York

I spent last weekend visiting Chelsea in York. She's going to York St John University. Basically, she's going to Hogwarts. Different sets in the Harry Potter films are based on locations in York, including The Shambles. So, yes, Chelsea is in Harry Potter land, and I'm rather envious. 

The picture accompanying this post is The Minster in York. It's huge, to say the least. Chels's university is just on the other side of the wall from the Minster. (My university is just across the street from a graveyard, if you'd care to make a comparison.) Because I had to pay to go into The Minster, I took a ridiculous amount of photographs - several of which are on my Flickr site. 

While in York, I went to a pub to watch my first rugby match. I still don't understand exactly understand the sport, nor the indescribable fanaticism. I nearly went deaf each time England did anything remotely good. Chels and I were there with the only three people in the pub supporting France - possibly because the girls are from France. They got lots of glares every time they started cheering. Needless to say, I don't get excited by sport. I think those days have definitely passed. 

Chels and I also discovered the wonder of flavoured rock candy. It's not the stuff that looks like crystals on a stick (or the sculpture outside the Akron U polymer building). It's just a hard candy with a really good flavour. I bought a bag of it on a whim and had to go back again before I left York to get myself a bit more. It's incredibly addicting. The shop also had a lot of fun chocolates. Unlike the typical chocolate bunny you'd get someone for Easter in the states, you could buy a chocolate duck (with a top hat), fish, car, mobile phone, dog, etc.  

We also had a fun night of discovering that Chels's dorm does not have a stove or oven, despite having several kitchens. So the frozen pizza was cooked in the microwave. It came out pretty well, for the most part. It was edible and it was pizza, and when you combine those, it can't be bad. Frozen garlic bread, however, is not as easy to cook in microwaves... 

In other news of Leicester goodness, the fire alarm went off in one of the buildings I have classes in, but, unfortunately, went off right after my seminar had ended. Perhaps someone felt a floor vibrate and triggered the alarm in fear of another earthquake. Whatever it was, the timing was terrible and my ears did not appreciate it. 

4.7

BBC Breaking News

I arrived back in Leicester today and was welcomed by an earthquake. 4.7 on the Richter scale with an epicenter approximately 60 miles from here. That means it felt a bit like a dump truck emptying a load of rocks right next to you and sounds like it. 

I was sitting in my room, reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when I felt the building shaking a bit. As it had been a windy day, I was willing to dismiss the dancing of my curtains as mere reaction to the draft from my window, though that didn't explain the vibrations in my floor. But, when you live with lots of university students, you don't really question that sort of thing until everything starts shaking and you can actually hear the rocks shifting in the earth. That's when you realise it's an earthquake, and that you're several floors up - but you're in England, so there's really nothing to worry about. 

USGS has official seismic activity here - in case you don't believe that there was an earthquake in England. (Being a geology nerd, I went here first and managed to get all of the geological information before the news stations had it. I've decided that's more sad than special.) 

How are the english people coping? They're all on their mobiles - or in the car park wondering if it's safe to come back inside the building. (While the fire alarms won't get them out there, at least an earthquake will.) And I'm guessing a lot of them are throwing earthquake parties now, just because this offers another reason for people to buy another round: cheers to surviving an earthquake!

While I've explained to them that the likeliness of it happening again is very slim (as we are not near any fault lines), most people preferred my advice of staying in a door frame so that nothing will fall on them. I'm hoping they're not going to try to sleep there.