Britt in Britain

Britt In Cranberry!

2005-06-16T14:31:00.000+01:00

couple of things:

1. I'm HOME!! :o)

2. As my brilliant dad suggested, I will do a final "closing" post in a few days that will sum up all my experiences and that good stuff. (mostly for my own posterity)

3. I will continue to keep an online journal even though I am now home and have even less interesting things to talk about. (although... if anyone saw me in Cleveland Saturday night... that drama was right up there with seeing the Pope)
The address of the new journal is http://www.livejournal.com/users/bert1012/
As much as I like Blogger, my friends from England are on livejournal. In theory, this will be our way of keeping in touch.

I should have rubbed the blarney stone

2005-06-03T23:24:00.000+01:00

Silly me. When I was in Ireland I should have paid the few extra euros for a trip to the blarney stone so I could get some luck on my side. Sadly, I was too caught up in castles, guinness, shopping, baileys and shopping to remember to pet a stone. As a result, I am now sick. Probably some dreadful disease contracted from the smelly hostel guy.

For those who are backpacking novices, allow me to expound upon the one aspect of hostelling that makes it the most incredible and/or disgusting experience of one's life: strangers. My general theory with regards to backpackers is that they are all cool. I figure that anyone who takes 2 weeks to 4 years off of life to travel the world is sweet. Thus, hostels are an incredible meeting place of these free spirits without a care in the world. They can also be a meeting place for bums without a dime in the world.

Last night, unfortunately, I met the latter. The individual sleeping in the bunk bed above me was dirty, smelly and about 59 years old with stringy, greasy gray hair pulled back into a disheveled ponytail. He wore dirtstained plaid pants that hung off his emaciated frame and his grungy white Hanes shirt was speckled with ketchup stains. When he first walked into the room in the afternoon, my heart went out to him. Then I realized that he was pissed. At 2pm. Later that night, after stumbling back to my room with my lovely new friends (who fell into the "cool hosteller" category) I lost any traces of sympathy for the old man.

As I walked into the room around 4am or so, I wondered whether or not he was still around. Sooner than I would have liked, I got my answer. Drenched in alcohol and clearly in want of a shower, I smelled him before I could see him. Then, I heard him. Talking in his sleep. Loudly. In a thick, drunken Scottish accent.

"Ghrarrhhhhssssh Grashshs grand ghahhah!"

I got into bed as quietly as possible in an effort not to wake up him or the other 9 people in the room. I put in my industrial strength earplugs and hoped for sleep to take me quickly. Despite my best attempts at sheep counting and calming Hershey's/Algebra coffee fantasies, sleep eluded me. Freaking smelly man. I just wanted some shut eye.

Nothing doing. Smelly man continued to punctuate his loud, slurred outbursts with turns so that I was not only faced by a barrage of unpleasant words but the screachings of metal on metal as the mattress springs shifted under his weight. Generally, mattress springs are a welcome surprise in a hostel. Not so this night.

Then, he... I'm almost embarassed to type it... started farting. Continually. Not silently, but most certainly deadly. Worst part is that he kept waking himself up after every outburst. Then, he would clamber down out of bed and go to the loo. However, he didn't seem to know where his card was, so he propped the door open each time he left the room, letting in a floodgate of light for the five or so minutes he was gone. I hate light when I'm trying to sleep, but at least it was a reprieve from the smell.

Then... the piece de resistance...

he fell out of bed around 6:30am. An extremely difficult task when one considers that there were relatively high railings on the bed to prevent such an occcurence. I am absolutely baffled as to how he managed to fall. I think he was a bit surprised as well for he emitted another puff of gas on his landing.

I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. No small task when you are also holding your nose. Very awkward all around.

Anwyways... I think I caught a cold from smelly man.

That's okay... all I have to do between now and next Thursday (when I come home) is attend a few barbecues & a bar crawl, have many teary partings, pack, study and take a final.

Plagiarizing in Dublin

2005-06-01T15:21:00.000+01:00

Once again, I'm in an internet cafe with only a few minutes left to post about this stellar trip. As such, it will be uber brief.

LONDON
Saturday - checked out the famous Portabello Road Market in Notting Hill. Ever so much fun. Bought a beautiful skirt and shirt for very little money and some fresh cherries from a street vendor. Best cherries ever. Guys were giving out free Vanilla Mullerice Yogurt as we were leaving the market, which was the perfect end to an incredible morning of shopping.

Then went to the British Museum where I caught a tour of the Asia room. Got to learn all sorts of stuff about Hindu gods and goddesses which related to the course I just took at Lancaster. Very educational and fun.

Then went back to our hostel and chilled with the other girls from our room (from Poland, Finland, Boston and Cali).

Sunday - I woke up early (7:30am) while Sarah slept and grabbed a quick breakfast on my way to Westminster/Big Ben area. Checked it all out on a beautiful morning with few crowds and got (what I hope) will be some excellent pictures. Went back to the hostel and grabbed Sarah then went to the Science, Victoria & Albert and Natural History Museums. Nothing toooo exciting, but it was free and you can't argue with that. Then went and saw The Interpreter (not a terrible movie) and then headed to Heathrow where we crashed until our 6am flight to Dublin

DUBLIN
Monday - Lots of shopping and checking out the city. Did some serious serious damage to the credit card. Spent more money in one day then I've ever spent in my entire life. (nearly $200... eek!) I will be paying this back to my father eventually and I figure it's okay because I am generally pretty cheap and it should all work out in the end...

Oops running out of time...

last thoughts on Dublin before I head to glasgow & edinburgh tonight....

Guiness is great, Bailey's is delicious, shopping in Dublin is dangerous, Avalon house is a top 5 hostel in europe for a reason...

8 DAYS TIL HOME!!! :-D

Londontown!

2005-05-27T20:46:00.000+01:00

Friday, May 27th

In an internet cafe in London with two minutes left. This will be short.

Everything here is wonderful and warm and beautiful and amazing and sunny and fascinating and interesting and exciting and....

- our hostel is right outside of hyde park (which is gorgeous in this 81 degrees and sunny weather) on a swanky street

- our rooms are clean and safe and there is a great bar in the basement

- i got to go to picadilly circus, leicester square, covent garden, knights templar chapel, Sommerset house, notting hill, charing cross, etc... just today!!

it's so great. it's amazing what a difference a little sun makes!

Frog leaps over Coldplay for top spot?

2005-05-24T22:51:00.000+01:00

This Sunday, the #1 song in the UK will not be the latest single from hometown geniuses Coldplay but Crazy Frog's Axel F (the same Axel F from Beverly Hills Cop that was popular in the 80s).

A ringtone is beating out Coldplay in their own country. What an odd place.

Proof

Last Saturday at Lancs... tear

2005-05-22T14:23:00.000+01:00

Last night was my final Saturday evening at Lancaster. (Next Saturday I will be in London, the following Saturday I will be in Edinburgh or Stirling and the one after that I'll be home doing something ridiculously cool like going to the Deckhouse/Barnes & Noble/Sheetz with T.) For my last Saturday, we definitely had a good time Lancs-style... chilled at old bars, ate sugar waffles, watched movies, got a dance show from Kate & Hev. The only thing missing was a lightsaber demonstration by Andy (had to get a rain ticket on that one).

I don't know what it is that has changed... maybe the weather, maybe the knowledge that the end is near, maybe the fact that most people back at Case are home & I'm not missing out on major events... but the place has been downright amazing. Figures huh? All I know is that I have an incredible 19 days ahead of me and I'm going to enjoy every last one of them. :-D How's that for optimistic? I figure it can't hurt. Worst that could happen is that it rains everyday... wait... that already happens.

In a completely unrelated subject, I've come across some pretty crazy news here in England. In a country where they promote Vegetarianism with the tag line "How long can you keep it up?" and try to stop littering with the line "While you are down there, could you put this in the bin for me?" (check out those stories here... article even includes the word "naff"!), they actually find the wearing of hoodies and baseball caps intimidatingly deviant behavior. In a shopping center in Kent, they have outlawed the wearing of hoodies and hats because they are antisocial. The story is here. What's almost as good as the dress code in the mall is the guy quoted in the story. His picture is shown on the right and the caption on the picture is "Mr Prescott says he did not mean to look miserable." Among other great lines in the story are:

"... he came back with 10 people with hoods, you know, these fellas with hoods on.
He came at me in a very intimidating manner but, of course, I now have security control. They appeared and they vanished." ~Britain's Deputy Prime Minister

"One of the problems for me is that I've got a face that falls into a miserable looking face." ~ same Minister

Brits are always good for a giggle or two.

22 days!

2005-05-19T14:18:00.000+01:00

Of course, now that there are only 22 days left, the weather is getting nicer and we are having all sorts of barbecues and fun playing Rounders (a reallllllly dumb, useless version of baseball), basketball on the outdoor courts, gossip sessions in Alexandra Square, etc... It's amazing how much nicer a place is in the spring! Instead of being holed up in their rooms all the time, everyone is out and about. It's so much fun being able to randomly sit on picnic benches or take walks down to the pitches where everyone seems to congregate on pleasant days (especially when your friends get randomly picked up and kidnapped mid-conversation).

