All the Wine Is All for Me

There comes a time in every young man's life when he realizes that one day it will become socially unacceptable for him to have purple hair. For me, that realization came yesterday, and I became resolved not to squander my youth.

Maeghan and I and some others were at a pub, and Maeghan was talking about how she is going to get a pretty dramatically different haircut, much shorter than she's used to. She was also saying she was considering dying it red, which started a discussion about what color hair I would look good with. Maeghan suggested purple, particularly as it would complement my glasses, and pretty soon I decided that was actually a really good idea. Thus, we went to a pharmacy on the way home, and within a couple hours, I looked like this:



Firstly, forgive my ridiculous facial expressions in these pictures. Secondly, I took these last night trying to get in different lighting, so you can see the degree to which it looks different depending on the light. I hope you like it - I definitely do.

My Courses

I've gotten asked about my classes a few times, so I thought I'd give a rundown. Here they are:

International Legal Institutions (Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:00am - 10:30am)
Professor Alison Duxbury, University of Melbourne

A course on the law of international organizations. We focus on the United Nations, going through its different organs (General Assembly, Security Council, Secretariat, etc.) and what their legal powers and responsibilities are, proposals for reform, and so on. We also will be spending a fair amount of time on various international judicial institutions like the International Court of Justice (established by the UN Charter), the International Criminal Court, and various war crimes tribunals. Then we go into regional institutions like ASEAN and the African Union. Toward the end of course we'll talk about specialized institutions like the WTO, as well as non-governmental organizations.

I like this course a lot, aside from it being so early in the morning. My foreign policy perspective is very oriented toward strengthening the effectiveness of institutions like the UN and the ICC, so this is important stuff to learn about. And the professor is great.

International Humanitarian Law (Mondays, 3:10pm - 5:00pm)
Professor Alison Duxbury, University of Melbourne; Professor Klaus Hoffman-Holland, Free University Berlin

Humanitarian law, basically, is the law of war. But it's limited to what's called jus in bello, which is the "law in war" as opposed to jus ad bellum, which is the "law to war" (some are pushing to change the latter term to jus contra bellum, or the "law against war" to emphasize the illegality of the use of force). In other words, it doesn't deal with whether the war being waged is just, or which side is right. Instead, it deals with the rules of war once a war has already begun. So this deals mainly with the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, which regulate things like the treatment of detained combatants and the protection of civilians and cultural property. We'll also be talking about the laws of occupation, the means and methods of warfare (stuff like arms control), and methods of enforcing humanitarian law.

We have to write a paper for this course, which we just chose topics for. My topic is the Palestinian Authority's recent decision to recognize the authority of the ICC in an effort to get the prosecutor to press charges against Israel for alleged war crimes. Basically it will be about whether the ICC can have jurisdiction over Gaza even though Israel is not a party to the ICC and Palestine isn't a state, and if it does have jurisdiction, whether a case can be made out against Israel for war crimes.

This is probably my favorite class.

Comparative Approaches to Human Rights & National Security (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30pm - 2:00pm)
Professor David Cole, Georgetown University; Professor Colm O'Cinneide, Kings College London

This course compares the national security approaches of the United States and the United Kingdom. Neither has a particularly stellar approach. The course goes through four basic areas of national security policy: detention, interrogation, terror financing, and surveillance. Then at the end it talks about the role of courts in times of emergency and/or terrorist threat. So obviously there are a lot of hot-button issues covered here, including Guantanamo, torture, and wiretapping. The professors clearly enjoy engaging with these kinds of controversies, and so do I, so it's a pretty fun course.

Transnational Legal Theory (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am - 11:55am)
Professor Alon Harel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This is a required course for all students at CTLS, which is unfortunate, because it's a really crappy course. It doesn't have to be - it deals with a lot of really interesting issues: theories of globalization, limits on sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, universal jurisdiction, etc. (Okay, those things are "really interesting" if you're an international lawyer, I promise.) But the readings are so incredibly abstract and dense that they suck all the fun out of the issues. They are also the sort of reading that are difficult for even a native English speaker, which means they're next to impossible for the non-native speakers in the program. And the professor, who is a really nice and interesting guy, does not have a background in international law. He teaches domestic legal theory, which is fine, but that tends not to translate directly to international legal theory, which deals with a whole different set of issues.

