It's been a busy week this last week. Thursday and Friday I was away at a conference in Durham (England, not NC). It was my first trip to Durham and I liked it very much. It was a bit chilly, but it didn't rain as many people said it would. The conference was about Blackboard, and I got to learn about the new features in the next version of the product. I also did a presentation at the conference with several other people from Sheffield Hallam University. I think our presentation went well, as several people told us they thought it was the best one they saw. We brought two of our student interns in to talk about their perspectives on using Blackboard. They did a good job, too.

Victoria and her friend Sarah organized a large reunion of their friends from Salzburg on Saturday. We had a big Christmas party at Victoria's parents' house. There were 14 people in total. A lot of Victoria's, Sarah's, and my time were spent cooking a traditional Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious, but a lot of work. Victoria and Sarah had also made two large games to play, which were fun. The party didn't fizzle out until 4am, so we were exhausted by the end of the night. We stayed Sunday and Monday as well to help clean up and relax a bit. Last week I spent some time getting Christmas placemats ready. I made a collage of Christmasy scenes and then substituted the face of each party guest for Santa's face.

I took Monday off, and returned to work on Tuesday. However, we invited everyone from our building over for drinks to get some people to meet each other. It was last night, so we still have not had a chance to completely relax and do nothing. Luckily work has not been that busy these two days, since it is the week before the break. The university closes early on Friday and will stay closed until January 3rd.

Today Victoria and I went to the Kelham Island museum. It is a museum about the industrial heritage of Sheffield; my parents visited it during their trip. It's pretty close to our house, but it's surrounded by mostly vacant warehouse buildings and old steel and coal mills. We didn't actually go to the see the museum. Instead we went there for the annual Victorian Christmas Market. They had traditional dances, storytelling, and crafts. We didn't buy anything though because it was very crowded and difficult to shop comfortably. We did get to pet some donkeys that were there, though.

This week my big accomplishment was buying Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They are doing a slow march across England. When I first arrived last year they were only available at Harrod's and at extremely expensive prices. During the summer they popped up at Victoria train station, and other places across London. The largest supermarket in Britain has started selling them at some London stores.

Finally, a store has opened up outside of London. It was in Birmingham, about an hour and a half south of Sheffield by train. I was in Birmingham for a two day conference. The conference was put on by SEDA, Staff and Educational Developer's Association. I'm an educational developer now, so I was trying to get a feel for what other institutions are doing, make contacts, etc. The conference was pretty good, with its share of good and bad sessions. The final keynote address was just awful though. The speaker had created a powerpoint with whole paragraphs on it that he read to us verbatim. He also had the annoying tendency of stopping his sentences halfway through, expecting us to know what he was going to say.

After the conference was over, I had thirty minutes before my train was supposed to depart, so I went to the nearby brand new mall, the Bullring, where I had heard there was another Krispy Kreme. They even had a compact doughnut factory built into the store. They were giving out free samples, so I took one and then bought some to bring back to Victoria. They are still more expensive than at home, but less so than in Harrod's. At about $1.50 a doughnut or a dozen for $12, I didn't buy too many. Still, it was a good taste from home. I think Victoria, Vernon, and I may take a day trip to Birmingham sometime after the Christmas shopping season to get more doughnuts.

Yesterday we walked out of our door to run straight into about twenty police officers in riot gear standing around the back entrance of a nearby pub. Around the front of the pub were another large group of police officers. It reminded us of South Korea, when we saw hundreds of riot officers on the street. There were also patrols driving around the city, and helicopters. Apparently South Yorkshire policemen were not allowed to take annual leave yesterday. The reason behind this was that Sheffield's two football (soccer) teams were playing each other yesterday. In the past this has led to rioting and fights.

From an internet search, it seems like the pub up the road is well known as a pub for fans of Sheffield Wednesday. I guess they wanted to make sure there weren't any fights before the game. The end result was the Sheffield United beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0, and there weren't any riots or anything that we saw.

One of the strangest things about Sheffield is the way people walk. In London you can walk down the sidewalks of a crowded street fairly easily despite the fact that the sidewalks are narrow and busy. People just weave in and out of each other like in most places.

In Sheffield, despite the large sidewalks and car-free shopping streets, people will run into you if you are not careful. They have a tendency to zig-zag down the street, step into oncoming groups of people, and stop in the middle of traffic. It's very strange, and we are not the only ones who have noticed it. Vernon and some other people from outside Sheffield have talked to us about it. Someone from Victoria's workplace called it the "Sheffield shuffle."

If you are walking down a huge shopping street with only a handful of people around, you can be sure that someone will head straight towards you, causing you to move to avoid a collision. I think it's one of the quirkiest things about Sheffield.

Last Friday we did karaoke for the first time since leaving Japan. Vernon, who lives in the basement flat, works at the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce. Some of them organised a karaoke night at a chinese restaurant. We tagged along, and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we had to share the karaoke room with a large bachelorette party. Despite that, we still had a good time.

On Saturday we went to Lincoln for the Orla and Niamh's birthday. They cooked a large dinner and had over about 10 friends. It turned out I was the only guy who came, but it didn't really bother me. We went out to some pubs and bars afterwards until 2am, then came home and collapsed.

