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! :)

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! :)

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! :)

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! :)

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! :)

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! :)

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! :)