Shooting

I went back to Citylife Church on Sunday and was just as impressed with the music as I was last week, but the preaching... not so much. Last week there was a guest speaker so the actual pastor took the stage this week. Let's just say I felt kind of intimidated bu his loud an animated and Pentecostal-esque preaching style. The music is fantastic, but I don't know if I could handle the preacher every week. After church I did laundry and got some homework done in the process (you go Hannah!). Monday I had a lecture in the morning and spent the rest of the day in the studio. Storm joined us for Monday night Bible study, which was basically a recap of a series they had been doing for the past few weeks. And after Bible study we had a flat meeting about the Edinburgh trip we're planning. Because a lot of us have Friday classes, Ash, Lily, Jaja and myself will all be catching a train Friday night and meeting the rest of the group at the hostel in Edinburgh. Then we'll have heaps of Scottish fun and come home Sunday night!

The weather was absolutely fantastic today. Before my morning lecture I had to "top up" my phone (aka pre-pay next month's usages for O2), so I got there as soon as it opened. I brought my camera with me so I could get some shots of the city of Sunderland -- I've been in England over a month now, and yet I have managed to take pictures of everything except the city I live in. I didn't have loads of time to go exploring and snapping, but the photos I did get turned out pretty well. After my morning lecture I walked studio, where I spent the rest of my day/evening. My tutor, Dave, taught me how to use the enlarger (it's what you use to expose/transfer thw film negative to regular photo paper). After about 3 hours of trial-and-error, I managed to get my first final print done! Dave also introduced us to our next assignment: portraits. I am a LOT more excited about this one because it gives you so much room for creativity; you aren't restricted by simply replicating an existing photo. Although I don't have classes tomorrow, I'll be spending the entire day in the studio shooting my last film slide and getting my last 3 prints done. Film photography can be extremely frustrating and time consuming, but the quality of the prints is astounding if you do it right. It has taken me quite a while to get the hang of things, but now that I know how to use all the equipment I won't be so timid about everything.

As long as the weather keeps being awesome like it was today, I'll probably start walking to all my classes. I figured it up on Google maps, and today alone I walked almost 3 miles. If I can keep this up I'll be sure to have excellent legs by the end of the semester!

Frazzled

Thursday was an okay day. I spent the most of my morning and early afternoon in the studio trying to get a negative developed. Long story short, I had a detrimental brain fart and took the lid off my film canister while I was mixing some chemicals, completely blowing out the negative and ruining about 4 hours worth of work. Let's just say I wasn't the happiest of campers. My finance workshop was equally frustrating; we're starting to put together cash flow statements for businesses. This would normally all be fine and dandy because I've already taken an accounting class so I have some background in it, except we're reporting everything by UK standards so I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. The lecturer isn't the best either, so it looks like I'll be teaching myself a lot about financial reporting this semester. Oh joy!

Yesterday's classes were somewhat better; I really like my management workshop tutor. He's a really sweet old man, and he really wants me to do well in the class and enjoy my stay here. We only meet once a week but it's surprisingly the one class I look forward to. After workshop I spent another 3 hours in the studio getting frustrated with myself (who knew that taking a picture of a rotten apple could be so time-consuming and difficult?), but I managed to shoot some film. I haven't developed it yet because the studio closed early, so we'll see how it turned out on Monday. Taking this film class is really making me start to hate photography -- well, kind of. I think the most aggravating thing is that for our first assignment, we have to replicate two photos by two photographers. Being the perfectionist I am, I'm never pleased with any of the negatives that come out so I keep reshooting and reshooting the exact same setup for days on end. I'll just be glad when this assignment is done and we can move on to other, more creativity-centered projects. Needless to say I was frazzled, and going to CU on Friday night was much-needed. There weren't a lot of people there because most of them were away at a leader's conference, but Ash and I led worship and everything went smoothly. The speaker was really good, and afterwards all of us grabbed dinner at a nearby pub. Then I came home to a lovely Skype date with Steven (our official 5 months, woot woot!). It was a nice way to start the weekend.

My day thus far has been extremely uneventful; I watched about 5 episodes of New Girl on Hulu since I was all caught up on Glee, spent too much time on Pinterest, and jammed out for a while on Becky's guitar. Tomorrow I'll go to Citylife church in the morning, do some laundry, and maybe do a little homework. Some of my friends have started planning a weekend trip to Edinburgh in a few weeks, so I'm getting pumped about that! We'll spend a day in Edinburgh, then another day on a bus tour of some cool places around Scotland -- maybe even spotting Nessie along the way. It's gonna be super fun and I cannot wait for all the photo ops that will come out of it!

Pancakes

I've started posting less and less often because, well, there isn't a whole lot going on now. I think I'm finally getting in the swing of things, so my everyday adventures seem less extraordinary and novel. But that's not to say that I haven't been having a fabulous time!

After my Monday management lecture, I spent a good chunk of my afternoon/evening in the photo studio taking pictures of a rotten apple (oh how awesome Hannah! How can you contain your excitement!). Now that I've gotten a better handle on how to work the 5 x 4 camera, I was able to get around 6 or 7 paper negatives developed, but I was still super uneasy about moving to real film. After spending 4 hours in the studio, I grabbed my Bible from home and went to a Bible study with some girls from CU, then Becky brought her guitar over and we sang Jesus songs until midnight. We had a grand ol' time.

After my two Tuesday classes, I spent another chunk of the evening in the photo studio. This time, I managed to process my first-ever film negative! It was so exciting! It also makes me appreciate digital cameras a LOT more. I had to recruit about 3 different people to re-explain the process of exactly what to do with the negative and how to do it, but I finally had one developed, processed, and dried after about 45 minutes. Whew. Afterwards, I celebrated Fat Tuesday/Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday with the girls from my Bible study. We got Domino's pizza and made heaps of pancakes with all sorts of delectable toppings: strawberries, nutella, whipped cream, and milk chocolate just to name a few. Sooo good.

