Cornwall Trip Video

(to make your own videos, check out www.animoto.com starting august 14th!)

Chris in Cornwall

As you may have realized, our year here – and my course – is rapidly coming to an end. For an end of the year field trip, we ventured down to the Southwest coast of England to study urban regeneration in Cornwall. Additionally, we stopped through Bath, an old Roman city and home to some amazing natural baths. Just outside of Bath, we toured a really cool new green building that is designed to minimize its impact on natural resources! We stayed in a small town nestled into the Cornish coast – a beautiful 10-minute walk to a ridiculous beach. The coast was absolutely stunning…

Cornwall was once an affluent mining region, and location of many incredible engineering innovations (like the hoverboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverboard). However, mining has been in sharp decline for the past century, and the area has suffered from economic decay and is now one of the poorest areas in the EU. We spent a good amount of time talking with the developers on the many projects underway to give Cornwall a facelift. I was impressed by the need for holistic and integrated solutions that go beyond injecting a single industry to save the day (which essentially brought about the downfall in the first place). We looked at issues from education, to housing, to resources – all in all, it was a really good way to interact with a complex problem and link tangible efforts toward a solution.

We also were able to visit some of the old bustling mines. A few have survived which excavate china-clay, commonly used in china pottery. It was really interesting to see the mining process as well as the scars it leaves on the landscape. One such scar has been transformed into one of England’s newest tourist successes, the Eden Project.

The Eden Project is an effort to connect normal people to the importance of and our utter dependence on plants. In order to accomplish this, the Eden Project has converted a massive abandoned mine pit into a few humongous biomes, or greenhouse spheres that are home to plant life in both tropical and Mediterranean climates. This place is stunning and has been a huge hit. I was seriously impressed and inspired by Eden’s innovative educational mission. Makes me want to be in education – especially as I feel average suburban living moving further and further away from tangible interaction with the natural environment. This in effect blurs the connections we have to the rest of society and the world at large. Where does our trash go? Where did our apples come from? T-shirts? Bread? What happens to our pee pee? We exist in blind isolation from the systems that sustain us. The Eden Project does an amazingly creative job at reconnecting us to our surroundings. This is really, really important – I think my new life mission might be to come along-side people who are committed to this same mission. Just check the tags in your shoe and try to untie the effect that particular purchase has on your neighbor around the world (in both positive and negative ways). Anyhoo, visiting the Eden Project was one of my highlights this year and I’d love to chat about this stuff if any of you have any opinions either way! http://www.edenproject.com

At the end of our trip, we were able to explore a large wind farm in Cornwall. It was a great opportunity to discuss the impacts of wind power, and actually go inside a wind turbine to get an idea of how they work and learn what the wind buzz is all about.

Aside from educational musings, our group snuck in a beach soccer match, and few big nights out at some hilarious, small town clubs, morning runs along the stunning coast, and some good time together on what was one of our last outings together. Makes me wish this year was beginning again. Guess that’s a good thing…certainly never had the same inspiring nostalgia from my cubicle at Boeing. Love to you all from da UK!

Mel's Birthday!

Hooray for my birthday! So, despite the fact that I'm writing this 6 weeks after the fact, it's still definitely blog worthy.

We were awakened at 7:30am (a ghastly time to be awakened, I might add) by Seattle-dwelling mom and dad so that they could be the very first ones to wish me a happy birthday. I expressed my heartfelt gratitude at their benificent wishes, but kindly let them know that we rarely, if ever, wake up before 9:00am these days. Ahhh, the life of a student! Nonetheless, it was such a fun start to the day. I have to put in a plug here for Mr. Christopher Roe, who is the cutest, biggest dwingie alive. As mom and dad chatted away, with me still in bed and half asleep of course, Chris snuck out to prepare a suitable birthday breakfast treat. After I hung up the phone, Chris began singing a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" from the kitchen, bearing in one hand a delicious birthday cappuccino, and in the other hand some warmed hot cross buns (a classic British breakfast treat) with candles ablaze. Despite the fact that the hot cross buns were nasty, it was the thought that counted! He also presented me with my birthday present, a black, retro-style Bench watch... I was completely surprised and so pleased!

