The Sun Also Rises

Time flies and we find ourselves in February already! Gaby and I took a trip back to the States over Christmas, which was so nice. We love it here in England, but you know.. we miss family, friends... taco bell... We had a great time at home, it was great to see as many people as possible.

Then, of course, we went to Utah to ski with my family, which was also excellent. It was Gaby's first time skiing and she picked it up very fast, and she liked it! So that's good news, I guess we can keep on going each year, then :) The place we stayed this year was great, too, and they had "free" food and drinks every afternoon for happy hour, which we took full advantage of. Overall, a great trip back to the US.

We then came back to York a week before I had my exams and Gaby's paper was due. So that was a very busy week, studying, reading, and writing. Gaby and I both think we did quite well on our assignments, though, so that's good. Then, classes began anew. I'm taking Advanced Plasma Physics, Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF), MCF lab, Computational lab, and Statistical methods in Experimental Physics. Gaby is taking "The Body Politic" and "Saints and Sanctity." So far we're enjoying all our classes, though advanced plasma physics is basically gibberish.

Our initial lease for our current flat ends in March, and we were planning to renew it and stay here until September. However, we started looking at new houses that were available just in case the perfect one came up, and it did! We like our flat now, but it is small, there are no doors except the one to the outside (not even to the bathroom...), and our landlords said no to bringing Fiddle (our cat) over. All these things are rectified in our new place, not to mention it's a 15 minute walk to campus from the new place, while it's a 50 minute walk from our current. All in all, we're happy about moving, though it might be a little stressful moving in the middle of the term. Fortunately, we have some friends with cars willing to help us, so hopefully we can knock it out in one weekend. We don't have THAT much stuff. As soon as I can I'll post pictures of the new place!

Oh, also, it snowed this past week in York!! We were hoping we'd get to experience a nice British winter with snow and cold, and it looked like it might not happen this year. But then, BAM, snow, and about 4 inches of it. We went out with some friends and played in the snow and walked around the city, which managed to get even more beautiful than it already was. The building in the picture below is the York Minster, the biggest Gothic Cathedral in England.

On a much more sad note, I have to start working on my taxes soon, which are guaranteed to be complicated with the move, only working half a year last year, getting married, etc. Hooray! At least I don't have to worry about UK taxes because we don't make any money here, we just pay it.

I guess the next big news that's going to come out from us is whether or not we get into PhD programs and get to stay in England for another few years. I interview next week for one position, which would actually switch me from Masters to PhD right away, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that one. It would also involved traveling down to Oxford every few months to run some experiments, which would be quite cool.

If that PhD doesn't work out, though, I also have interviews in March for PhD's starting next October. Gaby doesn't have to interview, just apply, so that's in the works at the moment as well, and hopefully we'll both find out that we both get to do our PhD's here! We'll keep everyone posted, and once we find out that we're staying for another few years, I expect people to start making their plans to come visit us!! Free lodging in York to anyone who comes and visits!

I guess that's it for now!

The Heart of the Matter

Well, I can officially proclaim that we are terrible at updating our blog, as I'm sure you'd agree. I like to think quality over quantity, but there do have to be actual posts every now and then for quality to even count for something. That being said, it shames me that this will be a short post, but I thought I'd at least give a quick update.

We got to see Brandon Sanderson a few weeks ago! He came for a book signing to our city, which we (Gaby) let him know was highly ironic as we were all so far away from home. Here's the picture, be jealous.

We're best friends now.

A few days later we had an awesome Thanksgiving party at our house! It was great because we got to celebrate it with a few Americans that we know, and we also were able to introduce our new British friends to the annual feast that is Thanksgiving. Everyone brought a dish of food, and we had a potluck. It was quite enjoyable, and my first Thanksgiving with Gaby as my wife! I also made some sweet potato suffle, which was a big hit. Gaby made turkey and gravy, which despite some defrosting drama, was also delicious! Side note: pigs in blankets here mean sausages wrapped in bacon. UK: 1 US: 0.

From then it's been very hectic for me as my professors all decided the last few weeks of the term were the best time to load us up with weekly problems and projects. I managed to get it all done, and so far I've not gotten less than a hundred on anything except one or two homeworks here and there. I feel I can say it now without bragging since my days at Tech did not go quite so swimmingly. But I digress.

The term is nearly over, Gaby and I leave to go home in ONE WEEK! We're pumped about seeing friends and family again, and also about eating some delicious Amurican food (like Taco Bell!!). But really, we are craving buffalo wings, waffles, tacos, and pizza and we will be eating as much of these things as we can while we're home.

As I said, this will be short and sweet, so I finish here.

Great Expectations

Well, it has been a long while since our last post. Many, many things have happened, so this will probably be a long post. In the future... we'll update more often with smaller posts instead of waiting over a month between bloggings.