Today was supposed to be another get-things-done day, but I had a migraine for the first half of the day so I didn't really get started until 2:00. I've noticed that my migraines are a lot less frequent than they used to be; it's probably due to the fact that I'm less stressed out, but I like to think of it as the healing powers of ye olde English air. I still got quite a bit of shopping done even though I had less time than expected (I am a girl after all, so shopping is supposedly my forte). I got some toiletries & some cleaning supplies from Wilkinson, and all my groceries came from Aldi. I also stumbled upon a row of thrift stores in town, so of course I found some cute clothes and fabulous deals while I was there. A super cute sweater dress marked down to £1.49? Heck yes I'll take it! It might be that the "charity shops" are better quality than all the Goodwills I'm used to hitting up, or it could be that semi-outdated British clothes look fashionable and new to me, but the three stores I visited all seemed to have much better selections than the ones at home. Who needs Top Shop and H&M when you can find vintage and cute clothes for less than 2 pounds? I've been waiting to find the local thrift stores here, and I think it's safe to say they will be frequented in the future.

I cooked spaghetti for dinner, then Ash and I practiced for Friday night's music at CU. The rest of the evening will probably be spent watching American TV shows. All my thanks and love goes to Steven for this one, because he somehow managed to hook me up to the server he built in Boone, and now I can proxy through it and have a US IP address! So now I can get on Pandora and Netflix and Hulu and all sorts of other websites that don't work in the UK! Catching up on Glee has been a much-appreciated and pleasant streaming experience.

- When someone says "dark room" with respects to photography, they really do mean DARK room. You have to walk through two sets of doors to get to the film-loading area, which had a black ceiling, black walls, black floor, and black counter. Loading and unloading film consists of feeling your way around while staring into total darkness. Kinda creepy, but kinda cool.

- Deodorant comes in an aerosol can. Wait... what? (Yeah! They have some roll-on, but it's the kind with an actual ball that rolls. For the most part, it's spray-on. Crazy!)

- The second meal of the day is called "dinner," and the third meal of the day is called "tea."

- A lot of people eat their pancakes topped with sugar and lemon juice -- kinda funky, but kinda good!

- So far my British girl friends have called me: flower, honey, love, sweetie, and my personal favorite: petal. I'm totally bringing some of these sayings back with me.

God is Good

The past couple of days have been positively phenomenal. Yesterday, Shelby, Ash, and myself went on an adventure to find the Penshaw Monument in Sunderland. We had seen some postcards of this Greekish-Parthenon-looking structure at a few shops in town, so we set out to find it. Since we had taken the metro last week to Newcastle, we felt like we were pretty experienced travelers (except for the fact that we missed the first metro by about 7 seconds... but no worries). So we caught the metro to the closest stop, which we later found out was a pretty decent way away. The 3-mile hike to the monument was filled with scenes of your typical English countryside: rolling hills, cute little bridges, and precious cottages & churches. Although the second half of the hike was uphill and extremely tiresome, it made actually reaching the monument that much more appreciated. It was so much bigger than I expected, but it was also not nearly as old as I had thought (constructed in 1844, to be exact). It was still cool though! We caught the bus home, grabbed some dinner in town, and I crashed for the night.

This morning I went to a church that was just a few blocks down the road from my flat. I felt really welcome there, and the worship was really good -- they even did a song that was written by Elevation (the church I go to while I'm at school), so I had a major God moment! There I was, 4000 miles away from anything I've ever known, and yet these people are singing songs that my home church wrote?! God is so good! Afterwards, Ash and I grabbed coffee with Becky, the worship leader from CU, and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with her. Long story short, because she is going to be out of town next week with the rest of the CU leaders, Ash and I are going to do the music this week at CU! Like, how crazy is that! We've only known this girl for 2 days, but I felt such a strong, Godly connection with her. God is just SO good! (I've been having tons of these God moments for the past few days, and I keep being reminded of how big and awesome and universal He is. This semester is going to be a good one.)

- Australians often shorten a lot of their words like I do. Awks means awkward, and hass means hassle.

- A lot of Harry Potter was filmed right around the Northeast of England, so we'll definitely be going on adventures to find some of the locations!

Jesus

The past few days have been pretty uneventful for the most part. Wednesday was a work day for me, and so I locked myself in my room and did loads of research and homework for some assignments coming up. Yesterday was a not-so-good day though; I suppose it started out decently enough, but I ended up getting really frustrated in the photo studio (I spent 2 hours setting up a shot, calculating exposure, etc... but when I developed my prints they were all wayy too overexposed, and one was completely out of focus. Coming into the class, I knew it would be challenging because I had never touched film before. I guess it'll just take a lot of trial and error until I get it right. The photo assignment is due in two weeks, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be stressing out quite a bit until then).

Because I was tired of eating frozen dinners and frozen pizza and takeout food, I cooked spaghetti last night. And even though I only used half the sauce and half the noodles and half the meat I bought at the grocery store, I still ended up with heaps of leftovers. I'm definitely not complaining though; I love having leftovers! After dinner, Storm and I went to the Globe Cafe again and hung out with a lot of the same old folks from last week; it's so nice to surround yourself with fellow believers, because you really start to miss it after a while. I had my first cup of British hot tea (sugar added, of course) and it was a lot better than I was expecting!