Faculty Colloquium (every other Friday, 11:00am - 1:00pm)

The colloquium is a lecture every other week by a different professor, sometimes somebody brought in from outside the program and sometimes one of the professors in the program. The basic idea is that the people giving the lecture have written an article for publication and before it gets published they show it around to a bunch of different people to get feedback. So on the weeks we have colloquium, we read the paper, write a short reaction memo, and then on Friday the author gives a talk and responds to the issues we raised in our memos. A lot depends on the subject matter of the article as to whether this is interesting or not, but the past couple ones we've had were pretty cool - one about the challenges to the equal application of humanitarian law to all sides in a war, and one about incorporating persons with disabilities into human rights frameworks.

And there you have it. With the exception of the transnational legal theory course, the classes are all pretty interesting, though there's a distinctly undergrad-y rather than law school-y feel to the semester which makes the academic side of things a lot less rigorous, which can be both bad and good - bad for feeling like you're getting the most out of the courses, good for traveling and having fun with people.

Plans

One of the most fun things about traveling is not the traveling at all but the planning. I didn't go anywhere this weekend, but I did book several flights and discuss plans for various trips. It's quite possible that the non-booked plans will fall through or be altered, but here's what I'm looking at for the next couple months:

Barcelona, Spain, March 5 - March 11 (mostly booked)
This is the first half of my spring break. Barcelona seems to be everybody's favorite city, so I want to devote a lot of time to it. This is the one time I'll be traveling by myself, which I think will be fun. Somebody also recommended taking a day trip during this time to some nearby town, but I can't remember the name of it or why it was recommended. We'll see.

Munich, Germany, March 11 - March 13 (mostly booked)
It's a bit of a hassle finding a cheap and direct way from Barcelona to Munich, but the plan is to meet up with Maeghan and Diane early on March 11 and stay for 3 days. Maeghan is going to be in Berlin the first half of her spring break, but I've seen Berlin already, so we're meeting up here.

Dublin, Ireland, March 14 - March 18 (booked)
We're planning on taking a train from Munich to Frankfurt late on the 13th, and then flying from Frankfurt to Dublin early on the 14th. Ireland was never high on my list of places to go while I was here, but it is going to be St. Patrick's Day, and a whole bunch of CTLS students are going, so I figure what the hey.

Paris, France, March 26 - March 29 (not booked)
This one is tentative, but it would be a good weekend for Maeghan and I, who appear to be among the few who have not yet seen Paris. Whether it's this weekend or not, we'll squeeze it in at some point for sure - you can't not see Paris, right?

Prague, Czech Republic & Krakow, Poland, April 2 - April 6 (not booked)
This is another tentative one, but Lisa and I both really want to see these two. The idea would be to fly into Prague late Thursday, have a full day Friday to see it, then take a night train from Prague to Krakow, which we would then see on Saturday, then take a day trip out on Sunday to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which we've been told are really worth visiting. That's a lot to squeeze in, so I dunno if it's gonna actually happen, but I hope so.

Istanbul, Turkey, April 8 - April 14 (booked)
This is the one I'm most excited about. Maeghan, Diane, Danielle, David and I are all taking this strip during the Easter Break, and we'll be getting to spend 5 full days there. We're also trying to do some research on whether there's anywhere close enough to take a day trip or something.

Scotland, April 16 - April 19 (not booked)
I've been to Edinburgh before, but I loved it and a lot of other people want to go, so maybe I'll be heading back. Danielle and I have also talked about how we want to go up to the Highlands, which are supposed to be really beautiful. These plans are very tentative, but for sure several people want to see Scotland and April seems to be the best time available to us.

And that's it. It might be the case that my exams are over soon enough that I can take another long trip in May before heading back to the States, in which case I'm contemplating either Greece or Morocco or Jordan+Israel+Egypt. Notably absent from this list is anywhere in Italy, which sucks, but I just don't think I'll be able to squeeze it in. Note also that there's a ton I haven't seen yet in London itself, so I'll have to get around to that as well.