We moved to England!! We did warn you we were going to. The move went smoothly, customs was easy, and we arrived in our hostel without (too much) trouble. It seemed like a longer walk than it actually was thanks to the 100+ pounds of luggage in tow. Unfortunately, at this point, the story doesn't go anywhere fast. We ended up staying in the hostel for a week while we spent

our days trying to get all the logistics of the move arranged. On the plus side, we were absolutely awed by the beauty of our city.

Our first day in England we went to the bank because, well, we needed money in a bank to buy things like apartments. Unfortunately, upon walking in to the bank, we were penciled in for an appointment two days later... an APPOINTMENT.. at the bank. It was weird, but hey, a new culture, so we accepted our appointment time and moved on, trying to think of something else we could do.

Fortunately, we had plenty to do: we got phones and watched Fringe. We didn't want to look at apartments, find one we love, and then find that it has disappeared by the time our bank account was up and running. We did make some calls and send some emails to at least get some viewings set up for later in the week.

The hostel we stayed in was very nice, but there's only so much tolerance for hostel-living when you actually want to settle in to a new town. So we bided our time, finally got our bank account setup, and then managed to get an appointment to see ONE apartment, not quite the number we were looking for, but hey, if it's nice we need no more than one. And it WAS nice! One problem, though, was that it was still under construction/renovation and wouldn't be done for another couple of weeks, something that was, for some reason, not mentioned in the description. That left us with no place and no other appointments, so we took some initiative and walked into one of the real estate offices to talk to a real person about the available apartments, which turned out to be a good decision. We found a couple options and setup some more viewings... for another couple of days away. Everywhere must be really busy to have such a drought of appointment times.

In the mean time, we explored the city a bit, as we are going to be spending the next year (at least) here, we thought that would be nice to do. Let me say, the city is AWESOME. Definitely picked the right place to study. The streets are cobblestone, the buildings old and British, and there's a medieval wall surrounding the city... which is built on top of a roman wall that was originally around the city. Yeah, awesome. We walked everywhere possible in the city. It's not huge, but there are tons of winding, medieval streets, and on the north side of the city there is a giant church, York Minster. It's HUGE and amazing inside, though we didn't go inside until much later in the story.

In an attempt to save money we basically ate complimentary

breakfast (toast) and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Finally, though, on Friday the 9th of September we went to a viewing of an apartment and it was awesome. Even more awesome was the fact that we could move in almost immediately! We just had to wait for them to clean the place a bit over the weekend, and we could move in Monday. The weekend went by slowly, but a huge weight had been lifted knowing we had a place to live! Our place is awesome, it has a spiral staircase in it!

Now that we had moved in, it was another waiting game until Tara and Mike to arrive. We did some more city exploring and ran across a pair of "native Americans" in full garb (feather headdresses, etc.) playing wind pipes and dancing. In England? Weird enough. But then, we got a little closer and they started singing... in Spanish... Making up words to a song from The Last Samurai. Really strange, but made us laugh. Oh, and British people were eating it UP, buying CD's and dream catchers. /sigh

Finally Tara and Mike arrived, and we really appreciated seeing friendly faces we knew. It was great hanging out with them for the 4 days they were here. We did some of the touristy things that weren't free that Gaby and I had bypassed before. We went to the viking museum (awesome) and we went into the York Minster and its catacombs. That was really cool because in the 70's they found ruins from the Roman and Norman buildings that used to be there. Great museum under the church and the church itself is beautiful. And HUGE. And, as Adam will be happy to learn, there is scaffolding on one whole side because they're renovating. It is a really cool place.

Along with the touristy stuff, we also went to some pubs, which Gaby and I had been refraining from doing just so we'd be able to go with Tara and Mike. We found some really neat pubs with good food and beer, and it's not all that expensive if you find the right places. Also, we found an all you can eat Chinese buffet for 6 pounds, which was excellent. Overall, we had a great time hanging with our friends. Unfortunately, they had to leave, and now we are waiting for school to start, which happens in another week and a half. I've received some of my textbooks in the mail, so I've started studying those (math is hard). Gaby doesn't know what books to buy since her schedule is still up in the air, so she doesn't have as much to do as I do. We've been falling back on WoW, minecraft, LoL, and of course, walking around our awesome city.

By the way, this is our entrance to the city from where we live (which is just outside the wall). No big deal, it's a giant medieval bar (which apparently means gate here).

Our crate comes next Monday, which is awesome! We're excited to get all of our cooking supplies, my computer, the xbox, etc. We'll step up the quality of our meals once all that arrives. Now we're sticking to pasta, sandwiches, and cereal.

Among other things, we're missing friends and family. It's exciting being here, moving to a new place, and doing it together as a married couple, but we still miss people. When we busy ourselves with school I think that homesickness part will start to recede. But we love you all!

