Since I still needed to talk about the rowing come-and-try, which was exactly what it says it was.
The rowing team arranged a meeting for newbs to come to the lake. And try rowing.
Okay, first off, let me explain the premise of rowing. You get eight people and put them in a boat that is basically a flat-bottomed canoe with lower sides. But, to add to the fun, no one is able to move from their seat; you actually have to buckle your feet in. You sit on a little wooden seat with holes in it so you don't end up sitting in a puddle of water. The seat slides forward so you're able to push off with your legs when you move the blade, i.e. oar. Which is wooden, and must be rotated in addition to being, er...rowed...which is what tears the skin off your hands.
Now move the whole thing to England. In January. It was around zero degrees (Celsius, which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit for us backward Americans, and late spring temperatures in Michigan), with a wind that simply didn't stop. You're on a lake. In winter. Only a couple inches from the water at all times. You spend the day on the water.
In short? People who agree to try this are nucking futs. Within half an hour, my feet were damp, my fingers too cold to properly grip the blade, and my face too numb to form multisyllabic words.
It was still awesome.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I don't think I'm going to join. There's also the bit where I'm terrified of any water deeper than a bathtub and had to be rather insistent in order to be given a life vest even though I told them I'm a weak swimmer. Still. My legs are sore, it was an incredibly English thing to try, and I'm glad I did it.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Things and things, part 2.
I've made friends with Mona and Samuel (called Samuel here to differentiate from one of my flatmates who is also called Sam). They're in my Myth and the Creative Process class (which is swiftly becoming my favorite course, btw). But the three of us went out to lunch after class last week, and they invited me to go out with them Thursday evening. Naturally, I accepted.
We met at the Top Bar, which is a good deal quieter than the SU Bar (which, to be fair, is essentially a sports bar. Being loud is in the definition of such) but a bit more expensive. Worth it to me, though, to not have to shout in order to have a conversation. Also, there were more pool tables. Samuel bought the first round of drinks, and the three of us killed time until the club opened in much the same we killed our afternoon at lunch -- talking.
Then, finally, Second Level, one of the clubs on campus. It was Alternative Night, which is billed as "rock indie punk metal" and probably a few others. I heard an awful lot of American eighties pop, though. Seriously, eighties music is ridiculously popular here. I can't get away from it. But they also played a bunch of rock music I didn't recognize, some blink-182, Green Day, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" because it was also Zombie Night.
Much different than the clubs in Ann Arbor I've gone to, which only play eighties when there's some appropriate theme, and otherwise play Top 40's hip-hop-py stuff or an "industrial" mix which is basically metalmetalmetalTRANCEmetalmetalmetalZYDRATECOMESINALITTLEGLASSVIALmetalmetalmetal. But it was also different in basic atmosphere. The dancing was more slightly awkward, high school dance-flavored as opposed to virtual vertical sex. People were dressed much more conservatively than I was used to seeing (Industrial/Goth/Fetish night at Necto aside, where pretty much anything goes, I'm used to at the very least getting bombarded with cleavage everywhere. Keep in mind that I'm five-foot-three, so chest-level for most people is eye level for me). There were still short skirts and hooker heels, but. . .it seemed less aggressive to me.
Yes. That's the right description. Because, besides this -- no one tried to touch me without permission. That shouldn't be such a big deal, but part of the reason why I avoided Necto most of last term was because even when I felt well enough/wasn't too busy to go. . .I didn't feel like getting groped by strangers. Which happens. It happens, no matter what you wear or how you dance. There is no asking. There isn't even any eye contact -- just the sudden realization that a frat boy wearing cheap eyeliner is grinding on your ass. This can generally be cut short if you're with the right sort of girl friend -- the sort who notices before you do and immediately turns lesbian. Typically this is enough to confuse the would-be predator into backing off. But the only way I've figured out to avoid it completely is to bring a guy with me and hang all over him for a night. Not my idea of a good time.
