And finally, graveyards

Without further ado:

The first set of pictures is from my mission in Uruguay. I was fascinated with the whole process of burial in Uruguay. This is from what I understand about Uruguayan burial traditions: After the funeral ceremony, a person is laid to rest in a cemetery, or more likely, an above-the-ground niche. After a few years, the body is cremated and the remains are place in an urn. It sounds a little weird compared to our culture's traditions to, in essence, dig up a body after a couple of years and cremate the remains, but in such a small country as Uruguay, it makes sense.

First, here is the tomb of Jose Artigas in Montevideo, who is like the "George Washington" of Uruguay, according to one of my companions.

These statues of Artigas are ALL OVER THE PLACE in Uruguay. There's pretty much one in every city (maybe an exaggeration, but not by much).

Under the statue is the tomb, where lies:

the remains of General Jose Artigas himself, guarded carefully

This is a Jewish cemetery in La Paz, near Montevideo, Uruguay. Unfortunately, it was always padlocked, so I was never able to go inside and look around.

Instead, we just took pictures through the bars.

This is the cemetery in Pan de Azucar. I love this statue; she's so beautiful.

This is an example of the "above-the-ground niche" where people are buried for the first few years of being... dead. I suppose more wealthy people's graves or tombs looked more like this:

These seem to be more permanent than the above-the-ground spots, so maybe if you have enough money, you can afford a permanent residence in a tomb.

There are rows and rows of urns in the cemetery. It's fascinating to walk around and see all the different urns.

And now, we will travel to a different continent to visit some graveyards in the UK:

This is Oxford. My dream is to study there one day! This little graveyard is right inside of Christ's Church college, which is the area where we spent most of our time at Oxford. Christ's Church is the old stomping ground of Charles Dodgson (more commonly known as Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice books).

This, my friends (you can't read it unless you zoom very closely) is the tombstone of Thomas Riddell in Edinburgh, Scotland. This awesome little graveyard is right by the Elephant House, which is a little cafe where JK Rowling supposedly started writing Harry Potter on a napkin. She is said to have walked through this graveyard getting ideas for names in her books. Looking through the graveyard, we not only found this grave, but also Mooney, Black, and McGonagall. Pretty neat!

This, if you notice, is not a graveyard. This is Winchester Cathedral, where Jane Austen herself was laid to rest.

There you go.

Glastonbury Abbey is the fabled burial site of Arthur and Guinevere (for awesome pictures of Glastonbury, see this blog)

This little graveyard in Bemerton, which was George Herbert's rectory.

Bemerton, again.

Stoke Poges, the graveyard that inspired Thomas Grey's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

Stoke Poges, again.

This is the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth. Amaaaaaazing! I loved their little parsonage, and as I have mentioned before, I can definitely understand where Charlotte and Emily Bronte were coming from writing their creepy Gothic novels. Loved Haworth, love the moors, love them.

Love, love, love.