remember, remember the 5th of November...

Well hello. Yesterday, I went into Lewes for Guy Fawkes Day. Every year they have this huge festival thingy and bonfires and fireworks and stuff in honor of Guy Fawkes. For those of you that don't know, this day celebrated the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, which was the plan of Guy Fawkes and others to burn the Houses of Parliament in London. So we took the train into Lewes, which was SO PACKED. It was very reminiscent of the Celebration of Lights, there were cops everywhere telling people where to go, the roads were shut down, and there was about 500,000 people all in this really small town. 

Of course, it was pouring rain, but it was kinda cool actually. It made it all that more dramatic. So we arrive in Lewes, and start walking around, we realy have no clue what to expect, or whats going on, and then all of a sudden we see a crowd of people walking towards us with burning torches. Oh and they were dressed like Pirates. Kinda weird. There was also a bunch of people dragging huge barrels of fire. Not only was there torches, but they were waving them around, I swear I almost caught on fire at least a couple times. 

So we followed the little parade, and we saw more torches, more people dressed up at weird things. And then we saw the burning crosses. Which was slightly odd, but apparently  no big deal here. It was definitely not something you could ever see in Canada. We also saw a couple effigies of Guy Fawkes and for some reason a huge Wall-E float. There was a bunch of other random float-type things of people and things that I didn't recognize. It was all very surreal.

So after the parade, we continued walking around until we saw in the distance a GIANT fire. So we followed the flame, and encountered a flame about the size of a large large house. Just a HUGE bonfire in the middle of the field. The atmosphere was very much what I imagine Woodstock would've been like, only less love. The field was SO muddy, and some people were just COVERED from head to toe and everyone was just kind of milling around, enjoying the warming and drying effect of the fire. It was pretty cool. From about 100 feet away from the fire, we could feel our faces burning! Luckily they had a fence around the perimeter otherwise I can imagine things would be bad.

After we left the bonfire, we witnessed a fireworks war, which was cool- but nothing compared to the Celebration of Lights. I guess I just have high standards though!  The experience was especially cool because this might be the last year that Lewes hosts this festival- I guess there is just too much danger potential, and it can barely support the amount of people that come anymore. 

So yeah, thats all thats really new- I'm staying around this weekend, might go on a daytrip to London or Brighton or something. I think me and couple people might plan a trip to Croatia for a couple weeks from now too!!! 

By the way, both my presentation and midterm went really well so I'm happy, and I just have a few more assignments for the rest of the semester. Other than that, nothing exciting on my horizon.

Miss and Love you all.