Springtime in Norwich

I had been looking forward to spring in England since I arrived in September, maybe because of my fondness for books like The Secret Garden when I was a child. So far I have not been disappointed. There are flowers everywhere! The most common is the daffodil, and it grows wild everywhere, even along the motorways. They are all starting to turn brown now, being one of the early harbingers of spring, but new gorgeous blossoms have taken their place. I wish I knew the names of them all. I've taken a few pictures here and there, but here is just one from a pretty spot on campus.
It looks like this everywhere! I'll try to take some more pictures to post later. The rabbits have also taken note of spring...I've seen a few darling baby bunnies hopping around campus lately. I imagine the grounds will be covered with them soon!

Even with how pretty the spring is, there were beautiful things about the winter as well. It didn't snow very much, but when it did it was these huge, heavy snowflakes that were so pretty (as long as you were watching from indoors!). Or take this picture that I took from the window of my bedroom from my residence hall on campus.This was early one morning before sunrise and there was a light blanket of frost and dew on the grass. The mist makes it all look so ethereal, doesn't it? Just beautiful. I also wanted to share with you a couple of other random photos that I never got around to posting earlier. The first is a picture of yours truly standing on the cobblestone street of Elm Hill, a sweet little area that is the "chocolate box" of Norwich. It's actually one of the best preserved medieval streets in England, and parts of the movie Stardust (with Claire Danes and Michelle Pfeiffer) were filmed here!

As I've mentioned before, the Sainsbury Centre (where I'm doing my PhD at the University of East Anglia) regularly hosts traveling exhibitions to compliment their display of objects from their permanent collection. Right now, they have China China China!! on display, which shows the work of 18 contemporary Chinese artists. One of my favorite pieces (and a crowd pleaser in general) is a piece called Artifical Moon, which is basically hundreds of energy saving lightbulbs wired together in the form of a massive sphere, a kind of alternative New Year's Eve ball for those of you from the states. It's hanging in the small exhibition space near the cafe outside the permanent collection galleries.
The piece of course presents a contradiction: with that much electricity being produced, even energy saving lightbulbs are going to cause a drain on the system. But what I like about it is the eerie glow it casts in the Sainsbury Centre. It's terribly bright, but not blinding as it would be if the artist had used regular lightbulbs. You can read more about the exhibition here: http://www.scva.org.uk/exhibitions/current/index.php?exhibition=48

What else can I tell you? Well, I will be heading back to Yucatan this summer to commence a new round of fieldwork! I'll be going back to do level III of the Yucatec Maya summer language program that I've been doing the last few years, only this time I'll be studying advanced Maya...shudder, shudder. We'll see how that goes. But it will be nice to get back down there and see people and get a leg up on my fieldwork. I also was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship from UNC-Chapel Hill for this, so that's always a plus.

Bill and I were in Nottingham this past weekend for his brother's 30th birthday party. That was a ton of fun. We went and played Laserquest on Friday and went out for dinner at this amazing Indian restaurant that evening with the family, and on Saturday all the friends and extended family drove in for a festive BBQ lunch. Bill was the grillmaster of course. It was fun to spend time with everyone and meet some more of the family.


Hope everybody's doing well and enjoying the springtime!