It was expensive, though. Where I'm used to being about to get into a club for free (for arriving early/being female) or for only a dollar or so, then being able to share a coin-operated locker with three or four other people, here there was a three pound cover (about $4) as well as a one-pound charge to store your coat. Drinks are expensive too, but then again, if I go to a club, I'm there to dance, not get hammered. (Though I have to admit, being able to buy a cold drink -- I traded between hard cider and club soda -- and take a break was kind of awesome).
I'll probably go clubbing more frequently here than I do back in A2, but probably still no more than once a week or so. While the club was cleaner than what I'm used to, it made up for it in volume. It took a full two hours for my ears to stop ringing after I left.
We met at the Top Bar, which is a good deal quieter than the SU Bar (which, to be fair, is essentially a sports bar. Being loud is in the definition of such) but a bit more expensive. Worth it to me, though, to not have to shout in order to have a conversation. Also, there were more pool tables. Samuel bought the first round of drinks, and the three of us killed time until the club opened in much the same we killed our afternoon at lunch -- talking.
Then, finally, Second Level, one of the clubs on campus. It was Alternative Night, which is billed as "rock indie punk metal" and probably a few others. I heard an awful lot of American eighties pop, though. Seriously, eighties music is ridiculously popular here. I can't get away from it. But they also played a bunch of rock music I didn't recognize, some blink-182, Green Day, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" because it was also Zombie Night.
Much different than the clubs in Ann Arbor I've gone to, which only play eighties when there's some appropriate theme, and otherwise play Top 40's hip-hop-py stuff or an "industrial" mix which is basically metalmetalmetalTRANCEmetalmetalmetalZYDRATECOMESINALITTLEGLASSVIALmetalmetalmetal. But it was also different in basic atmosphere. The dancing was more slightly awkward, high school dance-flavored as opposed to virtual vertical sex. People were dressed much more conservatively than I was used to seeing (Industrial/Goth/Fetish night at Necto aside, where pretty much anything goes, I'm used to at the very least getting bombarded with cleavage everywhere. Keep in mind that I'm five-foot-three, so chest-level for most people is eye level for me). There were still short skirts and hooker heels, but. . .it seemed less aggressive to me.
Yes. That's the right description. Because, besides this -- no one tried to touch me without permission. That shouldn't be such a big deal, but part of the reason why I avoided Necto most of last term was because even when I felt well enough/wasn't too busy to go. . .I didn't feel like getting groped by strangers. Which happens. It happens, no matter what you wear or how you dance. There is no asking. There isn't even any eye contact -- just the sudden realization that a frat boy wearing cheap eyeliner is grinding on your ass. This can generally be cut short if you're with the right sort of girl friend -- the sort who notices before you do and immediately turns lesbian. Typically this is enough to confuse the would-be predator into backing off. But the only way I've figured out to avoid it completely is to bring a guy with me and hang all over him for a night. Not my idea of a good time.
It was expensive, though. Where I'm used to being about to get into a club for free (for arriving early/being female) or for only a dollar or so, then being able to share a coin-operated locker with three or four other people, here there was a three pound cover (about $4) as well as a one-pound charge to store your coat. Drinks are expensive too, but then again, if I go to a club, I'm there to dance, not get hammered. (Though I have to admit, being able to buy a cold drink -- I traded between hard cider and club soda -- and take a break was kind of awesome).
I'll probably go clubbing more frequently here than I do back in A2, but probably still no more than once a week or so. While the club was cleaner than what I'm used to, it made up for it in volume. It took a full two hours for my ears to stop ringing after I left.
In a world where I do things half again as fast as I can blog them. . .the solution is clearly to do half as many things.
Busy, busy week!
(answer: it's hidden under my bed, next to that forgotten pair of pants*)
First, the Holocaust Memorial cabaret.
Oh, good gods. This was a performance at the Lakeside Theatre (the on-campus venue); a collage-type work that featured five singers and a supporting band that included clarinet, violin, percussion, electro-acoustic guitar, and a keyboard synth. The actual material performed, however -- this is where the "collage-type" bit comes in.