I was so incredibly blessed to have the most BEAUTIFUL day since the end of last summer... temperatures topped out in the upper 60s and the sky was a brilliant blue (with just a few token white fluffy clouds). The day's highlight was to take our very favorite walk to the neighboring village of Grantchester. Dressed in t-shirts and flipflops, we set out on the winding footpath that follows the meanderings of the river Cam, passing hugely expansive fields, lone white swans, scores of frolicking dogs, and old and young alike who were enjoying the beauty of the day. We arrived at one of Cambridge's best local secrets -- The Orchard, a tea-house dating back to the early 1900s that served as a second-home to bohemian Cambridge students (most notably, Virginia Woolfe, Rupert Brooke, Bertrand Russell, and Milton Keynes). As the name implies, the tea-house rests in a vast orchard and little wooden tables surrounded by adirondack reclining chairs fill the orchard grounds. We brought our tray of tea and scones out into the orchard and basked in the sun while reading aloud poetry written about The Orchard. Tearing ourselves away at last, we leisurely made our way home (and en route, mama and papa Roe called to send their best birthday wishes!).

The remainder of the day was as restful as the beginning: cooking a delicious lunch together, grabbing a pint at our favorite riverside pub, attending a Lenten preparation class at our little church, and finally enjoying a lengthy romantic dinner. All in all, a day that couldn't have been better!

Oxbridge Chess Tourney and Jamaica

So University sports here are weird. There is only one main game of the year, against Oxford, called the Varsity match. So while I'm about to go mad without March Madness, end of the year Varsity matches are capturing my attention. Two folks from my program are competing this year -- one guy is on the crew team and another on the chess team. Both of these events take place down in London and are the real deal.

This past weekend was the Varsity chess match, and Lissa and I decided to head down to London to support my buddy and explore the city. A little background, my friend from the program, Duane Rowe, is the national chess champion of Jamaica (therefore called a National Master). I play co-ed soccer for old people on dirt fields in Seattle, and chess has taken this guy around the world to compete in international events, just think Cool Runnings. He is the top chess player in Cambridge and recently played 14 people at once and smoked 12 of them. Check out the link: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/chess/simul2.php


Although he's never been able to beat me, he's pretty much the man (of course, we have yet to square up on the checkered board). He was set to play against a Women's International Master from Ukraine (which is a higher ranking than national master). To set the stage, the Varsity chess match was held in this crazy pompous old gentleman's club in downtown London called the Royal Automotive Club (da RAC). Ties are required at all times, jackets during weekdays, and the place reeks of old white male (company of which I am quickly becoming). Imagine a huge room with fire place crackling, red leather couches with the little gold rivets tacking the hide to antique cherry wood, and 20-something females take orders as the bow-tied men talk through the economic pitfalls of the Thatcher regime. I mean this place was straight out of Bond, and I was just waiting to watch some old Russian spy (with a radioactive colon) glide down the grand staircase and float into his Kremlin sponsored Benzo. I will probably never be in a place like that again.

Ok, to the match. To keep it brief, Cambridge upset Oxford 5-3. It was an upset because Oxford has a Grand Master (one of these Bobby Fisher type child prodigies) and the Ukrainian lady who was supposed to be unstoppable, like most Russian women. However, Duane dollywallompted this female -- no joke, took him 18 moves. Fastest game of the day. It took him 34 minutes of move time, took her 1 hour and 46 minutes. He won match of the day and was reported as being the catalyst for the unlikely Cambridge upset.



For those of you who haven't been to a match before, like me pre-saturday, you basically walk around with tea admiring the boards at play and pretend to exhale with emotion when someone makes a move - or in my case when the guy next to you exhales. It was pretty cool, and I would highly recommend it. We left the match, caught a few drinks in Soho and walked through Chinatown before settling on some Chinese food for din-din. Afterwards we went to a cool pub and caught the last train back to Cambridge. All in all it was a great day out! Big ups to Jamaica, the bobsled won gold.