One Down, One to Go

My first semester abroad is officially over, and my second one is off to a good start (not including the initial stress). At first it felt a bit bittersweet to be studying abroad all year. I was excited to travel, but I missed Hendrix and all of my friends. Now most of my friends are studying abroad so I am not really missing out on much anyway.

It was an adjustment living on my own without a roommate in a foreign country. I had to go through putting in all the effort that new friends require, as well as adjust to a few differences. It is really the small stuff, the stuff that I didn't even think about that require the most adjustment. The "@" is on a different place on the keyboard, the ketchup has more vinegar in it, and its difficult to find a decent tasting canned soup. I still am not a fan of grocery shopping without a car, but you just learn to make more frequent, smaller trips. 

I've also learned that making a packing list before a big trip is a very smart idea. That way you don't forget important things like converters. It also might make you think twice about what you really need to bring. For example, I did not need two big coats or more than two pairs of jeans. 

When I think about it the first semester had its ups and downs, but hopefully that will make this semester easier. If not then I will just catch a coach to London and bug Elizabeth.

Now that the first semester is over, its time to plan my trips for this coming semester. In May my dad is coming up and we are going to rent a car and travel around Ireland for two weeks, and then I am going to backpack with my mom, my friend Ally, and her mom through Italy. Finally I will end the year abroad in Spain with Ally and head back to Alabama at the end of June. I have all these great plans and now I just have to figure out what to do during the semester. I have the perfect travelling schedule because I only have class on Wednesday and Thursday (Children's Literature, Sociological Theory, and Popular Culture). Five days to travel a week and then I also have Reading Week and Easter Break and two weeks before I join my dad in Ireland. 

I meant to spend the last two weeks planning but oh well. I guess we will just see what happens. 

Exams/My Return to England

STRESS!! That is the gist of my first week or two back in England. Being the procrastinator that I am, I did not work on any of my essays while I was at home. I figured that would happen, so my original goal was to have them completed before I even left England. That goal was also not reached and all three essays were due just five days after I got back. One was a sociological essay on Earth First!, one was on Freud, and another was on Darwinian evolution. I hadn't even done the research for the essay on Freud, but like normal I was able to pull it off. I put the finishing touches on them the day before they were due.

Unfortunately my work did not end there. My exam on the British Welfare State was the day after my essays were due and I had to prepare to write three more essays for the exam. Its a seen exam so I had the topics. I had all three essays outlined with dates and important acts. I was ready to beast the exam, and you know what I did?..I slept through it. I am still not even sure how it happened. It is possible that I accidently took my left over sleep aids instead of the Advil I was intending to take, but it is also equally probable that my body was just exhausted from all the late nights I had been having. Either way, I awoke in a panic and spent the rest of the week trying to fix the problem I had created. Now I have to wait and take the exam at Hendrix in August. I will have to prepare for a different set of prompts and study all over again. I just hope I will not forget too much until then. 

It was a very eventful time, and it definitely tested me. Maybe in some twisted way it was good for me. It let me see what I could handle, but I would be okay if I wasn't tested like that again...at least not for a while. I guess it is just a new story I can tell about my study abroad experience.

Christmas Vacation

Two weeks home was not enough time, but I'm glad I got at least that.  It was nice to see my family and not have to cook for a change.

I got to start my wonderful vacation by spending 4 hours at the Philadelphia airport while it was under construction. Therefore there wasn't a lot of food choices for my first American meal, and the plane food had really filled my stomach. I was only comforted by the fact that soon I would be home and that a box of beef lo mien was waiting for me...that and my family. 

One of my main  missions of the trip back was food, clearly. Food that didn't require me to cook and that hopefully my parents would be willing to pay for. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I went to all/most of my favorite restaurants: Bottega, Cantina, Shangrila, The Original Pancake House, Sal's Soul Food Kitchen, Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I got to stuff my face with amazing junk food and just relax.

Besides eating I mostly just hung out with my brother Sam and then with Ally. I was a bit rushed the first couple of days because I only arrived about 5 days before Christmas. Unfortunately that meant I had to enter a mall during peak shopping time. It was a nightmare. There were just too many people in too small a place, and the parking was horrendous. Thankfully I managed to get all my shopping done in one trip.

