I Am in Receipt of a Package

I come back from a class that, frankly, crushed my soul, and I find a package slip. I head up to my room to drop off my bag and I think that I'm a bit peckish, and the package could probably wait until tomorrow. But then, as I'm responding to a message, I think that the box probably has snacks in it.

So I head in the direction that the slip says the post office is. I walk up the hill, I see this church. I've been walking for a while, and the numbers of the buildings are making zero sense: 89, 98, 103, 115, 125. And the other side of the street: 92, 93, 124. It's utter madness. I turn around and head back to the dorm and ask for directions. 

 Turns out, it's just past that church. I was so close!! As I've been walking, I'm reading over the slip and I see 7,2kg. I whip out my handy-dandy converter and I'm thinking, "15 pounds! You've got to be kidding me! How am I going to carry this thing?" While the customs form says it weighs 15.14lbs, it was more awkwardly square than heavy. And speaking of heavy things, Mama & Papa, let's not mail things that heavy... they're expensive to mail. 

But here's my box, home in all it's glory! I pop it open and what do I find? Dust. It seems one of the mashed potato packages was a bit crushed. Guess I'm having mashed potatoes with my taco salad tonight! Then I proceeded to cram almost an entire peanut butter granola bar in my mouth. Prepackaged food, how I've missed you! Not that I haven't loved learning how to cook and feeling super adult-like and self-sufficient, but sometimes a girl just needs a granola bar.

In summary: I finally got the package that was mailed September 4th, the post office is a bit of a walk away, I'm having mashed potatoes and taco salad for dinner, and my parents love me.

And I love them, too. Aitäh!

Library Haul

The bookshelves here are full of really old & really beautiful
copies. It's exactly what you'd want in a library.

Today, I went to two libraries and actually picked up a few books, instead of just wandering around like I did yesterday. Still not sure how they've organized things, but I did find most of what I was looking for. Asked for help in locating a specific item, but it seems the system is "if you can't find it yourself, fill out a form and we'll get to it in the next hour." This was only at the main university library. Each department, or faculty, has their own library, as well, and the librarians in my faculty's library were nice and helpful.

"It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

So, here's what I picked up:

My haul

The European Union: A Very Short Introduction by John Pinder and Simon Usherwood. I'm currently taking a class on the EU in International Politics. It's the first class on the EU I've taken, my knowledge on the subject was pretty limited to start with, and it's a Master's course. Hopefully, this will give me some much needed background information.
Theogony & Works and Days by Hesiod & Daphnis and Chloe by Longus. A booktuber I recently discovered reminded me that while I read and am familiar with many classics, there are writings even more classical. Looking to expand my horizons; I like the Greek material I've already read, so these should be a good escape from my homework readings.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Another book I found on booktube (huzzah!) and one that I've been looking foward to reading since I heard about it. Found it in the library by accident; just browsing through shelves when its Estonian version caught my eye (since I can translate that much; all the books in languages which use the Latin alphabet are intersperced). There were two copies in English... But for now one is mine! I might add this to my October Halloween themed reading list.
Geopolitics and Expertise by Merje Kuus & The European Union and Its Eastern Neighbours by Elena Korosteleva. Both of these are to help with a presentation I'm giving in my EU class on Thursday, the latter is a recommended reading suggestion from my instructor, and hopefully the former will help me grasp one of my presentation topics that is just not clicking.

Books and artistic dinner shot.

This should definitely fill some time while I await my laptop's return from the shop (which should be tomorrow; I can last that long without it, right?). I've already gone through a couple books on marketing for social media, and several chapters of a book on world domination, and another on cooking.
And now that my laptop is back, here are the pictures!

Me & Oscar Wilde! From the monument to 2 Wildes. There's
one in Tartu, and another in Galway.

From my reading of Daphnis and Chloe: "when she did not know
the way, music had shown her the way."

An Autummer Thursday Walk

I've been meaning to do this for a while and remembered on my way to class Thursday. Here's a video of my walk to/from class on Thursdays; didn't remember whether it's technically fall yet, thus the name "Autummer."

A quick preface: filmed on two different cameras, so there will be some difference in film quality and shakiness, and people kept looking at me strangely (which I understand), so there's definitely plenty of floor shots.

As a postscript, since I'm sure everyone's going to be asking me about the classroom that kills people. The ventilation system in this room is broken, and so when the windows are closed, it sucks all of the air out of the room. No matter how noisy it gets outside, we make sure the windows are appropriately propped open so we don't all die. Since this room tries to kill people. If you have any other questions for me, about anything in this video or my exchange, feel free to ask!

