(no subject)

First of all, thanks to everyone who commented on the entry right before I left!

Second of all, I'll pass out my address and phone number to those who need/want it ASAP. Lemme know if you want to send me stuff. ;)

Third of all, here's the daily journal thing I've been keeping since I got here and can finally post now that I have internet access (well, of a limited sort) in my room. (Warning: it's LONG.) I'll see what I can do about getting ITS to let me access my webserver, at least, so I can upload pictures I've taken and let you all see them.

Without further ado...

( Day 1: Arrival in England and Exeter )

( Days 2 and 3: Good, Bad, and Weird )

( Day 4: Sleep? )

( Day 5: Classes and cooking )

( Day 6: Today )

*itch*

Why do I have hives on my foot? Don't tell me I'm allergic to the duvet they gave me...

I really am going to bed now.

Totnes

(Note: Exeter's IT service also doesn't care much for LiveJournal, so replying to comments is...difficult. I'll do my best, but it's gonna take longer this year. Sigh.)

Anyway, my gripes with ITS notwithstanding, today was nice. The international and study abroad students got to go on a trip to Totnes this afternoon. Totnes is a little town in Devon (maybe the size of Mt. Vernon, about 15,000?) about forty-five minutes away from Exeter. The town dates from Tudor times, but overlooking the whole thing is a Norman castle from about 1000, and several buildings, including a church, from then as well. There were a lot of narrow streets and looming buildings from, like, 1500, which was just incredible. We visited the castle, or what remained of it, which was essentially a circle of stone enclosing a grassy area, but you could go up on the wall and have a 360-degree view of the town--I was fascinated by the rooftops being all squished together, as that's just something you won't see in America, or at least not where I've been--and the surrounding hills. I swear, this part of the country is what the Smokies would look like if they were a little shorter and had a lot fewer trees.

We also stopped in a little tea room and had one of those Devon Cream Tea things, because Stewart, rowdycamels, softstepshoes and the German and Danish guys we ended up with hadn't tried one yet. The teapot and teacups were oh-so-cute, and they had sugar! On the table! Praise be! Yeah, I got made fun of for my excessive use of sugar, but hey. Tea is vile without it. I even had to add milk, so really I think I had something more like chai than tea. Anyway, one ginormous raisin scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream later, I'd pretty much had dinner. (Although I sauteed myself some broccoli tonight! Woo-hoo! I'm proud; I think that's the first time I've actually cooked something that didn't involve the microwave here.)

And then we wandered around a bit and took more pictures, and then it was time to go home. We got to the Elizabethan museum about five minutes after it closed at 5, but we did get to wander through the garden of the manor house and peek through the windows.

Does anyone know of any good free photo-hosting sites? I tried dotPhoto, but there's no way to see the pictures I uploaded at anything close to their full size (~800x600), so that's out. ITS blocks all FTP connections, and HostOnce doesn't have the supersecure Telnet-esque connection that ITS does allow, so I need somewhere else to put photos if I want anyone to see them.