England, Enervation, and Easter

Well, I realized that I've been in Britain for some time now, and yet I've been horrible about posting... actually, Cheryl realized it, so I felt obliged to write something, and getting back into the alliteration in my title gave me some direction. England has really been great! I've loved almost every minute of it. The crazy things are just the small differences. I mean, it's not like being immersed in a completely strange culture, because things are really similar; however, the fact that things are so much the same really brings out the differences. Anyways, I can't think of any really good examples (my accent is hilarious to them when we talk about it... they really think it's ridiculous that i say the word water with kind of a "d" sound ... like "wad-er", because they really accent the "t"... it's just funny.) Anyways, as far as enervation goes, I've been ill for over 3 weeks now... basically that's been shit. A few days I just felt like death, but most of the time it's just been a feeling of general malaise. My throat has felt like I have strep for about 2 and a half of those weeks, so that's too much fun... however, that doesnt really matter, because I'm still having the time of my life. Michael, Brian and I have been planning out our Easter break... a whole month! I can't even believe it, it's going to be so amazing. We were going to go to Istanbul, but there were 2 bombings in 5 days a couple weeks ago, so we figured that terrorism, coupled with avian flu, provided enough reason not to go (we'll have plenty of other stuff to see, so it's not a huge sacrifice compared to the risks). So here's our plan as of yesterday... paris, barcelona, rome, florence, venice, bucharest (romania), budapest, vienna, prague, berlin, amsterdam, and brussels... we're also going to try to fit in krakow (even if we have to replace brussels). We've already got the travel booked up until rome, and then we're finishing the rest of it tomorrow. It's going to be pretty expensive (especially the actual travelling) but how often will I ever have an opportunity like this again? So basically I'm willing to go all out for perhaps the only time I'll ever have an experience like this. What's nice is how cheap flights are. The most expensive flight we're going to have is like the equivalent of $100 U.S., and that's from Leeds to Paris (b/c Leeds airport is pretty small). Can you even imagine getting an international flight in the U.S. for $100? I can't fly from Bozeman to Phoenix for that... well, as far as my travel around England has gone, I've missed out on 2 excursions, to Liverpool (went to my cousin's to change my money) and York (one of the deathly ill days) (home of the greatest band of all time, and you don't deserve to live if you can't figure out who that is...) However, I did make it to Newcastle, and the nearby Hadrian's Wall and Hexham village , with it's awesome abbey; I also went out to Mike's campus, which is in this old converted mansion called Bretton Hall. Both of those trips were awesome, and I've posted a lot of the pictures on my facebook, b/c it's way easier than doing it on here. This weekend, I'm planning on going to Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare is from, and hopefully see a Shakespeare play by the Royal Shakespeare Company; that would be SO INCREDIBLE! The weekend after, I'm going to London, so I'm pretty much excited about life in general right now. Well, that should do it for now, but I'll try to post more frequently (and therefore shorter posts) from now on... but I'm really not good at following through on stuff that involves any effort so we'll see.