I just hope the weather holds up for the next month for my adventures around the UK.

As an aside, for those of you I haven't told... boy isn't coming after all. Surprisingly, it's not his fault and the situation is such that I would feel like a heel if I complained. I was pissed for about a week seeing as how I had spent a lot of time planning the trip, had left Barcelona early not just to do work but so that I would have extra money to spend on time with him, had picked out restaurants in town we could go to and had told all of my friends that they were going to get to meet him... oh, and, the biggest annoyance of all... I don't know how I'm going to get all of my stuff home (he was supposed to bring an extra bag for me... grrrrr).

On the bright side, I now get to do a full tour of the UK! (I didn't really want to see the French again anyway...) A 10 day adventure of Manchester, Liverpool, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. Besides getting to see famous historical sites, multiple castles and sampling famous beers & whiskeys straight from the source, we'll be staying in the coolest hostels. Everyone we booked is on the "10 Best Hostels in Europe" list. One is inside a medieval church!! I'm so excited!

Also, I figure that if things are meant to work out between boy and I, we can go to Europe some other time. I've become really tight with people from Germany, Prague, Spain, Ireland and Dubai (!!!) and all have offered a place to crash at in the future. Alternatively, if we both have real incomes at that point, maybe we could even stay in actual hotels and eat quality food as opposed to grungy hostels and super-cheap dinners.

Geez... getting a bit ahead of myself there. I'm not one to plan futures around boys. Given my luck, I know better. Either way, provided I don't fail any more courses, I should be able to support myself just fine in the future and won't have to rely on anyone else for trips to Europe, or, while I'm putting myself through law school... trips to Lake Erie.

Anyways... as always, I've digressed... point is, the next 22 days should go quickly with lots of barbecues, birthday parties, bar crawls, finals and traveling in store!

Biting My Tongue

2005-05-19T13:52:00.000+01:00

This past Monday I had my first final at Lancaster in my Monetary Economics course. In the days leading up to it, I was feeling pretty confident. Unlike a lot of the geniuses at Case, I never feel confidet for exams. However, I thought this exam would be a success since they do things differently at Lancaster:

- The past THREE years' exams were posted online. Thus, I was able to get a feel for my Professor's testing style. As an added bonus, I noticed that at least two of the questions on each exam were repeats and if they were new questions, they were just different ways to ask about the same topics. To this I said "SCORE."

- The exam was to be composed of 6 essay questions of which I would only have to choose TWO. Since each question did not deal with more than one aspect of a topic from the class, it meant that, hypothetically, I didn't have to know the entire course inside and out.

- Just to reiterate, no multiple choice questions, no fill in the blank or identifications or short answers. ESSAYS. I'd never scored lower than a 93% on an essay test.

- Also, there are no classes for third years this term. Unlike Case where you have exams, papers and projects due the last week before finals and then only two days to cram for 5 or more classes.... Lancs gives everyone a minimum of three weeks class-free to study for 4-5 exams. Furthermore, some exams are spread a week apart. For example, my schedule is May 16th, 18th, 26th and June 8th.

That said, of course I slacked off in studying and only really focused hard core the last three 1/2 days before the exam and told people how it wouldn't be too difficult. I wrote practice essays for the questions that were repeated on each exam as well as practice essays for three of the topics that showed up each year. I thought I was set.

I could't have been more wrong.

For fun, the professor switched things up this year. No repeat questions and NONE of the topics I prepared were included. Monetary economics exam and there were no questions on Keynes, Friedman or the Quantity Theory. NONE.

I am sooooo screwed. The exam was worth over 2/3 of my grade. Ughghg. Thing is, I don't know what I could have done differently. As I've said when I was complaining about this class before, there is no book, I had to teach myself material from old Micro & Macro books, I went to his office hours, but he didn't give concrete help... I know that I always say "I failed," but this time I genuinely did. One of my essays included the following brilliant response "The answer could be one of two possibilities. [Extremely irrelevant background to fill space] The first is ....." Then I left it blank. Smart huh? It took me awhile to find the correct answers - I had to google the question and do tons of research - but I eventually found out that I put down the wrong equations, got guys backwards and generally answered everything wrong. So embarassing!

Anyways... moral of the story... don't lie about your background to get into classes and don't tell people an exam is going to be a piece of cake. You just end up looking stupid.

Finally! Something to post about!

2005-05-09T16:07:00.000+01:00

Rather than a lame post about cooking simply to pacify my parents, I actually have something to post about... Roses! I also have tons of pics from it (some of which I will soon have posted on webshots here.)

So. Roses. Big old sporting tournament between Lancaster University (Red Rose) and York University (White Rose). 40 years old. All sports teams from both universities compete in at least one game. "Sports" range from Football (soccer) & Rugby to Ballroom Dancing. This year, it was held at York University in, you guessed it, York. For more info behind the Roses tournament, click here.

The weekend went like this:

Saturday:
- Got on the coach at 9am for the 3 hour drive to York. Suffice to say that it was definitely the "scenic" route. Saw tons of sheep, old churches and one or two buildings that looked like castles. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so windy and hilly and carsick-inducing.
- Arrived at York University around 12pm and shown to our lovely accomodation: the wooden floor of a dining hall. This is a picture of our wonderful lodging from right before we left on Sunday (it's much cleaner than it had been because everyone was getting packed up).

- Went and watched some of the different games. Got to see cricket - complete with boys in V-neck sweaters.

(cricket pitch)

Then, went and hung out near the beer tent and watched the basketball boys play human foosball. (It was no coincidence that they stuck the blow up games near the beer tents.) The game was pretty hilarious. It was the American boys versus the World and, of course, the Americans ended up getting competitive and cheating by the end.

(Human Foosball)

Next, we went and jumped around in a blow up thing. Got to act like five year olds and tried to tackle one another. Very, very fun.

(Tackle)

Afterwards, we took a break from the blowup stuff and watched Rugby. Saw guys flip one another and pound each other into the ground. Way cooler than stupid cricket. (Also... while cheering from the sidelines, I got to see the finest beer bong since I've been here - obviously, it was by an American.)

(rugby match)

- Then, we all went back to the hall and got ready for dinner. Unlike the hair-straightening, short dress wearing, constantly giggling cheerleaders and other psychos that were sharing the hall with us, we chose not to pay 13 pounds ($26 dollars) to go to the Rose Ball (basically a grade school dance held in a gym with bad music). Instead, the basketball girls and guys went out for a great dinner in town. I had a goat cheese & leek starter, risotto & dolcelatte aubergine something or other & wine. The food was great and the company was even better.

(a toast to the season... check out the hair... shaved and died red for Lancaster)

(some of the boys... Andy (American), Andy, Rich (both English), Jorgen (Norwegian?)

(Matching Red Roses on Bugs & Josh)

(Most of the boys team... note that Josh (American) is a natural jackass)

i don't know what happened to my pictures of the girls :(... will have to get some at our upcoming team dinner

- After dinner, there were some awards presented.

(Jorgen giving European-style kisses to Squeeze for her award)

(Jorgen looking pleased to give kisses to Chris for hers)

(No kisses, just handshake, for MVP Jeff)

- Then, we hit the bars in town.

(it's hard to see, but he kept lighting his shots on fire)

(Andy, Me, Bugs... splitting Vodka & Redbull... first time I've had that combo since beginning of Sophomore year... does anyone else remember that night? Fire drill in Clarke Tower... a very embarassed Amanda & I...? I kept that night in mind as I drank this and made sure I learned my lesson & didn't mix it with medicine...)

(sidenote on these pictures... we spent the day outside in the wind and got drenched more than once... I was misinformed and thought this was a sports trip, so didn't bring hairdryers, straighteners or large quantities of makeup like the cheerleaders and other froo froo girls... so, take that into account)

(some of the group... they all have ADD)

(Chris, Hannah and I liked this pole in quaint York)

- Best part of the night... found a soap fountain! Spent quite awhile covering everyone in foam!

(Squeeze by the fountain)

(part of the group... don't give ADD kids alcohol or foam)

this got long with all the pics & I have important things to do (like open my Econ book and burn some dinner)... I'll finish later ....

Cooking for One 101

2005-05-05T19:55:00.000+01:00

The British girls on my hall often pull their resources and boundless knowledge all of things "cookery" related. I would join in on these celebrations of domesticity, but, seeing as how I don't really get in a tizzy over potatoes and pot pies, I cook for myself.

I thought, for giggles, I would share my top 8 cooking tips:

1) You do not peel a cucumber like you would a carrot. Instead, you slice it.

2) If you are in a backasswards country where they do not sell Hershey's syrup to put on your ice cream, apply liberal amounts of chocolate powder (the kind you use for chocolate milk - like Nestle's Quick). Super yummy! (nutella works as well...)

3) Although sugar looks the same as salt, it does not taste the same.

4) Sugar does not taste good on rice or pasta.

5) Portabello Mushrooms should not be frozen.

