Boy, it's been a little while, huh? Yeah, I'd love to say that that's because I've been out doing crazy exciting things and haven't had a chance to update about all of it. But sadly it's mostly because not much has happened. We did go to town last weekend, which was fun, and that's what most of those pictures are from. It was a really good time. Myself and six other Americans met at about 9:30 in the morning and then walked into town and first saw Clifford's Tower, which is in a few of the pictures I have posted. That is the largest part of the remainder of the castle which was just to the West (i think) of it now. It was what is called a Mote(pronounced mott)-and-Bailey castle, so there was a big courtyard thing that was walled and huge and there were lots of rooms and tons of stuff there, that was kinda in front of the tower, and then the tower itself was most of the castle proper, if you will. There would probably have been a moat between the tower and the courtyard area(with a draw-bridge), and they would both probably have been up on hills, like the tower is. Clifford's Tower is also where, in the early 12th Century, I think, all/most of the known Jews in the North of England were somewhat forced into and when they saw that the situation was dire, they set fire to the wood (which I think would have been all on the inside of the tower, as well as the roof) and comitted a mass suicide. Not a whole lot of fun, that part of it.

Then we wandered around for a while waiting to meet up with a few other people and headed over to this bar called the "Roman Baths" or something like that, cause when they went to expand it a few years back (when it had a different name) they found a Roman Bath-house underneath it! (Roman street level is several meters - yards - below current street level, just because of sediment and whatnot) So we went down there after lunch and toured it. Apparently York was the northernmost point of the entirety of the Roman military machine. This is as far as it gets, and I think they said that under the North corner of the walls (which are still standing) is actually exaclty where the old Roman walls went to, and that's technically the northernmost tip. That's kinda cool.

Finally we went to the Minster, which is that giant church in the pictures. The Minster is pretty much the most mammoth building I've ever seen. It's giant. They have little diagrams that show an overhead view of the city around the Minster and it takes up several blocks (or it would, if the towns around here had any sort of 'block' rather than just winding streets that have no pattern). It is also built on top of a building that the Roman soldiers would have used. It would have been pretty much the center for the military and it was also where anything official would have happened. In fact, it is where Constantine (you might know him from the name of the city Constantinople, now Istanbul, as well as for legalizing Christianity in the Roman Empire and then for making it the official religion of the Empire a little later (i think)) was crowned Caesar. He was with his dad visiting the outpost during his rounds when his dad died and he was immediately crowned by the army. Kind of a big deal. The current Minster took over (wait for it) two hundred and fifty years to build. TWO HUNDRED FIFTY! That means that it took longer to build the Minster than the United States has existed! WHAT???!!! I know, crazy. Just crazy. Just sit and think about that for a while, and then continue reading.

On Saturday night, then, four of us were sitting around playing video games, being board when we decided to go up to flat 6 and, since only one of the girls that lives up there was here at the time, newspaper the whole corridor. It was pretty cool and it took about 3 and a half hours for four of us to do. I've got some pictures, but my camera battery died, so we'll have to wait until I charge it up to see them. Then on Sunday when the girls came back, a bunch of us went up and climbed through the paper into Katy's (the girl who was here this weekend) room and then resealed the newpaper to listen to their responses. It was pretty entertaining, just a bunch of laughing and screaming and "this is so crazy, how did they do this??" and stuff like that. Good times. Remember, these folks are freshmen, so I've got to help get them started off right with college life. Know that I'm doing my best.

Ok, well that's about all I've got. Notice, Ang, that I did throw a couple of paragraphs in there, though it's pretty clear that even within the paragraphs it's fairly stream-of-consciousness. In any case, I like stream-of-consciousness. It's fun. :) Well, I hope you all enjoyed the news. I'll try to do something exciting next week (or remember if I did anything exciting before, and then just claim that it happened more recently). Later ya'll.