Hello from York! Yes, this is very, very far away from everybody. Kids in aussieland are literally on the other side of the world, thus the expression, down under. I won't be posting any pictures up yet cos I'm lazy but I'll write about random interesting things. There is no chronological order because my brain doesn't really like numbers and dates are numbers.

I went to see the ruins of Whitby Abbey. Gothic Lit. students should remember that Dracula hid in Whitby Abbey and the Van Helsing gang went there to look for him. It is really a fantastic place. The ruins are exactly how Bram Stoker described them. Seriously gothic stuff. I stayed there for a long time, trying to find the vampire's coffin. Then, suddenly, I noticed that it was getting dark so I faster siam. The photos are in Steven's camera cos my poor camera died that day so I must wait for them to be emailed to me before I can post them up. Please wait with bated breath.

From the Abbey ruins, I looked down and saw the river Esk. Again, Gothic Lit. students will remember that this was the scene for the river chase in Stoker's Dracula. Whitby is really a fantastic place because other than cool ruins, this seaside town is also the place where super yummy cod is caught.

I also visited Scarborough. You know, the song that goes : Are you going to Scarborough Faire? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Bullshit. Maybe a long, long time ago, it was a charming little seaside town. Sadly, today, it is the charming little commercialised seaside town of casinos and dogshit. There was so little beach because there was this whole casino belt with neon lights built all along the beach. And the floor was filthy. Dogshit everywhere. The evening that I was there, it was so foggy that I couldn't really see the floor (I'm serious) and was so scared of stepping on the dogshit. We quicly had dinner at a restaurant away from the beach and drove back to York even though we originally planned to stay the night in Scarborough and it was about 2 hours' drive back in the dark fog.

After the trauma of Scarborough, we decided to be closer to nature. So, we drove to the Yorkshire Dales. It's this very large area of land that is protected National Park which has gentle hills and lots of farm and natural formations like waterfalls etc. There was a very interesting formation called the buttertubs. In a sort of valley place with winds that can push you forward if you don't hold on to something, there are holes in the ground. When you look down the holes, you can see water flowing down rocks at the side. Like a mini waterfall in a hole. And right at the bottom of these 24foot deep holes, there are caves. I shouted hello to any aliens or undiscovered lifeforms that might be living down there before I rushed back to the car to defrost.

Steven and Mummy went back today in KiTTY. KiTTY is the name of the rented Ford car which had a license plate number: K05TTY. It just looked like KiTTY to me.

So now I'm all alone in this foreign land. I'm a stranger in a strange land just like Dracula was in England.

On my floor, there is only one other first year undergrad. He's an Iranian and just now in the kitchen, we were having communication problems. Every sentence had to be repeated 2 or 3 times because I couldn't understand his accent and he couldn't understand mine. Do you think it might be because I was deliberately doing a very strong Singlish accent? I could be subconsciously homesick.

I'm slowly accumulating people's christmas presents in the storage area that is under my bed. So far, Doggy has something. Are you happy Doggy? The rest will be added over the next two months and hopefully I will have a complete Santa Claus bag in time for when I return for Christmas