Anyway, this is the itinerary at this point. If anybody has any recommendations for things to see in any of the above, let me know in the comments.

A Few More Pictures from Salisbury/Cornwall

Maeghan just put her pictures from Cornwall up on Facebook and she had a few pretty good ones, so I'm throwing them up here:

A better view of the outside of Salisbury Cathedral than I put up in the previous posts.

This is the longest-running clock in the world. It doesn't have a clockface; it's just set to chime every hour.

Another picture of the fountain reflection that I talked about in the previous posts.

Land's End.

My feet at Land's End.

Cornwall Trip, Day 4: Tintagel Castle

Sunday was our last day, and we had to make the drive back, so we only had time to see one thing in the morning before heading out. We had our hearts set on Tintagel Castle, which is the legendary birthplace of King Arthur.

The drive there was the most treacherous part of the trip, worse than the first half of the trip there through the snow. For a while we had to drive down a narrow road with high walls of earth on both sides that our car barely fit into, as seen here:

The kicker was that this road is not one way. We are driving down the road and sure enough, another car comes the other way. We stop, there are a few moments of freaking out, and we have to back up about a hundred yards where there is a tiny section of road big enough for us to pull off to the side and let the other car pass. Fortunately this was winter and there weren't a lot of people around, so this only happened once, but we have no idea what they do when it's tourist season. It was totally insane.

Eventually we got there, and it turns out that the actual castle was built in the thirteenth century, whereas the legend of King Arthur is from the 6th century, so there's no way this was King Arthur's castle even if King Arthur actually existed, but it still could have been his birthplace or something. Anyway, the castle is in ruins now (I'm not sure why, when there are other things from that period that are still intact), and even if nobody knows anything about its historical significance, it's a pretty cool place. Unfortunately it was kind of rainy and unpleasant that day, and you have to climb up and down stairs and rocks to get around, but we still had fun.

Tintagel is another place on the coast, where there are a bunch of cliffs and it's really windy. This place was cool because there were also a bunch of caves, including the mythical Merlin's Cave, which Maeghan and Diane scurried down to get to and climb through, as seen in a couple of the pictures below.
















After visiting the castle we went to a Cornish pasty restaurant, which Lisa had been hunting for all weekend. She got the classic steak pasty:

They were delicious.

And that was the trip. We drove back in about 6 hours, which we were happy about. It was a pretty uneventful drive, and we got back exhausted and satisfied.

Cornwall Trip, Day 3: St. Michael's Mount, Land's End

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to drive down to the very tip of England, where there are a bunch of towns and things worth visiting. We had considered going to a castle called St. Michael's Mount, which is on a tiny island off the coast, but we called them that morning and they are closed in the winter except when the tide is low enough that there's a walkway people can walk across, which was not the case on that particular day. So we were just going to go straight to a place called Land's End, which I'll get to later, but as we were driving we passed right by St. Michael's Mount and decided to stop on the beach even though we couldn't walk all the way up to the castle. It was a really beautiful view on a very sunny (though still cold) day.

Some pics:
This is St. Michael's Mount. You can see the castle perched on top.






This was us sitting at a brick wall separating the road from the beach.

Our feet, on the beach.

This is me by the road before we got back in the car, with a pretty good view of the English countryside behind me.

After stopping here, we went onto Land's End, which takes its name from the fact that it is literally where the land ends. You drive down the road to get there, and then the road just stops, and it's cliffs and rocks and the Atlantic Ocean for as far as the eye can see. It was an absolutely beautiful day and an absolutely beautiful spot.

It's worth clicking to enlarge some of these to get a good look at the view:







It was insanely windy up here. We are getting blown away in pretty much all of these pictures.




This is a sign they posted there that was kind of cool.

After that we drove around to a couple towns that had been recommended to us. They were fairly cute, but I have no pictures or anything particularly interesting to report from them. We drove back home that evening, made some more food, and just hung out and drank at our place the rest of the evening, which was actually quite fun. We talked about language and accents and movies and compared our political systems and just had generally interesting and fun conversation. And then it was off to bed in preparation for our last day in Cornwall.