The creators of this piece adapted and merged a slew of poems and short stories written by Holocaust survivors as well as one documentary featuring the same. The libretto provided to the audience included a few photographs of paintings done by Jewish artists as well as the words/lyrics for most of the concert. For certain pieces, images were projected onto the back of the stage.
Mind you, most anything about the Holocaust is going to be depressing. This wasn't depressing. It was soul-crushing. I broke down sobbing at one point -- overwhelmed. The singers alternated between singing and speaking styles, between anger, hope, sadness, fear, and apathy. One moment, a man was the hardened Jewish guard at the gas chambers: "This way for the showers. . .this way" (while the singers intoned "It's this way for the gas. . . ."). The next? Breaking down, sobbing. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. I had to. Yes, we're survivors. Remind them what we did. Remind them how we cheated death.
And then -- they laughed, danced, whirled in circles, because how can you not be happy to be alive, to be free?
But how can you forget those who aren't?
The show was celebration and memorial all in one, perfectly fitting with that paradox.
To me, it's not so amazing that people survived the camps. Humans are adaptable, are at our core the most fierce of survivalists.
What is utterly fantastic to me is how anyone at all managed to make it out sane. Minds have shattered under less, gone completely and left rambling husks.
Remembering requires more strength.
------------------------------------
*Intentionally refusing to clarify whether I'm using American English or British English here. Have fun, kids!
- Holocaust Memorial cabaret show
- My first night dancing at one of the student clubs
- Rowing come-and-try!
(answer: it's hidden under my bed, next to that forgotten pair of pants*)
First, the Holocaust Memorial cabaret.
Oh, good gods. This was a performance at the Lakeside Theatre (the on-campus venue); a collage-type work that featured five singers and a supporting band that included clarinet, violin, percussion, electro-acoustic guitar, and a keyboard synth. The actual material performed, however -- this is where the "collage-type" bit comes in.
The creators of this piece adapted and merged a slew of poems and short stories written by Holocaust survivors as well as one documentary featuring the same. The libretto provided to the audience included a few photographs of paintings done by Jewish artists as well as the words/lyrics for most of the concert. For certain pieces, images were projected onto the back of the stage.
Mind you, most anything about the Holocaust is going to be depressing. This wasn't depressing. It was soul-crushing. I broke down sobbing at one point -- overwhelmed. The singers alternated between singing and speaking styles, between anger, hope, sadness, fear, and apathy. One moment, a man was the hardened Jewish guard at the gas chambers: "This way for the showers. . .this way" (while the singers intoned "It's this way for the gas. . . ."). The next? Breaking down, sobbing. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. I had to. Yes, we're survivors. Remind them what we did. Remind them how we cheated death.
And then -- they laughed, danced, whirled in circles, because how can you not be happy to be alive, to be free?
But how can you forget those who aren't?
The show was celebration and memorial all in one, perfectly fitting with that paradox.
To me, it's not so amazing that people survived the camps. Humans are adaptable, are at our core the most fierce of survivalists.
What is utterly fantastic to me is how anyone at all managed to make it out sane. Minds have shattered under less, gone completely and left rambling husks.
Remembering requires more strength.
------------------------------------
*Intentionally refusing to clarify whether I'm using American English or British English here. Have fun, kids!
Monday, January 24, 2011
To stop Disser from haranguing, and possibly meringuing as well
I'd plead being busy, or being sick, but honestly I should be used to both by now. So, in the interest of a certain level of upfront disclosure: I really, really like sleeping.
I have done things, though! I've read two novels in the past...five days?...or so, and I've been assured by both professors who assigned them that finishing either is a commendable task. I actually didn't find Manhattan Transfer as tedious as I was told it would be. Mysteries of Udolpho, however, would pretty much literally be about two hundred pages shorter with half the scenery description cut. Yes, Ms. Radcliffe. I get it. The French countryside is pretty. Can we move on to the kidnapping, please? ...okay, you can describe the Italian countryside for another dozen pages first. And then a five page poem. Is Valancourt ever going to actually do anything? (SPOILER ALERT: He doesn't.)
