Friday, October 28, 2011

Adjustment

It wasn't a very eventful week, which is why there is a lack of update.  I've mostly just been going to class and doing a lot of reading for it.

On Thursday, though, Carolyn's parents came to visit her and took me out for dinner at the hotel they were staying at.  They were really sweet!  It was nice and the food was yummy.  I had fish and chips for the first time.

I stayed up to finish reading Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and to talk to Janet.  I don't think I fell asleep until at least 4:30am.  I had to get up at 8:30am to get ready for my class at 10am.  And I had lectures and seminars all day.

I really do not like how some things are run here.  During my Gender and Women's Studies' seminar (discussion), we were told to bring in something that showed class and gender, be it an advertisement, newspaper article, or a book or movie.  I chose The Help.  We were going around sharing and commenting.  I really enjoyed this discussion, but when it got around to the girl sitting next to me, she cut me off and skipped my turn.  Now, I understand that she is running the class, but students should have some say in what they would like to discuss.  I think it was rude that she cut me off and skipped my turn when I put the time, thought, and effort in the assignment.  And besides that, we simply moved on, ignored the activity altogether and started to just talk about what she wanted.  It felt like she didn't care about our opinions, she just wanted us to know hers.  Why would she have us do this task if she didn't want us to have an in depth discussion about it?

Anyway, I was pretty upset over the whole ordeal.  And frankly, a little disappointed.  I don't feel like I learned anything.  It was honestly just a waste of time.

I finally managed to download the 18th episode of City Hunter.  I plan on making a cheese toastie and eating it in bed with some tea while watching City Hunter.  Yay!  It's the weekend.

Cheers! :)

Saturday, October 22, 2011

EPIC FAIL XD

Thursday (Oct. 20)

I made 닭죽 (Chicken Porridge) for the first time and it turned out pretty delicious.  Carolyn said it was really good!  I was pretty proud of myself.

She and I spent a while in the kitchen (why does Korean food always take so much longer to make?), with her playing music and us singing along.

Carolyn, Cíara and I made an attempt to finish watching Tangled.  I think we ended up finishing this time.  It took nearly 4 nights because internet here is terrible.

There was one night we also watched the Princess Bride.  I fell in love all over again.  I love that movie.

Friday (Oct. 21)

I had class aaallllll day.

I came back from class to get my mail and I got my letter from Justin!  It made me very happy.  I am currently working on sending something awesome back.  I ended up decorating with the things he sent me.

Friday night was actually really lame.  Carolyn and I went to the library because I needed to print things and she had books to pick up.  I am so excited to have things printed out!  Yay!

I could sense Carolyn probably needed some alone time...so I went to go bug Shaun to play F1. I have no idea how long we played.  We ended up watching The King's Speech, which I love, and messing around on Google Maps.  And talking to Kirsten on Skype.

I don't think I went to bed until at least 4am.  I just miss that girl so much!  And I don't like not being able to talk to her every day.  I miss our intellectual conversations on life and people and the way she says my name...Hehe.  Just kidding. :-P

But I really do miss all my friends and my family.  I was a little homesick on Thursday.

Saturday (Oct. 22)


Carolyn and I were supposed to go to Sheffield today and it didn't work out.  We got up, and there weren't even any buses that went out early enough to catch our train.  Ridiculous.  We had a little misadventure taking a different train to Preston, buying some breakfast and magazines, and coming back to Lancaster to sleep and do work.  Carolyn had to text Zhen for the times to get back on the next train.  We will be sending in our billion tickets to try and get a refund.

This makes me incredibly happy right now

Life isn't perfect.  It's full of imperfections and that's what makes it interesting. :)



Cheers! :)

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Feeling This

Sunday (Oct. 16)

After coming back to the flat, I watched some Friends with Carolyn (surprise, surprise).  We stayed up quite late...I think we had too much energy after spending time working in the library.  We were up until 2am making food.  And I guess that night was the night to talk to everyone because I think I skyped with nearly my entire friends circle plus family.

