I took my spontaneous trip and now I'm fully back in the swing of things, which is unfortunate because I could have stayed on vacation for a long while longer… C'est la vie. Other than that, the trip was wonderful and well-worth it.

But, first things first. The week of Tuesday November 4th through Tuesday November 11th.

The 4th was, as I know everyone was aware, election day! We planned an election night party, which started late because we didn't start getting any of the news in until 10:00pm or so. I mentioned before how interesting it was to see the reaction and interest shown by the English about this election and election night was pretty incredible because of that. We set up a little election night coverage thing at our kitchen table with my computer streaming live footage from the BBC channel (which was way better than CNN coverage by the way).

I had printed out the coloring maps and while we waited for coverage to start, we filled out a predictive map without cheating and using information from the internet. We did pretty well considering 3 Americans who have been out of the election news circuit filled it out with help from English students. We only mislabeled four so far although we are still waiting on Missouri. They are now hung up on our living room wall as a piece of Americana artwork. We colored and waited and ate and waited. We attempted to go down to the bar where they had a big projector screen set up, but by the time we went down there (around 2:00am) it was so crowded they had security there monitoring how many people could go in at a time- which at that point was one person could go in if one person came out, and because there were six or so of us and it was bitterly cold, we decided to go and finish watching it live streamed from our flat and try coming back later.

We watched until the results came in around 4:00am, which was quite early as they weren't predicted to come in until 6:00. We watched all the coverage of that and around 5:00 went back to the bar to try and watch Obama's acceptance speech. The security told us he wasn't allowed to let any more people in but Hannah and Emily "squeaked wheeled" enough, saying we just wanted to watch the speech (after we tried to find a way to sneak in) that he gruffly told us we could go in. So I watched Obama give his speech, surrounded by cheering, and ecstatic English citizens. It was amazing. Then we came back to the flat and, well considering it was almost 6:00, our numbers had dwindled, but a few of us stayed up until 7:00 just chatting and hanging out. It was a long, exhausting, yet pretty wonderful day.

Luckily, I had no class on Wednesday, so I was able to sleep in, although I had to go drop of muffins that Athena and I (mostly Athena in my kitchen) made for a cake stall for Rag at 1:00. Then I just stayed up and tried to be productive because that day was bonfire night. The 5th of November is known as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes night. "Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night, Cracker Night, Fireworks Night, Bommy Night) is an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November. It celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5 November, 1605 in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, were alleged to be attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London, England" (wikipedia).

You know the rhyme, 'Remember, remember, the 5th of November". And if you have seen V for Vendetta, it is based on this, although that succeeds in the movie and the whole point of this celebration is that it did not. There are lots of fireworks, and bonfires, and burning of effigies. I had an essay to work on, but I decided that it would be my only real and true English Bonfire Night, so we decided to trek over to Lewes (one town over) which hosts one of the most well known bonfire nights in the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewes#Lewes_bonfire

Because it is such a big thing, you can actually look on their website and you are warned that you shouldn't come. It's a very central thing to the Lewes community and they don't want a ton of visitors to come. But there are always a ton of visitors. Also, because they are close to all the universities, they are swamped by students every year. And this year was no different; we got to the train station and they had a line barrier set-up and there was actually a line, which I've never seen at our train station before.

We get to Lewes and it's raining and people are already drunk and we just kind of wander the streets not knowing where to go, until we stumble upon one of the six parades they have going on around town. The parades are full of costumes, fire torches, fireworks, fire, tar barrels on fire, drums and bands, did I mention fire? It was incredible, and we were so close there were moments I was afraid of getting fire dropped on me. After that, you follow the parade to a bonfire, and there are six set up on the outskirts of the city. So we watched a few more parades and then followed the crowd. It was a long, dark and wet walk, and when we got there nothing was going on. It was this big, what I assume to be a football pitch that was fenced off. People were standing around, or getting food from one of the carts that was set up. We weren't ultra impressed; until we found what was going to be the bonfire. It was HUGE! It looked like an Evergreen tree; it was about as big as one anyway. And then further along you could just make out the effigies. Apparently without knowing it, we made it to the most famous of the Lewes bonfires, where they burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, the Pope, and a famous person (usually political I think) with whom many people are unhappy with, who we found out later by asking a local, was supposed to be Gordon Brown (the Prime Minister) and the Bank of England.

