240 Volts

Today was a pretty good day. I got a good amount of sleep, and we had a meeting regarding our International Studies class in the morning. Just what the travel class will entail. We then took a short tour of the area surrounding the flat. We're basically bordered by 3 very busy streets forming a triangle around us. We went to a local produce shop, whose husband and wife owners are great supporters of the Luther program, and seemed very excited to have some guys this year (last year it was all girls). The guy offered to hook us up with some girl he knew. Anyways, there were some soccer fields and a bunch of other stuff. In the afternoon I practiced for about an hour, which was good. We ate dinner at a pub downtown, which we accessed by taking the tram. It's pretty much the Minneapolis light rail, with different cars and such. Had the first pint of real English ale, pulled from the cellar. Eh, it was alright. I'm sure it can get better. After that, about 6 of us did some exploring, and came across Nottingham Castle. It was closed, but we took pictures of the Robin Hood statue, and also found our way to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, reportedly the oldest pub in England. Apparently 3 pubs make the same claim. It's sort of half dug into this cave. Anyways, then we came back, and the night was spent writing a paper, reading some stuff, and blowing out my battery charger. It was acting funny, so I took it to the room next door and asked if I could plug it into a converter to see if it was just mine. Anyways, my request was misinterpreted, and I was offered a plug which did not contain a transformer/converter but a English/British converter. Basically, I ran 240 volts of electricity through a 120 volt object. Needless to say, it made a pop and started to smell like smoke. It's broke. I have an additional set of batteries to last for a while, but I definitely need to get a new charger soon. Tomorrow we leave on a 5 or 6 day trip to the North. We'll be hitting up York, then going over to Durham where we'll be staying in a castle. We will also cover Hadrian's Wall, which was built way back during the Roman Empire by the Emperor Hadrian to keep out the pagan Picts. So, that should be cool. Following that, we'll have an orientation for international students at the University. So, it'll be busy for a while. And I will not have my computer, so there will most likely be no posts until Sunday or Monday. At that point there should be some stuff to write about.