After class today, I had to return a bunch of overdue library books and pick up the paper negatives I accidentally left in the photo building. **note to self: don't EVER have an overdue book again, because you're going to have to pay a 20 pence fine each day it's overdue... and don't ever forget your photo negs, because it's a pain walking to Ashburne** Earlier tonight, Ash, Storm, and I went to something called the Christian Union, or CU: it's kind of like the uni's on-campus ministry. I really enjoyed it! I surprisingly knew all 4 songs they played and I met a lot of other Jesus-lovin' English students. They were all amazed with our accents (as most Brits have been that we've encountered) and the guest speaker was good. Sunday we'll be going to the church that hosts the Cafe. I'm finally getting plugged in, hooray!

- Just like we put milk in our coffee, they put milk in their hot tea. I thought it was super weird at first, but once I tried it I fell in love. I'm slowly but surely learning all the quirks of daily life in England -- maybe by the end of the trip I can be a halfway convincing Brit!

- A guy in my photo class was wearing an East Carolina Pirates shirt on Thursday. After I completely freaked out at how small this world is, I found out that a lot of his family is actually from Greenville. What are the odds! It was fabulous and it made my day.

- The English folks replace words that end in -ize with -ise (ex: organize becomes organise, and realization becomes realisation). They also often change -or to -our, such as in "colour" and "humour."

- I heard someone in the back of the bus singing Proud To Be An American, the Star Spangled Banner, and Wagon Wheel. Of course it ended up being another guy from App, but it's always nice to be reminded of home.

Love

Since Monday evenings have henceforth been appointed "flatmate dinner night," we got the crew together last night and ordered takeout. The Chinese joint we really liked was closed (on a Monday at 6 pm... weird), so we walked around until we found the closest place to eat: conveniently, another Chinese place. I had sweet and sour chicken with fried rice -- sooo good! A few of the girls went next door to Domino's and had a taste of home sweet home. I've been going hard on some pizza ever since I got here, so the Asian cuisine was welcome.

This morning started out decently enough; I had a finance lecture, then a long break until my photo class. Because I needed to do some research for my photo project coming up, I was going to hang out in the art library at Ashburne for a few hours and get stuff done. Little did I know that a gas leak over the weekend would render this impossible. Apparently, all the classes at Ashburne had been cancelled yesterday, and the heat had been turned off since Friday. The cafe and the library were both closed because they were "unfit for extended public use," so poor wittle Hannah got to hang out in a freezing cold building with literally nothing to do for 3 hours. Since the cafe was closed, lunch consisted of a bag of chips and a Pepsi from the vending machine. Mehh. I was in a pretty poor mood. Class started right on time, and even though I had absolutely nothing to do or show, I still enjoyed helping some of my other classmates with their shoots, calculating exposure, holding reflectors, and making test photo negs. Listening to Jesus music during my walk back to campus definitely helped too.

Once I got back home, I discovered that Steven had delivered me something. A gift! To ME! In England! It is Valentine's day after all, but being 4000 miles away from the one you love isn't exactly how couples like to spend their first Valentine's day together. Needless to say, Steven exceeded all my expectations this year! He had arranged to have a single rose in a vase delivered to me by one of the local florists, and he sent me a wonderful letter that arrived just in time for this special day. He went home in the middle of his busy day just to have a Skype date with me AND he even did a few more things to top it all off (ladies, if you ever find a guy who's willing to go the extra mile AFTER the extra mile just to make you happy, I suggest you hold on tight to him, because they are few and far between!). I'm so so thankful to have someone as wonderful as Steven, and I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world :)

After my day had been completely revamped by Steven's awesome self, we spotted the long-haired, orange community cat that so many other international students have been talking about, and lured her in with some Whiskers cat food we picked up yesterday. She has plenty of different names, ranging from Ginger to Clanny Cat to Marmalade. We call her Clanny Cat. Because all of the flats are laid out exactly the same, she knew her way around ours quite well. After eating some kitty food and playing with string, she took a nap on the couch for a while. I'm a total cat lover, so I loved just hanging out with Clanny Cat. She's so soft and lovable and friendly and playful. Hooray for mediocre days-turned-great!!

- Instead of saying "How are doing?" as a greeting, English people ask "Are you alright?" It still weirds me out because I keep thinking that I look like something's wrong with me... but they're really just being friendly and greeting me.

- There are very few stop signs on streets; instead, most of the smaller intersections simply have an upside down triangle painted on the road right before the intersection, which I've learned means "yield."

1172

In a word, my day can be described as: fantastic. Although I was running a little late this morning, taking the metro to Newcastle proved to be easier, cheaper, and faster than expected. We arrived about 10 minutes before the main mall opened up, so we found the library and grabbed a map of the city and started planning our day's excursions. A security guard kindly told us the easiest way to get to Castle Keep (like I said, everyone is so helpful here, I love it!). The mall ended up being much much larger than we imagined, so naturally with 4 girls walking around a shopping center, we spent quite a bit of time in there before we headed out to go exploring.

My first impressions of Newcastle were anything but bad; just like York, the architecture was all super old and super Gothic and super beautiful. I kept reminding myself that most of the buildings around town were at least 2 or 3 or even 4 times as old as America, and yet they were easily all 10 times more beautiful than anything in the States. While we were walking to the Castle, we found the St. Nicholas Cathedral (built in 1359) and heard its bells ring a couple times throughout the day (fun fact: one of the bells in the cathedral weights almost 2 tons. TWO TONS! That's crazy). We had to pay to get into the Castle Keep (circa 1172), but it was probably the best £4 I've spent since I got here. Years ago when I came to England with People to People, we went in more castles than I could count, so I thought that I was a seasoned castle-explorer-lady. But even though the Keep was tiny in comparison to most other castles I had been in, it was definitely the coolest. There weren't any rooms or crevasses that had been roped off, so you literally could explore the entire thing. I loved stumbling upon tiny little rooms and tiny little windows throughout the castle; we even found two tiny little holes that were used for toilets back in the day (pretty gross, but they had a certain air of royalty to them, so it was okay). We climbed to the very top and were granted a phenomenal 360-degree view of Newcastle. Other than the cathedral's steeple, we were at the tallest point in the city. The sun decided it would peek out at us for a few minutes while we were up there, so we had plenty of wonderful photo ops. Two postcards and a bazillion narrow (and steep, and circling, and dizzying) stair steps later, we were ready to take on the rest of Newcastle.

