I'm in FRANCE

Gwen's family are doing a house swap, just outside Chicago for just outside Paris, and I am the lucky duck who gets to horn in on the vacation. I took the Eurostar this morning (less exciting than I had expected. It's a train. There's a long tunnel. Whatever.) and arrived to smiling faces at Gare du Nord. Today we wandered around a bit and took a bus tour! I loved the bus tour!

The audio guide on the tour suggested that it was possible to purchase video cassettes on the Champs-Élysées. I would like to suggest that perhaps the audio guide has not been updated recently. The narrator was delightfully emphatic and alternated between chatting about things to our left or right (you may notice the Eifel tower in front of you...no, seriously, she said that.) and playing a piece of music that both Gwen and I were certain we'd played but completely failed to identify.

I took some pictures.

I'll share them with you in a moment, but first let me tell you that I declined the offer from a nun to take Gwen's and my picture. In some ways I regret declining that offer from a nun, but on the other hand I was having way too much fun attempting and then failing to take self portraits in front of famous Paris landmarks.

Here, let me show you:

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
What, you can't see it? Oh, right. Sorry! The zoom was still too far in...

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Um, okay, so the angle is a little bit off. 

Gwen and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe
Eh. It's alright. Not the most amazing photograph ever, but all of the principal players are represented.

Some thoughts on the Eifel Tower: 

1. It's brown. Did you know it was brown? 

2. Somehow, in person, it is significantly more industrial looking than I expected. 

3. And less pointy. 

I had gained some skill by the time we actually stopped by the Eifel Tower, and am almost pleased with these ones: 

The zoom! Don't keep it all zoomed in! Also, change the angle, this is never going to be a good picture. Your head is in the way. 

Ze Tower! (Is it rude to write in a fake French accent while sitting in a gorgeous house in Fontainebleu? Probably.)

It worked! A self portrait that worked! With an important landmark!

Some notes about my clothes: I'm wearing a coat. I'm clearly in Paris.  It is mid-July. Pssht. 

And it was a bit windy. 

ps. The spell check on blogger is currently set to French. Currently 98% of this entry is highlighted due to misspellings.

New Years in the North

Nik and I went to Newcastle for New Years: I met a cavalcade of his friends, all of whom are full of inside jokes, laughter, enthusiasm, and possibly too much energy. Over two days we were at three different families' homes, played numerous board games (most of which were either collaborative in design or possible to steer towards collaboration, much to my delight), played an epic 2010 quiz, ate heaps of delicious food, and had a wonderful walk right after mid-night through an old, icy train track (sounds dangerous; wasn't).

I thought they were wonderful.

Definitely looking forward to seeing them again and hanging out more, but for now, let's move on to the nostalgia part of things.

In 1994 my family took a trip to England. This was our first big international trip and it was a Big. Deal. We still talk about it regularly and it certainly looms large in my memory. (Can't speak for the rest of us, but I'm pretty sure that sentiment is shared.) One of my very favourite parts of the trip was going to Durham.

Laine and I had just finished 4th grade where we had learned about Castles. (Fantasy novel obsessed 9 year old Casey was very into this topic.) I still have vivid memories of what was probably my favourite project of all of fourth grade: designing and stocking a castle keep. (Combining two of my then favourite activities: drawing and designing things that were theoretically worth money and grocery shopping.)

The train into Durham has a magnificent view of the castle and the cathedral. As the story goes we stood on the platform looking at the castle and my dad told me that is was our hotel. Being sharper than your average rolling pin, I didn't believe him. Once he convinced me that, yes, we really were staying at the castle I'm pretty sure it is safe to assume I started bouncing up and down.

The castle is now part of Durham university and parts of it are used for university housing. Since we were there during the summer, they rented out the rooms to tourists. I remember worn stone staircases, bathrooms down the corridor, a wide hallway with places for me to perch (a windowsill?), creaky wooden stairs on the way down to the cafeteria with banisters topped by "pineapples" carved without having seen the fruit but only having heard a description, and telling my dad all about the arrow loops.

"Cakes, you know those are real arrow loops, right?"

".... !!"

Mind blowing stuff.

Oh, right. Nik. Here's how Nik works into this story- he spent sixth form living in Durham, it's where he met all the wonderful people from the beginning of this post. His mother was working at the Cathedral and so while the family lived in Durham Nik and his brother worked as vergers there. This was excellent for me because it meant that I had an extremely knowledgeable tour guide to lead me around. I was also pleased to meet some of the people from stories I've been hearing about his time working there.

