So this weekend I took a trip with the college to Avebury, Glastonbury, Wells, Bath and Stonehenge. It was a lot of fun, not to mention that the English countryside is gorgeous! Driving through it I immediately thought of my dad.. maybe I'll buy him a retirement home there after I make my millions. ;) The countryside is filled with fields, sheep and cows, and is every shade of green you could think of. It's quite stunning and peaceful, it's hard to believe that it's only a few hours drive away from the bricks that are London.

We started our trip off in Avebury, which is a neolithic site of huge concentric circles, the outermost circle being a mile in diameter. It doesn't look like much, certainly not as well-preserved as Stonehenge, but the countryside where it's located is gorgeous and a lot less touristy than Stonehenge. The only downfall is that it is covered in sheep poop. Covered. It was like walking through a mine field, because there were these giant pieces of poop everywhere. And where there wasn't poop, there was slugs who were giant and black and looked like poop. So it was a lose-lose situation wherever you decided to walk. I wish I could say that this was only at Avebury, but sheep are everywhere ergo.. their poop is everywhere.

Next we went to Glastonbury, which is the site of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey as well as the Tor. Glastonbury Abbey has many legends associated with it, amongst the most famous are that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's bodies were found buried there by monks, and that the Holy Grail was brought here and buried by Joseph of Arimathea. Looking at the ruins of the abbey and trying to imagine the sheer size that it must have been is a little mind-boggling, considering there's really not that much left of it.

Climbing the Tor was beautiful.. an easy walk compared to Arthur's Seat. Way back when it used to be an island called Avalon, but today it's a large hill with one part of a monastery left on top. It is quite beautiful, and there are sheep all over it.. obviously.

A side note about Glastonbury; there are weird spiritual shops EVERYWHERE. Magic, psychics, tarot card readers, crystals to heal you, magic water.. yoga studios. Haha. Let me put it this way - if you ever wanted to purchase acid, you'd probably purchase it here.

 Next up on our little jaunt across the English countryside was Wells, which is a small town but there's a beautiful abbey there, and it's just very quaint and cute all around. There are also swans that ring a bell when they want food there, which we didn't get to see, sadly.

After that, we finally made it to Bath, which is a World Heritage Site. It's gorgeous, it's built on hills so it's basically like Duluth, except that it matters more to the heritage of the world. But there we visited the Roman baths which used to be here when it was called Aquae Sulis back in the day.

 And then we went to Stonehenge.. Which is not nearly as large as you're lead to believe. It's still impressive, but at the same time it's a little bit of a letdown too. I think most people just like it for the photo op. I have many more pictures from all these places in my Facebook album, because I didn't want to make this a ridiculously long post, because it already is one! Regardless, Stonehenge was really pretty but I must say I did like Avebury better.. Plus there weren't any sheep at Stonehenge (!!!? I know right) so that got some cool points deducted from it.

That was a long post. Oops. Until my next obnoxiously long post..

xx

Thus far, not too much has bothered me here as far as the infamous phase of "culture shock" goes. Driving on the opposite side of the car/road.. eh, whatever. Children riding scooters everywhere, that's fine. No familiar names of stores.. great. But the one thing that definitely has gotten to me is the food, and not liking 80% of it.

I'm a notoriously (overstatement, probably) picky eater and the food in good ol' England is just not doing it for me, which is surprising because I like a lot of plain-ish types of foods, which are in abundance here. But when I step into a grocery store, I always freak out a little in my mind because there's hardly any recognizable brands to me, and lots of things that I don't even know what they are. Even something as simple as getting cheese.. no big deal right? Clearly not, because the cheese here that's 'cheddar' is white, and the cheese here that's orange is called 'leicester,' plus everything is either 'mature' or 'extra mature.' I do not even know what that means.

I also feel like everything expires very quickly here.. I don't really go through my food so fast as to eat in within 2 or 3 days of opening a pack of ham or cheese. So the first week all my food got all shrively and hard (the cheese and ham) and all my bread got moldy.. ("mouldy") awesome. Even the eggs I bought tasted kind of weird, but I think that's because I can't cook very well..

Not saying all food here is horrible, because it's not, I've had some really good chicken and sandwiches and other foods that I can't think of, but it's just that it's not what I'm used to and it's hard trying to adopt a new diet. Plus they have a lot of what I call "fancy" foods here.. not like the cat food, but just foods that I associate with people who eat fancily (definition: organic, 'healthy,' weird) which as you can tell by my definition isn't something that I really do much of. Don't get me wrong, I like salads, but the salads here feel bland to me.. I didn't even know that was possible, since I already thought salads were bland. But they're even blander.

But, hey. If that's the only thing that's bothering me thus far here, then I'd say I'm doing pretty good.

I will say I have fallen in love with one brand/type of food here..

I'm being very serious. They're so delicious. They also have ones with dark chocolate on one side, which I enjoy very much. The original is really good too, though. And I don't eat them because I have digestive problems, actually I'm fairly certain that they don't even do anything for digesting at all..

Feel free to buy me a pack if you're in a generous mood..

xx

Lately I've been getting very good at being a tourist. It's harder than you think, wading through throngs of people, shimmying through slight openings between slow walkers, avoiding the never-ending amount of flyers being thrust into your hands left and right. Intense stuff. But, being in London you become accustomed to all of the above, especially when you're going to see all the typical "touristy" sights. The weather has been beautiful this weekend, so I took the chance to walk around London and see all the sights I possibly could. I think I've been quite successful, and I'm going to post a few of my favorite photos from over the weekend, but I have manyyyy more in my Facebook photo album, entitled "Tourist." Enjoy! :)

I have so many more photos on Facebook.. it was difficult to pick the ones to put on here. But, alas, I'm sure I've bored you to death with photos, so until next time..

xx

Finally, I am unleashing the first movie of our fabulous selection of VHS tapes, which we like to call the Gunterstone Collection. (We don't actually call it that. Anyways..) It was a difficult decision as to which outdated VHS tape to choose for the first post, but finally after scouring through shelves of options, I chose a classic from 1986 which Michael Bay did a captivating reproduction of, though nothing could really compare to the shining display of ingenuity and drama that is.... Transformers the Movie (feature length, of course).




As you can see, someone clearly paid about 5 pounds for this little gem, and as you can see it's feature length. I'd have to say my favorite transformer on the cover is the first blue man to the right of Optimus. He's got a nice little stance going (though most of his legs are hidden behind Optimus' rather large calf), as well as gracefully checking the time AND shining his transformer light.

I did some high-tech photoshop on this baby. But here's the back and what it says, if you do not have the ability to read fine print:

With any luck, I've piqued your interest about this movie, so in case you're really dying to see it, it's available in 9 parts on YouTube, otherwise you can watch this short trailer to get acquainted.

Until the next post... [which will be later on tonight because I've done a lot of things in the past few days..]

xx