We crossed one of the bridges to get on the other side of the Tyne River because we spotted a giant futuristic-glass-shell-looking building. Turns out, The Sage Gateshead was a giant music hall that held tons and tons of performances every day. We only walked through the foyer but I was mighty impressed with the design (check out a virtual tour of the interior here -- it's like you're right there with me!). Then I drug my flatmates to the Baltic Center For Contemporary Art because I hadn't been in an art gallery in a long time, and I needed my art fix (disclaimer: the future-art-gallery-owner in me is about to come out, so just bear with me). You'd think that a 6-story art center would have loads and loads of art, but overall I was unimpressed with it. There was only enough artwork to fill mayyybe 2 stories, and I didn't really like the way the exhibitions were installed... To me, the Baltic was aimed at creating a community center instead of an art center, because I felt there was more of a focus on all the peripherals (like the 5th-floor "viewing box" of the city and the massive gift shop), and the artwork itself was secondhand. But I loved how crowded it was; it's really encouraging to know that some people do still care about art (I'll get off my soapbox now).

We caught the tail-end of the outdoor Quayside Market right beside the river, and I picked up a card featuring the work of a local photographer, Ben Nash (support your local artists!). By this time we were getting pretty tired from walking, so after grabbing some Starbucks we caught the metro back home. All in all, I had a pretty fantastic weekend, but now it's time to get back to the grind of classes. Next weekend's adventures: the circus!

Red Sauce

For dinner last night, my flatmates and I went to an Italian restaurant called Roma. The restaurant was really small and cozy; red walls, dim lights, and candles everywhere. We ordered some garlic bread for an appetizer, and I ordered the tagliatelle carbonara: pasta with cream, bacon, black pepper, parsley and parmesan cheese. It was by far some of the best pasta I've ever had! While we were waiting on our check, we asked a precious old couple if they would mind taking our picture. We ended up talking to them a bit, finding out a little about them, and places they recommended going while we were here. I can't remember where they were from, but they said they came to Sunderland about once every two weeks and got dinner at Roma. I loved everything about the restaurant, even down to the bill: they brought us the check in a small treasure chest, which had chocolate mints inside. So cute! The small wait staff was exceptionally friendly, we ate good food, in a good atmosphere, and at really good prices.

Afterwards we had a girl's night out to see The Vow at the movie theater with some of the other international students. Tickets were cheaper than what I'd normally pay for a Friday night movie back home, which was a good thing! The movie was your typical, sappy chick flick (and I may or may not have cried a few times), but I thought it was good overall. Since 10 people couldn't all fit in the large taxi, I walked home with 2 other girls from another flat. I think I'm starting to get used to this whole "walking" thing :)

Today was a much-appreciated lazy day. Doing laundry took a bit more time and money than I expected, and I'm very thankful I'll only have to do it every two weeks or so. After laundry I watched some Harry Potter and spent too much time on Pinterest. A lot of the other students went to the football (soccer) match at the Stadium of Light, which I heard was a good game but Sunderland lost in 5 minutes of overtime. I know I'm going to go to a match at some point while I'm here, but tickets cost about 25 pounds (so about... 40 bucks?). I'm not used to having to pay (especially not that much money) to go to a university game; at App, students get in for free for every home game played, whether it's American football or basketball or anything. Once it warms up a little I'll go to one; I just didn't like the sound of paying that much money to sit in 30-degree weather to see a team that I didn't know anything about play another team I didn't know anything about (I promise I have loads of school spirit, just maybe not for this uni yet!).

Tomorrow we go to Newcastle for the day! I haven't a clue what there is to do there, but I'm hoping to get some sweet pics at some point. Stay tuned! :)

- At the movies, you're given an assigned seat when you buy your tickets.

- Ketchup is called either ketchup, catsup, or red sauce. And most of the time if you ask for it, you get a teeny tiny amount that you have to pay for. Laaame.

- I think I'm going to start naming my blogs after some obscure word that appears in that day's posting. That way I won't have to worry about being creative (hence, "Red Sauce").

- "Digestives" are really common and delicious cookies/biscuits/things, that have absolutely nothing to do with being easily digestible (or at least I don't think they do).

- Emma Watson was apparently in London yesterday for a meet-and-greet with fans. It's so cool being so close to all these famous British actors!

Shutters

This morning's adventures were almost the complete opposite of yesterday's; the bus never came, so my flatmate Anna and I had a (not so) pleasant 45-minute walk to the art building in freezing rain. Let's hope that doesn't have to happen again anytime soon. Things did start to look up once class started though! We actually got to do some test photos with the 5x4 camera using paper negatives. With the much-needed help of my group, I developed, fixed, stopped, washed, and dried my first-ever film print! The subject matter isn't exactly the most exciting thing on the planet (cutlery from Poundworld), but I was proud of myself. I was so giddy inside, I'm sure all the other second-year photo students thought I was crazy. The professor, Dave, was standing by the wash bin talking to some students and he saw mine sitting in the wash bin with all the others. He picked it up and started commenting on how "the exposure is just perfect, the use of the shallow depth of field is great, the composition and contrast, etc..." Then he asked whose it was and I meagerly raised my hand in the back. Dave looked surprised that the "best photo neg of the day" was from a student who had never been inside a dark room before Tuesday, and how the other students are probably going to get tired of hearing similar comments from him throughout the course of the term. Words cannot describe how good I felt.

