A weekend at the shore

Sorry guys ,I am starting to fall behind in my updating. Life is getting in the way as they say. This week has been crazy busy with school work so I haven't had a single moment until just now to sit down and reflect on this past weekend.
All day Saturday and Sunday I was away on an Emory sponsored trip. We visited several stately homes in the Kent countryside and spent the night in Dover. It was great fun because I got to hang out with all my favorite Emory kids and to meet a bunch of the Emory people who are studying up at St. Andrews in Scotland.
On Saturday we visited Knole House which is a palatial home owned by English aristocrats. It was once the home of Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf's lover for whom she wrote Orlando. I haven't read Orlando yet(it is sitting on my shelf) but the house was amazing. It is called a calender house because it has 365 rooms, 52 staircases and 7 courtyards. We only saw a fraction of that, all decorated in unbeleivable opulence. My favorite part were the hundreds of free range deer which roam the property with basically no fear of human contact.
After Knole we visited Chartwell House, which was the private home of Winston Churchill. It is a very pretty, cozy little house with excellent views of the Kent countryside. The house had really beautiful gardens, you can see me sitting in one of them in the big picture on the left. I spent a long time taking slightly pretentious, but very pretty, pictures of the flowers and the grounds.
Later that evening we rolled into Dover. Dover is a seaside town, right on the English Channel (it's where the Chunnel starts I think). I'm told on a clear day you can see all the way to Europe. Unfortunatly we didn't have a clear day so France is still a mystery to me. I think I've mentioned before how these Emory excursions are entirely paid for by the school. This is is amazing. For this trip they rented out an entire bed & breakfast for the group. They also treated us to a fantastically boozy Chinese food feast that night. I've honestly never seen or eaten so much chinese food before in my life, it was pretty fantastic. Later that night we all went down to the beach. It was very cold but very pretty, you could see Dover Castle glimmering up on the hill, and on the horizon lights of I like to imagine (but what almost certainly was not) France.
Early the next morning we walked up to Dover Castle. Dover is this hulking medeival fortress, which has been known as the key to England because of it's inconquerability. It was absolutly huge, I think we only saw a small part of the whole place. We took a tour of the secret underground tunnels used in World War Two for defense. Despite the fact that our tourguide was clearly stoned, the tunnels were pretty creepy, and we may have actually seen a ghost! We were also able to go to the top of the Keep, that is the highest tower in the castle, and look down over Dover and the surrounding lands. Sadly, it was still too foggy to see France!
After a gross lunch of fish and chips (ick) we visited one last site, a beautiful historic mansion call Igtham Mote. It doesn't have a whole lot of significance other then it is really pretty and has a cool Mote running around it. I think I would like my house to have a mote. You can walk around the house which is decorated in a cool, 1930's style and is very, very big. Very pretty gardens again; I've seen more gardens in the past month then in my entire life, yet I don't seem to get tired of them. Finally the bus too the exhausted lot of us home. It was such a fun and interesting weekend and it is always nice to get outside of London and see the rest of England.
So my adventures continue this weekend in Brussels and Amsterdam. I am excited but also tired. Every day of this trip is exciting and crazy and different but also takes so much energy. In some ways it is good I am only here for a few months, I'm not sure I could keep up this pace much longer then that. Although do not get me wrong: life here is so much fun. Every day is a new adventure in learning and living and it is exhausting and demanding but I am loving every single minute of it.