The Life of a Tourist

Hello everyone! I know some of you were wondering about the delay in posting; life has been generally busy, but more importantly, our friend Terri was staying with us all week! The upshot is, we spent the week doing lots of really touristy things, getting some neat pictures, and occasionally acting against our better judgement by dressing up as vikings...

(I'm keeping the pictures small, but remember that you can click on any of them for a closer look.)


My favourite tourist trap was the Jorvik Viking museum. "Jorvik" is the Viking name for York. The museum is actually a guided tour through an underground recreation of sections of the city as they appeared a millenium ago. Not only are the recreated streets directly underneath the real ones, but the most nature of the soil has allowed archeologists to reconstruct the exact placement of every building on the street, as well as make an intelligent guess as to their functions! The reconstruction is populated by wax figures engaged in various tasks... including one who's job is to take an everlasting, groaning crap.




We also spent time in more conventional museums, the first of which is called the Yorkshire Museum, and it chronicles the history of the region. I was really amazed at the relics, which date all the way back to the Romans! I'm also fascinated by the transition from pagan religions to Christianity that happened towards the end of the Roman occupation. Here are some pictures in some kind of chronological order, starting with the Romans...



Notice in this last picture that Moses has a horn... apparently that's because of a mistranslation of a passage from the Bible! Oops...










We also spent time at the Castle Museum, which offers more general English history. There was lots of really cool stuff there, but for some reason I was especially in the mood for morbid pictures, so here are some skeletons and really scary clowns. (Erin Wheeler, if you're reading this, you may not want to scroll down...)







Watch out!





Ha ha.

One thing I've taken away from this past week is the awareness of my complete lack of knowledge with regard to European history, an ignorance which I regret. In the future I hope to have time to do some reading and increase my understanding of this fascinating subject, which is also part of my cultural heritage.

A final, unrelated note: Melissa and I are discussing and praying about our future. We're pretty much open to anything at this point. If anything develops, we'll let you know...

I'll do my best to keep posting, but I really have to keep my nose to the grindstone now, and next week my mother and brother are staying with us... so I can't make any promises, but I'll do my best! As always, thanks for reading, and leave a comment!


Until next time,

-Chris