I confess to skipping most of the poetry. Not that I don't like verse, but...I like some verse; odes and sonnets to sea-nymphs, trees, and bats can only go so far with me.
However, I digress somewhat. There are enough nerds writing book reviews online* without me helping out too much.
Over the weekend, besides reading, I also headed into Colchester downtown with Kersten (a German exchange student who, like me, has Fridays off class). It was cold and a bit windy, but otherwise not bad for walking around, assuming you hadn't, like an ass, left your hat in your wardrobe.
Kersten and I, after spending way too long in the visitors' centre looking at maps and souvenirs, headed to the Colchester Castle. Which is a museum. In a castle. But it's a very little castle -- the sort built of rubble as well as brick, and a tower that doesn't loom so much as it stretches a bit. But it's still a castle.
Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the museum itself. Part of this was due to plain old bad timing; Friday afternoons are common times for local field trips, and there were three elementary classes wandering about. And this is, as I sad, a very little castle, and the museum is restricted to but a portion of it. Result? It was more than a bit loud. However, the main source of my disappoint lay in the approach the museum took. It focused nigh-exclusively on the Roman occupation of Colchester. Boudica's uprising had a decent section, but this also focused mostly on the Romans she attacked. Also, the most prominent image of her displayed was an enlarged screenshot from the movie. The Anglo-Saxons, who came after the Romans, were relegated to two small sections of shelving and relatively little explanation of their culture or influence. Even a "We don't know much about the impact of the Anglo-Saxons" etc, etc would have been appreciated. Of course, I'm Viking-mad and terribly difficult to please on that front. Also, to be fair, the Romans left the most interesting (to the general public) and most numerous artifacts.
I would have disregarded the bias completely, though, if I hadn't also been struck by what I found to be a lack of respect toward the space they were using. In a few places, tucked away in corners of exhibits, were wrapped pieces obviously in storage, not display. Again, mostly ignorable and could be chalked up to poor planning.
Except one of those "corners" was a cell-made-memorial to a Quaker who had been imprisoned in Colchester Castle for his faith, and died in that cell. And now it was storage -- like it wasn't considered part of the museum, like it wasn't really worth viewing.
That really, really bothered me. While it seems to be typical in England for memorial to live alongside the everyday, I had not yet seen memorial completely disregarded. Treating such an exhibit with so little respect, in my opinion, borders on outright insult. Persecution based on faith is an ugly part of every nation's history -- but that doesn't mean it can or should be ignored. I suppose it is easy to forget that the people who lived one hundred, two hundred. . .one thousand years ago were still people. To, perhaps, a vast majority, it is difficult to consider these people as any more than a faceless name on a plaque.
(I do still recommend the museum for visitors to Colchester -- most especially if you have kids who might get antsy during a tour of a larger facility. There are also several kid-friendly, touchable exhibits, including sets of costumes and mirrors for modeling them.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*See, it's funny because I also have written a few pieces for The Internet Review of Books.
I have done things, though! I've read two novels in the past...five days?...or so, and I've been assured by both professors who assigned them that finishing either is a commendable task. I actually didn't find Manhattan Transfer as tedious as I was told it would be. Mysteries of Udolpho, however, would pretty much literally be about two hundred pages shorter with half the scenery description cut. Yes, Ms. Radcliffe. I get it. The French countryside is pretty. Can we move on to the kidnapping, please? ...okay, you can describe the Italian countryside for another dozen pages first. And then a five page poem. Is Valancourt ever going to actually do anything? (SPOILER ALERT: He doesn't.)
I confess to skipping most of the poetry. Not that I don't like verse, but...I like some verse; odes and sonnets to sea-nymphs, trees, and bats can only go so far with me.
However, I digress somewhat. There are enough nerds writing book reviews online* without me helping out too much.
Over the weekend, besides reading, I also headed into Colchester downtown with Kersten (a German exchange student who, like me, has Fridays off class). It was cold and a bit windy, but otherwise not bad for walking around, assuming you hadn't, like an ass, left your hat in your wardrobe.