6) Put equal amounts of rice and water in the pot. Not two parts rice to one part water. Burnt rice is hard to scrape off of a pot.

7) Some English "Quick Meals" are meant for the "cooker" (oven). They do not go in the microwave because the metal bits make sparks and sparks make fire.

8) When baking cookies from an English recipe, be aware that the setting for the oven is in Celsius not Fahrenheit. Cookies in the oven at 350 celsius for 12 minutes come out black.

Paris in the Spring?

2005-05-05T15:50:00.000+01:00

Once again, I am trying (somewhat in vain) to plan another mini EuroTrip for when the boy comes. Just as before, I am struggling with the "problem" of too many choices. Paris? Venice? Athens? Florence? Rome? Barcelona? Seville? Prague? Provence? Germany? Austria? Switzerland? Gahhhh.

I am seriously considering starting a business when I'm all growed up that just offers travel packages to study abroad students. Every American, Canadian and Australian I've talked to has money to burn but no direction. Cities are chosen based on everything from High School history classes & friend's stories to filming locations for the Real World. If I could just set up a travel business that offered pre-planned packages, I could make a bundle. The excursions could vary from 3 day jaunts to 6 week adventures and there could be options to suit every budget. Id offer tours of Italy, Italy/France/Spain options, main tourist stops, non-tourist stops, ones geared toward the outdoorsy types and ones geared towards the shopping types. Ahhhh. Generally, I come up with fantastic ideas only to find out that someone else has already implemented by brilliant plans. I'm sure that somewhere on the internet is a person selling what I'm looking for, but for the life of me, I can't find it.

Instead, I have to decide where to go, whether or not to get Eurail passes, where to fly in and out of, how long to spend in each city, where to stay, whether or not the hostels are close to the big attractions, how to get around and... the biggie... can I afford what I've planned?

Ah well... the boy is going to be gradumacated very soon. I think I will be devious and just leave all the odds and ends to him!

In other going ons...

This weekend, I will be going to York for "Roses." Roses is a big tournament between Lancaster and York University in which every sports team has a match. From what I hear, we leave on Saturday morning and get to spend the whole day watching different sports (soccer, American football, netball, volleyball, etc.) and then go out for the night with the different teams. On Sunday, the girls' basketball team faces off against York for what I'm sure will be a thrilling game that is attended by at least as many people as the badminton match.

Last night, hung out on a desserted, dark playground with some of the basketball girls and gossiped while having some wine & Carling. (I felt like such a rebel!) Let me just say that swings, wine and darkness are a pretty crazy combination. Once it started getting cold, we went and harassed this really cool Swedish kid then found a tv room. It was pretty fun overall.

Tonight, there is *FREE* wine, cheese, bread & Jazz at one of the campus bars. I think I'll check that out so that I can be like all the cool kids back home who are done for the year! (congrats all... although, Seniors aren't allowed to move on... I don't want you all leaving and I don't want to be a senior)

Hope everyone has a good start to their summer! :)

My Life is Boring...

2005-05-04T02:04:00.000+01:00

... so I'll talk about the people close to me that I am looking forward to seeing in less than 2 months. Also, I don't know if it's genetics or upbringing (nature v. nurture... it's a tricky one), but I can't make three negative posts in a row.

Many people might be unaware of the fact that I have two amazing sisters. Blessed with that undefinable, yet ever so distinct"IT" gene, they are the people you find your attention gravitating towards when they walk in the room. They have the hair, makeup-application, wit, wardrobe-assembling and boy attraction genes... (it's okay though, I got the height and can give them "noogies" whenever I'd like as well as put things they want on high un-reachable shelves). :-D I'd encourage them to start their own blogs, but they are much funnier, more talented at writing than I am and generally have exciting things going on in their lives and I don't need that kind of competition.

Quick Bios:

Audra: cool name, huh? 10 years my senior, but has never once made me feel inferior. She was one of the first people to talk to me like an adult... no small task. If you want the best & most interesting conversation of your life, this is your girl - no topic is too obscure or mundane, she's been known to make cows interesting. She has two bright, well-mannered and just all around fun sons (Curtis and Zack), so, obviously she is a brilliant mom. Currently going through nursing school at a back-breaking pace. I'm confident that no matter what specialization she decides on, within her first year of work, the ER writers are going to get wind of her exploits and base a whole character on her. She's the shortest person in our family, at about 5 foot 3 or so (?) & has crazy curly hair (the kind where you pull on the ringlets and they snap right back!). Obviously, we look very similar. Despite our differences in appearance, we both share a penchant for chocolate & anything ending in "ccino" from Starbucks!

(this is where i would add a picture, but I am a bum and have none on my laptop :( ... I'll have to add one in later)

Kelsey: prefers to be called "Schmuckaface" or "Kelsalumpy." 5 years my junior. Talks to me like I am a 6 year old. That's okay though, because around her, I act like I'm four. No matter how old she gets, I will always pretend like she is still in preschool because it gives me license to act like a preschooler as well (if that makes any sense). We have been known to run around the house beating spoons against soup pots worn on on our heads like hats. Shockingly, over the past few years, our relationship has evolved. Instead of spending all of our energy fighting over the front seat, we actually have legitimate conversations in between squabbles over radio control. She even gives good advice! Who knew? Must have gotten that one from Aud. What else? She's what one would call "athletic" and is better at basketball as a 10th grader than I was as a senior. I realize that doesn't say much, but, she has the Division 1 recruiting letters (or whatever they are called) to back up her skills. While she is having a similar high school career with regard to choice of sports, that is where the comparison of our HS experiences ends. She definitely got her personality skills from Audra, as evidenced by the fact that she has actual friends (plural). She's even had boyfriends and has been asked to homecomings and prom. Basically, she's way cooler than I ever was. She is about an inch shorter than me, weighs about 110 pounds and has natural blonde hair. I hate her. :)

Here's a pic of Kels and I. Given our expressions and the fact that Kels is missing a shoe, you might think that we are in some back street or some other casual setting, but no, we are at the top of the very holy St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. While we look nothing alike, we both share the jackass-picture-taking gene.

Here's one more of Kels sans the silly face... we look a bit more alike in this one:

so... the point to these rambling bios is that I am really looking forward to seeing my sisters when I get home. I can't wait for the many Starbucks trips (Aud now lives less than 15 minutes away!!), long gossip sessions, movie watching, mall trips, basketball games, etc. that will ensue!

Another Dumb Blonde

2005-05-02T16:59:00.000+01:00

So, this afternoon, the genius girls on my floor were mucking about in the disgusting, disaster area that is our kitchen. Kate, being about as coordinated as I am, managed to drop a glass jar of sauce on the floor, scattering sauce and glass everywhere. Seeing as how she is a natural blonde (I can say that now that I am back to full brunette), she made the brilliant decision to wipe up the sauce, pick up the large pieces of glass and leave the tiny little bits for the cleaning lady. This was retarded on several levels.

First, the cleaning ladies are about as effective as the tv-watching bums from Sherman were freshman year. The only soap they wanted anything to do with was Days of Our Lives. (Go ahead, roll your eyes. That was dumb but true.)

Secondly, the cleaning ladies do not come until tomorrow. That means there will be glass and dry sauce on the floor for the next 24 hours.

Finally, I was unaware of all of this and walked in without shoes and got glass in my feet. Then, while trying to pick it out, I cut my finger.

I couldn't find my band aids, so I took some kleenex and taped it to my finger Magyver-style. It works okay, but typing is difficult. Obviously, I should insist she clean it up or just go do it myself. Instead, in my usual passive aggressiveness, I am just going to wear shoes in the kitchen and hope the lazy twit forgets and walks in barefoot.

In summary:
Annoyance #2: Dumb, blonde corridor mates.

Actually, it's not just this glass incident that annoys me. Kate started dating this boy named Woo a week or two before break and, despite everyone's predictions to the contrary, they are still together. Boy are they together. Think of the biggest PDA couple you've ever met and then multiply it by a billion. (They make Carrie and Zack look like mere acquaintances.) They cook dinner for each other every night. They sit on her bed and make kissy noises so loudly that I can hear them with my door closed. He bought her a cactus 'just because'. (Although, seriously, a cactus? I suppose that's nice for a dorm room, even I have to work extra hard to kill those.) If you sit and chat with the two of them, they never take their hands off one another and only use baby voices (which is just disturbing coming from a large, over 6ft tall Asian). We went grocery shopping and they kissed in every aisle. They even got mushy over rice. Seriously. Rice. Their text messages are like this: "XOXO Kate and Woo Forever and Always BFFAL 3/15/05 Kisses Wuv you." They act like 9th graders whose parents are away for the weekend. Gag me.

Generally, I don't mind PDA too much. Although I do not engage in it personally (people look at you if you publicly display affection and I don't like people looking at me), there are many couples who make it quite cute. To use Carrie and Zack as an example again... living with C this past summer and first semester... I was able to witness genuinely adorable PDA. You could actually carry on conversations with them and I was never made to feel like an intruder in my own room. Here at Lancaster... it's painful to be in our kitchen at the same time as them as they constantly feed each other.