Sheffield had its first snow today. There were huge flakes of snow coming down around 4 during work. It didn't stick to any of the surfaces, but there was a lot of snow.

We have regularly had temperatures near freezing during the day, with frosts at night. They are predicting this will be the coldest winter in the last decade.

Today I finished working on a webpage for Victoria's parents. They own a guesthouse called Woodlands Guest House in the country, so they wanted to tap into another marketing method. If you want to look at it, it's at http://members.lycos.co.uk/woodlands/

It has some pictures of the inside and outside of the house and the gardens.

Yesterday was Guy Fawkes Day, a big holiday in England. November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes and several other Catholic conspirators, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes was arrested as he entered the cellar to light the fuses. I think I wrote about it last year as well.

Sheffield put on a big concert/fair/bonfire/fireworks display thing outside near the big stadium and arena. Vernon found out about it so he invited us to go with him and his kids out there. There were a lot of people at the event (I would say 10-20,000). We arrived just in time for the bonfire to be lit. It was very large, and kept us somewhat warm even though we were far away. We wandered around the rides but we didn't go on any. We did have some cotton candy (called candy floss here), and I searched for a caramel apple, but they only had candy apples (strangely called toffee apples, which sounds good). There was some live music but they were all bands no one had heard of. They were actually pretty good, though the radio DJs in between acts were horribly annoying.

The fireworks display was very good, and synchronized to several songs. After the fireworks we hurried back to the tram to get on before everyone else got there. We made it on the third tram, and the line had become very long by the time we got on, so we think we did the right thing to hurry. Since we didn't want to go on the rides and it was raining lightly we didn't particularly feel like sticking around.

Recently I discovered that I pay more for my monthly water bill than I do for any other utility (20 pounds a month). This seems strange to me, as I would imagine gas and electricity are more expensive than water. I think the underlying problem is that all utilities were privatized some years ago. Competition in electricity, gas, and phones has kept prices low. However, there is only one water company to choose from, and they seem to be able to charge what they want. Currently we have to pay a fee of 3 pounds a month for the water that falls on the roof of the building and then enters the city drainage pipes outside our house. I keep hoping for a drought so I can tell them I shouldn't have to pay that fee for the month. Our bill is based on the water taken in, and then doubled to account for the sewage going out. However, it just seems really expensive to me. Previously, water and sewage usage has always been included in my rent (in the US, Japan and London). Does this seem expensive (35 dollars a month for a single flat?) to anyone who pays for their water?

Water being more expensive than gas and electricity also seems a bit strange given the amount of rain that falls here.

We saw the end of a changing of the guard ceremony as well, but our tour guide was rushing us around a lot. That night we saw Chicago, which was well done. Sunday they went back to America. 

Here's one side of the castle. 

The main tower bit is actually not round, but slightly wonky. 

The last weekend of my family's visit, Victoria and I went down and met them in London. We went on a tour of Windsor Castle on Saturday. 

This is a view of the trebuchet in the field from one of the castle towers. 

Here is Warwick Cathedral, seen from the top of the highest tower. 

This is a view of the other towers from the top of the highest tower. You can see the countryside nearby as the town is not very big. 

This is a view of the towers from the courtyard inside the castle. 

The castle has a watermill by the river which is used to generate some of the castle's electricity. It was originally used for grinding flour, etc. 

Here's an upclose look at the trebuchet's wheels. Soldiers walked in the wheels to spring-load the trebuchet. In the background is a nice view of the castle. 

The other live show we saw was a trebuchet. A trebuchet is like a giant cataput that can sling things a long way. They slung a cannonball the length of the field. This is a picture of the trebuchet firing. 

They had a longbowmen archery display to show how fast and powerful the bows were. They were able to defeat the French crossbows because, despite being not very accurate, when the fired in large numbers they tended to be a wall of arrows. They could fire about twenty arrows in a minute as well, which seems pretty fast to me.  

On Saturday we went to Warwick castle. Warwick is close to Stratford, and also very historic. Warwick castle is privately owned by the amusement group that does Madame Tussade's and some amusement parks here. We were a bit worried it would be cheesy, but it was really well done. 

This is the cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife. 

Here's dad on the boat during the cruise. 

We went on a boat cruise down the Avon river. There are tons of swans and geese on the river. I guess they get fed by all of the tourists. 

This is the house next to the foundations. I think it was owned by a relative of Shakespeare. 

The area at the bottom of the picture where the bushes are is the location of Shakespeare's house. It was owned by the church years after he died. One vicar tore it down because he didn't want to pay taxes on it, so the foundations are all that is left. 

This is the house from the front. There used to be houses on either side of this house, but they were torn down by the Shakespeare Conservation Trust to reduce the risk of a fire. It is common in Britain for houses to be built connected to other houses. 

My parents went away and travelled to the Lake District. I met up with them the following weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford is known for being the birthplace of Shakespeare. Here is the house he grew up in. 

There were also lavish ponds and hiking trails in the gardens. 

Here's the family resting after the house tour. 

Another picture from the gardens. 

We also went to the maze in the gardens, where I got very lost but Victoria found her way through easily. She jumped out to surprise me during this picture. 

Inside the house, the rooms are covered in ornamentation, and every room has a painted ceiling like this one.