Monday (Oct. 17)

Despite staying up late the night before, I managed to get up early!  I got up at around 7:30am.  I got back from one lecture at around noon, and just hung out in my flatmate, Shaun's, room watching Extreme Couponing and Hoarders.  I miss TV...

Carolyn, Cíara, and I had a movie night watching Friends and Tangled.  It's too bad we didn't get to finish, though, because it took forever to buffer.  Internet here is really annoying, but I guess it's better than not having it at all.

We also made late night food and had girl talk again.

Tuesday (Oct. 18)

I got back from classes Tuesday feeling pretty good.  I had my creative writing class, and I think it went really well.  People that read my piece told me they really liked it.  Although, I suppose I can't really imagine someone coming into class and telling another person they didn't like their piece of writing.

We went through an exercise where we took the clichéd, "It was a dark and stormy night."  My tutor told us to write two more lines to create a lead, or hook, to grab the reader.  Mine was something like this:

It was a dark and stormy night.  I looked at my sister, and I knew she understood the damage that had just been done.  As I rose from the body, I dropped the gun and turned into the kitchen to watch the blood from my hands.

I must have done a pretty good job because she said that my lead could probably end with just the first sentence.  Maybe, I'm a better writer than I thought I was. :)

This guy in my class invited me back to his flat to have some tea.  It was very English.  We also spent some time in Waterstone talking about books.  He lent me his copy of Jane Eyre because I have yet to read it.  Ah!  I have so much to read.

Carolyn, Zhen, and I also booked tickets to go see some real football!  We're going to see the Arsenal vs. Wigan game on December 3rd.

Cíara took me and Carolyn out with some of her friends to a club called Revolutions.  It was a reaaally good night.  We played a drinking game with cards called Vendetta.  Basically, you put down a card and choose someone to drink for the number of seconds corresponding with the card.  If someone else around the table has the same number card, they can save that chosen person and pick someone else to drink.  I ended up drinking my entire bottle of wine again.  Hee.

Wednesday (Oct. 19)

I had no class today!  Whoohoo!

I stayed in recovering from the night before...I actually wasn't that bad. Maybe a little dehydrated.

I should probably have done some work today, but I'm such a naughty procrastinatorrrr.  I just don't want to.  Especially on a day off.  This is my problem.  I only end up doing work on days where I have to be productive by going to class or working.  Still, I've been a bit out of my mind here.  I think I'm still getting used to being here, because I've been stupid and forgetful lately.  Tomorrow is a new day!  I need to wake up from this sleep!

I'm gonna do work today, and watch Pirates of the Caribbean with Carolyn.  And can I just say that I miss Korea even more than I miss home?  I was going through some of my pictures with her, and I could feel my heart aching like I was missing a long, lost lover.

This entry will updated with some photos from the night before later.

Cheers! :)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Le Week-end

Friday (Oct. 14)

I had classes alllll day.  I remember just being really frustrated at getting lectured all day.  It was pretty depressing.

After sitting in class all day, I had far too much energy in my body.  I just wanted to playyyy.  So I went and learned some guitar from Shaun.  It took me a looong time and I think it was a fail, because I probably couldn't play it again if anyone asked.

I had to work on my creative writing piece too.  I still hadn't a clue what I was going to write about.  It ended up being about me, drawing inspiration from the movie The Proposal. Yeah, don't ask. It's pretty terrible.

Carolyn had to watch a movie for her class (Indiana Jones!), so I basically sat in her room all evening working on my creative writing/watching Indiana Jones.  We had some girl talk in between. :)

Somewhere in there we played some Corridor Jousting.  Take a look below!



I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but I played Shaun's Formula 1 game for quite some time...longer than I expected.  But I got better!  I kept at it, and Cíara was telling me she was impressed with my patience.  I went from 2:05 to 2:00 to 1:55 to 1:43...I was so proud of myself!

More girl talk...