So, ammended Annoyance #2: Uber PDA-ing, dumb, blonde corridor mates.

(fyi: it's raining outside, I was supposed to be in lovely Edinburgh today and I'm not, my finger is throbbing and I can hear baby talk in the background.. thus I'm in an icky mood... to be fair, Kate is quite nice)

Pic of Kate & Woo:

One more:

Avi had it right

2005-04-29T14:22:00.001+01:00

Since this is a long post - I'll sum up for my lovers of Sparks Notes who can't read long passages without breaks - Lancaster annoys me and the exercise gods hate me.

In the movie Snatch, there is a character named Avi who isn't so much a fan of England. I realize the movie is "smart" and everything, but to be honest, heist movies aren't my thing so I used to just like watching it because of Brad Pitt. Eh, I'm a girl, do you really expect any more from me? Right. Now that I have been a resident of England for nearly four months, I can appreciate the movie on several levels. At the moment, what I appreciate most is Avi, who clearly has been to Lancaster. Here is a sampling of his dialogue:

Customs Official: Do you have anything to declare, sir?
Avi: Yeah. Don't go to England.

Why this sudden understanding of Avi's point of view? Well, as the study abroad people said, we would all eventually move beyond the 'honeymoon stage' and start to see the University in all of its mediocrity. Thus, instead of including "Cool English thing of the day" with each post as I had originally planned prior to my arrival, I will now make "Retarded, Wince-Inducing, Annoying Lancaster Thing of the Day." (at the present moment, I am addressing my grievances to Lancaster and not the whole of England. London was nice.)

Annoyance #1: The "state-of-the-art" sports centre. In one of my first posts here, I described this poor excuse for a gym. As a person who is rather allergic to exercising, I had no intention of ever entering the antiquated edifice. However, my involvement with the basketball team forces me to stop by several times a week. The following is a list of complaints against the establishment:

1) To get onto the dodgy, dusty basketball court, you have to have a stupid membership card with your picture on it. Getting this card costs 10-20 pounds (I can't remember the exact amount) and with it, you are granted the privilege of paying for the use of different facilities. (What did the 10-20 pounds get you? I have no idea. As far as I can tell, a cheap, laminated purple card.)

2) To use the "Life Fitness Room" (read: abrollers and treadmills), the swimming pool (only slightly bigger than the blow up wading pool you had when you were two), the climbing wall (read: jungle gym) or the weight room (i have nothing mean to say here, it's quite similar to Case's) you have to pay between $3-6.

3) To use any of the above services, you must first go through an "Induction" class, held on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

4) They rent the dusty gym out to the badminton team on Saturdays and give the basketball team the dusty, poorly lighted, not regulation sized, sauna like gym. Badmiton???

4) Lancaster University insists that this is a premier fitness center even though most of the equipment is older than me. It makes Wade and Veal equipment look like the kind a Division 1 program wouold have. At least at Case there is no false advertisement, they don't pretend like things are great when they aren't. AND they don't charge you.

So... even though it's a rip off and the equipment is shotty... why the annoyance if I am a professed gymaphobic? Well.... I have gained the Foreign 15. It is similar to the Freshman 15 except that it is in kilograms not pounds. It is very, very depressing. SO depressing in fact, that on one of my days without basketball practice, I even got dressed in exercise gear and marched myself to the gym, money in hand. I walked nicely up to the lady, asked for admission to the Life Fitness room, put money on the counter and showed my membership card. Our discourse went as such:

Lady: You can't.
Me (politely): Pardon?
Snooty Lady: You may not use the life fitness room, you have not been inducted.
Me (politely): Pardon?
Fat, Snooty Lady: Your card has not been punched for an induction session. You must have an induction session before you can use the facilities.
Me: Induction what? (here I'm thinking its like an Atkins thing. Me and Atkins don't get along.)
Wart-Ridden, Fat, Snooty Lady: You are shown how to use the equipment.
Me: I assure you, I am capable of using a treadmill and an ab roller. I've worked with personal trainers before. (which is sorta true) I'm sure I'll be fine.
Thick, Wart-Ridden, Fat, Snooty Lady: NO. It's POLICY. No exceptions and the last session ended 20 minutes ago, you will have to wait until next week. Good day.

THEN... she turned around and walked away!!! She wouldn't even take my money. Stupid. And Annoying. And I'm still 15 kg heavier than I was when I got here. All because I do not appear capable of using an Ab Roller without breaking it or myself. To those of you who think she may have been correct in that assumption, really, I swear I could have handled it.

long time no post

2005-04-29T00:06:00.000+01:00

So, it's been over two weeks since I've posted. At first, you might think that this delinquency is due to my living a crazy life and not having a moment to spare for this blog. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. As far as these past two weeks goes, today was downright hectic. Let me outline it for you:

1) Wake up at 8:30am and go to my single class of the week at 9:00am. Unlike last week, the professor actually showed up today.
2) Come back at 10:00am, eat some cereal, watch some Arrested Development on my computer and download episodes 11-19 of Lost (I'm now addicted to that show...)
3) Read a book (that is purely for kicks) for an unspecified amount of time and fall asleep
4) Wake up from my nap around 3pm
5) Watch some Lost on my computer
6) Talk to boy online for an hour or so
7) Go to basketball practice from 6:30-8:30
8) See a campus movie from 9:30-12:00
9) Watch more tv/movies on my computer
10) Sleep eventually

Last week was slightly more productive as I wrote 20 pages worth of papers on stuff I didn't really understand. Even pulled two all nighters. Kinda made me feel like I was back at Case.

Even though nothing truly eventful has been happening, I have still managed to get annoyed at Lancaster and, as an extension, the entire country of England. I will detail those in my next post. (I may have another grievance to add to the growing list, but it is contingent upon events that may or may not transpire tonight.) hehehe... i've been reading books with BIG words... it's taken quite a bit of effort not to use all of them at once!

Travel Logue Sorta

2005-04-13T00:04:00.000+01:00

Sarah showed me this pretty sweet site called "Ball of Dirt." It mixes a blog with pictures, so I thought it would be perfect for a kinda travel logue of my EuroTrip. It is very much not finished at the moment as I only recently figured out how to upload things to the site... but, I think my mom and dad might get a kick out of it at least.

The site is:
http://www.ballofdirt.com/journeys/6102.html

In other news... today was gorgeous! It was sunny and not bitterly cold and the birds were chirping and "Sweet Home Alabama" was playing in the back ground and... well... it was nice. I went for a jog around campus and found a cute little path that had a couple of old fashioned cottages. I saw a horse and lots of cute sheep, a pretty yellow bird and a beautiful black & blue bird that I dont think we have back home. Daffodills and tulips were blooming alongside the sweetest little purple wildflowers (they are my new favorite! kinda makes it tough for the boy though... my old favorite flowers were the lilac/blue wildflowers that grow along the highway in Cleveland... they dont exactly sell those in stores... and i doubt flower shops will have "purple english wildflowers" either). Anyways... I decided that I may just survive the next two months here if this weather can keep up for at least a quarter of the time. Also, my run made me feel alot better about coming to Lancaster itself. I think that if I were in a big city like Leeds (where Rachel is) I wouldn't get to experience the small town charm of a place like Lancaster - the kind of charm that makes this country pretty okay in my book.

Also, went a whole day without eating carbs. Even made myself bunless Hamburgers with blue cheese and said "No" when I was offered pie. It's been a good day! :)

I love English

2005-04-10T17:28:00.000+01:00

After 2 continents, 6 countries, 5 capital cities and 11 flights in 28 days, I am finally back at Lancaster. While it is certainly not home (the continued absence of anything resembling a coffee shop or a Target made that abundantly clear) at least they speak English here.

I never knew how frustrating and draining it could be to spend time in areas where no one speaks English. At first, hearing different languages was exciting and everything that I had always wanted to experience. I was able to pretend I was Belle from Beauty in the Beast and bat my eyelashes, buy French bread and say "Bonjour" in Nice. In Rome, I was Audrey Hepburn on Holiday. However, I quickly began to ache for someone to speak English. In Nice, we went to McDonald's for dinner one night (yes... McDonald's... we were in a shady area and couldn't really afford the good French food and didn't want to sit in the dirty places we could afford). For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to order a plain cheeseburger. Saying the words "no tomatoes, just burger and cheese" in a French accent is not the same thing as actually speaking French. Thank goodness Rachel knew French from high school and was able to help me out. If she hadn't, I would have been lost in that country. I would have been forced to survive on baguettes, croissants and chocolate (3 words I knew too well in French).

So, yes, back in jolly old England where everyone speaks English. Overall, my trip was pretty amazing. Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Nice, Rome (got to see all of the craziness of the Pope's passing... pretty historic if I do say so myself), Paris and Barcelona. At the moment, I am still a bit overwhelmed or something from the whole experience, and will post later on all of the events. It's like going out and having a crazy night... you need to spend the next day recovering before being able to tell everyone about your exploits. I need a few days to recover (and gather pictures from Rachel and my family) before I give a full report.

