Highlights of my recent life include:
- Seeing another dorm building and realizing we aren't so badly off after all!
- Meeting a Canadian, making a Red Green joke, and finding out he's her god-uncle!
- Being elected as one of two course representatives (and getting the responsibility that goes with the position...awww)
- Meeting a bunch of DH folks from the Netherlands and trying to explain to them what "mushy peas" are and why the english insist on eating them in pubs
- Going to the Science Museum for a special night "adult" event -- meaning I could play with all the fun toys without having to wait for kids to get boogers on them first
- Carrying a couch for 1.5 or 2 miles back to the residence hall! ooof. A lady wanted to give it away for free but we had no transportation method besides our own backs.
- Joined the gym uneventfully and am enjoying picking a random machine each time I go! They have super weird stuff that I am not familiar with at all! Like a machine that wiggles so when you do pushups / situps on it, you work your muscles more than you normally would since they are also fighting against the shifting platform. Phew.
Today I had the great pleasure of meeting David and Christine, distant cousins many times removed that my Grandma M has kept in touch with all these years. They live in Canada but they are on a theatre tour at the moment (they were planning on seeing two shows today)! They took me to lunch at this very, very upscale place. It was a very beautiful room with mosaic tiled ceilings and marbled walls, the whole bit. A several course meal, wine, and very quick waiters, plus one of the best steaks I've ever had lay in store for me, not to mention the excellent conversation! It was a very enjoyable lunch, and I hope to keep in contact with them in the future, as we got on very well considering we were complete strangers! Haha. I told them if they are ever in Nebraska that they will have to stop by and we'll treat them, but I don't know how soon that may happen... oh Nebraska.
They asked a waiter to take a picture of us in the restaurant, so as soon as they send me a copy I will post it here!
Brad had me all excited earlier, because he messaged me asking if he could come to London for Halloween weekend! His mom really wanted him to have a nice holiday even though he is in a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween, so she was going to send him to hang out with me and the gang here in the dorms. Unfortunately, tickets are too expensive at the moment (it being last minute and all), so he won't be able to make it here. I am thinking about booking tickets to visit him in Malaga within the next few weeks though!
Speaking of booking tickets, Maia, Serene, and I figured out what we're doing for Reading Week! Maia decided to go back to visit her family in Prague and invited the whole residence hall to visit her. It would appear that I am the only one taking her up on her offer, but I will spend three days in Prague before taking a train to Munich to meet Serene. We thought long and hard about whether we should go to Berlin or Munich, and in the end Munich won out because it was a) less expensive, b) had a better known concentration camp near it, c) is close to Austria if we feel like daytrippin' to Salzburg, and d) looks like it may have a lot more 'Bavarian' charm than the more industrial looking Berlin. Not that I don't want to go to Berlin, but it may need to wait for a different week! I am a little concerned because I had to book a train ticket from Prague to Munich on a site that was only in German. So while I'm fairly confident that Praha to Munchën is correct, I am worried that I won't be able to get from the Nürnberg train station to the bus stop in twenty minutes. The changeover is all on the same company's trip, so I hope that they have a shuttle or something, or make it quite obvious as to where I am supposed to go, but that is a little stressful for me. I'm going to make Maia look over my tickets and things before I get on the train to make sure that I'm not going to the wrong place!
I am pretty excited about the opportunity to have a local show me around Prague! Plus, she has a car...whooo!
Serene and I were originally going to go to Munich or Berlin with another girl in the dorms, Luckeisha. Unfortunately, we hadn't considered that because she is from Trinidad she needs a travel visa to enter European countries. The visa is quite expensive, she has to have insurance up to €20 K in the country she is visiting, and she has to have booked all of her flights and hotels in advance BEFORE she applies for the visa. So she will not be joining us this time, which is quite sad. I had always taken it for granted that I could waltz into whatever countries I wanted without much of a thought for entrance visas and things, but now I have looked it up and I am surprised by the results! I can go to most western European countries without a visa, but eastern European, Russia, Turkey, etc are all going to be problems if I want to go there. So I guess I'll go to Tunisia instead! haha just kidding. Maybe.
They asked a waiter to take a picture of us in the restaurant, so as soon as they send me a copy I will post it here!
Brad had me all excited earlier, because he messaged me asking if he could come to London for Halloween weekend! His mom really wanted him to have a nice holiday even though he is in a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween, so she was going to send him to hang out with me and the gang here in the dorms. Unfortunately, tickets are too expensive at the moment (it being last minute and all), so he won't be able to make it here. I am thinking about booking tickets to visit him in Malaga within the next few weeks though!
Speaking of booking tickets, Maia, Serene, and I figured out what we're doing for Reading Week! Maia decided to go back to visit her family in Prague and invited the whole residence hall to visit her. It would appear that I am the only one taking her up on her offer, but I will spend three days in Prague before taking a train to Munich to meet Serene. We thought long and hard about whether we should go to Berlin or Munich, and in the end Munich won out because it was a) less expensive, b) had a better known concentration camp near it, c) is close to Austria if we feel like daytrippin' to Salzburg, and d) looks like it may have a lot more 'Bavarian' charm than the more industrial looking Berlin. Not that I don't want to go to Berlin, but it may need to wait for a different week! I am a little concerned because I had to book a train ticket from Prague to Munich on a site that was only in German. So while I'm fairly confident that Praha to Munchën is correct, I am worried that I won't be able to get from the Nürnberg train station to the bus stop in twenty minutes. The changeover is all on the same company's trip, so I hope that they have a shuttle or something, or make it quite obvious as to where I am supposed to go, but that is a little stressful for me. I'm going to make Maia look over my tickets and things before I get on the train to make sure that I'm not going to the wrong place!