Cornwall Trip, Day 2: Stonehenge, Salisbury

So the next morning we got up early to at least go see Stonehenge and Salisbury before deciding whether to keep going on to Cornwall. We drove a short ways over to Stonehenge, which we had been told would be somewhat underwhelming, which turned out to be true. The historical significance and wonder of it is interesting and all, but seeing it just isn't all that impressive. Worth stopping by, but nothing particularly remarkable. We did, however, get to see it covered in snow, which is pretty unusual.

When we got there, we discovered that in order to get past the fencing surrounding it, you had to pay 6 pounds. Maeghan and Diane were up for paying, but Lisa and Guido and I were not so convinced it would be worth it, so they went past the fence and we just looked at it from a short ways away, which still got us a pretty good view, as seen here:


Here are a couple pictures taken from closer, where Maeghan and Diane got:


And here are a couple taken from afar:

As you can probably tell from this last picture, it was a bit cold and windy, so we didn't stay for very long before heading down to Salisbury, about a 10 mile drive away, home of the Salisbury Cathedral, a gorgeous cathedral built in the 13th century and home to one of only a handful of the original Magna Cartas (and the one in the best condition).

When we got into the Cathedral, a group of men who looked to be in their seventies were milling about. They were volunteer tour guides, and one of them, Michael Avery, gave us an absolutely amazing tour of the place. He was the sweetest man in the world, and he clearly had a passion for the history of the cathedral and the Magna Carta. The place is lined with all sorts of interesting historical tombs and artifacts and such, all of which I couldn't begin to explain. This was probably the highlight of the entire trip, and anybody visiting England should take the time to stop by here.

Some pics:

This is from outside the cathedral. There are better views of it, but nobody got any good pictures of them.

This is a little courtyard in the middle, that looked really pretty with the snow.

The archway looking onto the courtyard.

A little colonnade sort of thing outside the cathedral.

Inside the cathedral.
This is cool. It's a picture of a fountain which pours off the sides but is totally flat on top so that it creates a nearly perfect reflection of the ceiling above. The tour guide told us that a couple weeks earlier a lady had mistaken it for a glass table and put her handbag on it, which they then had to fish out.

This is some sort of tomb. There were a bunch of tombs and burial stones all over the place. There was also the longest-running clock in the world, and a series of flags of England dating back, the earliest a ratty-looking one from the 1800s. A bunch of really cool stuff, basically. Then we went into the room with the Magna Carta, which we couldn't take pictures of. Original copies were made for each county in England, though only a few have survived, and the one there was the best preserved. It was pretty impressive, especially to a bunch of law students.

As we were leaving, our guide gave us a bit of advice which would prove extremely helpful. He told us to drive south along the coastal roads instead of the more direct route further to the north, due to the weather conditions that were wreaking havoc. He seemed to think we'd be able to make it to Cornwall without too much trouble, so we were encouraged enough to give it a shot. We left for Newquay, and besides one point when we had to stop at a gas station to let Maeghan pee and ended up getting stuck in the snow and having to push our way out, we made it without too much trouble. It took a bit longer than we had anticipated due to the longer route, but it was a gorgeous drive, and once we got into the southern part of the country, the snow disappeared entirely and the sun emerged.

We got into Newquay and arrived at our place, which was a whole apartment in a hotel that we got for cheap because it's not tourist season at all there (it's a big attraction for surfers in the summer, but not so much in the winter). We did some grocery shopping and got some wine and Guido made us some authentic Italian pasta, and we planned out our itinerary for the next couple days.

Some pics from our place:




The woman who ran the place had a bunch of DVDs in stock as well, so we grabbed Anchorman, which Guido and Diane had not seen. This, however, brought about a terrifying moment:

You will notice in this picture that Anchorman is playing on the television, and yet the DVD is ejected from the player. This was a major Poltergiest moment in which I freaked out that the place was haunted, but eventually we learned that by some bizarre coincidence Anchorman was playing on TV at the same time we were trying to play it on DVD.

Anyway, we had a fun evening of hanging out and watching the movie and drinking wine, then went off to bed.