Christmas itself was quite a geek fest. Basically "Santa" decided to give us a bunch of Doctor Who related gifts. Sam was probably the most decked out. He had a sonic screwdriver, 10's duster, a fez, and a bow tie. The day was made even better by the fact that we got to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special on BBC America. This is the first year we have been able to watch the new episodes when they air so it was quite exciting. It was also great because there was a large Sherlock Holmes presence in the episode and we had just spent the previous two days watching season 1 and 2 of BBC Sherlock. I guess the other elements of Christmas were pretty good but they were a bit over shadowed. It was nice to see my extended family, but this was the first year that one of my aunts was not there and she was definitely missed. I also got to gorge myself on eggnog french toast, which I have decided is the only way to make french toast.

Then it was just a rush of days till the new year. My parents treated me to both The Hobbit and Les Mis, but I definitely enjoyed The Hobbit more. My brothers were extremely occupied by their new video games, but we did play a couple of games of Risk together. Somehow Sam always managed to win. I think it was just because Jack and I were too preoccupied with stopping each other for winning. When I get home I am going to have to demand a rematch because I just can't allow this winning streak to continue.

For the first time I actually did something for New Year's Eve. Last year Ally and I watched the ball drop while knitting on my couch. Clearly we are a force to be reckoned with! This year we branched out a bit and went to our friend Connor's party at his apartment in Tuscaloosa. It was nice to get out of the house. In some ways two weeks wasn't enough, but other times it felt like too much time with the family...no offense to them.

Three days later I sent on my way back to merry ole England.

Oops!

Once again I have been a bit absent from the blog, so here comes a string of posts in an attempt to catch up. 

London Take 2

So my trip to London didn't go exactly as planned, but I had the most amazing time!

When I got to London on Friday it was already dark. I mean it was 4:30 in the afternoon so why shouldn't it look like 9:00 at night? I knew I was going to be on my own for at least the first night so I made sure the hostel I was booked was close to the Victoria Coach Station. It ended up just being down the street so after checking in I decided to walk down to the London Eye. By the time I got across the bridge I was starving so I stopped to eat at this Japanese restaurant. I haven't had Japanese food in such a long time and it was delicious. They gave me way more food than I could possibly eat so I just sat there for a while trying to digest it all before heading back out into the night.

I was quite surprised that it wasn't colder. When I was there in October it was unbearably cold and windy at night, but this night it was quite lovely. Since it was so nice I saw no point in heading back to the hostel yet. I decided to walk along the South Bank of the Thames towards The Globe. I hadn't been there yet and I thought now would be a good time. I wasn't going to pay to go inside, and I can see the outside at anytime so now seemed good. Many of the buildings were lit up in colors along the river and there were tons of Christmas lights up. Right next to the London Eye there was this cool Christmas market. The stands/stalls all had wooden paneling so they looked pretty legit. There were sweets, mulled wine, crafts, and even churros! It was all very Christmas-y. Oh, and there was a carousel! After exploring that for bit I finally made it down to The Globe and realized it was nothing special. Thankfully it was a nice walk.
On the way back I just sat on one of the benches and admired the beauty of London at night. This guy sat next to me and we ended up talking for easily over an hour. He lives near Camden but is originally from Belfast. We just talked about all sorts of things. He was kind of one of those guys who thinks he knows just so much and is so wise, but he was kind enough that I just overlooked it for the night.
Before I headed back to the hostel I got to listen to this guy play probably one of the saddest songs ever...Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. That song was always sad but once my dad told me specifically what it was written about it just became heartbreaking. I won't tell you why (I don't what to be responsible for your sadness), but if you look it up all I can say is you were warned!