However, I will give a little State of the Union persay...

- Right now, I am sitting in my lovely, safe room in Lancaster. I have the biggest, messiest pile of laundry behind me and would go wash the whole thing right now but a) i am out of laundry detergent and b) the grocery store is closed. It seems that the clothes I wore for 4 weeks straight will have to wait one more day until being cleaned. ewwww. Some remind me of Paris... they are very, very not clean.

- My computer battery is not recharging. I'd ask a computer expert to help me, but, as I've said before, there are none at the University.

- I am so ready to go home and I miss Case soooo much. I think I am one of a select few people at Case who have always liked the place. Even though the weather is crappy, I like the city. Even though the classes are difficult and stressful, I like the attentiveness and accessibility of the professors. Even though the campus is small, I like that I can walk down the street and know half of the people. Most of all, I love my friends and family. I liked Case when I left, but I love it now that I am gone. It's that whole "you don't know what you got until it's gone" type scenario. You could probably throw "It's now where, but who you are with that really matters" on top of that. I hate it when cliches are right.

I think it may not be too far of a stretch to say that that is one of the most important things that I have learned in my travels thus far. I have gained a true appreciation for where I come from. As I said, it's not that I didn't appreciate where I came from (or you lot) before, it's just that it has taken on a whole new dimension - there are so many little things that I hadn't expected to miss or expected to miss so much. I'm not sure how I am going to make it through the next two months, but, it is only two months and they will hopefully go quickly. I plan on working on the monstrous load of work I have due, shedding the Foreign 15 pounds (no lie... 15 pounds at least... even if my hair was photographable, I wouldn't post a picture because I now have an extra chin) and seeing the sights around England.

Ever since I was little, I have wanted to travel. I always, always, always wanted to learn about different cultures and cities and people and... basically do what I am doing right now. When I was in high school, I wouldn't even look at colleges that didn't have study abroad programs. When I start questioning why I came here, I remind myself that if I hadn't come to England and traveled for the past month, I would be sitting at Case right now regretting things. I hate regret. Therefore, I guess I am ultimately glad that I came here and have had the experiences I have had. I'm just experienced and cultured out at the moment. I just hope that the next two months fly by and that when I come home, everyone has a weekend free to meet up in Cleveland or something... because I may survive two more months before coming home, but I absolutely can not survive four more months without seeing the people that really are the best in the entire world (i can say that with authority too because I have met people from around the world, and none top the group of you from back home).

So... um... sorry to make this so long and complainy, but... just felt you all should know that I am alive and that when I say "I miss you" I mean it more sincerely than you could know. :)

Super Quick Eurotrip Post

2005-04-02T18:21:00.001+01:00

So... I'm at the hostel in Rome right now and I have 6 minutes before my internet shuts off. I'll make this quick.

I will be adding on a travelogue type thing of my adventures once I am back in Lancaster and don't have to rely on internet cafes where it costs 1 euro for 30 minutes.

Trip so far:

1)Amsterdam - Accidentally booked a hostel in Rotterdam instead of Amsterdam. Turns out Rotterdam is a 45 minute train ride from Rotterdam and that the train cost lots of money. Rotterdam was very nice and non-touristy. No one spoke English. Found a coffeeshop on the last day called "Bob Marley." Turns out coffeeshops in the Netherland do not sell coffee. Went to Amsterdam for the last night before we caught a plane at 8am... Amsterdam is very scary. Very, very scary.

2) Nice - Gorgeous. Cote'd Azur. Ate croissants, nutella and McDonalds. Lots of ritzy stores.

3) Rome - Spent first 10 days with the family. Best 10 days ever. Saw lots of old stuff and ate the best food ever. Am now 15 pounds heavier easy. Ran into a friend from high school randomly who I had not seen since graduation. Crazy! Now am with Rachel.

i don't really know what to say...

2005-03-19T11:41:00.000Z

I don’t really know what to say here… Last Friday, a close family member passed away. She was 17. I’m not a poet, so I won’t say trivialize the situation with poor words, but I will say a few things. It wasn’t fair, our family will never be the same again and it isn’t fair. The one consolation is that she was a beautiful girl with a heart of gold and, for the first time, I believe in a heaven and know that she is there, doing all of the things she could never do down here.

I also must say that I have the best family in the world. Really, I do. They are incredible. I flew home last Saturday and spent four days solid with my mom, dad, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and great-aunt and all I can say is that they are all amazing. It is terrible that it took a tragedy to make us all realize what we have and to grow so close, but… we did and it’s wonderful.

I wasn’t going to put anything up in this blog any more, because anything I write just feels frivolous. It also makes me feel guilty because I am having these amazing experiences while my family is mourning. I don’t know… I decided to continue posting because I am not going to have access to phone or IM for the next month, and I know my parents will go crazy if they don’t have some way of checking up on me J

So… I’m in Leeds now. Pretty cool school. Rachel’s dorm is amazing. Her room is like the kind you see on tv and in movies where you go “College dorm rooms just aren’t that big!” Hers is that big. AND it has a purple duvet with a dust ruffle. I’m so jealous! Leeds itself is the second biggest city in England and her university is right in the city, so there are tons of trendy bars and restaurants. It seems like a really nice place to spend the semester.

It’s really great getting to see Rachel. I’ve missed Phi Mu and the Case girls sooo much. I’ve decided to think of her as the representative of all you. Not a bad rep, huh?

At 6:00pm we leave for Amsterdam! I can’t wait. I’ve heard wonderful things about their waffles and brownies. Hehe Don’t worry, I’ll probably stay away from the brownies, but, if I do sample the local cuisine, I will be sure to be honest and write about my experiences.

I think we are leaving the computer lab right now and going to see a movie to kill some time. We were going to go shopping or something, but our backpacks are absolutely massive and could take a couple people out if we aren’t careful with how we turn.

So… stay tuned for updates on the European Adventure!

P.S.: Louis Keppler is the best ever. He came to visit me when I was home even though he had a lot of work to do and he knew it meant two straight days at the funeral home with people he didn’t know. He sat and played UNO with the little kids, made a pretty decent first impression on my family, took me for coffee TWICE, to Primanti’s Brothers and… the piece de resistance… on Sunday night, when the only video that would make me feel better was my tape of Jem episodes from the 80’s (I was a HUGE fan of Jem & She-Ra… made my parents tape every episode while I was at school)… he sat and watched it with me.

that last one was a bit harsh

2005-03-07T15:12:00.000Z

I'd delete the last post because of it's harshness, but maybe it's good to let people see that I can get pissed off sometimes. Maybe it will make me very intimidating, in that "we must constantly cater to her every possible want so that she does not blow up at us" sort of way. Yeah, maybe not.

Let's see... this weekend...

Well, after I first became aware of the possibility of no visit from the boy, I ate everything in site. Between 11pm and 4am I ate 2 pancakes, 2 pieces of toast, 3 cups of hot chocolate, banana and... an entire jar of nutella (it complemented the pancakes, toast, banana and my metal spoon). Am I a comfort eater? No, not me...

After eating the entire contents of my cupboard, I looked around for people who might want to go to London or Dublin with me. Everyone either had classes they had to attend or a shortage of funds, so I went about cancelling all of the reservations and getting what refunds I could. This further depresesed me because getting $5.00 back from a $120.00 reservation isn't as cathartic as one might imagine. (sidenote: if Unipac - the company that messed up - doesn't give us a full refund for travel expenses, I'm going to hop on a plane back home and personally kill them)

I spent most of Saturday sleeping, pretending to write a paper and feeling sick to my stomach from all the food I ate Friday night. That evening, I went out with the girls and had a well good time. Even managed to get back to my normal, optimistic self.

Came up with the following positive things about the whole mess:
- Paris mid-Spring is gorgeous (not that we will go to Paris, or that he will come mid-Spring, but it's a nice thought all the same)
- Come Sunday, I won't be all bummed out that Lou is leaving and will still be able to look forward to seeing him
- More time to hang out/go out on the town with the girls (who I've come to like quite alot)
- I can give my complete, undivided attention to my lovely, albeit unwritten, papers
- When not laboring over my papers, I can catch up on my chick flicks (which, for some odd reason, lou refuses to watch with me)
- I have more time to master the styling of these confounded bangs. No matter what I do, they like to go into corkscrews, fly away in frizzy bits, stick straight up or become round in the manner of early 90's bangs. Not attractive.

As far as I can figure, the only downsides are:
- I'll have to wait a bit longer for Desperate Housewives and all 6 seasons of SATC (after lots and lots of complaining about how much I missed being able watch the new and old fabulous foursomes and lots and lots of promising that he wouldn't actually have to watch a single episode of either series, Lou downloaded both for me and was going to bring them over on his computer)
-

don't ask, please

2005-03-05T03:33:00.000Z

The week of Lou fun has been cancelled. Serious F*Up by the passport service means he can't get on his flight tomorrow. Don't know when he is coming, but he has to come. At some point.

See, Karma strikes again. I've had such good luck with him, the patented bad Britt luck was bound to come through at some point.