So we wait around in the cold, freezing dismal waiting for something to happen, when all of a sudden, the parade starts coming through with their torchlight firesticks. We were really lucky and got a spot right on the fence, and near the gate that security was monitoring who came in. These people walked through the gate and went up to the huge Evergreen tree thing and threw their firesticks at it. I mean, threw! It was absolutely insane to see all these people throwing firesticks near each other. While that burned, they prepared for the next thing, which was a reenactment of the thing that Lewes will never forget, the burning of Protestant martyrs.

"In Sussex, it is a major festival that centres on Lewes necessitating the closure of the town centre. The night also commemorates the Glorious Revolution and 17 local Protestant martyrs that were burnt at the stake during Marian Persecutions by the Catholic Queen Mary I[11]." (wikipedia).

They had a scaffold set-up and someone acting as a Pope got up on it as to burn the martyrs and instead, all the people in the gate began throwing fireworks AT him. It was terrifying! This happened for too long, it scared me. But after this, the real show began! They begin to burn the effigies, with a spectacular fireworks display, the best I think I have ever seen, ever. And these fireworks ended with the effigies exploding into pieces. We left a little early to try and make it back to the train station before everyone else did, but we were able to finish watching the fireworks on our way back. Honestly, best fireworks show I've ever seen. Although, they don't stay in the sky like American fireworks, there were fireballs falling to earth, which was, in itself, an experience.

We got back to the train station and were astounded to see that the line was RIDICULOUS! I mean, we had to walk ten minutes just to find the end of it. We ended up waiting about an hour and a half just to catch a train home. It didn't seem to take that long, although it was still yucky and wet outside. We had a good laugh about how that line demonstrated true Englishness, how it's very important for English to 'queue' well. And that the English will hire people to ensure that the queuing happens well, which was true, there were more security in charge of the line than I had seen all night up until then. The English also hate queue-jumpers. A few people cut in line in front of us and two of my friends talked loudly about how much the English hate queue-jumpers and when queue-jumped it was appropriate to talk loudly and make witty remarks about the person who had done it. It was enlightening and hilarious.

I believe Thursday was a relaxing day with my girly roomies where we watched Clueless, Footloose and ate homemade soup. Which was lovely because we were all stressing out a little.

During the day Friday I wrote a huge chunk of my first essay. Rachel from across the hall cooked dinner for us, and later Emily, Hannah, Sarah and I proceeded to have a lovely run in the rain. I spent the evening working on my essay. I also watched The Secret Life of Bees, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

That Saturday was one that many people were supposed to be gone or busy for, so Sarah and I, as the only ones without plans, had originally intended to go to London for the day. It turned out that we both had a tone of homework to do, so decided instead to get up early and go be tourists and explore Brighton. Emily joined us and we spent a lovely day exploring the castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Pavilion ) which was so incredibly beautiful! We got drinks after that, then found food (Spanish tapas) and shopped a little. We searched out an adorable cupcake place that Hannah recommended and got 4 cupcakes for us to share later. Then more shopping and a trip to the grocery store. After our tourist filled day we came home, split the four cupcakes into quarters, shared and enjoyed while we watched The Other Boleyn Girl because we are all a little obsessed with Phillipa Gregory at the moment.

Sunday was an essay filled day. More timed essay writing/timed movie watch, although now I can't remember what I watched. I tried to watch Mamma Mia, but I don't think that worked…

Ok, so that was that week. I will upload some election night pictures, and Bonfire night pictures, but I need to get copied from Athena. I will also blog about last week's trip and upload those photos hopefully tomorrow. I'm still trying desperately hard to respond to everyone who has contacted me, I'm sorry it's taken so long! But for now, sleep; and for tomorrow, Virginia Woolf calls!

Oh! And I'm really really exicted to say that after much joking about "when you come and visit me", Sarah and Hannah have actually booked flights to come and visit me in March! I am super stoked to show then all the true PNW beauty and all the true American ways!!! Although, they can't comprehend a place that doesn't have recorded history before the beginning of the 19th century haha....

Until tomorrow,

Goodnight!