Poland post on hold... This should tie you over!

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts and for clearly lying when I said I would post err, a few weeks ago... things have happened. The update on the trip to Poland is just going to have to wait for a while, but for now I'll update on other happenings!

End of Term & the Move

Well I stuck through all the taught bits of my Masters. After various papers, some exceeding the the word length by 2000 words... ooops, a number of proposals and hours of packing later, I am now living in Birmingham England with Steve and his parents. We said goodbye-for-now to our friends up in St. Andrews with a few nights in the pub, a bop and of course plenty of drinks and laughs. The train ride was special with my numerous bags. How I have accumulated so much crap I just don't know. Anyway, life in Bham is great. We no longer sleep in a horribly uncomfortable college single bed but have a lovely double with nice sheets and superb pillows. We no longer eat crap food in a dining hall served by grumpy townies but rather get nice meals cooked by Mum. Steve's parents are great, and we get along well. Steve's sister Suzy is super nice and has the cutest Springer Spaniel named Flo. She is such a silly dog; loves to swim, loves to play, loves walks in the park and is just all around adorable. Way smarter than Bruce, sorry Mom! but Bruce was more handsome! Its nice to be in a home again, no more sharing bathrooms with gross people you don't like, no more cleaning up after someone else’s mess in the kitchen or having things stolen from the fridge. And there is tv. Its really great.

The Thesis

Well, its been a really really rough start. Never having written one before I simply had no idea what the hell I was/am doing. I'm not going into the details here because to be honest, I'll just get upset all over again. The short of it is, my advisor is unhelpful and has thought my work so far is crap, two other professors thought my proposal and bibliography were crap and I've had to pretty much start my thesis from scratch as of this past Tuesday. I spent this past week up at St. Andrews having a meeting with my advisor and frantically restarting my research. It was a productive week I must say, being alone up there, isolated in my room with a TON of books made working pretty good. Now I only have about 20 books to hunt down between here and London, then read them, then read the 20 + articles then oh yeah... write. I'm feeling okay about the topic, but just a bit worried I won't be able to really finish the research properly. But as always, it will get done, and come August 31st I will no longer have a thesis on which to work. So I just have to keep on keeping on until then to get it all done.

Australia

As many of you know, Steve got the Northcote Scholarship to do his PhD in Strategic and Defense Studies (history) at the Australia National University in Canberra ACT. So, we are moving to Canberra for three years! Holy Moly! I got my Work and Holiday Visa about a week ago which will allow me to well, work and travel haha. Steve has also gotten his student Visa good for three years. Mine is only good for a year, but by then Steve and I can declare we are in a de-facto relationship and I'll be able to get on his or by that time I may be able to have an employer sponsor my visa. I'm not sure when I'll be stateside next, its super expensive to travel to and from Australia, but I suspect I'll make a trip home around August or September next year when my Visa runs up. Finding flights and everything has been a bit trying. For some ungodly reason the airlines only allow one bag per person at 23kg with a carry-on being only 7kg. So that sucks, and you can't even buy extra bags, they charge per kilo over (like 35GBP per Kilo) so yeah. I'm working on how to get the stuff I really need over there, and I'm also looking into shipping some things home. It will all work out though. I hate to think about how difficult it will be when we need to move Steve permanently to the states... yikes.

Trip to Italy!

We went to Italy June 13-15th and it was great. Steve and I got into Venice a day earlier then Ma and Pa which was nice, as we could go to things they have already seen. We spent about four days there, and it was relaxing. There was nothing we HAD to see or do so it was just walking around and doing whatever we felt like. We then drove to Padua where I got to do some research on Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel. From there we went to Ravenna to spend the night, in an amazing b&b, then in the morning we saw the famous mosaics. We got bikes to ride around the city for a bit, they were free rentals from the tourist board. We got to see some neat places, including Dante's tomb (he was exiled from Florence in 1302 and came to Ravenna where he wrote the Divine Comedy then died in 1321) and a church with holy fish (under the altar there was a chamber with water in it, and fish... yes fish in a church). We drove to Tuscany then, taking lots of pictures on the way and enjoying the summer sun. We stopped in several towns, and of course went shopping to stock the sweet apartment we rented outside Cortona for the last week. It was great. From there we took day trips, most of which concerned my research. We went to San Gimignano where I saw an amazing hell fresco by Taddeo di Bartolo and managed to talk to the curator about it. We also spent a day in Florence seeing lots of things. We went to Santa Maria Novella for me to see the fresco of hell by Nardo di Cione, then we saw several other churches (closed unfortunately) then I went into Santa Croce where I saw Michelangelo's tomb (and other famous dead guys) some great frescos and important fresco fragments by Andrea di Cione (known as Orcagna) who was Nardo's brother. We then went to see the Duomo which has some incredible 16th c. frescos in the dome by Giorgio Vasari and Zuccharo. Steve and I went up into the dome which was nice, really neat view on the inside, but quite the haul up. The outside view was nice, but it was starting to rain. After that Mom and I went to the Baptistery to see the important and influential mosaics particularly the depiction of hell. Steve and I spent a day in working, while mom and dad went for a drive, then the next day we were headed to Pisa. Pisa was beautiful, it was a lovely sunny day. Mom and I went straight to the Camposanto for me to do research. I was going to see the frescoes of the Last Judgment and Hell by Buffalmacco. These frescoes were damaged in WWII by the allied bombs, and were taken off the wall, restored and now hang in a special room. The fresco was spectacular, mom loved looking at it with me and it was a lot of fun discussing things with her and telling her what I knew about it. We briefly went into the duomo, then Dad, Steve and I climbed the leaning tower! I know, so cool that you can go in it now! It was pretty neat being up there seeing the view, and just being up in the tower. We stayed the night in Lucca, and took a lovely walk in the morning before being taken to the Pisa airport. It was a great trip, it was so so so nice to see mom and dad. It was fun just being the four of us, perfect because mom and I talked a lot and the boys were joined at the hip basically. It was crazy at the airport (problems with the ticket etc) and needless to say I was a bit of a wreck, no surprise there. But after a teary goodbye, Steve and I flew home to Bham while ma and pa set off for their driving adventure up towards Venice.

Guess that’s it really, I know I wasn't particularly detailed in the recounting of anything but I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to, and hopefully I'll have time to write about Poland and elaborate on other things as the summer goes on. Hope you are all well and I'll get some pictures up soon!

Cheers!
Tori