soup afterwards. We saw William Wordsworth's grave, where Beatrix Potter lived and went to a stone circle built by ancient Celts in 1500 BC. It was absolutely spectacular. After going castle sightseeing we returned home and ate dinner, and then accompanied Jane to a little make-up party. I'm not much of a girly-girl, but there was tons of candy and cakes and smelly lotions so we all had a good time.

Today Eddy took us around on quadbikes, or four-wheelers, to see the entirety of "his" land and sheep and the facilities associated with owning them. I ended up driving around - and it was probably one of the most fun things that I've done here. We blew straight through fields of sheep, and caused giant sheep stampedes. The scenery was fantastic, rolling Cumbrian hills in the distance, patchwork farmfields and pasture in the foreground, and thousands and thousands of sheep.

Now I'm back, school starts tomorrow - in the studio from 9:30AM to 5:00PM!

peace,
steph

Curious Happenings...

The Art School. Thats the name of the student-run bar on campus, and on every Thursday night, at approximately 10pm it turns into a gigantic club. Literally hundreds of hip night-crawling Glaswegians queue at the door, itching to be let in to drink unbelievable amounts of alcohol, watch bizarre films and dance till they can't feel their legs (a phenomenon that is aided by ample amounts of Guiness).

Tonight, I found myself there because I didn't have anything else to do. My friend Deena invited me to come along, and together we walked the short distance over the hill with a couple of her flatmates. One of them is probably the most Tim-Burtonesque character I've ever seen in my life. His hair was about a foot long and stood straight up on end, but was parted messily to one side (a la Edward Scissorhands). He was about six feet tall, and his chicken legs were accentuated my black skinny jeans. I don't think that he had washed or slept in days, had dark circles under his eyes, was smoking incessantly and couldn't walk a steady line to save his life. I have no idea what he had been drinking or taking, but it must have been a lot...

When we got to The Vic, I was very very underdressed, or rather, undercostumed. The general style at the Glasgow School of Art is fairly consistent. Women predominantly favor a variety of hairstyles from the 1960's, clothes from the 1980's, or anything bought second hand from vintage shops or charity stores. If it doesn't match, thats great. If normal society would think you've completely lost it, even better... Being here is like watching the craziest fashion show you've ever seen, and when you think you've seen it all, a woman walks in with a pink-glitter and sequin dress and hair fixed into a bleach blonde mohawk, with one side closely cut to her scalp and died florescent pink.

The party atmosphere at the bar was great, but I got tired to quickly to stay for very long. To say that I'm not a night owl is an understatement, and perhaps just by luck, I'm not yet stoned out of my mind or completely pissed(drunk). But next week, I might try a little bit of dressing up, and if I do, pictures will follow.

Cheers.

Photo Update...

Here are some pictures from my weekend!
Summit!
Yay! Thats what we went up!
My friends at the beach...

Meet, greet, climb, get sick

Long time, no post. But to be quite honest, the last week was rather uneventful. I went to a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee, thats gaelic for ya) on Thursday night and enjoyed very rambunctious Scottish dancing, which is more like spinning around in circles, all the time as fast as you can. I went on an international student trip where I climbed up 3000+ feet and enjoyed the beautiful view from the top with a couple of friends, while eating chocolate bars and crisps. I went to the beach and took tons of pictures of ocean rubbish. I saw the train bridge from the Harry Potter movie in Glenfinnan. I've met students from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Estonia, France, Norway, Wales, Britain, Bulgaria, Austria... to name a few. Last night I hung out with my flat mates and watched four consecutive episodes of Dawsons Creek. I've developed a refined level of knowledge about various types of cabbage.

Ok, maybe I've done more than I've thought...

Today I met my instructors, saw my huge studio space and was introduced to the printmaking studio and life drawing room. We don't actually start working until next week - but then we start rotating on 2 week schedules, 2 weeks painting studio, 2 weeks life drawing studio, 2 weeks printmaking studio, then repeat until the end of term. This should be awesome...

I love this toilet sign. I found it in Glasgow - they have a strange sense of humor.

Today I'm leaving Edinburgh, and heading with the group of 8 IFSA-Butler students to Glasgow. Although the four star hotel, and gourmet meals and view of a castle from my breakfast table have been nice, its time to get back to the real world.

The past two days have been filled with meetings and information about what lies before us in terms of study and expectations. The Glasgow School of Art sounds fantastic. Although I already knew a lot about it, I'll outline some of it for the people I haven't talked to. Every week students are expected to put in about 35 hours of studio work in their private studio. The instructors periodically drop in to critique your work, but the projects are largely self-guided and self-motivated. We don't have a traditional American class schedule, but we do have one class on Thursdays on critical theory and art history. Otherwise there is no assigned homework or bigillions of written papers. The studio is only opened from 8:30am-6:30pm, with restricted hours on weekends, so I can't do homework late until the night, which means... no all nighters, ever. This is just what I need.

A couple of quick things about Edinburgh, where I've been staying for the past couple of days. The city is huge and cosmopolitan - to me it seems a bit like Paris, if you've ever been there. All the women wear highheels and smart, stylish clothing. I feel like I really don't fit in here... but oh well!