Hopefully, I'll make a winter edition of this, because I'm sure the snow will look awesome. Until then!

The Times we had: Tallinn

Saturday morning, early (but not necessarily bright), an American, an Italian, a Pole, two Germans, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and I headed out of our dorms toward the train station, bound for a weekend in Estonia's capital city with no real plan other than a rough idea of the train schedule, tickets to the ballet, and the name of a hostel. None of us had been to the train station before, but I knew roughly where it was do to a drive-by the day before. Luckily, the Tartu train station looks exactly like a train station.

 Seriously, movie style. This is the back side from the platform, but as soon as we saw the front we knew we were there. We arrived minutes before our train did. Points for timing.
  Tallinn is 2ish hours away by train, so we had plenty of time to do other things. There was some sleeping, some studying, and some reading done by the collective group.

Tallinn train station

As it was early on a Saturday, the city was still more-or-less asleep. The only people up this early are tourists (yay us!). We managed the entire weekend nearly mapless, so we just headed off in a direction. We found ourselves in Old Town, and at the top there are a series of buildings: some of worship, some of government, some of the tourist souvenir variety.
     This is the Church of Nikolai the Miracle Worker, and it sits fairly prominently on the Old Town hill, and can be seen from almost anywhere, which made it a pretty great rendezvous point when we broke off into groups. It's a Russian Orthodox church built 1822-1827, and as you can see, currently under construction. There has been a Russian Orthodox church on this site since the 15th century. This one was the first dome building in Tallinn.
     Going inside, it's very different from the other churches/cathedrals I've visited in Europe. It's not stone on the outside and carved and embellished on the inside, but almost the opposite. The outside is completely bedecked in craftsmanship of a number of types. It has four entrances, each with it's own impressive archway and religious iconography. The inside is painted in much the way you would expect it to be carved. It has intricate gold working near the altar, but other than that, all the walls and ceilings are very 2D. It was beautiful, especially filled with people using it for the purpose for which it has been built, just different from the other buildings of a similar nature I've experienced.
    This is Tallinn Town Hall, and it sits in the town square, another super easy place to meet up with people. It's the only remaining gothic town hall in Northern Europe; construction was completed in 1404. The tower was destroyed in the bombing raid on March 9th, 1944, but was restored in 1952. Today it is used as a representational building to hold ceremonies and concerts, and houses a display on the original 1530 weathervane. This is where we met up with an old school friend of Phillippe's who took us to lunch. Unfortunately, Saturday at noon is when everyone's eating lunch, so it took a few stops to find somewhere. The pub we ate in was empty, which was great for a group as big as ours. It was the oldest pub in Tallinn and pretty much all of us had burgers. My first Estonian burger, and it was pretty good; they put a spice on the fries that made them especially tasty.
    After lunch we wandered a bit more, and attempted to locate our hostel. We had news that they lost our reservation, and hoped they still had space for all of us. After twisting and turning through Old and New Tallinn, we found it, and they had room, which was fantastic. By this point, we'd been go-go-go for so long that I was ready for a nap. Most of the group went to the beach, but a few of us stayed back to try to at least curb the drowsiness so we would last through the ballet that evening.

The adorable gate for parking at the opera/ballet building.

     We saw "Medea", as performed by the Estonian National Ballet & Estonian National Symphony. I don't know that I've ever been to a ballet before, especially not one like this. It was different from what I'd imagined; completely tutu-less, nearly pointe-shoe less, seemingly chaotic movements that only made sense some of the time (i.e. Medea's decent into madness). But it was still well done.


And of course even the building was beautiful. The ceiling had a huge chandelier, and a gorgeous depiction of theatre goers of many different eras. There were busts of famous dancers/musicians in the hallways, and costumes from great performances on display.
     But of course, after the ballet, we were hungry. Once again, we split into groups, and ours headed for burgers, ending up at Hesburger. After ice cream, burgers, and Estonian TV with people speaking with Russian & French accents, we were off to bed.
    Sunday was the Tallinn Marathon, so lots of streets were closed, or partially closed, and crazy people were running everywhere. Not just the preset marathon course, but everywhere. It was like an entire city of Martins. There were people from the various gym franchises passing out flyers, a line of shops full of work out gear, and general "there are lots of people here" chaos. There were runners from all over Estonia, two teams from Great Britain, people from Poland and Finland, and even a man from Ethiopia. Who races an Ethiopian?!