I grabbed a toasted cheese and tomato ciabatta for lunch today at one of the cafes on campus, which tasted like HEAVEN because it was so warm and I was so cold. I'll definitely be getting another one sometime. My finance tutor must have forgotten about our presentations because she didn't say a word about it during the entire 2-hour workshop. I was definitely not complaining! However, I didn't really sleep well last night, and I may or may not have dozed off in the middle of class, and she may or may not have called me out on it... that'll be the first and the last time that'll ever happen, haha :)

Ashley, Storm, and I went to something called the Globe Cafe tonight; it's kind of like a place for people around the world to hang out and drink tea/coffee. It meets at one of the local churches on Thursday nights. We basically just played Scrabble with a bunch of British people all night. It's nice to hang out with people who share the same values as you; I really missed church. We all had a jolly good time, so I'm thinking it's definitely something we'll be going back to!

- One and two pounds are both in coin form, so whenever I get change back I feel like I'm getting ripped off.

- As mentioned, they drive really really fast over here. I could practically feel my stomach in my throat flying over a few speed bumps earlier today.

- There's a kid in front of me in one of my lectures that has a mullet. Good to know the Englishmen know how to rock a schweet hairdo.

New Things

Having a break during the middle of the week is really nice. While it would be cool to instead have no Friday classes with and a 3-day weekend, I'm thoroughly enjoying sleeping in and doing nothing during the middle of the week. Since Lily (flatmate) doesn't have Wednesday classes either, we decided to go to Bridges and do some shopping. She works at Subway back at her home in Australia, so we stopped by the Subway here to see if there were any differences in the menus. I was feeling adventurous so I ordered something called a chicken tikka, not having any clue what I was about to eat (Google later informed me tikka is a type of curry, so that explains why I wasn't a huge fan of it, but my belly was thankful for food nonetheless).

Today I bought a satchel at T.K. Maxx; it's just like T.J. Maxx, but just with a different name. I've been researching what the letters stand for but haven't come to any real conclusion why the name is different over here. I also found some adorable boots from a Payless-type shoe store and a leather jacket that was half-price from a place called Peacocks. Most girls have a billion shoes or a billion purses, but I'm a jacket girl. Since I only brought one with me (besides a rain jacket), I've been having serious withdrawals. Now that I have a leather jacket, I can look super cool and fit in with the other billion people who wear leather over here! Also, I invested in some real dishware and cutlery from Poundworld, bought some stamps so I can mail postcards/letters, and finished up the PowerPoint for tomorrow's group presentation. Laundry can wait until the weekend.

About half an hour after I got back to the flat, my other roomie Shelby asked if I wanted to go with her to find a good coffee place. We ended up walking all the way back to Bridges, where I stumbled upon an awesome canvas union jack painting thing on sale for £2.50, so that's currently hanging in my room now. My feet are pretty tired from all the walking (I looked it up, and walking to and from Bridges two times in a row is around 5 and a half miles... so I'm definitely getting my fair share of exercise in!). I'm really looking forward to tonight; I have a skype date scheduled with my fantastic boyfriend Steven. It is kind of difficult being 4000 miles away, but we make it work and I'm so thankful for it :)

- There are a lot of security/policemen who walk around the town. I've only seen maybe one or two police cars, but probably at least 20 of them on foot since I got here.

- The ambulance is bright yellow, with a small yellow and green checkerboard pattern that goes down the side. It looks pretty cool, actually!

FWOC, FMAT

Aka, "First [Official] Week Of Classes, For Me At Least." With about 30 people waiting at the bus stop when I arrived this morning, I was almost certain I was going to have to walk to campus. Yesterday morning I had missed the bus by about 15 seconds, so I knew it wasn't that bad of a walk, but I was feeling lazy like always. Luckily, the bus driver stopped farther back than he usually does, so I somehow managed to be the first on. This was going to be a good day.

I figured out how to locate books in the library, check them out myself, and print things off all before my morning class. The library staff were exceptionally helpful despite my dumbfounded looks and strange accent. My financial reporting lecturer is somewhere from Egypt or the middle East so I can hardly understand him. It's a good thing I'm used to taking business classes from international professors though; just give me about two weeks and I'll be able to decipher what he says. Until then, I'll just have to listen extra hard to catch everything he says about the ASC and SSAPs and IFRSs and the IASC and IOSCO (I counted them up: 14 total acronyms about financial accounting standards in a one-hour lecture. Bleck!). Studio photography today was just as challenging too; my professor taught us about exposure placement and light meters and the inverse square law and dark room developing and and and... let's just say that I'm SO thankful I don't have classes tomorrow. My brain needs a break.

After heating up a frozen pizza and garlic bread (accompanied by 3 cups of heavenly sweet tea), I started looking up tickets for the Coldplay concert. Aaand apparently they are sold out. Mind you, the concert is in June. So I checked some of the other venues they'll be playing in England, and all of those were sold out too. I guess since Coldplay came from London, they would naturally be really popular here. I probably should have thought about that. Oh well, I'll just have to find something else to save for!

Tomorrow will be a get-things-done day. I'm hoping to do a load of laundry, find a post office, buy some real bowls/cups/silverware (we've been washing plastic cups and forks for over a week now, so it's probably time to invest in something that won't break after 3 uses), find a book satchel, and put some finishing touches on a presentation for Thursday.

