Monday, February 14, 2011

Hot Brits Week Starts Now!

Happy Valentine’s Day, my wonderful blog readers. I hope that those of you who are celebrating with someone are having a fantastic time. In high school, I was pretty bitter about Valentine’s Day--I would wear all black and mope. These days, I’m just kind of apathetic about the whole thing. I’ll be celebrating with my parents and my dog, so there’s no romance for me, which is fine. However, the snow in Minnesota has been grey, it’s just now starting to warm up from below zero temperatures and I’m waiting to hear from graduate schools, so I decided to spice things up for myself. And do you know what makes me feel better about life? Period pieces.

If you told me I could get on a plane to go to England, my first reaction might be slight hesitation. I spent my junior year abroad there, and fell in love with a British guy (things didn’t work out there). I think like a lot of Americans, I had really romantic notions about England--little lambs frolicking in meadows, hot guys riding around on horseback saving women with sprained ankles, and the expectation that every literary activity and every historic spot would be a sublime experience. I will say I spent about the first week going, “WOW! EVERYONE has a British accent!” A lot of my experiences in England were great, like visiting Powderham Castle, Stourhead Estate and the countless number of museums in London. Not to mention, I made tons of awesome friends. However, it did lose a bit of its enchantment when I was there, such as when my eleven flatmates would run screamingly drunk around my flat at 2 a.m. Or when the cleaning lady would come by, scream “This kitchen is in an absolute state!” at early hours. Of course, some experiences that may have seemed really romantic on the surface, such as gazing at the ocean over the cliffs of Tintangel Castle, were a little different than expected because of our program supervisor continuously warning us not to run over the edge of the cliff (and really, who can blame him?), or the wind slapping my hair right into my eyes. Like any experience, the whole year was a mixed bag. Even though it wasn't quite a period piece, I'll always be grateful for my time abroad.

Given the conditions in Minnesota as stated above, the idea of standing on a cliff contemplating the love of my life as music swells (yes, I am thinking of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice) without the program director telling me not to fall. However, these stories also have witty commentary on society during their times, as well as lots of hot guys. Plus, there are always hot guys. And let’s not forget, YA literature also has its share of smoking British characters and locations. So I am having an entire week celebrating great period pieces, fabulous British characters, enchanting settings and faraway love stories.

Get ready for a week of talk about movies, beloved characters, a review, guest posts and a few giveaways.

4 comments:

  1. Can you give away a hot brit? Because I'd love to win one ;).

    Reply
  2. I'm sorry your study abroad year didn't work out so well =( I did a very similar thing, and while I did occasionally get the drunk flatmates (we generally didn't get on and they liked to torment me when drunk) the rest was enough to make up for it for me.

    Anyways, so excited about this week, sounds awesome =D

    Reply
  3. This sounds like it's going to be an awesome week!

    Sorry your study abroad didn't go as well as you had hoped. The UK is still the place I want to visit the most, but haven't yet.

    Reply
  4. Oh you look so pretty in that pict.

    Reply

LinkWithin

Ads Inside Post