Then sitting around, chatting in Greg's room, playing more Formula 1 in Shaun's, playing guitar and singing...then, everyone went to bed while Carolyn and I stayed up to do laundry.  At 4am.  It was brilliant and stupid, all at once.  While we waited for our laundry, we watched the Formula 1 race in South Korea. :)

Saturday (Oct. 15)

Because I ended up falling asleep at around 6:30am, just before the sun came up, I slept in and woke up at 1pm.  I did some work (finishing up my story and writing up my Global Identity response).  I later got some food with Carolyn at the Chinese restaurant we went to on our first day here.  I had the sweet and sour chicken with fried rice.  Mm...

Then we played board games.  Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit.  I suck at games.

Girl talk!

Sunday (Oct. 16)

I woke up early to wash up and get ready for the day, but it was so cold, I crawled right back into bed.  I ended up falling asleep.  (Surprise surprise)

I met up with Carolyn and Cíara at the library to get some reading/studying done.  We made quite a bit of progress.  I'm pretty satisfied. :)



I don't know what I'm going to do now.  Guess I'll just curl up with a book.  Something will likely happen, and I'll have to update again.

It's a bit rainy here today.  I hope yours was sunnier. <3

Cheers! :)

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Hooky

Sorry I've been skipping out on writing!  It's late now and I really should get to bed.  But I'll have a new, exciting entry tomorrow! :)

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Night Drive

I don't miss home, but I do miss the people I left behind.  My sister and I talked for a while and ended up going to sleep at around 3am.  Thus, I woke up at around 10:30am today.  I was lounging around the flat for a while before going to my Creative Writing lecture at 1pm.  It consisted mostly of house keeping things.  The professor had pink hair.  It was awesome.  And she went over a lot of things that we shouldn't write about.  Which makes it harder for me to figure out what my piece is going to be on, and it's due Saturday.  Oh, boy...

After class, I attempted to write while sitting in Carolyn's room watching an Indiana Jones movie.  What's with Lancaster and watching movies for classes?  Not that I'm complaining.  Just curious.  We had grilled cheese for lunch (sooo yummy...it's our shared comfort food now), and then we went on an evening drive with Cíara to test out her tires.

The 3 of us drove into town to check out some other parts to take pictures. We were such tourists.  I took a bunch of pictures!  I adore the fact that it is so quaint here.  It was nice to get some fresh air.

When we got back, I went to the re-scheduled movie screening for my class.  Lucky me, it's only a 2 minute walk from my flat.

After my movie, I ran into Carolyn on her way back. I have perfect timing! We tried doing work again from where we left off, but ended up getting hungry and making tea (how English!).  I also had ramen.  And Jude was in the kitchen, so we sat around eating and talking for some time.

Writing this creative writing piece is much harder than I expected it to be.  I'm a little nervous about putting it up for critique. Ah!

I gotta go to bed soon to get up before the fire alarm goes off at 9:10am.

Cheers! :)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Ring the Alarm

Looking back now, yesterday was quite eventful.  I was thinking about it and yesterday feels like ages ago!

I had just 2 classes yesterday.  A Gender and Women's Studies lecture at 1pm, and then a Creative Writing seminar (discussion) at 3pm.  I felt a little guilty for being so tired during my first class.  I started to do that thing where you catch yourself drifting off and wake yourself up.  I don't even now if my notes are legible...I'm too scared to check.

Creative Writing is the one class I was really excited for!  I went and it was a smaller group of students.  The professor seems really nice too.  She hates American rom-coms just as much as I do!  Haha.  Although, I have to admit that I like watching them every once in a while.  I met some friends in that class. I think I've got most of their names down too.  I sat next to Tom who seemed pretty excited about me being American.  He said he could tell.  Hee.  He wanted to be Facebook friends, but I couldn't find him.

After class, I came back to do...absolutely nothing.  Honestly, I don't even know what I was doing in my room for the next few hours.  I just remember Greg coming to my door asking if I wanted to go to the Beer and Ale Society meeting with him.  Heck yes!  He and Shaun went first to meet up with Jack at County Bar (it's on the north side of campus), and Jude and I waited for Carolyn to get ready.

