in Shakespeare's hoods

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of visiting Stratford-upon-Avon, the town where William Shakespeare was born. It was one of the Give it a Go activities and went very well! The coach journey only took about two hours, and we had the day to explore the town as we wished. I didn't really know anyone else who was going, so I wandered around on my own. I did think of tagging along with some group, but somehow I felt like I wanted to experience the almost-sacred place with only myself. And I'm really glad I did just that!

I had done some research online before I went so I knew what I wanted to see. The two places I wanted to visit the most were Shakespeare's birthplace and his wife Anne Hathaway's childhood home. Anne Hathaway's cottage was about 1 mile away from the town centre, but I thought it wouldn't matter.

The town itself was really beautiful, and you could really feel the olden times there. A lot of the buildings looked just like they probably did back then.

This is the house Will was born in! To get in the house, first you had to go through this "Shakespeare Experience" (or whatever they called it) which was sort of like an interactive presentation with different rooms and special light effects and doors that only opened once the presentation was over. I didn't fully get it at first, but it was pretty cool! And I went so early that I was the only one there, which was even better. I got to explore the house in peace and one staff member shook my hand when he heard I was from Finland. "We don't get so many Finns here!"

This window used to be in the "birth room", but now it's behind a glass panel. It says under it that it was common for "pilgrims" to carve their names in the glass of the window, which I think is quite lovely.

This is the room that Shakespeare is said to have been born in. It was a bit difficult to get clear pictures inside the house, but I'm glad it was allowed anyway!

In Anne Hathaway's orchard. There were several different sculptures and pieces of art scattered around, and a footpath in the forest that took about 20 minutes to finish.

Her cottage! I think it's so lovely, too bad about the scaffolding. I would really love to live in a house like that!

"Shakespeare's church", Holy Trinity Church, where he and Anne Hathaway are said to be buried, but unfortunately I didn't get to go in.

River Avon

The reason why I didn't get in the church! When I got there, I thought there might be a wedding judging by all the hats, so I didn't dare go in. And when I was leaving, I actually saw the bride walk towards the church. I didn't dare take a picture when I was still facing her, so I did it more subtly... It must have been lovely to get married in Shakespeare's church!

Hall's Croft, the house of Shakespeare's daughter Susanna and her husband, doctor John Hall. I had got a "three-house" ticket, so I used my final house visit on this one.

I also happened to visit the town on the "Day of the Doctor", Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, so many places in town were in the appropriate mood.

These were in an Oxfam, where I bought three biscuits: a weeping angel, a Dalek, and a Tardis.

I had a Victoria Sponge and some hot chocolate in a lovely place called Hathaway Tea Rooms. Maybe I should have had tea, but I felt sufficiently like a true English lady anyway!

The building with the tower is the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

All in all, it was a great visit. It was so nice to spend the whole day with myself, doing and seeing the things that I wanted to. It was a good decision, because this girl in my Irish class who had also gone said that she and her friends didn't visit Anne Hathaway's cottage because they thought it was too far away. ;) Their loss...

Edinburgh!

I'm kind of ashamed of how infrequently I've written lately! It's been over a week since my Edinburgh trip, so I should definitely say something about that!

It was organised by the Erasmus Student Network together with a company called Travelholics who provided us with tour guides. Unfortunately the organisation of the trip was awful with the coaches being late and a bit broken, the tour guides not knowing anything or keeping us up-to-date, and making the attendees wait for pretty much everything. However, the trip itself was great, because we got to do what we wanted and I had a good time with my friends! Visiting Edinburgh is definitely something I'd recommend, but I wouldn't go on an organised weekend trip like that again, I think.

Here's a selection of pictures from the weekend!

J. K. Rowling's cafe

The hostel provided us with a great included breakfast!

As you can see, we were pretty lucky weather-wise. Especially Sunday was beautiful! I don't think it rained once during the weekend! We visited the castle, walked around the city and did some shopping. And ate, of course! And while the others joined the Scotch Whiskey Experience, I had some time to meet up with Becks who took a train from Glasgow specifically to see me! It was really nice!

Edinburgh is such a pretty place. It was lovely to see it again! But next time I'll take the train... With all the waits and breaks, the coach journey took about 8 hours on both times. But it was worth it in the end, I think!

Yesterday I visited Stratford-upon-Avon, so I'll try to write about that soon!

Manchester, reading week, and Edinburgh

It's been too long since the last update! Nothing has really happened though, apart from mine and Anna's Manchester trip last Saturday! It was really just the ticket as I was getting a bit bored...

It was quite nice weather at first...

... then the dark clouds started coming in...

... and finally, we were caught in a hailstorm.

 

Luckily we were safe in a charity shop for most of it! We just had to go outside to take some pictures...

 

There were lots of nice vintage shops in one part of the town. Manchester seemed to have more different kinds of areas than Sheffield - they even had a Chinatown!

It was basically just a bit of a street with several Oriental restaurants, but we weren't complaining about a 3-course lunch for £5.

I've had reading week this week, and even though I haven't done as much work as I would've hoped, I'm still pretty satisfied with what I've done. I also got another care package from home with some Finnish chocolate in it! That was such a nice surprise, again!

This weekend will be quite exciting because I'm going to Edinburgh! The trip is organised by the Erasmus Student Network, but I think there'll be non-Erasmus students going as well. The coach leaves at 3 am...

