Burns Night

Balliol celebrated Burns night last weekend! Robert burns was a Scottish poet, who influenced many poets to followe. To name a few, John Steinbeck took the title of 'Of Mice and Men' from the last stanza of Burns' poem 'To a Mouse': "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft agley." Bob Dylan selected Burns' 1974 song 'A Red, Red Rose' as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life.

Anyway, the brits celebrate Burns by eating haggis (sheep heart, liver, and lungs mixed with oatmeal and spices!) and drinking a lot of scotch. The haggis was brought out on a huge platter, and led by a bagpiper. With the dinner came some readings from Burns' works, and 'Burns': the guys of the college read a speech mocking (burning) the girls in the college, and vica versa. The night finished with more Scotch, and a ceilidh, a traditional scottish dance. Below is the haggis, and some post-dinner socializing.

Cairngorm Mountains

I headed up to Scotland (near Aviemore) for a few days to do some winter climbing and practice some winter skills. I built some shelters, dug a bunch of avalanche pits, did some deep snow navigataion, practiced some self arrests, learned some new snow belays, and just generally played around in the snow and mountains. The area has more snowfall than it has seen in over 30 years! It was fairly cold, and we saw wind gusts up to 100mph at the summits, so I didn't take any pictures, for fear of frostbite! Below is a single shot, taken by someone else. Though nothing like the dramatic peaks of the Tetons, the Cairngorms are pretty, and I could definitely spend a lot of time exploring there. I have, however, come to the conclusion that traveling anywhere in the U.K. when there's snow on the ground is generally a bad idea. After many re-routings and missed trains, I feel like I know the train stations of the U.K. pretty well!

Snow!

Oxford got six inches of snow! The city came to an absolute standstill because of the 'severe weather.' I've been told that this is more snow that Oxford has seen in over 20 years! I'm definitely enjoying it, and have already sledded down the biggest 'hill' in Oxford. Here is the snowman Clarissa and I built,

and looking down my street during the snow,

One of the heads outside the Sheldonian,

And a few more snowy Oxford scenes,

I've been warned that I probably won't see this much snow in Oxford ever again!

Paris

Once back in Paris, Jon acted as my personal tour guide. I saw Notre Dame with its 'flying buttresses' (arched eterior supports) next to the Seine River,

and the Eifel Tower- the fog made it look particularly cool, and I liked these pictures,

and Sacre Coeur Basilica on the summit of Mountmarte, the highest point in the city.

We went to the Rodin museum (artist of 'The Thinker'), which I very much enjoyed. Here's Jon, thinking,

and saw the nearby Les Invalides, originally built as a retirement home for war vetrans, and more commonly used as a museaum of the French military.

I saw the Louvre, but didn't go in, mainly because its size was too intimidating. You could spend an entire trip to Paris in the Louvre.

This is the Seine river, and the bridge on the left, Pont Neuf, is the oldest bridge in Paris

Next, Jon, his roommate Zach, Zach's wife Holly, and I took a daytrip to Mont San Michel in Normandy, France. It is a tidal island about 1km off of France's north coast and is topped by a famous Gothic abbey. It was built in the 13th century and withstood reapeated assaults throughout the 100 years war. It was really cool to be driving along and watch this appear out of nowhere!

On one of my last days in Paris, we visited Pere Lachaise cemetary, which was very cool to walk through. I saw the graves of Louis Gay-Lussac (physicist), Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and a few others.

And finally, I spent New Years Eve with Jon, Zach, and Holly up at Sacre Couer.

Happy New Year!

The holidays were great fun, but I definitely missed spending it with my family!

Belgium

On Christmas Eve, after an 11 hour bus journey, I arrived in Paris and met Jon. On Christmas morning, we hopped on another bus to Bruges, Belgium. As I boarded the bus, the radio was playing (in English), 'I'll be home for Christmas.' Great, rub it in.
We found our hostel, which was connected to a bar, so we dove right into tasting the amazing belgian beers. Since there were very few restaurants open, our Christmas dinner turned out to be kebabs (similar to a gyro).
After beer, our next priority was the Belfry of Bruges, which, if you saw the movie, you'll recognize. It is a medieval belltower in the historical center, originally built in 1240. It was destroyed by fire and partially rebuilt in 1280, 1483, and 1493, which explains Longfellow's poem:
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.
We climbed the 366 narrow, steep stairs to the top.