    First on the list of things to do was walk on the wall of the city. It's a steep climb up, but you come to this little room which has benches and windows and this suspicious box in the centre. Turns out, the box covers a hole in the floor, from which one could drop things on unsuspecting passersby in the tower below.

There's a room above this one labeled "Room for Wage War", full of arrow notches and a door with a spectacular view of Tallinn. Below, you can see the wall of the city from above, as well as the walk we took on the city wall.

View from the war room

     I'll admit to not having eaten out much in Tartu (and by not much, I mean 3 times) but what we don't have is Mexican food. As much as I like Taco Bell, I'm willing to accept other "Mexican" restaurants as well, but we just don't have any. Tallinn, on the other hand, does have Mexican food. And it therefore became necessary to stop by...

Never before has so little made one so happy. I had pork tacos that were SO GOOD! I was tempted to get one of everything, but reality took hold. Those tacos lit up my whole world... I was so happy. Clearly, it doesn't take much. *sigh* I miss it already.

     Our little group didn't all eat Mexican, so we headed toward this "pancake house" that we kept hearing about. We'd stopped by the day before, but this place is pretty popular, and was packed. Luckily, there was a free table. What came out of the kitchen wasn't so much a pancake, in the North 

American sense, as a thicker crepe. This sparked a discussion, and at some point we're all going to get together to make international pancakes. I ended up getting an apple, vanilla, and cinnamon pancake, which meant that was lunch #2 for the day, since these things are big, on a Waffle Co. vs. Eggo scale. All of our pancakes were really good, and I totally understand why this place is so popular. 

    We still had a few hours after lunch before our train headed back to Tartu, and after wandering around the Old Town a bit more and stopping by the viewpoint, with the "The Times we had." sign, Anna decided we should head toward the ocean, and that's what we did. 

    Nowhere does the ocean smell quite like it does at home. Does Alaskan water have a high saline content or something? Because neither the Baltic Sea or the English Channel smell salty or ocean-y at all. And we saw exactly two seagulls, though we weren't watching very carefully and they could have been the same bird. Either way, there was sun and an ocean breeze. We were only there about 20 minutes-half an hour, but it was so quiet and calm. On the way back, we learned that Germans consider a bird pooping on your head good luck, and we were completely willing to let Katja go on believing that. 

    All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend. I got to see some things, eat some things, and hang out with people I haven't before. It did make me excited for the other travel opportunities open to me around Europe, but I need to make sure my residence permit goes through first. After that, Europe is my oyster!

Tartu: Week 1

I've officially been in Tartu for a week and a day now. I've had only one class so far (classes started yesterday), but it should be interesting.

Orientation was in the Zoology building, about a 20 minute walk away. Not too bad, but it's uphill, and my legs kind of hated me those three days. As it turns out, the building where I'll have most of my classes is also uphill. Fantastic. But, as I headed to that first day of orientation with my roommate, I saw interesting pieces of art, lots of parks, and this cool decal:

In case you're not a fan of Top Gear, that's the Stig "inside" this "reasonable priced car."
     Orientation covered a lot of different things, and I technically have another session tomorrow specifically to get us all ready for applying for residence permits, an extremely involved process from what I gather. Last Friday was the last day of all-day sessions.






It was also the first day in more than a year that I wore blue-jeans on a weekday. I felt the need to document. It was that big a realization. I didn't do much this weekend; a lot of reading mostly. I've done more reading in the last week than I've done in a long time, mainly due to the lack of wifi in my dorm. It's been nice, actually, though I feel I probably should have been doing something else. My roommate and I nearly spent all of Sunday in the room, except for the hour that I ducked out to grab some wifi by the river. So close... I've had plans nearly every day to go get my library card so that I could use the wifi indoors and stop worrying about the spiders and bugs I keep finding on myself here in the park, but it's also uphill and across the town centre, and not near where I have my classes. Close, but apparently not close enough that I'm willing to get up and go do that. I'm out and about tomorrow anyway, so we'll see.

The view from a pier in the park near my dorm,
where I get wifi. The bridge changes colour, too.

     Last night was the Rector's welcome for international students. We had the reception in a ruined cathedral that now partially serves as the University museum. (I have pictures of the outside I'll insert here later).

White Hall, inside the Cathedral.