Kersten and I, after spending way too long in the visitors' centre looking at maps and souvenirs, headed to the Colchester Castle. Which is a museum. In a castle. But it's a very little castle -- the sort built of rubble as well as brick, and a tower that doesn't loom so much as it stretches a bit. But it's still a castle.
Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the museum itself. Part of this was due to plain old bad timing; Friday afternoons are common times for local field trips, and there were three elementary classes wandering about. And this is, as I sad, a very little castle, and the museum is restricted to but a portion of it. Result? It was more than a bit loud. However, the main source of my disappoint lay in the approach the museum took. It focused nigh-exclusively on the Roman occupation of Colchester. Boudica's uprising had a decent section, but this also focused mostly on the Romans she attacked. Also, the most prominent image of her displayed was an enlarged screenshot from the movie. The Anglo-Saxons, who came after the Romans, were relegated to two small sections of shelving and relatively little explanation of their culture or influence. Even a "We don't know much about the impact of the Anglo-Saxons" etc, etc would have been appreciated. Of course, I'm Viking-mad and terribly difficult to please on that front. Also, to be fair, the Romans left the most interesting (to the general public) and most numerous artifacts.
I would have disregarded the bias completely, though, if I hadn't also been struck by what I found to be a lack of respect toward the space they were using. In a few places, tucked away in corners of exhibits, were wrapped pieces obviously in storage, not display. Again, mostly ignorable and could be chalked up to poor planning.
Except one of those "corners" was a cell-made-memorial to a Quaker who had been imprisoned in Colchester Castle for his faith, and died in that cell. And now it was storage -- like it wasn't considered part of the museum, like it wasn't really worth viewing.
That really, really bothered me. While it seems to be typical in England for memorial to live alongside the everyday, I had not yet seen memorial completely disregarded. Treating such an exhibit with so little respect, in my opinion, borders on outright insult. Persecution based on faith is an ugly part of every nation's history -- but that doesn't mean it can or should be ignored. I suppose it is easy to forget that the people who lived one hundred, two hundred. . .one thousand years ago were still people. To, perhaps, a vast majority, it is difficult to consider these people as any more than a faceless name on a plaque.
(I do still recommend the museum for visitors to Colchester -- most especially if you have kids who might get antsy during a tour of a larger facility. There are also several kid-friendly, touchable exhibits, including sets of costumes and mirrors for modeling them.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*See, it's funny because I also have written a few pieces for The Internet Review of Books.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
In which a bar and a grasshopper are visited
Nasty little thing about Orientation Week -- about a million things happen at once.
So, first off: the trip to Cambridge. We (the other interested exchange students and I) left Colchester in a coach around ten in the morning and reached Cambridge a bit before noon. What hit me first was that despite the buildings all seeming to have been built somewhere between 1600-1800, despite cobbled streets turning to pavers turning to asphalt, despite the pack of tourists taking photos and gaping at the stone gargoyles and the mechanical time-eater -- everything worked. Nothing looked out of place.
We were first turned loose; Paula, Miriam, Kersten and I wandered through the open market, which was kind of like a regular flea market in the US, except smaller and there was a cheesemonger and a butcher set up as well. For lunch we stopped at a tea shop -- the sort that serves avocado and prawn sandwiches -- and wandered outside again. We took way too many photographs and gawped at everything. I think it finally hit me here that I was in England. Friggin' England. At one, we met up with the main group again for a short guided tour, where we learned that nearly every single crumbling building is a monument to something. The Eagle, a fairly nondescript English pub, was once popular with American Airmen, who burned their names into the beams. These have been left there (by now, in most American buildings, I bet they'd have been painted over). A second-story window is left permanently open -- seriously, it's written in the lease of the building that that particular window can never be closed -- in memory of two young girls who died in a fire in that room. The Chronophage is a new structure built into the side of a library belonging to Corpus Christi College: a mechanical clock made of overlapping discs. Small blue lights around the edge of the discs read the time, with the outermost circle marking the seconds. But unlike most clocks, sometimes it hesitates or even moves backwards, but it always stays on time. Atop all this is a grotesque metal grasshopper that walks along the rim, legs jerking, eyes blinking and tongue lolling. More than a couple students were unimpressed: "It's ugly." Our tour guide, however, couldn't stop expounding the symbolism of the ripple-like discs (representing the big bang), the jerky forward movement (unpredictable but inexorable, like time itself), and even the grasshopper itself (the device used to keep the clock in time is called a grasshopper). To top it off, she thought that most of us couldn't speak English (very untrue; everyone in our group had quite a good grasp on the language), so she repeated herself quite a bit. Regardless.