It was a wonderful, wonderful day and because they were the cheapest tickets, when we took the train back to London, it was in First Class. Nice.

L to R: Castle, Cathedral, Me

America: The Brief Sum Up

24 days, 8 states, my favourite people, and a pile of stories. Pretty good work, I think.

Kansas: I never did tell you about the reception...one of the things that I have noticed is that if I promise you that something "will be coming soon" on the blog: I'm usually lying. Sorry! Here are some key words to attempt to make amends: photo booth, delicious food, bubbles, jazz pianist, snarky 9 year old, dancing so much I shredded the lining of my dress, group singing, group singing in parts, 5 little snowmen, mouth harp, muggy blanket of heat,  peace pipe/cigar, bridesmaid's room for hiding in, A whole new world, 2am. (Missouri and Kansas = 2)

Chicago: So good to see Andy and Nancy! The general consensus is that I hadn't been there in 5 years, which is clearly far too long. I got to see Andy's band perform at CJ Arthur's and they are sounding good. It was fun to see/hear everyone again and also momentarily steal Sandy's rhythm bones. My friend Josh from Garfield was sweet enough to stop by the gig as well so there were more people in the audience! I wandered around a bunch in order to see how much I could still navigate just by memory- the answer? A fair bit. Andy and Nancy had a parade of people through their house while I was there, my favourite of whom was an artisanal garlic farmer. 'Artisinal' is probably the wrong word...but fancy and rare types of garlic in any case. Too brief a visit! (Illinois = 3)


Baltimore/DC: I stayed with my dear friend Daniel, briefly saw Liz, took a short walk with Zane, and spent the day at the National Air and Space museum with Sarah, Desh, Jim, and Guinness McDog. An excellent, excellent visit that reminded me that the "family size" package of food- while cost effective, sometimes means that you end up with a 9"x 11" casserole full of meatloaf... tasty and delicious turkey meatloaf, but still a bit overwhelming in size. Daniel and I went on a trek to find his old 3 storey tree house, but we failed to find an accurate alternate path that didn't have us fording a river. Next time, next time I will see this epic tree house. My final night Daniel and I went to Applebees where we made friends with our waitress who had been having a very tough night, but cheered up at our paper sculptures and mini footballs (we maybe weren't exhibiting the most appropriate restaurant behaviour...) (Maryland and Virginia = 5)

New York:  I took the Bolt Bus to New York and was delighted with it. Free wi-fi! (that was where the epic and multi-linked Air and Space post came from) Lots of leg room! The guy sitting next to me was reading an article about John Cage written by Cornelius Cardew and I though to myself "there is no reason why anyone who was not a fairly extensively trained musician and/or composer would be reading this..." so I introduced myself. It turns out he's a composer- and being a composer, about my age, and traveling from Baltimore to New York we checked out Facebook to see who all we knew in common. Bizarrely the only common contact we had was an Irish opera singer that I had met in Norfolk. Small world, yes, but that's just weird. 


In New York I stayed with my friends Kevin, Sean, and Zach over in Jersey City. We started at lunch with Indian food- which made my mouth burn. Kevin and I visited his office at Meet The Composer, walked through a rainstorm, sat under the highway during a rainstorm, and eventually ended up at a Vietnamese restaurant eating delicious  bánh mì that made me so happy and then made my eyes start watering. (I used to be so good with spicy! Apparently no longer...) A trivia night followed that (our team got second place and $30 with absolutely no input from me. I'm not too up on 1970's pop culture) and so ended my first day in NY.

The next day started with cactus tacos (Mmmmm and not too spicy!) and then consisted of hipster watching in Williamsburg where I amused myself by doing a sociological sartorial study. I had drinks with an editor from Tor (we totally geeked out about graphic novels) and then spent the night in Astoria with my friends Ronni and Noah- you may remember them from the epic wedding posts of last year. They're doing very well and it was fabulous to see them again.

