The Chatsworth House

The Chatsworth House belongs to the Duke of Devonshire and his family.  We went on multiple guided tours around the property, and had a ton of time to tour around ourselves and take photos.  This was one of my favorite places so far on the trip, and I really enjoyed looking through all of the paintings and sculptures.  Theres simply too much history about this place to include in this posting so I have added a link if anyone is interested in reading up on it.  I hope everyone is doing well and I will post more pictures soon!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House

Roman Fort and Mock-Combat

The ruins to this Roman Fort are preserved by the town of Newcastle.  There are many very interesting artifacts that have been found here that give historians a lot of information about how the Roman army ruled parts of England and how the cities surrounding them were set up and run.  These guys did some stage fighting for us that did not really seem all that staged.  They get bruses and cuts from the dull weapons regardless.  It was interesting to watch because the big red headed guy with the braided rat tail was about 6'6'' and probably weighed close to 300 pounds.  So he won every fight.

Tynemouth Priory and Castle

Sorry for the sideways pictures, I have to figure out how to change the orientation while im uploading them so that they are the right side up.  The Priory is located in Tynemouth which is actually a part of Newcastle.  These are the reminants of a very old cathedral that was built in Newcastle when Catholicism was being heavily spread.  It was interesting though because during WWII a small base and gun towers were built here to overlook the ocean since it was such a perfect vantage point for the English.

Sorry for the delay

Hello everyone,

I have been extremely busy registering for classes over the past few weeks.  The education system over here is completely different and a lot more independent.  I have however been learning a great amount of knowledge about Newcastle and the UK in general.  It is great having four roommates from the UK.  Charlie and Connor are both from Leeds which is about 2 hours south of Newcastle.  Matthew and Scott are both from Yorkshire, which is somewhat close to Leeds.  They are both big places and they send a ton of students to the University of Newcastle.  We eat dinner every night together and everyone takes turns cooking.  This makes it relatively cheap to eat because we all pitch in money at the beginning of the week and enjoy good meals.  I specifically like this because it is a good time to talk with them and exchange many different facts of life and information about our completely different countries.  We discuss a lot of politics as well as sports and music.  We exchange a lot of vocabulary too but for the most part we all get along and I do not anticipate any problems.

This past weekend I was in Munich for Oktoberfest.  It was an awesome trip and a great experience.  It was a little pricy but who knows the next time I will go back there with thirty + friends and be able to have such a great time.  there we a lot of terror alerts and what not but it did not really bother us and we fealt safe.  it is weird being that far from home and not being able to speak the language.  It was actually funny though because I met a native of Munich named Mike.  he spoke absolutely no English but over the course of about two hours we were able to communicate mostly through hand signals and pointing at stuff.  Uncle Jeff will get a kick out of the fact that he is a welder who does work on underground pipelines and steel work on the highway.  That same night we met a bunch of Australians and Londoners who we exchanged email addresses and names with.  I have found that for the most part everyone is a little interested in meeting americans, and no one has been extremely rude to us.

I am taking a history class, and english class, theology and also a business class.  They do not seem all that tough however the amount of independent work that is expected of us over here is incredible.  Its nothing I cannot handle but it is a big change.  I am used to having a course plan detailed down to the day.  Here they give us a list of about six textbooks and tell us to read them and find which chapters are relevant to the different lectures we have.  Luckily most of my friends from loyola are in these classes so we can work together.  oddly enough I travelled all this way to take an American History course taught by Professor Houston who is infact from Columbus Ohio.  It was a nice connection to make and we enjoyed meeting him because he is allowing us to write our papers in the American English we speak as opposed to the "proper" english spoken over here.

I am going to be uploading some photos over the next few days.  I have so many to sort through and I am trying to figure out how I can just upload every one of them in a slide show.  So keep a look out in the next few days.  Mark- to answer your question i have not been to the Riverside yet but we are actually going tonight.  So I will let you know how it goes but we have heard it is an awesome venue.  I hope everyone is well back in the states!  I am having an awesome time abroad and it is everything I imagined.  Sorry for the delay but now that i am settling in I should be able to keep everyone posted more often.  Until next time Take care!