We also were treated to a visit to the chapel in Kings College.
It was utterly magnificent. Impossibly high ceilings, impossibly detailed stained glass -- a picture Bible hundreds of years old. The Tudor stonework and the oaken screen (a rare monument to Anne Boleyn). These windows...I could give measurements, but I don't know how to communicate the presence they had. The brilliance of the colors. . .the carefulness that had constructed the individual faces of the saints -- of Adam, of Joshua, Judah.
I am about as far from Christian as you can get, but these were so beautiful my heart broke.
The inner sanctum had been reworked in order to contain Rubens' "the Adoration of the Magi" -- one of the few works of art here that was separated from visitors by a barrier. This and the lawns were the two things we could not touch (the windows, too, but they were designed for this and placed far above the reach of a human man). Otherwise, we could trail our hands along the stonework, run fingers over the oaken screen, lean casually against it. History, here, is preserved alongside what progress is necessary. This chapel was built for the everyday people to marvel, for hands grubby with ash and clay and shit with nails broken and palms callused to touch. And it was all so, so beautiful.
Leaving the chapel left us a bit drained, so we stopped at another tea shop and had tea (with milk) and scones. True British scones are amazing. 'nuff said. Then we wandered through the nearby mall, in and out of a few designer shops, and back to the bus (we did get slightly lost here and detoured back into the Eagle. For the record, I couldn't find the burned names anywhere. Perhaps we were in the wrong rooms).
Then a return home, back to my flat for dinner, and out again to the student union bar. We sat and gossiped -- joined by a few other girls who had gone on the trip, as well as John, who hadn't. They poked fun at me for ordering liquor -- I poked fun at John for ordering light beer. All was good -- but I was exhausted, as I've been mostly unable to sleep since I arrived here, and headed home again around eleven.
By the next morning, most of my flatmates had moved back in. More on them later. Right now, I have class in less than nine hours and should probably at least attempt to get some sleep.
So, first off: the trip to Cambridge. We (the other interested exchange students and I) left Colchester in a coach around ten in the morning and reached Cambridge a bit before noon. What hit me first was that despite the buildings all seeming to have been built somewhere between 1600-1800, despite cobbled streets turning to pavers turning to asphalt, despite the pack of tourists taking photos and gaping at the stone gargoyles and the mechanical time-eater -- everything worked. Nothing looked out of place.
We were first turned loose; Paula, Miriam, Kersten and I wandered through the open market, which was kind of like a regular flea market in the US, except smaller and there was a cheesemonger and a butcher set up as well. For lunch we stopped at a tea shop -- the sort that serves avocado and prawn sandwiches -- and wandered outside again. We took way too many photographs and gawped at everything. I think it finally hit me here that I was in England. Friggin' England. At one, we met up with the main group again for a short guided tour, where we learned that nearly every single crumbling building is a monument to something. The Eagle, a fairly nondescript English pub, was once popular with American Airmen, who burned their names into the beams. These have been left there (by now, in most American buildings, I bet they'd have been painted over). A second-story window is left permanently open -- seriously, it's written in the lease of the building that that particular window can never be closed -- in memory of two young girls who died in a fire in that room. The Chronophage is a new structure built into the side of a library belonging to Corpus Christi College: a mechanical clock made of overlapping discs. Small blue lights around the edge of the discs read the time, with the outermost circle marking the seconds. But unlike most clocks, sometimes it hesitates or even moves backwards, but it always stays on time. Atop all this is a grotesque metal grasshopper that walks along the rim, legs jerking, eyes blinking and tongue lolling. More than a couple students were unimpressed: "It's ugly." Our tour guide, however, couldn't stop expounding the symbolism of the ripple-like discs (representing the big bang), the jerky forward movement (unpredictable but inexorable, like time itself), and even the grasshopper itself (the device used to keep the clock in time is called a grasshopper). To top it off, she thought that most of us couldn't speak English (very untrue; everyone in our group had quite a good grasp on the language), so she repeated herself quite a bit. Regardless.