My last day in New York I actually spent in Connecticut visiting Meredith, her town, country club, and house she grew up in. It was great- a tour of Meredith's stories. We went kayaking and, thinking we were being clever, left our extra clothes on the shore. When we got back the tide had come in and Meredith had to fish them out of the water...oops.  (New York and Connecticut = 7)

Boston: The Bolt Bus up to Boston hit rather a lot of traffic so the sun was setting as I arrived at the bus station. I had used the wi-fi on the bus to get a map of the area around Laine's apartment and directions for how to get there and was feeling quite confident about it all until I started to follow the map. The neighbourhood is beautiful; everyone has a garden, there are a couple of parks within walking distance (I got a little lost and happened upon both of them), and the houses are stunning. When I finally found the address that I had I called Laine up. There was no way that was her house and there was a light on and was she sure that I wasn't going to be knocking on some random family's door? Digging through their mailbox to find a key?

Basically what I'm saying here is that Laine has the most beautiful apartment ever. It is about the same size as the house we grew up in, has lovely bones and intricate detailing, stained glass windows, and enough storage space for an army. (Well, a small Spartan army.) And a pantry! And adorable little butler-pantry-nook-thingy.

More Boston and Laine in the next post.
(Massachusetts = 8 states visited! Making the rounds...)

Meredith's Birthday

For Meredith's birthday she rented a cottage in a little town just off of the English Channel and we stayed there as a group and made delicious food and chatted and laughed and bumped our heads on the ridiculously low ceiling beams and went on a six hour long hike over many, many, many hills. It was beautiful and we were drenched in sweat and grime by the end of it. Meredith said it would be okay if I posted some of her pictures so that you all can be jealous...

Scotland: Number 1

My friends Wylder and Desh are visiting from DC on their way to India. Since it is half-term for me we decided to spend a couple of days up in Scotland. We decided to take a two day, small bus tour into the Highlands with a tour company called Rabbies which is maybe not the nicest name ever, but they did a great job.

We had a 16 seater bus/van thing with 12 of us on the tour. With people from Spain, US, UK, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand, we were a very international group. Our tour guide was Mac Scott. I haven't decided yet if that could possibly be his real name- but we'll roll with it for now. He showed up all kilted out and proceeded to spend the next two days regaling us with dozens of stories of battles and heroes and the organization of various clans through his microphone. His accent would get thicker the deeper into a legend he got and then would abruptly drop back into a fairly normal Edinburgh accent whenever we needed to make a decision about where to go next or when we almost ran over a pheasant. He would also act out some parts of various stories using hand gestures and sound effects. The sound effects were fine (because life is better with sound effects) but the hand gestures were sometimes a little much- like when we would be careening through the snow and suddenly both hands are off. the. wheel. Yeah, that's lovely that you have to fold and fold and fold the Feileadh Mor but drive!

Not that I ever actually felt unsafe- we were in very good hands.

We didn't have the best of luck with weather while we were out there- heavy mist covered the city on our way out of Edinburgh and it snowed overnight when we were in Inverness- but had I not been told that we weren't following the original plan- I don't think I would have noticed.

We frequently left the bus to go look at and take pictures of stunning scenery and lochs. I fell massively in love with the "hairy ginger cows" (Highland Cattle) and would frequently squeal when they were visible outside the windows. They're just so cuddly and ginger and they can't see very well through all their hair! Cute.

I should probably point out that Scottish people do not, to my knowledge, refer to the Highland cattle as "wee 'airy ginge' coos" but MAN Sarah, Desh, I do.

Everything was stunningly gorgeous, and if we ended up in a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow trying to take pictures, well, at least I had 4 extra pairs of wool socks to change into.

Oddities

1. Lavender scented tissues. I needed some kleenex (this is me we're talking about, I always need kleenex) and the nearest kleenex was in Marks and Spencer's where the cheapest tissues were lavender scented. Doesn't that seem odd? Think about it- if you need a tissue- can you smell?

2.I went to Oxford today to go visit my friend Ken and to see the Steampunk exhibition at the History of Science Museum. On my way there I found a small Doctor Who umbrella that had been lost on the tube. I carried it around all day and used it as an excellent gesticulator. It was not a good cane, however, at it was approximately one and a half feet high. I feared that the child who had lost it would want it back so at the end of the day I left it on the same tube line. Probably a better way of getting it to lost and found would have been to give it to a TFL worker, but oh well. Next time.

3. On Thursday I went to my co-worker's house for supper but was *so* hungry on the way there that I bought a small sandwich from a kiosk stand at Moorgate station. That sandwich turned out to be filled with the best chicken tikka I've ever tasted. From a random little kiosk that mostly sells chocolate bars. What? How strange is that. But sooooo tasty.