So, to sum up, please don't ask "How was seeing Lou?" I didn't.

worst ever i am writer to be, firstly.

2005-03-04T02:35:00.000Z

As usual, I am the one stuck compiling our report for my accounting group. These are just a few of the prize sentences I was given:

"as they find the expected figure from historical data, say on average doubtful debt is reducing constantly( figure not know)."

"And it gotten the views on the potential recovery ability on these doubtful debt, but unrecoverable bad debt; cause doubtful debt can be treated as a loan, firstly."

WTF? I tried to translate this into working English for awhile and gave up "full stop". 10 pages of that mind-boggling nonsense was driving me crackers. I think I'll just bring it to our group meeting tomorrow and have them explain what they mean. Hopefully they will do the explaining in English and not Chinese.

Also, as you all probably expected, I did not get the rest of my work done. Boy is coming on Saturday and I had intended on having both of my papers written by tomorrow. Ha. Between this accounting stuff, another disappearing professor, more interruptions from drunkety drunk Brits than I can recount here and my utter inability to focus, I have 2 halves of outlines. Super. Just super.

I think I can write the English in one go tomorrow. It's only supposed to be 2500 words (about 10 or so pages). The essay prompt is something like "Experience of female writers or female characters in American Literature" Guess what I chose as my focus? Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. How many times have I read that book? 2 or 3. How many times have I seen the movie? A bazillion and a half. What grade do I have to get? "C"

Yeah, definitely will be able to write it tomorrow.

ha. I'll get back to you all next week when I'm panicking because I only have 300 words and I still don't know how to define money for my Econ paper.

Procrastination Take 2

2005-03-02T23:49:00.000Z

I suck at life. Can't write these darn papers for the life of me. But can I sit here and effectively "blabber on" for 45 minutes? Absolutely.

Today's Big Event:

- I need to learn Chinese. You might ask, "Why would you want to learn one of the most difficult languages? For business? Culture?" Nope. Fighting.
- Today I had a meeting with my Accounting group and, just like at Case, it's myself, an English speaking Brit and 3 Chinese students. The one Chinese kid, named Wanzheng Si (but we call him Jason, obviously) isn't very good with English. Every now and then, the other two, Pen Ding and Lon Wang (Don and Judy, respectively... for the record, I couldn't make this up if I tried...) translate in Chinese. It usually takes 5-10 minutes to get the concepts through to him so the English kid, Adam, and I, use the time wisely and talk about American football. He is a Steelers fan. Clearly, we have become good friends. Welllllll... today, Judy and Jason got into a big old fight. In the library. In Chinese. It went like this:

Judy: "[lots of chinese words i dont know] RECEIVABLES [More words I don't know] CASH FLOW STATEMENT [still more words i don't know]"
Jason: "[only words i dont know]"
*Judy stands up, slams her books on the table and starts pointing at Jason and raising her voice. 25 or so people in the room all stop talking and stare.*
Judy: "[chinese words that probably didn't mean chopstick or chow mein] DEBTS"
*Jason stands up and towers over her. Adam and I cover our faces with our folders to keep from laughing out loud.*
Jason: "NET INCOME[chinese words that might have meant 'you short, anal cow']"
*Judy sits down, packs up her stuff and says in an even louder voice than before*
Judy: "[chinese words that might have meant 'you are a smelly bad dresser with greasy hair, take a shower'] PROFITS. F* OFF!"

Then Judy explained to us [in English] that she was very, very pissed off at Jason for something he said to her in Chinese. She sat for about two minutes trying to make him say it in English, but when he finally did, it was quite the let down. Apparently he had told her that her part of the project needed to be revised. She didn't agree. She told us we were "The WORST group ever." I think she was including groups in China. I think that's pretty cool. Anybody can be the worst in England, but who is the worst on two continents (three if you count the US)? Me!

So, yeah, must learn Chinese.

-Still have nothing written. Was supposed to finish by today. I'm terrible.

I'm procrastinating

2005-03-01T18:32:00.000Z

To procrastinate, I'll update on the last day and a half:

- If I were extremely, terribly shallow and had no redeeming moral values, I would start by saying how I was bummed because I can't go to the Topshop Lock-In. (A trendy store in town with clothes that I have been lusting after since I arrived was holding a Lock-In tonight. 20% discount on everything in the store for students, free alcohol from 6-9 and free gifts with purchase). But, I won't start like that.

- First off, there was a terrible accident last night on the highway near Lancaster. Chemical lorries crashed . At least one person is in critical care. News of this got out last night and our porter came around telling all of us to close our windows so that we did not get sick from the fumes that were being carried on campus. I'm not sure if anything serious could have happened, but the news (as well as a shortage of buses) effectively cancelled all activities for the evening.

-I then came up with the brilliant idea that I would stay in and write those papers I keep putting off (ZERO pages written to date, btw). Hah. Boy/Girl drama on the floor ruined that as well as the onset of what better not be strep throat or an ear infection.

-Next... as I was walking out of the kitchen at 4:30am after a hunt for orange juice, the fire alarm started going off. Obviously, I panicked. I am just amazing enough to set orange juice on fire. I was sure that I was going to be that girl. Either way, all 300 or so members of Grizedale, tromped outside in various states of sleep and agitation. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to throw on a pair of pants over my hot pink mini sleeping shorts before walking out. Others were not so lucky. (fyi - boys - if there is a fire alarm in the middle of the night, put on shorts underneath your robe when you walk out. wind can be mean.) After 30 minutes of standing around, we went back inside and I learned that someone else was that girl. :giant sigh of relief:

- No buses in and out of town meant that my professor couldn't make it onto campus and I couldn't get any pointers on my not-yet-started-in-earnest essay. I'm screwed. Either I make the boy (who isn't exactly an economics prodigy) help me while he is here or I'm going to have to make the three course "Authentic Homemade American Meal" I promised to Tall Andy (who is an economics prodigy and took the course before). Right. Must find out what an Authentic Homemade American Meal entails.

- MASSIVE boy/girl drama that involved much "texting" and "MSNing" and then deep analysis of the aforementioned texts and MSNs. For example:
Kate: "I ended mine with an X" [X means "kiss"] His didn't end with an X"
Hannah: "Do boys X?"
Kate: "Let's take a poll"
Heather: "Hannah and I will ask the boys on Ginger Andy's floor for their input"
Kate: "Britt and I will ask Tall Andy's floor for their thoughts."
Me: "I'm doing what? Isn't this a bit "freshman year?"
Oh, that's right. They are freshman. It's such deja vu. But, unlike my freshman year, I'm not the cause nor the focus of the drama, so it's secretly fun.

Haircutting in the Hallway

2005-03-01T01:59:00.000Z

A week or two ago, Kate gave a haircut in our corridor to one of the guys. He was looking a bit rough and, rather than pay the terribly expensive fee of $10.00 for a guy's haircut, he got a free one from Kate. As a former roommate of Amanda's, I wasn't at all shocked for I've seen many a Uni boy stop by and ask for a free haircut.

(sidenote: why do boys do this? they surrender their hair to an untrained girl with no experience whose only tools are scissors from the 8th grade. additionally, some boys go to girls who may or may not be irritated with them for past affronts. in those situations, they get what they paid for. professionals may cost money, but at least they are unbiased.)

Anyways... what was really surprising was what a great job she did. I can think of one or two boys who left our room freshman year looking a bit worse when they walked out than when they walked in... But Kate... she's a pro. Perfect trim, angled cuts, just the right amount of body.
Word got out about her skills and there is now something of a waiting list for her services. We are thinking of making a side business... "Kate's Cuts!" For the very reasonable price of one pint of Hagen Daz Ice Cream and a Cadbury Milk Tray, she can trim, style or highlight.

Tonight's customer was "Ginger" Andy (as opposed to "Super Tall" Andy). Ginger Andy wanted blonde highlights. (actually... Kate had extra hair dye leftover from when she did her own and she wanted Andy to have blonde highlights.)

Here is a pic of Andy in the middle of his treatment. (I came back from classes to find him walking around the corridor without a shirt and with foils in his hair... it cracked me up, so I took pictures... unfortunately I don't have a "before" for a proper "before and after" comparison. The "during" 's are pretty good though)

Andy with foils

Andy and Kate, "Ace Stylist" (you can't really see the highlights in this picture, but, they looked nice close-up)

Trip Planned!

2005-02-27T20:10:00.000Z

To make sure I didn't miss out on one of the travel deals I found online, I went ahead just now and booked train and plane to Dublin. I did this without consulting the boy to make sure he was up for it or that he hadn't found a better deal. Since he clearly does not have my amazing skills, this shouldn't be a problem, but I think I am going to cross my fingers all the same.