We also were treated to a visit to the chapel in Kings College.
It was utterly magnificent. Impossibly high ceilings, impossibly detailed stained glass -- a picture Bible hundreds of years old. The Tudor stonework and the oaken screen (a rare monument to Anne Boleyn). These windows...I could give measurements, but I don't know how to communicate the presence they had. The brilliance of the colors. . .the carefulness that had constructed the individual faces of the saints -- of Adam, of Joshua, Judah.
I am about as far from Christian as you can get, but these were so beautiful my heart broke.
The inner sanctum had been reworked in order to contain Rubens' "the Adoration of the Magi" -- one of the few works of art here that was separated from visitors by a barrier. This and the lawns were the two things we could not touch (the windows, too, but they were designed for this and placed far above the reach of a human man). Otherwise, we could trail our hands along the stonework, run fingers over the oaken screen, lean casually against it. History, here, is preserved alongside what progress is necessary. This chapel was built for the everyday people to marvel, for hands grubby with ash and clay and shit with nails broken and palms callused to touch. And it was all so, so beautiful.
Leaving the chapel left us a bit drained, so we stopped at another tea shop and had tea (with milk) and scones. True British scones are amazing. 'nuff said. Then we wandered through the nearby mall, in and out of a few designer shops, and back to the bus (we did get slightly lost here and detoured back into the Eagle. For the record, I couldn't find the burned names anywhere. Perhaps we were in the wrong rooms).
Then a return home, back to my flat for dinner, and out again to the student union bar. We sat and gossiped -- joined by a few other girls who had gone on the trip, as well as John, who hadn't. They poked fun at me for ordering liquor -- I poked fun at John for ordering light beer. All was good -- but I was exhausted, as I've been mostly unable to sleep since I arrived here, and headed home again around eleven.
By the next morning, most of my flatmates had moved back in. More on them later. Right now, I have class in less than nine hours and should probably at least attempt to get some sleep.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Orientation!
I've been in England two days now -- or something like it. I freely admit that the plane ride over completely screwed any natural sense of the passage of time I had left.
Or, as a good friend of mine told me: "Wake up! It's dinnertime!"
I've more or less settled in to (into?) my flat at this point. I have my own bedroom with a desk and a wardrobe and a bookshelf and bedside table. And a bed, though I guess that was implied by the label "bedroom." I share a bathroom with the other people in the wing of my flat -- there are something like a dozen rooms, and four bathrooms, though really there are eight half-bathrooms. There is a room with a toilet and sink, and a separate room with a shower and a sink, in each wing of the flat. I've gone to the supermarket (name of Tesco) and braved British currency. I've even taken a bus!
Today was the first day of our (official) orientation. By "our," I mean the 75 or so new exchange students Essex is hosting this term. Basically, everyone met in a large room (by Essex standards; by UofM standards it was a fairly small lecture room with a lot of broken seats) and went through some of the basic need-to-knows. There was discussion of travel options, a few explanations of English cuisine and slang ("jelly" means "Jell-o," "jam" means "jelly," and "jellied eels" are exactly what they sound like) and a hasty reminder at the end to remember to study. I think I'm gonna like this place.
