c'est bon!

The internet returns to the hostel! As do my stories. I'm not sure if that is as exciting... hopefully you continue to find me engaging without pictures, because my parents shipped me a new lappy charger and it's been a general fiasco figuring out where exactly they attempted to ship it. Long story short - still no pictures :(

Since I last checked in with you, I've done about eight million things and I can hardly piece together for you what has happened. But it's been wonderful, really! I've had stupendous pub food and cider, seen three wonderful new plays (the most exciting of which is "Jerusalem" by Jez Butterworth, it blew my mind), and left the nearly-home comfort of London to visit York, a small city five hours by bus to north of us here. York was a blur of commercial shops and historical sites. We walked the paegent tour of the York Mystery Plays, which we read for Shuffel's class. The stops on the circa Middle Ages, theatrical parade route are now inhabited by boutiques and Starbucks. A very similar walk through the city, a ghost tour of York, led the gang around to similar shops and lots who's establishments are haunted, but it was much more frightening in the dark with our fantastic, dramatic tour guide, who described hangings and murders in gross detail. We also visited the York Minster, a fantastic old cathedral, the ruins of a monestery outside of York and Castle Howard, a fun aristocratic estate featured in the movie "Brideshead Revisited." It was a lot to take in for such a short amount of time, but I'm really in awe of the human strength and sometimes, excess that went into creating these buildings.

Yesterday, I spent the whole afternoon in a cafe Facebooking and planning my midterm break trip to Brussels (by train!). I hope you all got my lovely messages. After a long day of trying to get to the Science Museum and instead, getting lost in Kensington Park, I'm exhausted, but as I find my way to bed, you should warm at the cheeks knowing that I go with fancy thoughts of you in my head. Bonne nuit!