Here are the gears to the clock that sits at the top,

and the mechanism by which the bells are played, 47 in total, weighing 27.5 tons.

Looking out from the top of the Belfry,


And looking down toward the market center,

This is the left side of the Basilica of the Holy Blood. The upper chapel off to the right is home to the relic of the Holy Blood, a crystal phial supposedly containing a few drops of Christ's blood. It was brought to Bruges around 1200, after the second crusade. The phial is stored in a silver, jeweled tabernacle. It was on display the day we visited, and yes, I had to go touch it.

A little less holy but equally pleasing was our tour of the Staffe Hendrik Brewery, the only brewery left in central Bruges. The tour was pretty cool and we were rewarded afterward with beer. All three beers from this brewery made it into my top ten beers I had in Belgium.

From the top of the brewery. The smell of hops was in the air!

While in Bruges we also visited the Church of Our Lady, built in the 13th century, which contains Michelangelo's original Madonna and Child, and the Groeninge Museum, which contains a collection of 15th century Flemish art. We drank lots of beer and ate a few belgian waffles covered in belgian chocolate.

After a few days of exploring the sites of Bruges, we grabbed a train to Brussels.
We saw Grand Place, the square which is the cultural heart of Brussels,
It was here that I rubbed the statue of Evard 't Serclaes, who was famous for his recovery of Brussels from the Flemish. Supposedly the statue grants wishes and brings good luck.
We also saw the famous Manneken Pis (dutch for little man urinating). Built in 1618, it is somewhat of a landmark for Brussels. I didn't understand it before I saw it. Now that I've seen it, I still don't get it. But, the crowds of people that gather to see it are impressive.

After a day and night in Brussels, we were on a bus back to Paris, and sadly parting with the Belgian beers.

Training in Cardiff

Oxford is pretty cold and wet lately, and it lacks any indoor training facilities. So, I headed over to Cardiff, near Wales, to the Indoor Training Center the weekend before Christmas. We trained hard indoors and I got to vault, then we spent the last day running these big sand dunes near Cardiff- pretty cool! They killed me though! Our group,

Running to the coach felt longer than it looks:

Walking to a different hill,
Tough work!

Tignes, France

Skiing in the French Alps was absolutely amazing! We had good snow the entire six days, and we had two really big powder days. The entire skiable area is above the tree line, which was a bit strange at first, but gorgeous. We skiied the six days straight from about 9am to 4pm, usually with a quick break for lunch. By the end of our trip I was exhausted and my shins were very sore!

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You can't ski without fuel. We ate one traditional French meal while we were there, and it was raclette. The name both refers to the cheese itself and the dish, and derives from the french verb 'to scrape,' which makes a lot of sense. The cheese is placed under heat lamps, and as it bubbles and becomes gooey, you scrape it onto your plate, on top of potatoes and slices of meat. It's kind of like a more active form of cheese fondue! Here it is before (placed under two heat lamps), a picture of Lindsey scraping one side off, and the final product. We tried really hard, but we just couldn't finish it!

This was the underground ski lift/tunnel that went up the mountain- it was warm and really fast!

This was our first run on the first big powder day. You'll have to ask Lindsey how much fun it is to search for your skiis once you lose them in powder! The last picture is her attempt to hike out of it- that didn't last too long.

I can't explain how cool it was to be skiing amongst such scenery, although I took many pictures in an attempt to pass the feeling on to others. It's hard to capture the 360 degree scenario, but nonetheless, here are my attempts.

A few of Lindsey and I,

One with Tignes in the distance,

A few from the top of the glacier,

In this picture I was trying to capture the hundreds of lines through the fresh powder on this hillside,

This is the natural arch that I fell in love with, and just had to ski through. This, however, would require a bit of hiking...

From the top of an off-piste area we were about to ski. The French kindly translated the important signs like this one. Don't worry, the snow was fine.

And finally, just a few more scenery shots...

Guess what? It turns out I like the Alps!