Class in a Castle

Well, I've said that this place is amazing, but can you imagine having class in a manor house that is yearly insured for over 60 million dollars or 30 million pounds???? I can't, and I'm living in the carriage house next to it. Basically, the sun comes out around 4 or 5 AM my time. Since we are so much further north, the sun tends to stay out late, and when the sun rises the sky usually is crystal clear just engulfing the English countryside. I get up around 6:45 or 7:00 for my Contemporary Ethics in Leadership Management class. Its a group of about 7 or 8 students and is held in the Morning Room, which is specifically designed to wake you up. See the architect of the manor decided that a room needed to be built directly where the sun rises in the morning to give Sir Gregory the "imaginer" of the building and wealthy "sickly wealthy" owner of the building a place to wake up. So each morning w/ the sun in our eyes we talk about case studies and contemporary ways of looking at leadership. I don't see myself having much problem in this class, well because if you know me I'm a bit of a crazy when it comes to my leadership positions


So my first day of class, I go into the class and introduce myself and come to find that our class got out early, "usually a custom" for the first day of class. In my mind, I say to myself, "Hey Brad, looks like a perfect day to head out and take a run in the English countryside." So, I throw on my running shoes, blast my iPod to Flogging Molly and take the 1 mile driveway all the way up to the highway... "don't worry mom it has a sidewalk." The view is immaculate, I watch these fields pass me by, I see a soccer pitch "field" along the right side of the road, cars pass me, complete fields made up of just wildflowers, yellow and green just sprawled out as far as the eye can see, sheep grazing on the hilly landscape. Yes, I am truely in England jogging... Its unbelievable, unreal, and I'm completely spoiled.

After my run I meet up with a few friends Dina (sp) "I still mispronounce her name," Beth, and Jess. We decide that there is no time than now to start booking a trip to Ireland... so yes mom and dad I'm going to be spending a little more money than anticipating. We walk around the manor and we're all still trying to get our directions straight. We have lunch in a "refrectory" not a cafeteria, and eat Sheppard's Pie. It was pretty decent. Eventually, I decide that it would be a good idea for me to go to Grantham by Harlaxton shuttle and buy some shampoo and some hair gel. Yea, the Brits love their hair gel, the breathe the stuff I'm convinced. Beth decides to join me because she needs an adaptor and a few other supplies from the ASDA "British version of Walmart." We walk around Grantham, she exchanges some Dollars for Pounds and we have a drink at the Goose. One of the friendliest and cleanest pubs I've ever seen. Well, after sitting and talking for a while we lose track of time and find that we missed the shuttle back to Harlaxton at 3:30. So we go to the Morrison's "Scotts, Kroger" and chill around 4:00 watching the school children get out of class. It does look like they are all at Hogwarts, each child is in uniform and all of them are headed to the train station.

After about an hour and a half of waiting for our shuttle which was a half an hour late, we end up getting our ride back to the Manor. We all indulge in something that looked like chicken and head back to the carriage house. Everyone then tells me that people are hanging out in the basement Harlaxton pub called "The Bistro." So Lissa and myself decide there is no better time than the present to go down to the pub (2 pound) pints... and watch the taped Yankees and Mets game. We have a blast down at the pub, I hang out with a great many students some from Southern Florida University, UE, Kentucky and others. No crazy drinking games here, just people enjoying each other's company and watching baseball.

I end up after a few drinks coming back to the carriage house to begin my reading assignment for my Contemporary Leadership class and then start planning for my Ireland trip. Boy was that a blast, we just hung out shopped for hours on Ryan Air and booked what we could. I'm pretty pumped about it, a Paddywagon tour will take us all over the southern and "CATHOLIC" part of Ireland. So I'm definitely going to be able to get to mass. Anyways, at about 3AM I end up gearing up for bed and say my goodnights to the roomates. A good lad told me something today that was really interesting about the life we're living over here, "Everything moves extremely slow and fast at the same time." Picking up on the cultural cues while waiting for shuttles, and then making purchases is just amazing. This UK is like Indiana in a great deal of ways, but just twisted a little bit. I'm going to be posting some pictures of a tour I took of the Manor house yesterday I hope you enjoy them.

-Brad