The next day I was supposed to meet up with Maile. I went to Camp Juliette Low with her, but I haven't seen her for three or four years. We were communicating via Facebook so I knew there could be issues. We had a tentative meeting place when I left: noon at Parliament. Unfortunately the internet was down in the hostel so I wasn't aware that the meeting place had changed. I ended up waiting at Parliament for thirty minutes before I realized something must have changed. Poor Maile must have ended up waiting at the Tower of London. It was disappointing, but I didn't let it spoil my trip.
I walked up to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I get bored by religious realist paintings, which most of them are, so I headed straight to the two rooms housing the impressionism paintings. I got to admire Monet's "Water Lilies, Setting Sun" and Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield with Cypresses: and "Sunflowers". I'm not going to lie, I looked for Amy's name in the latter but to no avail. It didn't take long to admire the paintings in those two rooms so I headed outside and got to enjoy the rehearsal of the Christmas tunes that were to be sung on the steps later that night. I had every intention of making it back for the formal performance, but it just did not happen.
I decided it was a museum kind of day so attempted to make my way to the British Museum near Covenant Gardens. I started off by taking a wrong turn and ended up having lunch at Tortilla. I finally got tacos and they were delicious. I just wish I could have had some queso. The British just don't seem to understand my desire to eat a bowl of melted cheese with tortilla chips. After lunch I took a couple more wrong turns and ended up in the Seven Dials area. It was such a cool Soho type area with tons of shopping. I found this store called Forbidden Planet and fell in love. It is sci-fi/geek paradise. It is filled with comics and TV and movie memorabilia. If I had had more money I would have bought a truckload of stuff. There was a whole section for Doctor Who and The Big Bang Theory and Marvel superheroes. They also had all of season 8 of the Buffy comics, the Buffy omnibuses, the Angel comics, and the Angel & Faith comics. I could have bought a lifetime of gifts  for Sam in that store and he must visit it whenever he returns to London.
Finally I made it to my original destination, the British Museum. The place is gigantic. I don't know how but I managed to walk through every room. I was there until it closed at 5:30. Honestly the trick is to not do much reading. If you try to read everything you will be exhausted after the first room. They had a marvelously depressing bunch of rooms on Egyptian burials, a fascinating room on the history of clocks, a room on tea in China and Japan, and a plethora of rooms on the history of the rest of the world. The combination of walking to the British Museum and throughout the museum resulted in some very pained feet.

However, the walking did not stop there. I decided to walk back to Trafalgar Square to see the Christmas concert. Unfortunately I was distracted again when I passed St. Martin's Theatre. They were showing Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap so I decided to catch a show. I must say the seats in the uppermost section were definitely not made for even average sized people. I'm short and even I felt cramped in those tiny rows. There was hardly any leg room at all. However, the show was a beautiful "who dunnit". I did keep expecting a giant bee to appear, but no luck. Clearly Doctor Who has severely altered my view of Agatha Christie mysteries. After that I tried to catch the Christmas market, but it was much too late and all the stalls were closed down so I caught a bus back to the hostel and crashed.




So there was no Maile, but it was a big confidence boost travelling by myself throughout London. Clearly I can do this.

Off to London!!

I'm off to London for the weekend and it will be a wonderful break from all the studying I've been doing. It will be bloody cold, but I know how to layer. I'll basically be like an onion.
I'm not sure what I will be up to, but I am supposed to meet up with a friend from camp, Maile. We haven't seen each other in about three years so I am very excited to see her. Hopefully all goes well and my nose doesn't freeze off because that is the one thing I can't cover.

The End of the Semester is Approaching

I only have one more week of classes and 13 days 'till I go home, and I am starting to feel the pressure. Technically my one exam isn't until January 9th and my 3 papers aren't due until the 8th, but I have a lot to do. I need to complete the papers before I get home because I will never get anything accomplished there. Home is just so distracting. Also I am only going to be there for two weeks and my dad already has me listing places I want to eat.

I just don't know where the time went. I can't believe my first semester abroad is almost over. I have not traveled to enough places yet and for that reason alone I am glad that I have another semester to go. Otherwise a year is a long time. However, my friends Elizabeth and Rachel will both be abroad next semester and that should make things more exciting.

November was not the best month overall and I realize its more about who you are with than where you are. I think I was just letting the cold, rainy weather get to me. It also doesn't help that it starts getting dark by 4:00. It just takes a little more effort to get me out of bed, but I am working on it. Next semester I will be prepared; I will be better. But I'm glad I'll be able to take a break at home before that.