Au revoir, l'Angleterre

Today is my last day in England, and I'm waiting in the train station in York.  I had to check out of my guest house at 10:00, but my train doesn't leave until 2:15, so I wandered my way to the train station, made it here a little before 11:00, and I decided to just plop down and wait it out.  I've got a tiny bit of a  sore throat, and it's a little drizzly out, and my suitcase is pretty huge, so I'm just gonna sit and waste some time on my computer.

Really, I would probably do well to get some reading done, but I just want a day or so off from thinking about speech processing.  The conference was really, really great, and my talk went over pretty well!  I said at the very beginning, "This is my first conference talk ever, so please be kind."  And that got a laugh out of the audience, and then people were very, very kind.  It's pretty fun to get a laugh out of a room full of people too!  Then once I got started, I wasn't nervous at all.  It was very weird, actually.  I started to freak out a little on Friday night, when I was still fixing up some of my slides.  I could feel my heart beating and I was really, physically anxious thinking about giving my talk.  I decided to go for a brisk walk and get some dinner in town, and working out some of my nervous energy helped.  Then by the time I got up at the podium on Saturday morning, I was feeling strangely relaxed.  There were lots of questions and comments at the end, which is always a good sign, and multiple people came up to me throughout the rest of the day and said, "I really enjoyed your talk" and then had some comments and suggestions.  So I would definitely call the whole conference a success, and I would even call my first talk a success and a good experience, and it feels really good to be done and to have my first one out of the way.  Whew!

The conference ended around noon yesterday (Saturday), and then there was an excursion to Fountains Abbey, about an hour's drive west of York.  We got a guided tour of the abbey and all of the grounds, then we had tea and cookies and made it back to York around 6:30 last night.  I grabbed a sandwich in town on the way home, and then I got back and suddenly realized I was done!  I was absolutely exhausted once the realization hit me (and I also didn't sleep too much on Friday night), so I turned on the TV and zoned out in bed, and it was so nice.  Zoning out in front of the TV is such a luxury these days, since we don't have a TV at home, and I found this British show called "Fool Me" where magicians do tricks in front of Penn and Teller, and if Penn and Teller can't figure out how they did the trick, the magician wins a trip to Las Vegas to perform with them.  It was really fun.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the abbey.  It was pretty cool, and a really nice day, even though it was threatening to rain all morning.  The abbey was apparently constructed in 1132 by some renegade Cistercian monks, and it went into disrepair during the reign of Henry the VIII in the early 1500's when he founded the Church of England and quit funding the Catholic Church in England.  (Or something like that - more info at the Wikipedia link.)

This is actually a church on the grounds of the abbey, constructed in the late 1800's.  I'm becoming a European church snob, apparently, because I couldn't be bothered to take pictures of the inside.  1800's?  Pffft.  Unimpressed.

The abbey in the background, seen from across the grounds.

Now I'm at the train station and starting to get a bit peckish.  (I've noticed I've started staying "bit" a lot more just in the past few days.  And I'm finally getting used to looking to the right before I cross the street, just in time to leave this silly country.)  I think I'm going to get some porridge (i.e. oatmeal) from the café in the train station.

Some of the signs here are really funny to me.  Like this one: "Do not struggle on the stairs."

There was a really great one in my hotel room that said, "IN CASE OF FIRE, DO NOT RUN.  It tends to cause panic."  I don't think they're trying to be funny, but it cracks me up.

Also, people keep saying "thank you" when they do things for me.  It is really throwing me off, because then I don't know what to say back.  A waiter poured me coffee at the conference dinner, and then said thank you.  And the woman who served me breakfast at the bed and breakfast kept saying thank you when she would bring me things.  I just don't know what to do, so I've been having a lot of conversations that go like this:

"Would you like white toast or brown toast this morning?"
"Brown toast, please."
"All right, thank you."
"..........thank you..."
[Then she comes back and hands me my toast.]
"Thank you."
"..................thank you..."

I obviously can't say "you're welcome", but it's kind of ridiculous for two people to thank each other like 8 times in the same conversation.

This may be related to the fact that I do not understand the usage of the word cheers.  I think it can alternately mean thank you, you're welcome, and something like go ahead.  Because I was walking home the other evening, and a guy on a bike stopped and said "cheers" as I passed.  Ok, it's not "thank you", because he stopped for me, so it might be like, "don't worry, I see you and am not going to run over you, so go ahead", or he might be a creepy dude and I should just keep walking and not respond in any way.

Never before have I felt so confused about my own language.  I'm ready to go back to France, where I know what everything means. ;)

Au revoir, l'Angleterre!  Bonjour, la France!