4. I took the bus to Oxford. It was, confusingly, called the Oxford Tube (it's not a tube. It's a bus. Don't be silly.) I got a little car sick on the way up (unusual for me) and fell asleep on the way back. The way back was delicious, actually. It was warm and cozy and I had two seats to myself so I curled up and fell asleep in the gently rocking darkness.

5. The steam punk exhibition was so cool. It was very small, but some of it was so amazingly intricate and delicately crafted. Tom Banwell was one of the artists. These photos don't do it justice, but the link there should go to a fire helmet that was luscious with the leather work. Gorgeous. I also really liked Sydney Padua's comics.I bought this mug because I thought it was so funny

Back In London

What a journey that was!


I started on the 4th in Seattle. Laine took me out to breakfast before driving me to the airport (thanks Lainey!) and I flew to Chicago where I had a 12.5 hour layover. Now, normally that would be just a huge pain- but in this case my dear friend Angela (whom I haven't seen in over a year and a half) lives there and not only did she put me up for the night- she also picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. That's love that is. 6am through the snowy streets of Chicago? We had a wonderful time chatting the night away and even managed to get some sleep so that I was reasonably rested for today's journey to London.


I was worried about security and how it would work with this being a connecting flight rather than starting off from Chicago initially but it was no problem at all and I had plenty of time to hunker down with my book at the gate. I was so hunkered down that I almost didn't notice Sarah Titterington sitting on the other side of the counter for the gate.

How cool is that? She was flying from Kansas and so we spent part of the plane ride looking at photos of a recent wedding that she and Dave went to right after New Years and catching up about the holidays.

The flight was supposed to get in at 10:45 which would have been just fine with the tube schedule. However, due to weather in both Chicago and London (it was snowing both places) we were an hour late. Which meant that the tube and the Heathrow Express were both shut down for the evening. Ridiculous.

I had spent part of the flight working on drawing from a photograph I found in the flight magazine and at one point was approached by a man sitting behind me,

"don't draw from someone else's work- you'll create bad habits. Draw from life."

"Well. Excuse me." I thought while his wife murmured "He used to be an art teacher"

By the time he came back from the bathroom I had got over whatever imagined slight there was and turned around to ask him more about what sort of bad habits that would create. I don't know that I totally remember the answer but we got to chatting. They're a lovely couple- Jeff and Amy and they're stopping off in London for two days before heading off to work on their foundation in Africa and see mountain gorillas and Jane Goodall. How totally neat is that?

It was good that I got talking to Jeff and Amy because that meant that when we arrived and discovered that there wasn't any useful public transportation it meant that I was able to share a taxi with them. There were four of us in the taxi so it was only 20 pounds for me to get from Heathrow to Kings Cross (near their hotel) where I caught a night bus that slushed it's way through the snow and got me home about a quarter to two.

I'm not sure if the snow is going to prevent school or not but we'll see soon. For now I am off to sleep for a bit of a nap before a (potential) full day's work.

Back in Seattle

I made it back to Seattle and have settled in nicely- falling asleep at the totally reasonable hour of half nine and then managing to stay asleep past four am! Life is good. The flights were uneventful, if long and I had nice seat mates the whole time. So, whew!

Thanks to Mical and Dan for picking me up at the airport and then taking me for delicious sushi. (I do love sushi) Laine showed up towards the end of the meal which was wonderful also.

But lets take a moment to go back a couple of days, yes? The tykes put on a show! And I have videos of it! It hadn't occurred to me before Wednesday just how difficult it is to take a video of a children's performance. It isn't that the kids are moving around so very much (we had them trained up good) so much as it is the parents popping up every ten seconds to take another picture of their *child!* Which, fair enough, but maybe we could have, like, a press corps section of the hall? All photographs and video cameras in a special designated area where they can just get in each other's way and not disrupt- you know *MY* video? Because I'm all greedy like that?

I will say that my favorite part of the video is during the reception performance when near the end one of the fathers waves his hand to get his tyke's attention and then when that fails to work he snaps. Um. Not like he got angry- he just clicked his fingers...never mind. C. also spends most of the video with her fingers up her nose. (By "trained up good" I mean that relatively speaking. They are only four after all.)

Anyhow- it was a riotous success and super fun, and if you're in Seattle you're more than welcome to come to see the videos which I can't put up online for obvious privacy reasons.