Mingling with the other students was a bit awkward at first. Initially, somehow I managed to attract a small group of other Americans -- though I was trying to wave over pretty much everyone who came in early. I guess my accent scared them off? However, after the lectures were done, we were given refreshments -- mineral water, fruit juice, coffee, and of course tea, milk, and biscuits. I used the time to talk with a couple girls who had filtered in a bit later: Carlie, from Australia, and Paula, from Brazil. Since we didn't have anything to do for the rest of the day, we decided to meet up at a pub later for dinner and drinks (since I, as a 20-year-old American, had never had such an experience), after Carlie finished moving into her new apartment -- er, "accommodation," excuse me. However, by 4:30 jet lag had caught up with her, so we decided to put the pub plans on hold til tomorrow. Paula and I instead went for a walk. I helped her set up her internet connection and ultimately we grabbed a couple beers at a convenience store on campus and I cooked dinner for us both at my flat.
I found the selection of alcohol strange. There was a fair amount of red wine and a good selection of beers unfamiliar to me -- except for the Asahi and a Korean beer I think I recognized but currently cannot remember the name. No whiskey or scotch, no tequila (unless you count a "tequila-flavored beer"), and I don't recall seeing vodka, either. I ended up grabbing a "ginger beer" since it sounded interesting, as well as a Cadbury chocolate bar since the English-made ones are supposed to actually be good; Paula bought a Sol.
All in all -- a good day.
Also, ginger beer is rich and fruity but a bit sweet for my everyday tastes. Also, I wasn't even carded. And since I haven't yet found the recycling bins for my building, the two empty bottles sit on the edge of my desk, probably foreshadowing my eventual alcoholism.
Or, as a good friend of mine told me: "Wake up! It's dinnertime!"
I've more or less settled in to (into?) my flat at this point. I have my own bedroom with a desk and a wardrobe and a bookshelf and bedside table. And a bed, though I guess that was implied by the label "bedroom." I share a bathroom with the other people in the wing of my flat -- there are something like a dozen rooms, and four bathrooms, though really there are eight half-bathrooms. There is a room with a toilet and sink, and a separate room with a shower and a sink, in each wing of the flat. I've gone to the supermarket (name of Tesco) and braved British currency. I've even taken a bus!
Today was the first day of our (official) orientation. By "our," I mean the 75 or so new exchange students Essex is hosting this term. Basically, everyone met in a large room (by Essex standards; by UofM standards it was a fairly small lecture room with a lot of broken seats) and went through some of the basic need-to-knows. There was discussion of travel options, a few explanations of English cuisine and slang ("jelly" means "Jell-o," "jam" means "jelly," and "jellied eels" are exactly what they sound like) and a hasty reminder at the end to remember to study. I think I'm gonna like this place.
Mingling with the other students was a bit awkward at first. Initially, somehow I managed to attract a small group of other Americans -- though I was trying to wave over pretty much everyone who came in early. I guess my accent scared them off? However, after the lectures were done, we were given refreshments -- mineral water, fruit juice, coffee, and of course tea, milk, and biscuits. I used the time to talk with a couple girls who had filtered in a bit later: Carlie, from Australia, and Paula, from Brazil. Since we didn't have anything to do for the rest of the day, we decided to meet up at a pub later for dinner and drinks (since I, as a 20-year-old American, had never had such an experience), after Carlie finished moving into her new apartment -- er, "accommodation," excuse me. However, by 4:30 jet lag had caught up with her, so we decided to put the pub plans on hold til tomorrow. Paula and I instead went for a walk. I helped her set up her internet connection and ultimately we grabbed a couple beers at a convenience store on campus and I cooked dinner for us both at my flat.
I found the selection of alcohol strange. There was a fair amount of red wine and a good selection of beers unfamiliar to me -- except for the Asahi and a Korean beer I think I recognized but currently cannot remember the name. No whiskey or scotch, no tequila (unless you count a "tequila-flavored beer"), and I don't recall seeing vodka, either. I ended up grabbing a "ginger beer" since it sounded interesting, as well as a Cadbury chocolate bar since the English-made ones are supposed to actually be good; Paula bought a Sol.
All in all -- a good day.
Also, ginger beer is rich and fruity but a bit sweet for my everyday tastes. Also, I wasn't even carded. And since I haven't yet found the recycling bins for my building, the two empty bottles sit on the edge of my desk, probably foreshadowing my eventual alcoholism.
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