And I think that catches everyone up. Gaby will probably have something to add, I'll let her do that in another post as this one is long enough.

Cheers!

Jarrod

Origin of Species

It was once said that "Nothing could kill a musical like too much exposition". Well this isn't a musical, kids.

So why are you moving?

Jarrod and I are attending graduate school at the University of York! [pictured below] We will both be going for our Master's degrees, which will take about a year, and then we are going to be applying for our PhDs. We expect to be in England for about 4-5 years, which is a scary thought, since so much can change in that time. As my Dad said at our wedding, we plan to keep our feet light and always expect change.

We are really excited to go to such a great university and even more excited to experience a different culture for a few years!

What will you be studying?

I will be studying Early Modern British History (think end of War of the Roses to the beginnings of the British Industrial Revolution). Basically, lots of dead people with very alive ideas! Some of the great events which you should know about during this time are Henry VIII's many wives, the Protestant Reformation, Elizabeth I's reign, the English Civil War, Charles I's beheading, and the Glorious Revolution (when William & Mary of Orange came to rule)! So jam packed.

Of course, there's so much to study in history and you can get as detailed as you desire, but I am considering studying the society that elite women created by social climbing, whether using their wits, marriage vows, or bodies as a means to gain power.

Jarrod will be studying Fusion Energy (details on that in previous post). Here's a brief explanation, bear with me science folks! Basically, there are 2 ways of achieving nuclear energy - fission, the splitting up of atoms, and fusion, the combining of atoms. Our sun works this same way!

The products of fusion are water and energy, making it much safer and creating more energy than fission, which is what we predominately use currently. "Well, why the heck are we not using fusion??" you might ask. Well, it's not very cost effective. But wait! That's what Jarrod is going to be helping with. Fusion energy studies are now focusing on creating new methods to make the process more efficient. Also, it's freaking cool!

So... why England?

Oh, this is a whole other monster....

Our tale begins in a bedroom of a teenage girl, her nose to her book in eager anticipation of what will happen to her imaginary wizarding friends next... Okay in all seriousness-- Harry Potter is what got me thinking about England as a place to visit, but it wasn't until I studied abroad at Oxford University summer of 2008 that got me thinking about living there. But of course, I didn't know Jarrod then and my life would have to change, twist, and turn a lot before I would get to a place where not only is Jarrod my husband and love of my life, but also that we would be moving in only a few short weeks.

So yea, fast forward a bit -- I meet Jarrod and --BAM-- love strikes! Oh and a plus... he wants to live abroad too.

So last summer, we go on a fun tour of Europe with our very good friend Adam. While in Amsterdam, Jarrod and I took a nice long walk around the canals, discussing our future. That was the moment we really decided to try this thing, try to move to Europe. At this point, we weren't narrowed down to England, but we also considered Amsterdam, Spain, Ireland, and good ol' Scotland as well. All places we loved and could see ourselves thriving in. We also decided that grad school would be the best means to do it. Not only did both of us want to extend our education, but it also turned out to be the easiest way to get there! Man, God is good.

So Jarrod and I started on the hunt for programs that would fit our interest. Our game plan? Find schools we like, apply to them, and then see which ones accept us, from there, we would make a decision on where we wanted to go based on schools we both got accepted to and schools that were close enough together to commute too.

Well, it turns out that the University of York was the first school either of us heard back from, and we both got in. Pretty much immediately we decided to just get a jump start and decide that was where we were going to go.

And the rest is... well, present day.

3 weeks to go

3 luggage to pack

1 crate to pack for shipping

1 cat to get a pet passport

2 people so excited to start this awesome adventure!

-Gabs

p.s. if anything, stick around to see how long we can stick with the British literature titles as blog titles thing. Cool kids do it.

Brave New World

It's Monday, three weeks until we board a plane to Manchester, England. From there we go to York via train and then to a hostel for, hopefully, only a few days. What started as a vague plan a year ago has come to fruition and we're both stoked!

Today, I got my visa in the mail, AND my schedule for fall and spring were posted online! I've been nervous, not knowing what my classes would be, how my schedule would look. But now I know!

Gaby hasn't received her schedule yet as she has more options than me. That is to say, she actually HAS options, whereas I do not. She gets to pick her classes at the end of the first week of school at which point we'll both know our schedules.

We still have some paperwork to get through until we're fully ready to go, but it's getting there. We're almost ready. At least as ready as we can be considering we can't rent a flat until we get there. Fortunately, once we arrive we have over a month to get used to the new city, new culture, and new life style.

As this is our first post, I thought I would try my hand at it, though I can bet that Gaby will be our voice from this point on. I may, however, post some awesome science when I learn it! So stay tuned.

Jarrod