When we got there, there were a lot of people, but most of them were guys.  I think, now, I want to join just because of that fact.  Because ladies can drink too.

The flatmates + Jack started walking back because the society was moving their party to the Grad Bar (it's past Grizedale, on the far south side of campus).  Carolyn, Jude, and I decided we wanted to get work done at the library.  We were there reading for a while...maybe an hour and half?  But I started drifting off into sleep again.  I don't know how much of my reading I have actually retained, but I'll find out tonight!

The library was funny.  I was sitting in the reading room at a desk, when Jude turns around and tells me that there's going to be a loud alarm in about 3 minutes.  He tells me he just wanted to let me know, and not to freak out because it's loud and it can be scary the first time.  Haha.  So we didn't tell Carolyn and this loud voice comes out from the speakers letting the whole world know that the library was going to close in half an hour.  I had quite a good laugh.

Today, I slept in till 11:30am, got dressed, and went into town with Carolyn.  We went and did some shopping, and got groceries.  Ahhh...they have Topshop here and I nearly died.  I just wanted to buy everything.  There was this other store, River Island, that had a 10% discount for students.  Gah.  I wish I had a million pounds just to shop.  I ended up just buying a pair of earrings and a necklace from this store called Accessorize (and with the student discount, the necklace was basically free!), and then another pair of earrings at Claire's plus a ring.

We got back at around 5pm, so we spent a good part of the day out and about.  It was really nice! :)

Now, I'm in my room, everyone is quiet (studying, I think?), except outside I can hear all these people yelling at the bar.  Hehe.  It's fun.  I wish I could join them, but I should really work on my short story/creative writing piece and my assignment for my Global Identity class that I'm taking through the U.  Today was a nice day off, but tomorrow I only have 1 class (Creative Writing lecture) at 1pm, and then I have to go to the rescheduled showing of that movie, Adaptation, that we didn't get to see on Monday.  I wonder if the professor wanted me to take care of that?  I guess that means I have one more thing to do on my list of things to do tonight.  Busy, busy, busy...I hope everyone is well!

Oh, and for anyone reading this...you should comment!  It's nice hearing from you, and it's motivating for me if I have people who are actually interested in what's going on over here.  Anyone should be able to comment, even just anonymously.  So pass it along!

Cheers! :)


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The View from the Afternoon



For the sake of keeping updated, I will begin where I left off yesterday afternoon.


After getting back to my room and attempting to do my reading, I decided there was really no point in trying to get it all done today if we weren't even going to discuss anything until Friday.  Besides that, I have quite a bit of free time between now and then.  So, I gave up and just sat around on Facebook until the time came for class.


It's a good thing I left the flat 20 minutes early, because I had a lot of difficulty trying to find my next class. I swear -- a smaller campus makes it harder to find things. Before the professor started the movie, she explained that by the end, she would need 2 volunteers to be in charge of checking out movies and playing them each week.  Guess who got the job?


Turns out, the movie quit on us 15 minutes in, and I got it working again.  There was one guy that made the first attempt, and then I went to help.  He gave up on me, and another guy came down to try to fix it.  He eventually went to find help, but by the time he came back with the professor, I had gotten it up and running again.  She pulled me aside, asked me what had happened, said she would put in a complaint, and told me that if I wanted, I got the job.


So now I have a job!  Haha. I told Carolyn and Cíara, and they seem to think it's awesome -- they were both encouraging it.


To celebrate and catch up with each other on things that happened over the weekend, the 3 of us went over to Cartmel's bar to grab dinner and drink Corona.  And I was buzzed before I finished. Then, when we got back, instead of doing the reading each of us had to do, we played games and watched Friends...and chatted some more.  I finally went to sleep at a reasonable hour (12:30am) and woke up early (7:30am)!


And now...I'm all caught up!  I sent out emails to family this morning, updated my blog, and now I have to get ready for the day.  I hope all is well with everyone else, wherever you are.