Some trip details may change, but I am going to follow the itinerary based on my Mastercard statement (if I pay for something, I'm doing that something no matter how much it rains or snows):
March 5th- Take train to Manchester then Megabus from Manchester to London
- Hopefully meet up with some long lost friends (not posting details about that just yet in case it doesn't come through... don't want to get the hopes up!)
- Meet Lou at 10:35pm
- Check into the hostel and have a few drinks at the bar directly below the hostel
March 6th - Sightseeing in London
March 7th - Sightseeing in London then back to Lancaster
March 8th,9th - Twiddling our thumbs and watching paint dry in Lancaster
March 10th,11,12 - Dublin to see the sights and to drink large quantities of the Guiness
March 13th - Lou flies to London for home and I go back to Lancaster

As a side note, I got some great travel advice from a person who randomly stumbled upon this site. (how cool is that?) Unfortunately, I couldn't put it to work for this trip, but my corridormates and I are going to use it to plan other adventures around the UK in the coming months... V.Excited! (sorry, had to pull a Bridget Jones in honor of a helpful Londoner)

Also, had a wine night last night with the girls! Even though there weren't any boxes of wine, we still had a great time with our bottles. We sat in the hallway and Heather, Sarah and I ate ice cream while Kate had "savoury" food (hard to describe, but food that isn't sweet, chocolatey or sugary... can be pizza, sausages, sandwiches). Sarah and I tried to get the girls to enjoy The Princess Bride, but the jokes didn't seem to translate. They just kinda half smiled while Sarah and I quoted along with the following lines (which just so happen to be some of my all-time favorites):
- "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
- "Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dwaem within a dweam."
- "He's only mostly dead."
They didn't think any of it was funny at all! Inconceivable!

Here's a few pics from the wine night...

Heather demonstrating how to drink straight from the bottle...

I have NO idea...

Heather and I hiding in her comforter because that's what all the cool kids do...

English McDonald's are the Best!

2005-02-26T12:24:00.000Z

One of the things that McDonald's is known for is their ability to offer menus that include their trademark items (Big Macs, Fries) with local dishes. When I was in Hawaii, rice was offered as a substitute for fries and Portugese Ham with Baked Beans was the number one selling breakfast item. These were both good, but one of the English McDonald's specialty items takes the cake... Cadbury Egg McFlurry's!!! Vanilla ice cream mixed with a cadbury egg... mmmm... divine!

I didn't really look at any of the other items on the menu because I only had eyes for my McFlurry, but next time I stop in I will have to see if they have any other goodies...

Beating "The Man"

2005-02-26T03:22:00.000Z

One of the few movies that I have been able to get from the network here is "School of Rock." While I will concede that it is not a cinematic triumph, it sure does make me giggle. I particularly like the theme of "beating the man." In honor of this movie, I will share some of my recent attempts to undermine the proverbial "man."

(actually, these aren't rebellions, just the latest manifestations of my obsession with being frugal)

1.) Printing/Photocopy Fees - Here at Lancaster, there is no free network printing. Each page costs like 5-10p per page (10-20 cents) and photocopying is twice that. As a spoiled Case student, I think this is ridiculous. Unfortunately, I have had to photocopy several readings for my classes because the books can only be loaned out for 3 hours. However, rather than paying the exorbitant fees, I just take pictures of the books with my digital camera. Then, I load them on to my computer, zoom in and voila! words. So, cheers to digi cams (I'm not sure if that is an English phrase or if Heather is just weird, but I like it)!

2.) Free downloads of music, movies and television. It costs over $32,000 a year to attend Case. My goal is to beat the man by amassing that amount in files before I graduate. Also, in my perfect "Brittany World," illegal downloads will lead to entertainers being paid reasonable salaries proportionate to the amount of actual work they do. I realize that pirating software isn't going to result in the reversal of the American tradition of rewarding the pretty and untalented, but I depend on implausible rationalizations.

London

2005-02-26T02:12:00.000Z

7 days and 6 hours and then I get to hop on a train and then a bus and then... I will be in London for two whole days/nights! In light of this exciting event, I put a picture of Trafalgar Square at night on the template :-).

I'm still working on making a nice little travelogue-type blog of all the adventures I am having, but until it is all nice and pretty (which will be a week or two from never), here's a pic from my seminal trip to London.

Sarah and I saw this "grafitti" on one of the lampost bases on the south bank of the Thames River and just had to take a picture...

wait- i'm supposed to be learning something here?

2005-02-24T20:17:00.000Z

With the impending arrival of boy (t minus 9 days... not that i'm counting) I suddenly have mass amounts of work to do. Three giant essays that should be due in three weeks now have to be completed before boy gets here. As if I am capable of doing things before the due date? Please. There is a reason why I pull ridiculous all nighters before major due dates - I am cursed with the inability to do proper work without near-lethal amounts of adrenaline coursing through my veins. 10 days before they are due? Impossible!

What should be right up my alley is studying for my ginormous accounting exam tomorrow. It is in my class that is equivalent to Acct 302 - not the easiest material in the world. The material is further complicated by the following factors:

1) The words don't match! For example, instead of "income statement", it is called the "P&L" or "Profit/Loss' statement. That one took me a whole week of class to figure out. Sometimes, the French professor (in his thick accent) will use nonstop abbreviations for an entire period and I will have to go back to my room, pull out my old accounting book next to my new one and try to translate between the two. Booo.

2) My seminar instructor is this grad student. Also French. Even though she has an Extremely thick accent, it doesn't bother me a great deal. What annoys me is that I went to her office hours asking for extra practice problems for the exam (we are assigned ONE problem per chapter as opposed to the half dozen-dozen problems assigned back home). She said she couldn't give me extra problems. Well, she could, but she wouldn't have answers for them. She could maybe correct them herself, but certainly not before the exam. So now, I have a midterm worth half my grade tomorrow on 7 weeks worth of material and I have 5 book problems to practice.

3) This midterm worth half my grade consists of ONE question. One. An alternative version of the exam was given on Wednesday to one of the other groups and apparently it was insanely difficult and combined information from all of the chapters. Obviously, we don't have any similar sample problems to work from.

I hate the French.

I am a Horrible Travel Agent

2005-02-23T13:15:00.000Z

So, boy is flying into London on March 5th, which is only 10 days away!! Sweet. Very excited about this since I have not seen him in over two months now. I think I am even going to meet him at the arrivals gate in Heathrow. (Mostly to see if it looks the same as in Love Actually)

I have to confess though, I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing since I have to be the travel planner. It's kinda stressing me out. (planning a trip through the UK... rough life, I know)

So far it looks like this:
March 5th - 6th: London. Even found a single room w/ two beds for two nights just outside the city center. Relatively bargain deal at $118.25 (USD)
March 7th - Birmingham? Girls on the hall say its great with lots of nice, old buildings
- Bath? Old Roman baths/ruins could be cool.
- Stonehenge? Might as well see what all the fuss is about
March 8th - Fly from Liverpool (where we can pay homage to the Beatles) to Dublin for $5.00
(USD)
March 9th, 10th - Dublin and maybe Glasgow. Can't find any cheap rooms anywhere. Will probably have to sleep in giant hostel with 10 strangers in the room for the same price as a single in London. Will drink lots of Guiness to compensate.
March 11th,12th, 13th - Lancaster?

I make a terrible travel agent, but it's okay because the boy is pretty chill and I think we will have a good time even if we spend the whole week sitting in the Grizedale Bar drinking coffee and ale and watching English sports. :-)

P.S.: i heart rachel because she is doing the major planning for our European travels over break... i only have to look up cheap hostels and transportation!

P.P.S.: congrats to all the girls with revealing and bigs and littles and all that good stuff. i really wish i could have been there.

P.P.S.: My little, Christine is the best!! (so is my big Kim, who is a regular Sarah Kuhn now with 2 littles, 2 grandlittles and a GREAT grandlittle!)

Cheers!

2005-02-22T02:50:00.000Z

Here are some of the really random things I keep forgetting to mention about living at Lancaster among the Brits:

- "Cheers" - this is the best word ever. It means "Thank You", "Your Welcome", "Excuse Me", "I'm Sorry", "Good Job", "Cheers" (in the toasting sense) and much, much more. This word knows no limits. Be prepared, because I will be using this nonstop when I return.

-"One More for the Queen" - Rather than "God Bless You" or "Gazzunheit," this is said towards the end of a sneezing fit. It's kinda fun.

- Nudity on Television - Janet Jackson should have been British. "Wardrobe malfunctions" as seen during last year's Super Bowl halftime show are commonplace on national, non-cable, British television. Except, these "malfunctions" appear even more premeditated than Ms. Jackson's since the actresses enter the scene without clothes. Ultimately, the Playboy channel has nothing on the BBC.

