The blog is BACK!

There wasn't anything to post about the last week or two in Cambridge since I was basically just writing final papers and taking exams. Either way, I had a great final week or two in Cmabridge, and then a good flight back to the US. It's neat to be able to fly into New York, because nothing welcomes you into America like the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade Center (the new Freedom Tower) along with the Empire State Building and the rest of the New York skyline. 

I also had a short little layover in Iceland on the way back, and for what little I saw of the land, it looked beautiful - definitely worth a trip back sometime soon. I had never actually seen ice in the ocean...like ice and icebergs and stuff, but they actually had that up in the Icelandic waters off the coast. 

 One last picture in Cambridge...

I caught the plane's shadow in the cloud!  

Look at the exotic volcanic ash beach in Iceland.

And the two pictures below is the ice in the ocean. I made sure that they weren't just white caps from rough seas. 

Unfortunately, when I got back to Yale I went to bed, woke up and got my stuff out of storage, then fell very ill. I was too weak to get down my stairs to get to the medical center, but finally around Tuesday morning I mustered the strength to get down the stairs and meet a shuttle that took me to the Yale medical center. Once I got there they hospitalized me for like a day and a half, so I was pretty sick. The good thing is, now I'm feeling better. 

The campus, although hot, is really nice right now (as nice as a city campus can be) and I've been enjoying just walking around and actively enjoying the campus surroundings. The two pictures below are where I live, and the third picture (although shaky) is of our main library, Sterling Memorial Library, and it just finished a complete refurbishment and just reopened. I like it.

Last night, one of my best friends from high school back in Georgia who also goes to Yale went with me to GuitarCenter and then we went to Texas Roadhouse - and they had good sweet tea! 

And here are the classes I'm taking this semester:

The History of the American South Since 1870

Elementary Italian

Intermediate Microeconomic Analysis

The History of the American West

I know I haven't blogged for a while...things are just a bit boring around here. I'm generally not inclined to blogging about my assignments and readings in my financial markets class, and nothing has really happened.
Cambridge is small. Actually, Cambridge is really small. Once you do everything in Cambridge (which may take only a day or two) you just kind of get used to not doing so much. My days normally consist of going to class, eating and then working on the computer (or video-chatting back home).

I will say that I have began to toy with the idea of taking the train home from Yale for Christmas break with a friend that is also from my area. It's a long trip (18 hours from New York Penn Station to Atlanta Peachtree Station) but I think there's a certain nostalgia regarding long-distance train travel, and I have to try it at some point.
The reviews are actually amazing for the trip. There's a daily train that runs from New York City to New Orleans (I'd obviously be getting off in New Orleans) and it's called the Crescent line on Amtrak. I think it'd be kinda fun...all meals included along with unlimited beverages and snacks. Bring a book and some cards and then just hop up in my own bed when I get tired. I'd only do the trip if I got a roomette, which is a small room with two beds and a toilet and sink. It's not too bad if you book with another person, so I may see if I can convince my friend to make the trip with me. How fun - traverse the eastern seaboard along the spine of Appalachia to get home for Christmas by train travel.

And unfortunately, things have been so droll around here that I haven't even taken any new pictures. Sorry. :-)

I guess one of my favorite things about Europe that I have noticed everywhere I have been, whether in Italy, Denmark, Scotland or England is the abundance of flowers everywhere...I mean the flowers seem to grow without any attention being given to them. Back home in Georgia it seems like a full-time job just to get a rose bush to look nice and grow pretty roses. Over here, nice roses are everywhere...along with plenty of other interesting little plants, like the one below. So I guess this blog post has lots of flowers and vegetation pictures. 

The few pictures below are of a church courtyard in Cambridge that is basically overgrown and unkempt. 

I think it's a shame they even had to put up the sign (see below) in a church courtyard/cemetery.

Most of the epitaphs on the headstones are almost illegible by this point.

Last night while walking through the grocery store we found the little chocolate eggs that have toys inside...the ones that are illegal in the states. I think they're illegal because the government thinks that everything should be edible, and it poses a choking hazard to store an inedible toy inside a chocolate egg. But I think they're neat!

Tonight we walked up to the highest point in Cambridge... "Castle Hill." It's hardly a hill...it's more like a knoll. Seriously, it looks like a place I  would have built a fort as a young boy. This hill is small, and it's hard to believe somebody was able to fit a castle on it hundreds of years ago. The castle must have been a very modest place. Check out how small this place is, even though it offers a fairly nice view of Cambridge. I found it kind of funny, but at least they don't call it "Castle Mount" or anything. :-) 

See below...what you see in the entire size of Castle hill. It is about the size of most living rooms in houses today. 

And below is the full height of the hill.

And below is the hill, as seen from the street. 

And then on the way back I saw an old church behind the trees and wanted to go look. It turns out that it is St. Giles Church, and it's early gothic in style. One way you can tell it is early gothic is by the simple windows with no stone tracery. 

Below is the statue of St. Gile, I suppose.

See the windows below and how narrow they are and how the come to a point in a fairly sharp manner...those are "lancet arches" and that's another big characteristic of early gothic buildings. Also, see the shaft/pillar in between the two windows? See the band/ring just below the top where the pillar meets the capital? That band is also characteristic of early gothic buildings, because the masons would hide the joinery of the stones with those bands so the joints wouldn't be so obvious. But there is one thing that points to the building's actual origins: the statue of St. Giles above the door.  A statue like that cannot be original. All statues with very few exceptions were completely demolished when Henry VII created the church of England. Along with the fact that bricks were used in the construction instead of cut stone, it is clear that the building is actually a neo-gothic building from the 1800s. And I actually looked it up on the internet, and it was completely rebuilt in 1878. So yeah...some more useless facts about english gothic churches. 

The River Cam looked nice tonight as well:

And by the time I walked back to King's College the sun was setting...so I took some pictures.

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