I went with my roommate and she met up with her tutor (each of the international students is assigned an Estonian student to help us figure out the University and life in Estonia. They act as mentors and translators, etc.). We had some sparkling beverage of undetermined flavour, some Estonian snacks and cakes, which we're pretty good once we got over the initial "I have absolutely no idea what this is or how to describe it's flavour." We talked with two professors who are, in part, from America, and one of the Student Council members who is also a medical student. Generally, a good time was had and good snacks were eaten.

From there, we went to a bar called the Gunpower Cellar, which used to actually hold gunpowder. Apparently, it has one of the tallest ceilings of gunpowder cellars anywhere. My roommate and her tutor are both in the Computer Science/IT department, and their Faculty (that's what they call departments here) have a tradition to meet at this bar on the first day of classes each year. So I joined them. Monday nights are also karaoke night at the Gunpowder Cellar, and we were keen to hear some international students sing in languages they don't understand, while intoxicated. There were songs in Estonian, German, and several 80s American pop songs.

This was the first song that was sung (part of the chorus). That's what I've gotten myself into by attempting to learn Estonian. If Google Translate is to even be partially believed, this portion of the song is about some crazy shenanigans during a shindig.
     And now I'm going to acquire some type of comestible, start the wifi gaining process, and read some no-doubt interesting articles on Russian Foreign Policy.
    Later taters!

 

Princess, look out the window, and welcome to Estonia.

Currently, you find me sitting on a park bench by the river, because the dorms are a few of the places in the city without wifi. What. The. Heck. Don't worry, I'm remedying the situation, but for now, my laptop is basically a paperweight that can play movies. I watched both "Mamma Mia!" and "Mona Lisa Smile" last night, after spending the day a-wandering.

But let me back up. I left my hostel in London at around 5am. I'd developed a sore throat, but it wasn't too bad. I got some water at Victoria station, found a bench and chatted with my dad while awaiting a train. From there, I flew to Helsinki. I thought that trip was supposed to be 6 hours, but it was only 2. Yay! Then I had a layover in Helsinki before the 45 minute flight (I thought it was 2 hours), to Tartu. All in all, significantly shorter flying times than expected, but not entirely pleasant. My ear hadn't popped from the flight to Helsinki and was really uncomfortable the rest of the way.

Tartu's airport is crazy small. Clearly we're in driving country. It handles about one airplane at a time, and they're the propeller, Horizon Air, types. The luggage carousel, to quote my dad, looks like a "kiddie pool." From there, we'd all been told to take either the Airport Shuttle or a cab to our dorms. There were eight of us students: two from the US, two from the Netherlands, one from France, two from Switzerland, and one from China. And a number of non-University affiliated individuals. We loaded up the shuttle, and then realized there were nearly twice as many of us as the shuttle would hold. This was the last run of the day and the shuttle driver was really conflicted as to whether or not he'd come back for us. We were all for getting a taxi, but there were exactly zero of them available. Finally, the driver agreed to come back, but said it'd take about 50 minutes to drop off everyone and come back. It wasn't raining, so we piled outside with our luggage and talked, hoping he'd come back, discussing the size of Tartu, based on the airport size and the fact there were no cars driving by and only a couple of people passing us in the hour we were there.

We made it, eventually. Checked into our rooms, disturbed by the lack of wifi, and crashed. I met my roommate, from Russia. We're still working on remembering each other's names; we haven't been in the room awake at the same time much yet. But I do know she's a Masters student in computer science. 

My ear still hasn't popped, though I don't think that's much the problem anymore. My throat has gotten worse, but I didn't let that stop me... much.

I slept, fitfully, until about noon yesterday, having used a scarf as a sheet, and a pile of clothes as a pillow. I found enough wifi at a store down the street to send a quick email and a Facebook message or two, and then went about trying to find bedding. I gave up several hours of walking in the rain later, and stopped by the same store, picked up the items below, having a rough idea of what was contained within the packages. 

My first Tartu shopping adventure.

 We got some toilet paper, a package of sour cream mashed potatoes, a package of chicken mashed potatoes, three orange juice boxes, trash bags, and two packages of chicken noodle soup. I did eat one of the soup packages for dinner last night, and I'm not sure the water out of my faucet gets hot enough for that.
But I still needed bedding, so I asked the houselady (that's what she's called) where I could get some, she gave me a map, and off I went. By this time, the "yeah, it's raining," plus the distance I'd have to walk resulted in "Wow, that is quite the downpour." I added to my shopping list, as much as I thought it ridiculous, an umbrella. They're clearly not only for tourists here. I found a store, bought some of the things on my list, including a rainbow umbrella. I stopped at the store near my dorm later for some (what I'm assuming is) milk and granola with coconut and peanuts. I'm definitely shopping by pictures on containers, and the milk had a cow on it so...
 Here's a bit of my little slice of dorm. I have a desk, a chair, a window, several shelves, a cabinet for my clothes, and a bed, with my new bedding on it. The room has an attached kitchen (no microwave!) and a bathroom with heated floors, which is good because the shower curtain does next to nothing. Floor's a bit too hot for me, but...