After the show we went to the staff Christmas lunch. I've never been to a proper work Christmas do before so that was very exciting. It was at a restaurant that was technically only a 10 minute walk from school- assuming you went in a reasonably straight line. The music teachers decided as a group not to take a taxi there with everyone else since it was snowing lightly and prettily. In retrospect we probably should have double checked that we knew where we were heading first. It took us about 40 minutes to walk there because we basically went in a giant, cold, snowy circle. What this *did* mean however is that when we finally arrived we were cheered. So alls well that ends well.

We had received an email that morning notifying us that the school had ordered enough wine for everyone to have about half a bottle each and if we wanted more alcohol after that we were just going to have to pay for it ourselves! Hmmph. I want to let you know that in order to set the stage for this next part- remember that there was a performance that morning and that in the lead up to the performance everyone in the basement early years section of the school had been listening to and singing these songs over and over and over and over and over (etc.) again. We were all waking up with the songs running through our head and and all falling asleep with them running through our heads still. There were two in particular that seemed to have special, sticky properties. Those were "Etoile de Noel" (Which is still stuck in my head) and "Snowflake Serenade"

So a group of tipsy early years teachers, a charming and beautiful young music teacher (that's me, guys), and snow dumping it down outside the window- my boss turned and pointed to me and said "this is your fault!" before leading a rousing rendition of Snowflake Serenade in a public restaurant while everyone was wearing colorful paper crowns from the Christmas crackers. Nice.

Charltons

I spent the first few days on the East Coast staying at Daniel's house in Germantown and taking the Metro/Train/Walking combo in to Peabody every other day. Daniel was nice enough to come pick me up from Baltimore the first time (an hour drive there and an hour drive back) because I had wanted to both stay in Baltimore long enough to take my favorite yoga class (SO totally worth it) AND do viol consort (see above) AND get back in time for Man Night. Which is what Daniel, his brother Jonny, and their assorted Man friends have each Monday. I was honored to be a part of it. On my second day in the country Jonny and Daniel were teaching lessons late, so I finally got to meet Jonny's new wife Lindsey. She's super neat and we made complicated dinner. When I left for the wedding I tried to take some pictures; I may need to work on my self portrait technique...

Travels with Grammy

We've been having an eventful yet relaxing time here in London. Leisurely breakfasts followed by jaunts into town or around my neighborhood.

On Saturday we decided that we ought to see a show so we got tickets to a performance of The Messiah at St. Martin's in the Field. That was in the evening so we decided to go explore my school area and look around. We took the bus down to GSMD and took a quick tour around the school. It was a lovely day so we bought lunch from Marks and Spencer's and ate in the public bowling green in front of my Finsbury job. Grammy wanted to see the Roman amphitheatre so we walked down to The Guildhall and managed to get there just as the art gallery went from being charged to being free. Well timed us! The art gallery was lovely and it was fun to see the amphitheatre as well. It was hard to believe that the ruins were so old. Particularly as they are bathed in this weird green light and there is an audio track of a crowd cheering/jeering and gladiators running around. It's actually just the tiniest bit silly...

Grammy had seen the 14th century hall that *is* the Guildhall before so we spent a confusing few minutes debating which building off the square it was likely to be. Eventually we figured out that we needed to enter a truly hideous 1960's entryway. The hall had been closed to visitors half an hour before we got there, so that was a little disappointing. I noticed that there were GSMD fliers in their flier area and since I had understood that there was NOT a connection between The Guildhall and GSMD (in spite of the name) I asked about it. It turns out that GSMD is sponsored by the City of London Corporation and The Guildhall is the heart of The City's government. So that is the connection. Once the security guards found out that I went to GSMD and that I was graduating this year, one of them offered to take us back to the hall! So that was SUPER cool. We felt very privileged. Also, it turns out that GSMD has its graduation ceremony in the hall- so it was exciting to see where that is going to take place.

There was lovely early evening light at that point so we walked to St. Paul's and had a quick coffee in Starbucks while Grammy told me stories about Helen. Then Starbucks closed so we hopped on a bus to Trafalgar square. We got some soup in the Crypt, which was very crowded- but a nice woman saw us looking for a table and offered us hers as she was just about to leave. We collected the tickets and were there right as the doors opened for the show. I hadn't been there since the remodeling was finished and it is absolutely gorgeous now. We didn't have the most expensive tickets so our view was pretty poor- but the acoustics were wonderful and it was a total joy. I spent a lot of time watching flickering candle light glinting off of the gold leaf of the ceiling decorations while listening to Handel's recitatives and soaring choral soprano lines. We moved to wider seats at the intermission- for which I was grateful.