I am pretty excited about the opportunity to have a local show me around Prague! Plus, she has a car...whooo!
Serene and I were originally going to go to Munich or Berlin with another girl in the dorms, Luckeisha. Unfortunately, we hadn't considered that because she is from Trinidad she needs a travel visa to enter European countries. The visa is quite expensive, she has to have insurance up to €20 K in the country she is visiting, and she has to have booked all of her flights and hotels in advance BEFORE she applies for the visa. So she will not be joining us this time, which is quite sad. I had always taken it for granted that I could waltz into whatever countries I wanted without much of a thought for entrance visas and things, but now I have looked it up and I am surprised by the results! I can go to most western European countries without a visa, but eastern European, Russia, Turkey, etc are all going to be problems if I want to go there. So I guess I'll go to Tunisia instead! haha just kidding. Maybe.
Once again, I am amazed by how inexpensive travelling in Europe is. I think my tickets to Prague are the most expensive things of the whole trip, and they were only £45 or something. The train / bus ticket to Munich is € 29, and the hostel is € 12 a night. Not bad! Plus, armed with my previous hostel experience, I was able to confirm that indeed, there are bed sheets provided, lockers, and showers. :) The hostel also offers tours of Dachau and the concentration camp itself, which Serene and I may take them up on if we can't figure out the bus routes ourselves. I was impressed by how much I was able to figure out from the German website with only a minimal amount of dictionary searching, so hopefully we will be able to function in Munich!
I blew my cover accidentally to the spanish speakers in the house. A bunch of us were cooking one day when a guy asked (in Spanish) if there were any knives he could use. I passed him one and no one thought anything of it until about ten seconds later when someone realized, "Wait. How did you know what he wanted?" So I can't eavesdrop anymore! Not that I was doing a great job of it anyway, because between the Ecuadorian and Barcelona accents, plus the ridiculously rapid Mexican pace, I wasn't getting a whole lot besides the gist anyway!
It rained today, making this the second time it has rained during the day while I have been here! It would appear that London gets a bad rep for no reason, although I've been told that I just need to wait for summer to roll around to get a better idea of London's weather.
I have to pick a project for my Digital Resources in the Humanities class and I am so torn! The assignment is to analyze interaction with an analog object versus interaction with its digital counterpart. For example, how is seeing a sculpture in an art gallery different than seeing a 360 degree view of the same sculpture online? What are the pros and cons of each? Would the sculpture reach as wide of an audience if it were not digitized? Etc. I have a couple ideas that push the boundaries of the assignment and I'm not sure she will let me do them, but meanwhile I can't even decide which one I want to do!!
It rained today, making this the second time it has rained during the day while I have been here! It would appear that London gets a bad rep for no reason, although I've been told that I just need to wait for summer to roll around to get a better idea of London's weather.
I have to pick a project for my Digital Resources in the Humanities class and I am so torn! The assignment is to analyze interaction with an analog object versus interaction with its digital counterpart. For example, how is seeing a sculpture in an art gallery different than seeing a 360 degree view of the same sculpture online? What are the pros and cons of each? Would the sculpture reach as wide of an audience if it were not digitized? Etc. I have a couple ideas that push the boundaries of the assignment and I'm not sure she will let me do them, but meanwhile I can't even decide which one I want to do!!
- "Live" WWII twitter feed : The idea is that WWII headlines, events, and photographs are being "tweeted" as if today was the same day in 1939. So today I got messages about reports of brutality in Poland, the US decided it would sell weapons to belligerent nations, and I listened to King Leopold give a radio address. Is this enough of a digital counterpart to the history that I can never actually experience for my teacher's taste? Hard to say. Probably hard to analyze as well, but quite interesting!
- GIS data from a buried Roman cemetery : She said where possible, we should visit the site or object's analog version so that we could compare it against the digital version. I would argue the power of DH is that the digital version can give you an experience you would not necessarily be able to have in a physical sense. So I can GO to Prescot St. in London, but I will not be able to experience the Roman cemetery that was recently excavated unless it is through GIS maps and visualizations that I can download and explore on my computer! Eh? Maybe.
- The London Bridge in 1540, a virtual tour : The BBC hosts a history site for children that includes a virtual tour of what the London Bridge might have looked like in the 16th century. This third option is a bit of a cop out compared to the others, to be honest, but it also pushes the envelope of the assignment. I can easily go stand on the London Bridge now, but this digital version helps me to visualize what it might have looked like 500 years ago. And the fact that it is aimed a younger audience would play an important role in my paper's analysis...
What do you guys think? I have to decide within the next couple days so I can write up a proposal and find some supporting research material for my overarching points!
Right now though, I think I'm going to go to bed because I have class in the morning and I am still battling my cold, though I think I have almost won at this point!
Bye!
Right now though, I think I'm going to go to bed because I have class in the morning and I am still battling my cold, though I think I have almost won at this point!
Bye!
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