Bath: Day 5

Above:
Picture #1: Cardboard Jane Austen, 4 Sydney Place
Picture #2: Pulteney Bridge and the river
Picture #3: A bunch of us from just two out of the four houses at the scrum-de-lee-icous tapas restaurant
Picture #4: My friends Emily and Chelsea and I standing on the bridge above the river at Sidney Park. This park was a very posh place for visitors to come and breakfast and mill about and explore the labyrinth. It was just right around the corner from 4 Sydney Place, which is one home of Jane Austen's in Bath.

Today was somewhat exhausting. We received a phone call about ten minutes prior to our normal time of leaving to walk to class from the director of our program. Apparently there was some electric grid failure which caused the train my professor was traveling by to shut down completely, so he was trapped. Well, obviously our 9:30 am Jane Austen class had to be canceled and we were to meet at the 11:30 time instead. This threw a monkey wrench into things. I obviously wasn't going back to sleep so I stayed up and got ahead in my reading and then headed to that class instead. We went around today on a building tour which was super neat. We got a huge amount of history pertaining to Jane Austen and her books, as well as some other cool historical figures. I nearly died when we saw 4 Sydney Place. They actually had a cardboard figure of Jane Austen in the window- ha! We also saw was Queen Charlotte took residence, William Wilberforce, William Penn, etc. We also toured Sydney Park and got some great views of the river. Needless to say, my gym shoes proved their worth. Thankfully, it warmed up and the sun popped out for this excursion.

Because the class got thrown off a bit, I did not get a chance to have much of a break in between class so a couple of us ran to get a drink and mint chocolate chip ice cream from our favie, The Real Italian Ice Cream, Co. Yes, it was fantastic. No, it did not last long. After the quick break we met with our Sherlock Holmes class which was pretty typical. We have a proposal for a paper due monday in there, as well as a short presentation in the other class, which will be interesting because everyone on the program is going to Cornwall this weekend so I guess I need to get those both done by tomorrow night! EEK!

We made dinner again tonight and watched some Harry Potter 3 in the spirit of England and headed off to our Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk. You're probably thinking, what on earth is that? Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Instead of doing yet another walk of Bath to learn more history...we took this absurd walk around Bath (in the rain in true English fashion) and this guy twisted the history and made it super funny. He was crazy. He even put this stuffed rabbit in a bag and threw it in the river only to have that rabbit later turn up in the show. Weird. But it wasn't just us Americans. There were other English people there, Canadians, French, Puerto Ricans (???)....it was just a ridiculous time. He made fun of things like people thinking the water would cure them, etc. It was a pretty funny show and well worth it.

Oh, new key phrase for you all which I will be constantly using, courtesy of Dr. David Fallon: "Swish". It means to be cool, fashionable, posh, etc. Ex: That handbag is so swish.
Yeah, that's a keeper for the States.

And a funny story for you, also courtesy of Dr. Fallon:
Apparently in Austen's time there was this guy who claimed to have a "celesstial bed" that would cure women who were having problems conceiving a child with their husbands. Miraculously, these women would lie down in this bed and wind up pregnant. Well, it obviously was an issue with their husbands because the man who had this celesstial bed was a sketchball and took a little advantage of his stupid clients. People back then...celesstial beds...reminds me of those stupid sham-wows or any other dumb invention today that doesn't work. They also thought using a swing would put the muscles and bones back in place and cure you of ills because of the motion...way to go, English.

OHHH, How did I almost forget?! Prince Charles was in Bath today. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to see him, but some of my friends did and got some pics of him which I saved to my computer so I will post that up soon too.

G'night all! XOX from the Motherland