More and More plans

Luke here. So much for less frequent posts...

A few items of note:

-We were able to book our trip to Rome (this one IS actually compulsory for our program, though we hardly had to be coerced into going) thanks largely to the services of the Italy travel book given to us by my Aunt Marianne and Uncle Jim. Much thanks are in order to both of them for the services of the book.
The trip is from January 11-18 and we'll be in Rome the whole time (doing classwork from the 12th to the 15th). We're staying at the Hotel Giuliana (which we found in the travel book), which is several hundred euros cheaper than the hotel recommended to us by our program leader (as in, the one we probably would have stayed at if we hadn't had the travel book). It's in sort of the Northeast section of the city, but pretty close to the Colosseum, many other historic sites, and about 500,000 churches (though where in Rome isn't?). We also discovered the joy and delight of European budget airlines as each of our round-trip tickets before taxes and other fees cost 10 pounds (about 15 dollars). Of course, it was a bit more after fees and taxes, but waaaay less than flying anywhere in the US.

-Newcastle United (our football/soccer team) tied the game we went to on Wednesday night 1-1. They are actually fairly lucky they didn't lose because they were outplayed for the first half, even though they are the better team (and first in the league still). It was a pretty fun time and we definitely want to do it again, maybe next month.

-We may take a jaunt down to the Yorkshire Dales this weekend to spent a night at the Grinton Lodge youth hostel and escape the city a bit. We both really miss the countryside and Grinton is in an absolutely beautiful, secluded location (though fairly complicated to access without a car -- sometimes we miss the Neon quite a bit, other times not). So that's not set in stone, but it looks likely to happen. We'll hopefully visit Richmond Castle, which is nearby, as well. After that we definitely should be able to post some pictures again (it's been a while).

That's all for now.