- The sinks have separate faucets for hot and cold water, so your hands are either molten lava hot or freezing cold.

- Copy/printer paper is skinnier and taller than what we have in the US, so all the handouts I've been given stick out of my notebook just a tad. Makeshift dividers? I'll take it!

- Even the library is super eco-friendly; the lights have motion sensors that automatically turn on/off when you pass through all the aisles.

- People are just so friendly and helpful, including both the students/staff at the university and the locals in general.

- I suddenly miss wearing my Chacos back home.

- My cereal has penguins on it :)

Lessons Learned

I felt so healthy at breakfast eating my strawberry jam toast and granny smith apple. With only one class today, I had some time to myself to get some things organized. I managed to e-reserve three books in the library that will hopefully be ready to pick up tomorrow. One of them is actually a textbook I need for class, so if I'm really lucky I'll be able to have the book checked out for the entire semester (with lots of renewals in between), which would save me some money. Tomorrow morning before class I'll also probably stop by the library and figure out how to print things out; the professors/tutors here put all their lecture notes and PowerPoint slides online, so we can just print them out beforehand and bring them to class. It's nice not having to scribble down a bazillion words at the speed of light.

Because I already have my first group presentation to give on Thursday in Financial Reporting, I met up with my group members after class to knock it out. I was not looking forward to talking about corporate governance or remuneration committees to people who have been studying it for years. Heck, I didn't even know what those words meant until a few days ago! But of course the meeting wasn't nearly as bad as I anticipated; the two other girls in my group were super nice. One is from Sunderland, the other from Newcastle. Although I'm sure I was the epitome of the stupid American, I couldn't help but ask them question after question. This was my first chance to have an extended conversation with real English folks and find out what it's like to live in the UK. By the end of the hour and a half meeting, we had finished the PowerPoint, and I had found out that English girls aren't too different from us American girls! They talk about the same things (like boyfriends and clothes and how much they like/dislike their professors), just in a much cooler accent than me :)

Another trip to Aldi resulted in breakfast foods, Nutella (!!!), sugar, and a few more frozen dinners. **note to self: make sure you bring enough cash, because Aldi does not like my American credit or debit card. Something about it not having a "chip" inside.** I did, however, finally got my sweet tea fix!! I had to eyeball everything because we don't have any measuring cups yet, and I had never made only 1.5 liters of tea before, but I think it turned out alright. It's so weird being the "southern girl" of the flat, because at home I'm usually the one that tries to disassociate herself as much as possible from the south. There are some people from Maryland, West Virginia, and Washington state, but I'm the only one who drinks sweet tea and knows about the glories of Bojangles and Cookout. And of course the other girls from Germany and France haven't a clue about it.

- Tax is included in everything you buy here. It's so nice.

- Also, people only tip at restaurants/pubs if the staff was exceptionally good.

- Because I'm so much farther north than I was back home, I get about an hour and a half less of daylight. Combine that with an 90% chance of cloudiness on any given day and you'll start to miss the sun.

- If you describe someone as being a "knob," it basically means that they are a jerk, as in the sentence, "He became a knob, so I broke up with him!"

- People from Sunderland are called "Mackems," and they live on the River Wear. People from Newcastle are called "Geordies," and they live on the River Tyne. Even though it's the same river and there are practically no differences between the two groups, you better be really careful that you don't get them mixed up. These are VERY proud people.

Super Bowl Sunday

**note to self: never go grocery shopping on a Sunday **

Apparently the buses don't run on Sundays (at least not the free ones), so my flatmates and I took a 25ish-minute trek to the Bridges to get our grocery shopping done for the week. It's so wild, they have two grocery stores and an international market inside of a mall, so it really is a one-stop shopping center! You can get your groceries, clothes, beauty supplies, electronics, and pretty much anything you can think of all within a one- or two-block radius. Some of my groceries included: frozen meals, granny smith apples, strawberry jam, tea bags, a baking sheet, and a small pitcher for making sweet tea.

I woke up to the sound of another maintenance guy banging on the door... somehow, the doorknob in the lobby keeps falling off every time we use it (it's actually quite funny, having to pick up the doorknob off the floor whenever you want to leave, then just watching it fall back down once you've left). He wasn't able to fix it today but tomorrow they'll send someone with the right tools to replace it. I might have slept wrong last night, because I pulled a shoulder muscle in the shower this morning and I haven't really been able to function properly since then (if you don't know me that well, you'll soon learn that I am an expert at injuring myself). The pulled muscle made carrying 10 or 15 pounds of groceries across town a bit more uncomfortable than I would have liked, but I survived. Although ibuprofen (and most every other medicine) makes me break out for some strange reason, I'm thinking I'll be taking some very soon.

Tonight is the Super Bowl! It's a shame that practically none of the pubs here will be showing it though, and with good reason; kickoff wouldn't be until 11:30 pm local time, and Sunday nights aren't exactly a big party night for these Englishmen. I'm not a huge Giants or Patriots fan, but it's the one time of the year I actually look forward to watching the commercials. Even if I were to find a pub that was staying open late enough to show it, my friend Katie noted that they would probably have different commercials here anyway, which I hadn't even thought of. So I suppose I'll just stay updated on the game via people's status on Facebook, and catch up on the commercials once they get uploaded to Youtube in a few days. Thank the Lord for modern day technology!

