Christmas Holidays

It has been over a month since my last post, which for most bloggers is unacceptable. My only excuse is that it has been exam season around here, and we have had a bit of work to do. I will quickly summerize each of our winter trips, leaving most of the details out so that there are still stories to tell when we get back to the U.S.

I  was lucky enough to get to see my family over the Christmas holidays. They came to visit London for a few days, and it was great. We did lots of touristy things with the Cutty Sark being the highlight of the trip. Then I headed to Switzerland to see some friends I met on the QM2, and do a bit of skiing.

Cutty Sark Rigging

Cutty Sark's hull, note the concave bow sections

Satchel in Lenzerheide, Switzerland

Chris flew home to Houston and managed to surprise almost his entire family. He then toured Italy with his mom. There are no pictures on face book of the trip, so you will have to ask him for those.
In other news, it snowed in Southampton, about 4 inches. This is apparently a big deal, judging by the local and university response...

 

Andy, Chris, and Cody in the snow

Cody also spend time in Italy, I believe almost two weeks. He met his girlfriend, Lindsay, there and they saw quite a bit of Italy!

Cody and Lindsay at the Trevi Fountain in Rome

Andy had the most adventourous holiday by far. He spent the first 10 days rock climbing in southern Spain with the University of Southampton Mountaineering club. After a brief rest and Christmas in the dorm, met his girlfriend, Colleen, and also headed to Italy. I believe he and Chris met up for some portion of their time.

Andy and Colleen with a nice selfy

Since we have been back, we turned in our final Maritime Archaeology paper (everyone passed), designed a satellite to orbit Saturn, taken a final exam in Maths, Programming, and Astronautics, and turned in lots of thermodynamics assignments for Webb. We are now completing our final papers for Ship Science, to be turned in on Friday. We will all be flying back on Tuesday the 29th, landing in JFK at 12:30 pm, in case anyone wants to meet us.

Just this morning, we went to visit BMT Nigel Gee, a marine consultancy office in Southampton, but that will be covered in the next post, so all you who get bored by Naval Architecture stuff can skip it.