Q: Why was the archaeologist depressed?

A: Because his career was in ruins! :)
We visited some ruins today so I just couldn't resist. ;) Luckily, I don't think anybody is sick of my jokes... yet.
Today we took a day trip to Canterbury! I wish I would've read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales before coming so I could've had a little more of a connection with the place, but it was still great anyway.
It took us quite a while to get there because we had to meet the coach in Greenwich. Altogether it took us almost 3 hours, but its fun to travel when you're with friends! :) Upon arrival we had a little over an hour to explore and get lunch (or eat my pb&j) and then we all got to take a guided tour of Canterbury Cathedral, seen below.


This was so neat because the Canterbury Cathedral is like the head of all the Anglican Church, and the Episcopalian Church in the states. This is because the Canterbury Cathedral has the ArchBishop of Canterbury, who used to have almost as much power as the King. I learned today that a church is called a Cathedral if it contains a "cathedra," or a seat for the the Bishop. So yeah, Canterbury Cathedral is a pretty important place. Its also extremely old! The first cathedral on the site was built in like 400 something, but this Cathedral was built in 1100 something, I think. There's been so much history crammed into my brain lately its all kind of blurring together. Anyway, check out this picture. The bottom two rows of stained glass have been there since the 1200's!! The other parts aren't very old, they're from the 1400's. ;)
The other picture is a little memorial stone for the people that saved the Cathedral during WW2. Canterbury was bombed quite heavily during WW2, but apparently the bombs would land and then not explode for a little while. People would be on the roof of Canterbury Cathedral 24/7 and would throw the bombs off the roof to protect the Cathedral from blowing up! I thought this was so neat, what a great show of their dedication to preserving the church and its importance to them!


Here's another picture of the cloisters which I just thought was really pretty. :)

And here's another just because its beautiful :)

I was really glad we got to visit this Cathedral, its just full of really interesting history and is absolutely beautiful- like everything in this country! :) I would write more, but its another noisy night in the front room...
Oh one more thing. Two of the big windows in the Cathedral had been blown out by bombs, so they hired some Hungarian guy to redo the stained glass. When we saw it we all thought it looked like Disney characters, and it turns out that was a very correct assumption! Apparently Walt Disney hired Hungarian artistts to do some of his work, and they studied at the same school as this guy who did the stained glass- so its not really a signature Disney look, but more of a Hungarian art look! Cool! I love finding out interesting stuff like that.
After the tour we headed over to the ruins of St. Augustine's Chapel which dates back from 2nd century A.D. I believe. St. Augustine is so important because he's the one that brough Christianity over to England. Anyway, there isn't too much left of the building or anything, but you can definitely tell where the rooms were and such. It was absolutely gorgeous though, green grass growing everywhere with beautiful magenta flowers all around! I loved it. :) We took lots of pictures, but not all are on my camera. Here are just a few!
The four of us tried to take some jumping pictures, but none of the ones on my camera turned out too great. I like this one though because Emilie and I look so carefree, and then Caitlin looks like a little kid who's about to dive for the first time!! Haha, pretty funny.



We hung out for a while in the beauty of the place, and then went to go punting! The whole day was great because we didn't have to pay for anything, all the activities were planned and paid for by the Study Abroad Program. :) So yeah, we went punting down a river, if you can call it that. It was probably 15 feet wide and and definitely no more than 2.5 feet deep. Haha. It was so fun though! We took the scenic route and just enjoyed the ride. We didn't even have to punt! We had a guide who punted us along and filled us with interesting information. :) It was so pleasant, perfect weather. We got back at 5:23 and had seven minutes to make it back to the cathedral for the Sung Eucharyst. We ran there and barely made in before the first congregational hymn. The Eucharyst service was really neat, besides the whole burning incense thing. We've been to lots of evensongs, but I don't think I've been to a Eucharyst service since Wetsminster Abbey, our first weekend in London. I enjoyed it, of course, especially since they sange Byrd's Mass for 4 voices and his Ave Verum, but the LDS church is true. ;)
After this we just headed back into the hotel and came back here! Sorry this post is pretty lame, but we have homework due tomorrow that I still need to finish and I'm super duper tired... so I'm sacrificing good blogging tonight.
Talk to you tomorrow and see you soon! Crazy.