Dover Castle

Hello! It's 9:05 AM here in Canterbury and 4:05 AM back in Indiana. I have a couple of things to talk about today. First of all, in case you hadn't heard, I literally destroyed the sound machine my mom sent me. Okay, so maybe not the actual machine, but its plug and cable are dead. Blackened. Busted. Why? Because I blew them up. I, my dear friends, not knowing that the voltage here in the UK is higher than in the US, just stuck my new Brookstone sound machine into the wall sans converter. I was fiddling with the settings- "Oh, wow! Ocean waves! Ohhhh, thunder storm!"- when the loudest, most terrifying noise ever erupted from my socket, right next to my feet. A little, white flame shot out from the wall. It sounded like a gun shot had gone off during a meth lab explosion. It shook the house. It was astronomically loud and inches away from my ear. At first, I was shellshocked. "What the...?" And then, I was scared witless. "Will someone call the cops? Oh, my God!" I sat, my now deaf ears pricked, waiting for my roommates to come racing up the stairs, eager to catch me in the act of cooking up some drugs.

 But no one came, and no cop was summoned. I then assessed the damage. Sound machine: Fine. Able to be used again with batteries. Piece of poop adapter-thing that allows a clueless American to plug an American device into a UK socket without converting the energy: Useless. Withered up. Charred. American cable and plug that attach to the sound machine: Literally in pieces. Wires sticking out everywhere, reaching towards the sky. Socket: Blackened. What really got me during this assessment was noting that my computer charger and converter were in the socket next door to the burned one. I unplugged them and noted with supreme horror that they did not work with any of the sockets in my room. I had killed them! Life was over! Well, anyways, I tried them again the next day, and they were fine; it's just that most of the sockets in my room no longer work. Oops. The point of origin socket is especially useless. I really should report this incident, but, ehhhh... It makes a good story, right?

Onto Dover. I went to Dover castle on Sunday with a whole bunch of other international students. The company was lovely, but, whew, Dover is pretty disappointing, let me tell you. To begin with, the castle isn't that old. Okay, so, it was built in, like, the 1100s, right? Ohhhh, old. No. False. It's been redone again and again, so that now it's basically from the 2000s. It's like this joke I've heard.

"Hey, did you know I own the axe that Washington used to cut down the cherry tree?"
"Really! Wow! That's amazing!"
"Yeah! And the handle's only been replaced five times and the axe head twice!"

So, it's pretty much not Washington's axe, yeah? That's how Dover castle is. "Oh, the roof was redone in the 1700s." "Oh, the floor was replaced in the 1500s." "Oh, this hall was repainted in the 1980s." Boo. Plus, it was cold as heck, so it was hard to appreciate the grounds and the roof. Secondly, the White Cliffs of Dover are probably the singularly most underwhelming natural creation I've ever seen. They're no longer white because of pollution, so now they're more like the Beige Cliffs of Dover, kind of like those formations I see whenever I drive along the highway back home. Wow, I'm being such a hater today. Let me say that it's still a pretty cool castle with a lot of history to share. I enjoyed walking around in the secret underground tunnels that were used as a bunker during World War II. If you go to Dover, definitely see them. There are five levels of them below the ground, an astonishing fact. The tunnels themselves are fairly old, for there are inscriptions on the walls dating back to 1805. Also, you can see the French coastline from Dover, which is neat.

This weekend, I'll be going to see Bath and the Stonehenge, and I'm very excited. I will post pictures and comments here later! Thank you for reading!