Study Abroad 2014

I'm starting to get excited about my summer study abroad program. My colleague Eric and I will be doing a repeat of the program we led in 2012, focusing on electronic media (his class) and American Expatriate Writers (my class). We'll start at gorgeous Harlaxton Manor in the British Midlands where we'll teach our classes:












Our next stop will be London where we'll stay for five nights, exploring places connected to the classes we've just taught. We'll visit Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.



We'll wander the streets of London tracing the steps of T.S. Eliot.


We'll visit several BBC locations:


And we'll take plenty of walking tours past some of London's most most iconic structures.


After that, we head to Paris for five nights. We'll picnic under the Eiffel Tower.




We'll wander down the Champs Élysées.


We'll visit beautiful Montmartre.


We'll see some of the world's best museums, like the Musee d'Orsay.


And the Louvre:


And we'll visit Versailles, of course.






Finally, we'll head to Montparnasse to see the places our expat writers lived and wrote.


Interest is strong for our program, so we're hoping to fill our twenty-four spots quickly. I have a sting feeling that this will be my last study abroad trip, so I'm hoping to go out with a bang.

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Pyramid Hill

I've been an absent blogger, dear readers, off obsessing over kitchen renovation and new job issues. I haven't been ignoring my love of new things, though. Last month, in addition to the crazy-making new things I mentioned in sentence one, I also did something I'd been wanting to do for ages. I visited Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton!, Ohio. That exclamation point is part of the city's name, by the way, not a typo. Enthusiastic people, those Hamiltonites.

Pyramid Hill sits on 355 acres of lovely parkland overlooking the Great Miami River. There are 64 sculptures in the park, as well as a sculpture museum that was closed the day I visited. On the September afternoon when I explored the park with my friends Paul and Wanda, the air had just a hint of fall in it, and the sunshine was that golden color that announces the arrival of my favorite season. The park was also filled with dogs: unbeknownst to us, they were celebrating their annual Dog Days Festival. The best part of this in my eyes was that admission was free that day!

We spent about an hour wandering from sculpture to sculpture. They're spread out over this big park, so any visit involves some walking.
Here are Paul and Wanda.




This was my favorite sculpture:










Wanda liked it for its ability to give her a hot stone treatment after a walk in the park.



I ran into an old friend from Xi'an while I was there, too.



There are gardens all over the park. This formal one was lovely:






My bum knee started to bother me, so I found a picnic table in the shade and sent Wanda and Paul off to spend more time exploring the area by foot. I stretched out on the table and spent the most wonderful thirty or forty minutes watching the clouds move across the sky.










When they returned (with the car), we rode around the park stopping once to explore an area I loved. First, we came to this colorful sculpture called Cincinnati Story. If you look at it long enough, you can see the Ohio River and the famous fountain on Fountain Square:




If you look longer, you can see Paul.



















We walked a bit further and found a really nice seating area, where I squatted for quite a while. The only thing missing was a nice cold cocktail.



There were some nice views here.









Some of us chose not to sit down!




I recommend Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park if you live in the area. It's a lovely park on a fall afternoon: perhaps even worthy of Hamilton's exclamation point!

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