Cheers! :)

Monday, October 10, 2011

First Day

The last night before class was spent in the flat playing a video game in Shaun's room, playing card games (Go Fish and War, for the curious), and watching my favorite TV show, Friends.  Carolyn showed me this website and we watched it on my computer in my room, starting from the beginning.

I had my first class today at 11am.  I was so excited, I didn't sleep much the night before...but now that I have time in between this class and the next, I decided to work on some reading, blog...and maybe nap.  :)

My first class today was Gender and Women's Studies 101.  I left the flat at maybe around 10:45am and got there early.  This campus is super small!  Back at home, I would typically leave the apartment at least a half hour before class started.  I love that everything is so close.  It makes life easy.  Thinking about it today, I'm already getting sad about leaving.  Because now that classes have started, I feel like I finally have a life!  Ha.  I am definitely starting to fall in love...

It is a little rainy here today, but not bad.  I just wore my white, waterproof jacket and my Converse.  Actually, the classroom I was in was really hot!  So it was kind of nice that it was cool out.

After my first class, I met up with Carolyn to run some errands and grab lunch.  We ate at Sultan's on campus.  I had a Tomato and Mozzarella panini with chips and a drink.  It was sooo good, but I couldn't finish.  I felt bad -- I hate leaving food.

Then we went to Waterstone, a bookstore here in the UK, and Proust's, Swann's Way, was screaming my name.  I bought it.  Excellent purchase.  I can't wait to curl up in bed and start reading it.

My next class is a film showing for my Literature and Film class.  I can't remember what we're watching, but I found out last night (when I was being an insomniac) that I actually do have quite a bit of reading to do before I go.  It begins at 5pm and I've still got about 3 hours to do it.  Better start now if I want to get started on Proust!

Cheers! :)

You can't see it here, but the lecture theatre my first class was in is on the left!

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Lancaster University, Week 1

I'm proud of myself for getting everything to fit!
Saturday (Oct. 1)

I woke up really nervous!  I was scared because even though I've been away from home for long periods of time before, I was never really by myself.  I always had family to rely on, and I was extra scared because I would have to adjust to a culture I wasn't familiar with.

My flight was at 2:30pm so I showed up at around noon.  My mom dropped me off but she left me and my sister to meet up with my cousin to have lunch there and send me off.  I was so nervous, I was afraid I'd throw up if I had anything to eat -- so I just ordered a wrap and salad with fries.  I was actually really sad about leaving Minnesota because of the gorgeous fall we were having.  I wanted to stay and go to the apple orchard, hang out with my friends outside with the smell of leaves all around us...I've always loved fall, but I never knew how much until I had to leave!

Minnesota Fall
Arriving in Atlanta was the easy part.  Getting from Atlanta to Manchester was even scarier.  It finally really hit me how far away I was going.  I could already hear everyone's accents and it was just a really crazy moment for me.  And I'm used to long flights and 14-hour jet-lag, but I was still scared, nervous, and really excited.  There was just so much anticipation.  I just had no idea what to expect.

Sunday (Oct. 2)

I arrived in Manchester airport on Sunday at around 8am.  That flight took forever and it took a lifetime just get through the border.  There was a huge line.  I think it took me 45 minutes.  It took me a while to find the bus that was supposed to take me to Lancaster University, but when I showed up, everyone was really nice and very helpful, as was everyone at the school when I arrived.

After I got settled into my room, I totally passed out.  I was sleeping when I heard a knock on my door, and it was just a few of my flatmates going around meeting everyone.  It was really nice, because I've always felt really awkward first meeting people.  They made it easy for me!  I have 7 other flatmates: Carolyn, Simone(?), Cíara, Zhen, Greg, Jude, and Shaun.  They are all really nice people.  It's a mix of exchange students and UK students.  Carolyn is from Buffalo, NY and Zhen is from China/Canada.  I haven't talked a lot with Simone, but she's from Brooklyn, NY.