Kävin Annan kanssa viime viikonloppuna Manchesterissa, mikä oli kiva kokemus. Tällä viikolla on/oli väliviikko, eli luentoja ei ole ollut. Sain postissa Fazerin sinistä kotoa, nam! Tänä viikonloppuna olen menossa Edinburghiin noin sadan muun (vaihto-)opiskelijan kanssa, itse asiassa lähtö onkin jo noin 9 tunnin päästä kolmelta aamuyöllä. Olen ollut siellä kerran aikaisemmin vuonna 2009, mutta on kiva päästä katsomaan, millaista siellä nykyään on! Eräs suomalainen tyttö, joka on myös täällä vaihdossa, kutsui minut ja muutaman muun suomalaisen Suomi-iltaan lauantaina, mutta en tietenkään tämän Edinburgh-reissun takia pääse. Hänen lupaamansa makaronilaatikko houkutteli kyllä, mutta onneksi aiomme tehdä jotain itsenäisyyspäivänä muutaman viikon päästä.

a lovely weekend

I had such a nice and relaxing weekend with Charlie, even though there were several occasions when things didn't go as planned! We were going to have a pub dinner on Saturday evening, but we left a bit late so all the places were either too full or didn't serve food anymore. It was okay though since we made a delicious meal ourselves! :)

On Saturday I showed him around the university buildings and city centre. It was so funny to be in England and still be the "tour guide" one! It was a bit rainy, but luckily not too much.

There were some amusement park rides in the city for some reason, also in front of the city hall!

We looked around the shops and spent the rest of the day watching Misfits and looking for food. It was really nice not to do anything special!

On Sunday we tried the pub meal again and were much more successful. We went for a pie in the Nottingham House, which was nice and relatively empty at lunch time. Even though I've only been there twice, I think it's probably the best pub in the area food-wise!

After we were completely stuffed, we took a tram to Meadowhall, which is a massive shopping centre about 20 minutes from the city centre. I hadn't taken the tram in Sheffield before, nor had I visited Meadowhall, so it was all in all very interesting! I especially enjoyed the tram ride, as most of the journey was through parts of the city I had never seen before. We didn't really have energy for the whole of Meadowhall, so we just wandered around as long as we wanted, and then headed back. I think I'll visit it again next week to do some Christmas shopping...

It was a great weekend! :)

Yesterday I got back this phonology assessment I might have mentioned before. I got 72, which is a first, so I was glad! Although I couldn't help feeling I could've done even better... ;) But I'm still quite proud of myself, because I pretty much did it all from scratch whereas the other people in the class have taken the prerequisites that I haven't! We've already been assigned the next assessment (due the 28th), which looks quite scary, so hopefully I'll be able to do it! Another thing to submit by Thursday this week is my poetry portfolio, which consists of five poems and a review of a poetry collection.

What else is there... I ordered my railcard yesterday and it already arrived today, even though I was expecting it to take at least 5 days! It will get me good discounts on train journeys during this year.

 

Viikonloppu Charlien kanssa oli tosi mukava ja rauhallinen. Kierreltiin kaupunkia ja yliopiston rakennuksia sekä käytiin ratikalla Meadowhall-kauppakeskuksessa. Ratikat eivät ole täällä ihan samanlaisia kuin Helsingissä, vaan niistä tulee mieleen pikemminkin juna, ainakin kyydissä istuessa. Ratikka eli Supertram kulkee samalla tavalla kaupungin kaduilla, mutta sen raiteet kulkevat myös keskustan ulkopuolelle, mistä junamaisuus ehkä tulee. Lisäksi matkanteko ei ole samanlaista nitkuttelua, vaan Supertram kulkee oikeastaan aika nopeasti. 

Fonologian tehtävä, joka on siis yksi kolmesta arvioitavasta työstä (eikä koetta ole siis ollenkaan), palautettiin eilisellä luennolla. Sain arvosanaksi tosiaan 72 sadasta, joka on kai aika hyvä. Mikä tahansa 70 ja 100 välillä on "first", eli korkein. Numerot ovat vähän lomittaisia, mikä on aika outoa. Mutta olen siis tosi tyytyväinen! Sain myös eilen tilaamani junakortin, jolla saa junamatkoista alennusta. Nopeaa toimintaa!

pancake, pies, pass

Last Saturday Marie and I made some pancakes that Anna, Ulrika, and Karin arrived just in time to eat. They had been to Nottingham earlier that day.

They were even more delicious with ice cream and jam!

This past week I've also submitted my first Phonology assessment out of three, titled "Analysis of Voiced Plosives and Fricatives in Language A". I worked quite hard for it, so I hope I'll get a decent grade! There was a teachers' strike yesterday, so my Irish class was moved for Tuesday, which meant a very busy start of the week, but then I've had both Thursday and Friday off this week, which is nice.

On Monday I went out to eat with some of my flatmates.

Me, Rike, Purfi, Mathilde

What a blurry photo, but it had to be documented - we haven't really done many things together yet! We had fish and chips at a pub called The Place (because it's "the place to be"!).


The whole week has been a big Halloween celebration, it seems. I'm not really used to celebrating it, so I haven't done anything special for it, but I've seen so many different costumes these past days! It's amazing that it's November and it stills looks like this:

Technically, I took that yesterday when it was still October and today it has rained all day... But still!

 My only Halloween-y thing was taking part in a Thriller dance class on Wednesday. The session lasted for about an hour, and I think we all learnt it pretty well in that time! There is a video too but I'm not sure if I'll dare put it here...

We tested yet another pub nearby for dinner yesterday. They mainly do pies, which were absolutely delicious!

I think I look like a Sunday school teacher.

Today I've mainly been cleaning and tidying and writing something for my poetry class portfolio ("a writerly appraisal of a contemporary poetry collection"). We had a flat inspection this morning, which meant that someone from the accommodation services came round and checked every room to see whether we've been taking care of them! And guess what...

Yay! And now I'm leaving for the train station to welcome Charlie -- double yay!