It's officially been a week since I first arrived, but it seems like it's been ages. I feel like I know my flatmates so well already, I can almost predict what they'll say occasionally. I've come a long way since my first night. Last Sunday, I regretted coming over here and felt like I had made a huge mistake. But now that I'm finally getting settled in a bit more, I can tell that this is going to be a good semester. I'm presented with new challenges every day, whether it's getting to my classes or reading street signs or understanding the locals or paying for things in a different currency, but every day I'll learn/notice little things that make my time here a little easier. Such as:

- When a car is at a stoplight, the light will turn yellow both before it turns green and before it turns red.

- They're suuuper eco-friendly here. The heat turns off automatically, public transit/walking is the main source of transportation, and you either have to buy plastic bags or bring your own at grocery stores.

- "Bangers and mash" is a really common meal, which just consists of mashed potatoes and sausage.

(Old) York

First off, I love England. Our trip to York went really really well. It took about an hour and a half to drive down there in the big coach bus, and the ride took us through the typical-looking English countryside, sheep and hills and everything. I kept getting flashbacks of People to People from years ago... half of my trip on P2P was spent riding on a bus staring out the window at the UK countryside. I was feeling really nostalgic, and I still couldn't believe that I had come back for 5 months. This is gonna be good.

Our study abroad adviser had organized and accompanied us on the trip. She had given us a handout of things to do/places to go in York, and most of them required money to get in. A good group of us went to Clifford's Tower because it only cost about £3. It seemed incredibly out of place, sitting on top of a grass bank in the middle of a city. Since England is so flat and they don't really build skyscrapers in the towns, there wasn't really much of a skyline to ooo and ahh over, but it was still pretty. A cold front had just come through so we were all miserably cold and were quickly loosing feeling in all our extremities, so we briskly walked (haha my puns are awful) to a pub called Yates for warmth and sustenance. They had a two-for-£7.95 deal, so I split that with one of my roomies and got some beef stew and dumplings (which was AMAZING).

We then hit the town for shopping and picture taking and doing whatever we felt like! I found some really cute English stationary so now I can start writing actual letters and sending them to people back in ye olde US of A. There happened to be a crafts fair going on in one of the little

churches, so we paid 50 pence for entry and checked out all sorts of cute little handmade/vintage trinkets. I found a beautiful Asian perfume bottle that I fell in love with, and the seller cut me a deal on it so I got it for really cheap. There were a lot of street bands

performing and they were all pretty impressive! I really liked one of the first ones we saw called

The Glass Caves, so we all pitched in and bought their CD (one of the songs on their CD is titled "Eboracum." I just happened to be reading about the city of York on Wikipedia when I found out that "Eboracum" is actually the Latin name for York. How cool!). We stopped in a music store where I got my guitar fix for a few minutes, and then it started snowing. By this time we had been walking around in below-freezing temperatures for a few hours, and were ready to warm up with some hot chocolate and brownies. Walking back to the coach was lovely because the town had been covered in snow, although it was a bit cold and slippery.

I don't remember much of the 2-hour trip home because I was snoozing through most of it, but we did pull over about halfway through to let a few people relieve themselves. Mind you, it was still snowing at this point. And there were no bathrooms anywhere. So they did their business right outside the coach. Major props to them. Haha gross.

Dinner tonight consisted of a frozen pizza and Oreos. I haven't been to the grocery store since last Sunday, so I might stop by Aldi's tomorrow to restock the fridge for the upcoming week. Hopefully the weather will clear up a bit and it will stop sleeting in Sunderland soon. Looks like tonight will be another lazy night in; all this walking is really taking it out of me! I'm really looking forward to the end of the semester though, because I'll hopefully have some really great legs :)

Gotta Get Down On Friday

It's so hard to believe that I've only been here for 6 days. It feels like it's been forever.

I only had one class today, Intro to Strategic Management. There were supposed to be 25 people in the class, but only 6 of us showed up. Again I'll state that 2 hour classes DRAG on. I'm so

used to either 50 minutes or 1 hour and 15 minutes, so those last 45 minutes kill me. But I'm sure I'll get used to it. Once I was done with class, I went to the Bridges shopping center and found some fabulous sales, for which I was VERY grateful (if you didn't already know, I'm probably one of the cheapest/most frugal people you've ever met when it comes to buying clothes). I got a long-sleeved shirt AND a dress for £10! I love the feeling of finding a great deal. So far it's been pretty difficult to find any thrift stores, but I'm sure once I get to know my way around town a little better I'll spot some.

For dinner my flatmates and I split some fish and chips from a little takeout place down the street. The ladies who took our order were cracking up at our accents the entire time we were there, and I wasn't really sure why, so I was kind of confused, but it was all in good fun. Even though we got loads of food, I doubt we'll be going back anytime soon; unflavored fried fish sitting in pools of grease isn't really my favorite cuisine. Bleck. We'll find a better place next time.

I really miss sweet tea and freshly baked cookies. You can find tea bags anywhere, and I'll be purchasing a pitcher, heaps of sugar, and cookie dough very very soon. I can't wait.

Tomorrow is our trip to York! It's about an hour and half drive, and so far all the international students I've talked to are going so that'll definitely be fun. It's supposed to rain and snow all day so that'll undoubtedly put a damper on our trip (haha I'm so punny!) but I'm looking forward to it nevertheless. Also, I'm really looking forward to go see Chicago when it comes to the theater. And the circus will be in town next weekend! AND I found out that Coldplay is going to be playing at the big Stadium of Light in June... tickets are a bit pricey for Coldplay, but who else from home can say they saw Coldplay in England? I've heard they put on an excellent show and I love all their music. I'll have to stay super frugal (which isn't too hard for me), but it'll be the perfect way to end my time here! So many things to look forward to this semester, it's gonna be great :D

Things noticed:

- English people love takeout.

