It rained today.

Haiku-a-day:

Feb 3^rd

Rain gently taps at

my window, but a ghostly

wind glides straight through it.

This is the first day that I've seen it actually rain here in Leeds.  It poured our first day in London, but I hadn't seen it do anything more than a light sprinkle before today.  It's not even that bad or anything, but it's finally starting to look like the England that you always hear about, cloudy, raining, muddy, etc.  I am thoroughly enjoying it!  Also, my window doesn't quite keep out the cold very well (thank goodness I have curtains).  And to address the 'ghostly wind' in the haiku, it's quite true.  It literally sounds as if there are ghosts (plural) "Oooing" outside my window.  If I could record it to show you I would.  It seems very fitting as tomorrow night Roxanne, Leah, and I will be going on a ghost walk in York!  It's supposed to be nice and creepy!  We'll learn about old ghost stories (apparently someone saw Roman ghosts in the basement of the Treasurer's House, so that's where this all started) and go to the places where ghost sighting have been.  It will be fun.

In other news, my museum class had our first field trip today (only the 2nd class too!).  We went to the Leeds City Art Gallery.  The Gallery was great, but the class was odd.  Basically we all got there, listened to a 15 minute lecture by one of the staff members, then got to look at paintings throughout the building with absolutely no more direction from the professor.  She didn't even bother to tell us that after looking through it, we could leave whenever we wanted, so my friends and I kept wandering off and coming back to where the professor was, anxiously waiting for her part of the tour, but it never came.  When we finally asked her when we should all rejoin, she told us we wouldn't be.  So we went home.  However, we made sure to see the whole place before we left.  It has a very interesting rage of artwork from very old paintings to a room of photography to a room of purely modern art accompanied by strange music.  I prefer older, more structured art, so I spent more time looking at that.  I look forward to more trips in this class.  It's quite interesting to learn how museums function, how curators resolve their problems (according to the 15 minute tour guide we had they have lots of problems!  She was pretty funny!), etc. 

I know some of you are anxious to hear more about my beer making class.  I've only had 2 lectures so far and, seeing as it is one hour a week only, I haven't had too much to say about it.  This past week we talked about the ingredients in beers.  There are so many ways to make different flavored beers.  Depending on how long you cook (or kiln) the germ, you could get lager, pale malt, dark malts (specialty malts), green malts, etc.  I need to start thinking of what I want to do for making my own beer.  Any suggestions at to flavoring?