Later that night, a few of us sat around in Greg's room chatting, drinking beer and wine, and attempting to watch There's Something About Mary.  Ahh...they drink a lot here!  Not to get drunk or anything, but they drink often.  It's fun and I love it.  It's different from college in the US because I feel like most kids don't actually know how to drink.  They get to that drunk point, and then drink more.  It never made sense to me.  I think kids here know how to drink more responsibly.

Monday (Oct. 3)
Today was the beginning of Freshers' Week and exchange student orientation stuff.  Basically, we were getting talked at all day about registering for classes, campus facilities, Students Union, college residence officers, International Student Support, history of Lancaster, etc.  It was so hard getting out of bed.  I got up at 9:25am and had to be in the building that is literally 20 ft from my flat.  So I took my time getting ready.

Zhen and I decided we would walk to the library during one of our breaks to register and get our student IDs -- because without it we had no access to internet.  I thought I was going to die.  It was so annoying!  We had to stand in line for nearly and hour and a half.  Ridiculous I tell ya.  We missed out on all the talks in between our break and lunch.  When we got back, Zhen and I found Carolyn to get lunch at Wong's Chinese restaurant.  It was really comforting.  They had all these Snoopy figurines -- they were adorable!

After lunch, the three of us went back to finish up getting talked at, and at the end we had cakes and tea (with milk!) like real Brits.  Then we headed back to our rooms to get ready to go into town with Cíara.  She is so sweet for taking us.  She has her car on campus, so she drove us into town to get groceries and other essentials.  We went into Sainsbury's and Wilkinson (which I think is like Target).


That night, we went out for pub golf on campus!  Colleges are different here.  It's not really separated into areas of study, it's more just a way to not get lost in the crowd (even though there are only about 12,000 students here).  There are 8 colleges here: Lonsdale, Fylde, County, Pendle, Bowland, Furness, Cartmel, and Grizedale.  I'm in Grizedale. :)


Each college has its own bar.  Like I said, they're serious about drinking here.  All the flatmates went out together (minus Simone), and it was just like bar hopping, except there was a 'par' for a specific drink at each college.  We started out at Lonsdale, I think, then the Graduate bar, and finished off at Grizedale.  I'm not actually positive that we only went to those 3, but I'm sticking with that for now!  Grizedale bar is really nice.  I really like it.  Although I think the Grad bar is my favorite.  I may be biased because everyone else was talking about how it was the best, but I really think that out of all the ones I went to that night, it was my favorite and definitely the most memorable.  My flatmates said it was the one that was most like a real bar, and I would have to agree.  It's small and cozy and not well-lit.  I haven't had that much to drink in a long time, but I had so much fun!  Everyone is really friendly and drama-free.  I don't know if it will always be that way throughout term, but it was nice going out with people who didn't get mad at each other for doing stupid things like my old friends did back at home.

We all came back and hung out in the kitchen until the early hours of the morning.  I love nights like this!  I think at home, I felt really lonely being around people and having "shallow" friendships.  At home, I feel like I have friends, just not ones that I can call up and sit around with.  Maybe it's just me, but I feel like people are more genuinely nice here, not just "Minnesota nice."

Tuesday (Oct. 4)

Today was registration day...and I don't really feel like talking about it or reliving it.  It was awful.  To keep it short, I waited in a huge line for about 2 hours, ran around trying to find the different departments to get into seminars, and ended up only getting to one.  This campus is really confusing to me because there aren't big, separate buildings like the U of M has.  It feels like they're all kind of intertwined with each other.

After that little adventure, I was so tired from running around that I passed out again.  I fear that Carolyn is already catching on to my strange sleeping habits...Hee.

I woke up later to watch Bridesmaids with the girls (minus Simone, plus Jude) in Cíara's room.  But I fell asleep watching that too.  I think I still have jet-lag or something because I can stay up till 4am but I cannot for the life of me get up at 10am.  Oh, wait.  That's normal for me.