 Below is the view outside my window; overlooks a road and a park. Not much to see but there it is. 

Tomorrow I start my orientation, which will hopefully get me into a rhythm. School is school anywhere, right? I haven't gone to the area where most of the school buildings are yet. I'm headed there to hopefully find food, though we'll see. 

Hope everybody has a great Tuesday, and I'll catch you on the flip side!

------------------------------------

"It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that which has been quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it..." -Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, pg. 108

Seeing the Sights: London & Beyond, part 2

From the back of Buckingham Palace, looking out
over the gardens.

Day 3: Buckingham Palace has timed entrance tickets, which is nice, because it means I actually got up and out of the hostel at a reasonable time to get lots done today. I walked more than 5.5 miles, as I decided this was a "No Tube" day. I can feel maybe 3 of those miles in my calves at the moment, and I'm sure it'll hurt more in the morning. Thank you, London.
     If Wikipedia is to be believed, Buckingham Palace was first opened to the public as a result of the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle, in an effort to pay for the restoration of said castle. You don't get to tour as much of the palace as you do the castle (though, for the size of these things, you really don't tour much at all), but it was still interesting, especially with the current display on Royal Childhood. They really pulled out the stops, and managed to bring nearly every room back to the events children have had in them, pictures taken of the various royal children doing children-y things, etc. The dining room is set up for Prince Leopold's christening with a giant cake, the music room has many of the christening props, the gallery has a picture of Prince Charles and Princess Anne reading on the floor, and the 1844 room has a similar picture of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. (This did not put a damper on my goals to be a princess one day, just in case you were curious.)

Dear Queen Elizabeth II, while you were out, I toured
a couple of your houses. They're pretty nice.
Keep the change.
London Love, a colonist. 

    After Buckingham Palace, the plan was to go to Kensington Palace, but since that seemed a bit farther off on the map, I thought I'd try Westminster Abbey first. While London is a huge city, the major tourist attractions are pretty easy to find, especially if you know a little bit about London already. I was following street names on my map every now and again, but as soon as the Tower of Westminster popped up over the buildings, I knew where I was headed.
     I didn't end up going into the Abbey. Yes, the line was fairly long, but more importantly, I got distracted. I know what you're thinking, "Westminster Abbey is... a-huge, both in size and tourist attraction-y points, how could you possibly get distracted?" Well, let me tell you a thing. It was not the waffle & hot dog carts, though that did give me pause. It was this:::
     
                This, my friend, is what we in the business call "guerilla marketing", at least it is if I'm remembering that correctly. So, you're walking along, a goal in mind, maybe not, but you see this TARDIS in the middle of Parliament Square, and suddenly it doesn't matter what your plans were, or the fact that you need to cross several streetlike-bits to get to it, you're gonna find out what's up with this TARDIS. It's sectioned away from the public, so one can't get too close to it, but it's an ad for the new series of Doctor Who which airs tomorrow (if anyone needs me at 7:50p tomorrow, I'll be watching Doctor Who, so don't need me). If anyone has an idea for an eye-catching, plan-stopping thing we can do for Rainbow along this vein, let me know! Now! The weirder the better! (Note: Turns out Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman did a photoshoot with the TARDIS this morning.)
     All right, I did eventually move away from the TARDIS, after taking a couple pictures. From there, I started on an epic quest. I didn't know how epic this undertaking actually would be, but I'd found a thing on my map that I needed to see. So, off I went, toward the West End.

     And we're walking.


     And we're walking.


     And we're walking. This was certainly one of those trips that really shows how not knowing where you're going makes the journey seems so much longer; coming back from something, the walk or drive always goes so much faster. But! I did finally make it; can anyone identify the building?

