A bit of travel

Hey there! Papers, papers, papers. So much writing to do. Uni is so much fun. Not.

Well, I actually have something to talk about this week. On Saturday I went on a trip to Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace. Last term I had gone on a bunch of trips and so far this is the only one I’ve gone on. There’s a reason for that.

So I went to the Study Abroad office to buy some tickets for the trips they offered (which, by the way, are fewer than last term). I get there and oops, every trip except one (which I don’t want to go on) is sold out. I decided to sign up for the waiting list for Stratford.

Onto last week. I get an email saying a ticket has opened up and that it was a first come first serve basis. What do I do? I run to the office and buy it, that’s what, getting there about 25 minutes after the email was sent. So I guess that worked out in the end, huh?

Anyway, Stratford was oddly entertaining. I learned the meaning of the word ‘potluck’. In Shakespeare’s time they would cook a sort of stew in a pot and they’d just throw food in there, and every time bits of food would get stuck on the bottom of the pot, and whenever they cooked they would scrape the food off the bottom and mix it in with the rest of it. If you got the food you wanted, like chicken or beef or something, then you had potluck. Yay history! Also, ew history.

Guess what else? The phrase to be “worth your salt” is about the fact that salt used to be really expensive. And they ate on square wooden plates and they washed them with ash or something. Also, they kept a fire going in the kitchen all day and night, and if a wife didn’t keep it going her husband had the right to hit her. Ugh, history.

We saw Shakespeare’s house (where he grew up) and his and Anne Hathaway’s cottage (his wife). We actually got to go inside the cottage, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures. The tour guide was going on about different idioms like the potluck thing, and then at the end he oh so casually mentioned they were selling a book in the gift shop that talked about other idioms as well. How clever. Not.

Overall it was a good tour. I say it was oddly entertaining because I usually find history boring, but learning about the meanings of all those phrases was cool. I guess that’s why I’m an English major.

Moving on, here’s a quick thing I remembered while I was in the store today:

BritBit 1: This is one of those everyday things you forget about after a while. In the UK they write down the price of the item on the item itself. That is, the price you see on the item/near the item is what you pay. In the U.S. they tell you the price BEFORE tax, so the actual price is slightly higher. Here if it says 14.99 then it’s actually 14.99, not 15.07 or whatever. I actually noticed this when I first got here but, as I said, I forgot.

The U.S. apparently got snow last week. We got a bit of snow today but not much. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come here.

Also, the Superbowl was last night. I hadn’t even known it was on. I don’t know who played and I don’t care who won, but I’ve watched some of the ads online and they were pretty good, especially the Doritos ones.

Well, time to go work on those papers. See you next time!