- Girls will wear tights and skirts/shorts/dresses to class and around town. It hasn't gotten out of the 30s since we've been here. Crazy folks.

- "Lay's" potato chips are called "Walker's."

- Greggs, which is a bakery/bread/sandwich shop, are located on every corner. I've probably seen 6 different ones since I've been here. These people love sandwiches.

FDOC

First day of classes! Well, for me at least. All the "modules" as they call them actually started on Monday, but since I had orientation & whatnot I couldn't make it to the first two days. So, today was my first official experience in a UK classroom, and let me tell you: it's totally different than America.

Finding my photography class wasn't all that bad, surprisingly. I caught the bus to the main campus, then navigated my way south for about a 20 minute walk (for some reason the
photography/fine art building is out in no man's land... it took me a solid 5 minutes to even find it on the campus map. I've heard that they were supposed to tear it down and rebuild a new one on campus, but clearly they want to make their art students work extra hard for their degrees. Or maybe they think that we're the most capable of finding it because we're so observant and aesthetically-oriented. Ah, I digress.). I walked to the top of a hill and found the creepy looking old "Ashburne" building; vines growing all over it, surrounded by a 10-foot gate, and not a soul in sight. Granted, I was an hour early for class, but nevertheless I got a little weirded out.

Once I was inside things started looking up a bit. There was a tiny cafeteria on the main floor, so I grabbed their breakfast special for £1.60. **note to self: bacon here is actually country ham... and what looks like orange juice in the vending machine is actually super-carbonated-kick-you-in-the-face soda** The cafeteria lady was really sweet, so I'll probably be going back soon. My photography class went super well; I found out it's a film class, so the "tutor" introduced us to basic studio lighting, tungsten lights, and what's called a 5x4 Toyo large format camera (see picture). I've been wanting to experiment with film and figure out how a lot of these other cameras work, so I was itching with excitement! We got in groups and set up/took down the Toyo one at a time; my group members volunteered myself to go first, and somehow I got it set up the fastest out of all the other groups. The professor even noted that "look, the non-photography student has it set up first! Come on the rest of you." (And again I was beaming with joy inside... A BRITISH photography professor gave ME kudos the FIRST day of class. Ahhhh!)... Long story longer, THIS CLASS IS GONNA RULE.

I'm also taking an advanced Financial Reporting class... long story short, that class is not gonna rule. My background in business is not very extensive at all, and the UK's standards of business are different than America's, so I'll probably be doing a lot of out-of-class studying for it. But the tutor seems pretty understanding about it, and so far her teaching style is easy to follow (gotta love those powerpoint slide handouts). The same feeling-of-unpreparedness will probably apply to my Intro to Strategic Management class, but we'll see about that tomorrow.

Last night was kind of a lazy night in. I hung out with one of my other friends from App and then had a skype date with my wonderful boyfriend, which was very much appreciated. I'm feeling another lazy night tonight; maybe I'll cook one of the many frozen dinners I bought a few days ago. Maybe I'll watch some Harry Potter (again, props to Steven for providing me with such entertainment). Who knows!

Even some more things I've noticed:

- Nobody wears bookbags here. Like seriously, nobody. All the girls and even the guys wear book satchels/shoulder bags/man purses. Looks like a satchel is on my shopping list now, too (@ Jason: no worries, nobody stole my booksatchel ;) ).

- Girls have an obsession with unnatural hair dye. I've seen quite a few purple-, blue-, and bright-orange-heads.

- Two hour classes drag on.

- My finance professor used the words "dubious," "farcical," and "brilliant" during her lecture today. I love England.

Gone 'Splorin

I woke up to the sound of a maintenance guy banging - quite loudly, might I add - on my door. I had noticed that the faucet in my room was a bit leaky, and even though I didn't report it, somehow they knew... creepy. But no more leaks for me!

Today was a day of exploring, aka walking until you can't walk anymore. I first picked up my campus ID card so I wouldn't have to pay for the bus anymore, then we hopped on the bus and headed east in search of the beach. And we found it (after I had asked for directions in my best attempt at an English accent from a lady at a petrol station... no funny looks, so I guess I'm a pretty convincing Brit!). The wind was exceptionally strong and crisp blowing off the North Sea. Despite the "no dogs allowed" signs posted everywhere, we spotted a good handful of people walking their dogs on the beach. These Geordies are such rebels. After a few minutes of photo ops, we grabbed some lunch at the Cafe Bungalow: a precious little cafe with a great view of the ocean.

After we hitched the bus back into town I did a bit of shopping. My clothes were getting wrinkly-er and wrinkly-er by the second since I hadn't bought coat hangers yet and they were still sitting in my suitcase. My desk was entirely too dark and I was still freezing every night, so I also bought a lamp and a blanket from a store called Wilkinson in town, which is kind of like England's version of Walmart/Target (aka, one of my new favorite places!).

I start classes tomorrow, so I'm really anxious to figure out how to navigate my way around all the campuses. My first class doesn't even meet on campus, so it'll definitely be an adventure trying to make my way to a random building 20 minutes away from a bus stop. By the end of this semester, I have a feeling I'm going to have really great legs.

Some other things I've noticed:

- They serve slaw with almost every meal.

- The cars are all super tiny hatchbacks. And no one puts stickers on them. How sad.

- All of the electrical outlets (or "wall sockets" as they call them) have switches on them so you can turn them on and off. I have yet to figure out why.

- Once you learn to understand their accent, the locals are really friendly and they all seem to love talking to Americans.

- Their shoes and clothes are sized differently, so I'll have to do some experimenting to figure out what sizes I wear in the UK.

- Chicago the musical will be showing at one of the theaters here; I cannot WAIT to go see it!