     Yeah, I really didn't think so (unless specific people, i.e. the Mr. Barnett types, are looking at this, in which case, maybe). This is Freemasons' Hall in London, home to the United Grand Lodge of England, built around 1933 to remember those Masons who had died during WWI. It only took 4 posts for this to turn to the Masons... beat that History Channel. It is huge (I have a couple other exterior pictures to post to Facebook. To Juneau's Masons: Can we have one of these? Please?), and inside there's a museum and (right now) a display on Garibaldi in London. It's another one of those "no pictures" places, but it was pretty cool to see the Masonic paraphernalia on display. They had mini officer badges, various items from the Order of Women Freemasons, King George VI's PGM apron, a replica of King Solomon's Temple, etc. It was interesting to see that the Grand Masters of the various orders of Masonry don't necessarily serve for a single year (the Grand Master of the Mark Master Masons has been Grand Master since 1986; that change of command has got to suck).

    From there, I started back toward Kensington Palace, in the hopes of finding food along the way. When I stopped in Trafalgar Square, I found, in front of the National Gallery, this statue of George Washington, which was given to the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Commonwealth of Virginia. I think the date on the sign was shortly after the Revolution, but even if it wasn't, I can't tell if a statue of this man in particular is a nice gift, or kind of jerkish.    
     Trafalgar Square seems to be the congregating point for a specific type of person in London. There was a man playing the bagpipes (which isn't too weird), a statue man, several men dressed as Yoda floating mid-air, a magician, and this statue of a giant blue chicken. Hmmm...
    So I head back toward the Mall, because from here I can pretty much find my way to where I'm going. I take a little walk through St. James' Park. Walk past Victoria Station, pull out the map to see which road I need to turn on to in order to get to Kensington Palace, and really focus on the vast expanse of Kensington Garden & Hyde Park that separates me and the palace. It is at this point, that I decide that can wait until a Tube day.

Day 4: I definitely went more off the beaten tourist path today. About an hour away from it, in fact. I took the train to Alton, and from there acquired a map to get me to Chawton. The plan had been to take the bus about halfway there, but the man at the rail station said it was easily walkable, so I figured what the heck. What he did not mention was that at some point, the sidewalk ends, and you'll walk arms-length from cars on the A31 as you try not to get stabbed by plants or attacked by badgers (Author's Note: I didn't see any badgers, but it would not have been out of the realm of possibility). And then you'll need to cross the road. But I did not die, mainly due to the lack of badger sightings.

[Okay, having now finished the new Doctor Who Episode, let's do this!]
From the pictures I'd seen of Jane Austen's house, I was expecting it to be off to the side, kind of on it's own, however it's, uh, not. It's at a fork in the road, but other than that, a standard little neighbourhood. The building doesn't look quite how it would have in Jane Austen's day, but it's pretty similar. It was passed down until around the 1940s, when it was in an estate sale, purchased by a single man who then donated it to the Jane Austen Society. All of her novels were published while she lived in this house (except the two which were published posthumously, but written at this house).

The above are a few things from the Austen household. On the left are all three pieces of jewelery Jane Austen owned (of which we are aware). I can't imagine owning only three pieces of jewelery, but she owned a turquoise ring, a topaz (I think) cross necklace, and a fancier turquoise necklace. Seems like a "going out" necklace, and an "everyday" necklace is all a girl needs. As the saying goes, "Jesus matches everything." Up until 2 years ago, these three pieces hadn't been in the same place since Jane Austen's death. On the right, we see a table setting from the Austen dinner table. Clearly, they ruled the 7 seas.

Mansfield Park was first published in 1814, making this
it's 200th birthday. So the museum has several displays up on
the book, and various plaques referencing various pieces of it,
as well as many copies of the book to follow along or simply
read in the garden. Let me tell you, pictures like this are much
easier to do when you're not by yourself. I did actually read several
chapters of Mansfield Park in the garden, though not while doing this.

This is Jane Austen's writing table, where she revised Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion, and where she penned all her other novels. This tiny little desk did so much. From this window and onto the page sprung so many scenes I could picture as I walked around the village. Marianne and Margaret walking up a hill, tempting fate to make it rain; Catherine Morland reading in the grass under a tree; the picnic outside Barton Cottage; Every scene in which someone took a turn around the garden. It's absolutely beautiful. I could never live in London; there are too many people... everywhere. As much as I love it, I couldn't do it. But I could totally live in the country. I even found a house!

This is pretty much my dream home (regardless of the fact
that it's down the street from Jane Austen's). And luckily,
it's for sale! Mama, Papa, check this one out!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes, my calves hurt. ("Estoniaaa daaay awaaaaaaay"... to be sung to the tune of "Tomorrow" from Annie. By tomorrow evening, I'll be in the land of... Estonians! Seriously, not a single major export comes to mind that would be useful here...)