Nottingham

I spent this past week down in Nottingham at a postgraduate conference. I was pretty stressed about it for the past month leading up to it, since I was giving a paper. A couple friends from the department and I went down on the Saturday morning and so had to get up about 4:00 am to catch the train. Needless to say, we were pretty overtired and giddy by the time we got to Nottingham around 1:30ish. The conference itself went quite well. I think my paper went well although I did get some questions I wasn't expecting. O well, it's all a learning experience. And I was sort of out of my league anyways since it was a literature conference and I am an ancient historian.
Some friends from my undergrad years are also going to school over here and were there so it was a great little reunion. And really, it's kind of fun to just get out of the town I live in and hang out with some other students from schools all over the UK. Plus, I'm glad I got the practice of giving a paper to people outside of the department. I even got the courage up to ask a question in one of the other papers (and that never happens).
The conference ended on Sunday afternoon and all my friends headed back to their respective schools. I, on the other hand, stayed in Nottingham where I met up with a friend from Calgary, her husband, her brother and his girlfriend. We stayed at her cousins house in Nottingham and had a great couple of days just hanging out. On Monday, we went to Warwick Castle and spent the whole day just wandering around the grounds. It was a great way of spending a day and the weather was beautiful!
It was really nice to get out of town this weekend and have a little vacation. I definitely needed it. Now, I'm back at home, madly trying to finish the chapter I'm working on and just getting back into the swing of things. I would definitely like to go and see more of Nottingham since there really is a ton to see and since I was only there for a couple of days (really just one full day to explore) I didn't get to see Nottingham castle, or Sherwood forest, or meet the sheriff of Nottingham... Perhaps another time.

As always, I've added only a few pictures here but have put all my pictures up on my website http://picasaweb.google.com/medea.colchis