I ended up renting a bike on Friday, and pedaling as fast and as hard as I could for about 2 hours. An inept Italian mechanic tried to help me set up the rental bike - but I ended up helping him put on my pedals, raise the seat and pump up the tyres (British spelling!). The manager offered me a job, but I politely declined... After checking the bike's brakes I was off. I didn't even turn onto the wrong side of the road once, and I must say, riding in traffic here is a lot of fun. The roads are like patchwork quilts... they have small patches of cement, small patches of cobbles, and small patches of asphalt. In addition, the roundabouts are fantastic you can go zooming around them really fast.

I also visited the velodrome, but didn't get a chance to ride. There was no one there to help me get a bike, but I did get a personal tour of the facility. The track does look exactly like ours, except for the fact that its tucked away in a ghetto of Edinburgh. Barbed wire fencing, huge tenement like housing and graffiti sprout up all around it. The track was actually built in 1979 and its holding up just as good as ours.

Since i didn't ride the track here, I've just decided that I am going to Manchester to ride on the indoor velodrome there - they just finished it. :) !!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I also went to the Edinburgh national museum, where we got to see a Picasso ceramic exhibit. Although I found it interesting, the permanent display of taxidermied animals was much more enthralling. They had a collection of thousands of stuffed animals - from ostrich to kiwi to tiny bugs and snakes - you name it they had it. Its one of the creepiest things I've ever seen.

Well, I have to pack my stuff, I'm leaving in 30 minutes!

TTFN.

Oh the things I've done...

Disclaimer: I'm exhausted, please forgive me.

Tuesday.
I went hill walking with a older gentleman I met at breakfast. In essence, we walked to the pub and back. It took us a two and a half hours walk to get to get there. The walk was incredible, and the pub was even better. Dated back to 1705, the building was filled with ancient chairs, stuffed animals and dreary faded old portraits. A fire crackled in a cast-iron hearth, its the most Scottish thing I've ever seen in my life. And to complete the occasion, I ate haggis! It was surprisingly good, except for the foreboding aftertaste and crunchy animal bits...

This is me wearing Georgia Gould's glasses after she threw them at me. And yes, I did give them back.


This is the view out the bus window. You know, just the everyday normal trip up to Fort William...

Well my photographs really don't do this place any justice...

I'm exhausted. More tomorrow.

HOLY FRICKING COW

THIS IS THE MOST INCREDIBLE PLACE IVE EVER BEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I SPENT THE WHOLE DAY AT WORLDS AND I GOT TO SEE JULIEN WIN AND GEORGIA GOULD THREW HER GLASSES AT ME AND THEN I GOT TO WEAR THEM AND THEN I ATE SOME PORRIDGE AND THEN I CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN AND THEN I CHEERED WITH SOME CRAZY SCOTS AND ATE A MINTY-CHEWY!!!!!!!!!!!

ITS LIKE A FAIRY TALE LAND!

ILL POST ... THE XC COURSE IS SOOOOOOO COOOOOOOOLLLL

PICS AND VIDEO TO COME, IM AT A HOSTEL AND HAVE TO RUN...

CHEERS!

Glasgow...

Wow, it really feels like I've been here for ages. Maybe its the stress of being in a completely foreign place that makes the days seem longer - or maybe its just the jet lag. The flight was uneventful in a good way, although I did randomly sit next to a German girl named Sabine who knew Kari from her exchange program in Moorhead. The world really is a small place...

I managed to get to my hostel, "EuroHostel" with no trouble. The thing is a humongous megaplex on the River Clyde, right at the edge of downtown Glasgow. It temporarily houses a couple hundred people from all over Europe. Therefore, I've been hearing more German and French than English in the mornings, when I attend breakfast in the hostel kitchen.

Glasgow is very industrial, old, wet and dark. When I got off the bus near Central Station, the buildings looked like they had been damp for ages. It was slightly drizzling and the sky was overcast. To add to the rather musky atmosphere EVERYONE was wearing black and most were pale. Looking back, it was like the Addams family had spontaneously combusted on the square. Packs of Scottish people swarmed the streets, leaving their jobs to go home. Traffic was hell, the lanes are tiny, and a small number of commuters filtered through the spaces in between the cars. Half the city is under construction, working to restore the older buildings. This means that many of the sidewalks are obstructed by scaffolding and made trying to get through tiny spaces with a suitcase and giant rucksack during Scottish rush hour a tad awkward.

Today, I went to the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. Only two galleries were open, but both exhibited the art of local artists, many of whom had graduated from the Glasgow School of Art. Yikes! This place has quite the reputation, and I'm frankly surprised they let me in. I haven't yet had the chance to walk over to the school, but hope to tomorrow.

I also made a friend. She's from Perth, Australia, and today we wandered around the city together - to the bus station and then to a pub to grab a bite to eat. Whenever we stopped to ask questions to locals, they gave us curious looks. Bet they were wondering why an Aussie and an American were walking around the city together...

Other plans:
Find a cycle shop
Go to St Mungo's Museum of Relgious Art (they have a killer Salvador Dali there)
go to sleep

Good night

less than 24 hours

At this time tomorrow I will be flying to Amsterdam. Its a bit scary to think about. I anticipate that the "Wow, I'm not coming back for awhile" feeling will hit sometime next week, probably in the Scottish highlands.

I wanted to apologize to all those people who adore haggis, because I spelled it wrong in my last post. HAGGIS.

In addition, the velodrome in Edinburgh is not an indoor venue. Its a beautiful 250m track that looks exactly like our velodrome. I hope that they will have cycles for hire.

And today I managed to confuse shillings, euros and pounds all in one sentence. Ooops.