Whan that april...

I visited Canterbury on Saturday! With Laura, Tanya, and a whole bunch of international students. Twas so nice to see a part of England that is not urban like London is. Apparently there's a whole other world out there, just like you really can't judge the US by what you see in New York. I am ignorant enough not to have realized this until Saturday.

So Canterbury is kind of a funny amalgamation of the really really old with the modern (see: the Jaguar store beside the Nordic ruins.) We saw the Canterbury Cathedral, the ultimate end of pilgrimages such as the one described in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" (thank you, English 125.) Then we climbed on the Nordic castle ruins-- so much fun, like some giant medieval playground.




After that we walked to the real playground and chilled (literally) on the see-saw-like contraption into which Laura and I could not fit our legs. It was such a beautiful park/play area--reminded me of one that I saw in L.A. but a lot colder, and also everyone had British accents.

Other fun things about Canterbury: The Black Prince is enshrined there. The grass is beautifully richly green, which I have not seen for a while living in the city. They have fresh crepes with butter and sugar--mmmmmm. And best of all, they have a Winnie-the-Pooh store!! I loved it. I have discovered since being in London that I adore children's literature, and should probably try and do something with that at some point in my life. This is an odd little passion and one that I don't really know what to do with, but for now I'm content just to read about the Hundred Acre Wood.

Then today in our history class, we were talking about how the US still observes Blue Laws in some areas while England does not, and our sweet benign little 80+ year old professor said: "Well, you are Puritans, after all. You're descendants of the people we got rid of." Love it.

Then Laura and I walked around attempting to find the UCL Hillel House and failed miserably, but did discover the University of London Union house, where they had a little student hang-out place.

We then attempted to make pancakes in honor of NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY tomorrow(!), but the Brits' version of pancakes are crepes and not the lovely fluffy things we have in the US of A, so we got burned and eggy and confused and ended up switching things up in the middle and converting our batter to Yorkshire Pudding batter. Which turned out AMAZINGLY. I do not really understand the concept behind Yorkshire Pudding, but I do know that it is a) not pudding b) deformed mutant batter that puffs from the tray and sprouts branchy little offshoots c) most perfectly made by Courtney and Laura's Home Cooking (brought to you by the 10-Second Rule.)


Thought of the day:
I miss American pancakes.

Word of the day:
Flapjacks = NOT pancakes. They are little granola cookie snack-like thingies.

Distinction of the day:
Sweet v. Savoury. Sweet foods are sweet and dessert-like (self-explanatory), i.e. jam, honey, ice cream. Savoury foods are heartier, more meal-like, i.e. meats, potatoes, pasta. I did not understand this until today, which is highly unfortunate, since British people use this overly frequently to ask what kind of crepe, pie, etc you want when it can go both ways.

Uncertainty of the day:
Sheets = ? As in, "Professor, how long should our essay be?" "About six sheets." "Do you mean six pages, or the front and back so it's twelve pages?" "Don't worry about that; just make it six sheets."