Wednesday (Oct. 5)
I woke at noon to go see all the department heads that I couldn't meet with the day before -- and they weren't there.  Again.  Registering for classes has probably been the biggest pain in the butt so far.  I skipped out on all the orientation stuff for the day, and hung out with Carolyn watching SNL and doing our nails.  And that night -- you probably guessed already -- we went out to a club!  I went with some of the flatmates again.  Cíara invited some of her friends over and we chatted, did some pre-drinking in the kitchen.  Jude, troublemaker he his, started messing with the light above the table in the kitchen.  It was full of nasty wasps!  I was scared it was going to rain wasps on us...it was the most disgusting thing ever.  He shook out all the bugs out the window, but it took a while to get the fixture back on.  Hee.  I haven't laughed that hard in a while.  It was hilarious and so gross.
Mint


We took a taxi to a club in town called Mint (I think?).  The taxi was super affordable!  I mean, granted there were 6 of us pitching in, but still.  It was maybe $1.50 each?  After a while at Mint, we migrated over to Sugarhouse which is a Lancaster University nightclub.  The place was huge!  There were 2 rooms and loud music.


Jude, Cíara, Carolyn and I took a double decker back to the Uni.  Jude and some other boys sitting in the back of the bus showed Carolyn and me how to play "backseat of the bus."  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos...only video.  :)



We ended up grabbing some individual pizzas at Pizzetta Republic on campus before heading back to our flat.  It was sooo good!  I tried it with garlic mayo and it sounds kind of weird but it was amazing.
Margherita personal pizza
Thursday (Oct. 6)
Yay!  It's Shaun's birthday! :)


Cíara bought a card for all the flatmates to sign and give to Shaun for his 21st birthday.  Carolyn and I spotted some decorations at Central, a convenience store under our flat, and she decorated his door with balloons and a banner.


This was the day that I finally got registration under control.  It was crazy, and intense, but I got through it.  I ended up waking up at noon again and skipping the Freshers' Fair.  Honestly, I did not want to have to wait in that huge line.  It was so long!  I wasn't even going to try. 


Beer at Grad bar
I spent some alone time in my room to phone home and figure out my courses and such.  That night, a few of us went to the Grad bar to celebrate Shaun's birthday.  It was me, Carolyn, Zhen, Cíara, Greg and Jude that went to meet Shaun and his friends there.  We got to sit in this cozy little corner with our beers and chat about traveling, Thanksgiving, and our different accents.  It was a merry time.


On our way back to the flat, Greg grabbed a stool that was sitting out. Hehe.  It is an ugly thing and we still have it sitting in the kitchen.  We stayed up in the kitchen until Janet skyped me and chatted with some of the boys in my room -- she kept gushing over their accents.  I was surprised they even talked to her for so long.  She was so excited. It was sweet. :)


Friday (Oct. 7)

I went into town with Carolyn and Zhen to get more food for the week from Sainsbury's.  And I found an Asian food market!  Apparently, there are two, but I'm just happy I found one.


Ahhh...I drank so much last night.  It's the most I've had in a really long time.  But it wasn't my fault!  I'm really bad at games, and drinking games are even worse.  I kept losing...it was awful.  I felt pretty crappy this morning, but I'm feeling alright now.  A little hungry and embarrassed, but alright.



Saturday (Oct. 8)

Surprisingly, I woke up pretty early today.  I got up at around 9 to take a long, hot shower because after last night, it was much needed.  But then as soon as I got back to my room, I fell asleep again.  Old habits die hard.  I got up, started this blog entry while listening to some John Mayer (FTW!).  It took me foreverrrr.  If you read it all and got this far -- THANK YOU.  Hopefully, it was worth the effort.  If you want more details on what I'm up to, just leave some comments and I'll try to answer back in the next blog entry.

Now...it is 7:40pm and I don't think I've had anything to eat all day.  I am lazy and I miss home.  Sooo...I think I will make some of the 짜짱면 that I bought yesterday.  Yay!

Cheers! :)