See? Doesn't that sound like a delightful day?

Visitors!

I don't know if you know this, but some people have been visiting...Lainey left on Wednesday, but Grammy is still here with me and now I have photos from her camera! Up there at the top we've got Laine and me on the Millennium Bridge in front of St. Paul's on our way to the Tate Modern (Laine's favoritest museum) and the other picture is of the three of us in their hotel room right before Laine left. We managed to get the self timer working and set the camera on top of Laine's shoe box (You should ask her about the shoes, they are AMAZING. Really.)

We've been having a lovely time and today Grammy and I are on our way down to the Borough Market to go check it out. Yesterday we went to Dalston market and bought some vegetables and some African fabric. Dalston is amazing because as you're walking down the stalls it gets very confusing to figure out what country you're actually in. Even the shop signs are done in African styles. It's a lot of fun. We both decided that we wouldn't want to buy fish there though...too much sun.

Cornwall: The composition

This trip to Cornwall was our last before the concert which will be at the end of February. Since it was our last real working session, we had to make sure that our pieces were completely written so that next time all we have to do is refresh and rehearse, but not compose anymore.

I was a little nervous about this because I felt like I hadn't done enough work or put enough thought into it on my own time, and also because I haven't written that much music (nor been the leader for many composition projects)- so: nervous.

A few days before the trip I decided that I really ought to listen to the recordings I made before Christmas break to see where we were and what needed doing- lo and behold, it turned out that we had already structured and rehearsed most of the piece and really only needed to write the ending and perhaps one more section. Turns out I was way more on the ball than I thought...

So we rehearsed and reviewed and tried to remember how we had played the piece the last time. We were handicapped in this process as our principal violinist was gone and I only had one pair of headphones for the recording. John came in just before suppertime and said that it sounded a bit disjointed and maybe we wanted to cut out a section or perhaps make it a set of miniatures? So that made me nervous again, but I shouldn't have worried! Because the kids are fabulous and the piece was sound and coherent and really all we needed to do was make the ending I had already planned, rehearse a bunch, and play a few games wherein we wiggled a lot in order to wake up.

I was so proud of them because they really pulled it together and because the principal violinist was gone a lot of them had to take on more leader-y roles than they had in the past and they all TOTALLY stepped up to the plate.

I was particularly impressed with my youngest violinist who was struggling with our melody that opens and closes the piece. Everyone else has it down, and while I knew she still wasn't solid- I wasn't sure how to help her out without making the rest of the group stop and re-learn the melody as well. She, however, was brave and stubborn enough to make it clear that she needed individual help- so the two of us went to the hallway to work on learning it by ear and I left the rest of the group to figure out which kind of entrances for the final cannon they preferred (one whole iteration before the next entrance, or just one bar?). In 3 minutes she had it down pat and the rest of the group had not only decided which entrances they liked better (whole iteration) they had also added a chord to end the piece. How clever are my kids?!

Suffice to say the final piece was awesome, the students all liked it, and it is going to sound totally cool in the atrium of the gallery in St. Ives. I have an mp3 of it on my computer if anyone would like to listen to it- email me and I'll forward it to you.

Also- somewhat unrelated- we each have a composer who is working on pieces that will be played at the end of the year by the CYO that are supposed to be inspired by the pieces that we write with the students. Mine is named Eseld, and she is wonderful. The first time we went to Cornwall she was very pregnant, the second time she was gone, and this time she brought her two month old baby boy with her. He is totally adorable and I held him a bunch because baby time is almost always good.

St. Ives

St. Ives is ridiculously pretty, and I will tell you more shortly about how the most recent Cornwall expedition went (in a word: Good!). But for now I would just like you to know that I have put up a BUNCH of new photos over on flickr and nearly all of them have notes on them as well- so it's pretty much like a blog entry. So please do go check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/

The new photos are in the sets "MapMaking" and "UK Adventures"

I'm off to Africa

Time for sleep now, I'm meeting people at the train station at 7am to go to Gatwick. Almost completely packed (have to figure out what to do with my straw hat from Williamsberg- pack it where it might maybe get smooshed? Or carry it separately where I might lose it?)

I will be basically out of contact until the 2nd of May, so have a lovely April everyone! There will be so many pictures coming...