- The O.C. - When the O.C. first came out, I didn't really watch it. I was more obsessed with SATC (old episodes and new), adult swim and various reality shows. However, living next door to Katie this past semester, I sat and listened for about a week while she watched the entire first season on her computer. She laughed so hard and went "oh my god" so many times that I just had to see what all the fuss was about. So, after a particularly heinous week of mind numbing midterms, I downloaded the whole first season and watched it in two days. After the overload of O.C., I was kind of neutral about the whole thing. It had just the right amount of mindlessness that I look for in television shows and great fashion, but I was still loyal to my WB shows. (I secretly love watching Dawson's Creek reruns on TBS). Thing is, the OC is just as huge here as it is back home. Perhaps even more because someone at the University figured out how to get copies of the show on the Friday after it airs in the states. Which means that people at University are about 8 weeks or so ahead of the Brits who see everything reallly late (Desperate Housewives only recently started here). What does this mean for me? I am now hooked. I set my alarm for 8am on Friday, begin searching the network for the episode (it gets posted around 7:58 am) and then press "download." Given the slowness of the network, this process takes about 5 hours (give or take 2 hrs), so I go to classes and when I come back, I am greeted by a brand new episode. It is a little piece of home right on my computer. :-)

- The University Wants Me to Fail - There are 8 bars on campus open until at least 11 or 12 every night except Sunday. There are 6 or so "coffee" shops on campus. Kinda. Five sell more alcohol than coffee or tea, but I'll let it slide. These coffee shops close by 6:30 every night. 6:30! How does a night owl such as myself get any work done? There are no designated quiet areas or all-night study spots. The stupid library closes by 9:45 every night!! (I asked why no one started a petition for a 24-hour study area like we did at Case... they thought I was crackers). So, my only option is to do work in my room. The same tiny cell where I can not only hear the music from Sarah and Hannah on both sides of me, but Heather across from me, the people directly beneath me as well as those diagonal to my room below me. Oh, you can also hear the pipes above me. I don't do well with noise to begin with, but when you take away my coffee and I'm forced to sit through a constant cacophany of discordant sounds... To summarize, I'm getting zero work done.

what a comment

2005-02-21T02:32:00.000Z

so, my last post got this comment:

"Whilst reading your blog, I feel as though I am wielding a massive Batman-shaped [non-PG word] and striking wildly at a 400-lb gorilla [non-PG word]. 'Muguh,' she repeats."

i always knew i had amazing powers over boys... :-P

i won't dignify that with a response, but i feel like i need to say something for the record (because i keep getting unfriendly/weird comments from random people and it's just annoying to have to continually login and delete them from the comments pages)...

1) i'm trying to keep this stupid thing free of innapropriate content so that i won't be overly embarassed when family members read it

2) no. i am typically not as flakey/shallow/daft/self-absorbed/materialistic in real life as this makes me out to be (i've been reading over past entries and the image i am portraying of myself isn't really the best). thing is, it's a "blog"... an online diary. of course i am going to look self-involved.

3)what is the point of my ramblings? [see how dumb these comments are?] i'm trying to record what i'm up to because communication with you lovely people is difficult. given my complete inability to be brief, summing up 6 months worth of experiences and ruminations in one or two sentences when i get home would be impossible. as i said in previous posts, i'm trying hard not to put anything really personal on here. surface level only.

4) i am aware that sentences start with capital letters. i'm lazy. besides there is a reason i'm an accounting major, not an english major.

5) i am aware that "i'm lazy" is a weak sentence.

6) i am also aware that there is a great, big world out there and that it isn't fair to make generalizations about different groups from my limited experiences.

7) yes, i passed high school. grade school too. kindergarten was rough though since i repeatedly failed lunch (true story actually).

8) yes, it would be more interesting if i did carrie bradshaw-style posts. i'm not as witty as a team of hbo writers or this incredibly brilliant girl, so i'd rather not compete and then pale in comparison.

9) no, i will not date psycho blogger stalkers. my boyfriend knows more linux than you.

My Mum and Dad are the Best

2005-02-16T20:27:00.000Z

In the past, my mother and father have had the tendency to go a bit overboard whenever I ask for something. For example, last year I mentioned offhand that I loved Swedish Fish. Sure enough, the next time they visited, I was bestowed with not one, not two, but THREE Costco-size boxes of Swedish Fish. Another instance occured at the beginning of my Freshman year (when I was not wise to their wily ways). While moving in, I asked if they could possibly find a cheap table from Wal-Mart for for my television. Typical of them, they brought back a brand new television plus a tv stand. "It was just easier and we figured you would use it" was their reasoning. Well duh! of course I could you use it, but it wasn't NEEDED.

Being of a frugal frame of mind, I was always irritated by this behavior. A few weeks ago, when I found out I made the basketball team, I was beset by a terrible dillema - I needed my basketball shoes from home but was afraid to ask for them. Two years ago, when I needed a pair of dress shoes for some of the formals I was going to, they DROVE them to me on a random Monday when I had classes instead of just sending them to me. I was afraid that if I asked for my basketball shoes my dad would FLY them to me and watch a game. Dad, I bet you are reading this right now and thinking "how did you know?" :-) My second fear was that if they did indeed send me the shoes, I would also get sent a plethora of other goodies (which would cost a small fortune to send overseas). Thus, I called my mom and had her write down a specific list and then sent her an email, clearly delineating items to be sent.

Well, all I can say is that I will never again complain about their indulgent manners! I got the package today and boy was it filled with wonderful stuff!!! As suspected, my mum completely ignored the list! Wonderful basketball shoes, fresh t-shirts (so I won't have to keep wearing the same two to practice), tights (the ones sold here are too short for me), my super mini skirt (which is considered trendy and modest here), the cutest Valentine's Day stuffed animal ever, my favorite going out shirt, Heath bars and... the piece de resistance (sp?), the one thing that I was hoping she would go overboard on... a whole package of Hershey Bars!!

After spending Valentine's Day all by myself with no packages or surprises (I used to always get them from my parents), this was really was the best ever and couldn't have come at a better time!! So... yeah, my mum and dad are the best!

I heart the Case Network

2005-02-15T13:43:00.000Z

There are a lot of things I miss from home. Around the time that everyone starts hating Case full on and makes plans to throw themselves in front of the cars on Euclid, I'll make a nice post about all of the things that are AMAZING about Case. Until then, I'll be brief and mention the one thing that I miss almost as much as you lovely people, Algebra and Target/Wal-Mart.

The Case Network.

The Network here is crap. There aren't even any computer nerds. The "computer science" people on campus are illegitimate posers. I tried to get help with firewalls, VPN and other low-level dorky stuff from one of these faux brains and he didn't have a clue. There isn't a single person on this campus who has figured out how to get past the firewalls and use voice over IP programs. No one knows how to fix my IM (which constantly turns off) or help me to send more than two emails a day. I'd give the average Case tech guy (or girl) three hours to solve my problems. Grrr..

Also... not that I would ever do anything illegal like download music or movies... but if I were, I would find that their "Well Good" file sharing system is also crap. You can only share files with the people in your building and those files only include old Friends episodes, Little Britain, Scrubs, cheesy British pop music and bubblegum punk. They don't even have the freaking Beatles!!!!! Also, no one has ever heard of Dave Matthews!! How does one get through college without Dave?? I was briliant and left all of my DC, Death Cab, Rooney, Rilo Kiley, Postal Service, Motion City Soundtrack, Modest Mouse, etc... at home. (side note: is it okay to like bands that have been featured on the O.C.? i was introduced to them before the show was on air - but did I miss the window of acceptability? I'm not sure...) Fortunately I found some Badly Drawn Boy, Killers, Franz Ferdinand and Keane from the girls on the hall, but they are starting to get really old. I miss my whiney college music.

I think I am going to have to buy cds at the store tomorrow ::gasp::

So... if you are pissed at Case for some dumb reason, talk to a true nerd and download a movie or a song! :0)

Song Currently in My Head: Penny by Hanson. I'm not kidding. The girl across the hall plays it constantly and I can't get the darn thing out of my head. If she starts playing MmmBop be ready for the headline, "Britt Murders Brit"

Book Currently in My Hands: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's decent and very engaging, although not as good as the critics seem to think. Then again, I have odd taste. For example, I thought the Da Vinci Code was trite, commercial and poorly written (while the rest of the world hails him and considers it their favorite book). BUT - If you need a fun book for 20 minute breaks from incredibly abstruse textbooks, this will do the trick.

Food Currently in My Mouth: Scone with clotted cream and preserves accompanied by a steaming cup of Earl Gray. Heaven! Forget the "Freshman Fifteen Pounds"... I'm currently making some serious progress towards the "Foreign Fifty Pounds." I just hope I fit into those tiny plane seats for the flight home!

Some Pictures of Edinburgh

2005-02-13T14:03:00.000Z

The following pictures may help explain why my not-yet-well-traveled self has decided that this is one of the cities I'd like to live in someday, or at least come back to for a long period of time... it mixes medieval history with modern conveniences, vibrant culture and picturesque scenery. Oh, the food is yummy too.

Here is where I am going to live in Old Town. (the one with the blue door) You can see the castle from the end of the street.

Here is where I will have my morning coffee on my way to work at some exciting international accounting or international law office. (This is also the site where J.K. Rowling penned the very first Harry Potter book since she couldn't afford to heat her apartment. Looking out from the windows of the shop, I realized that I'd write a worldwide phenomenon too if I had the same view every morning.)

On the weekends, I will be an avid rugby fan and go to bars with these guys:

After the rugby game, I will go to Princes street and shop at spiffy stores like Harvey Nichols and Gucci (it's my dream, let me have my illusions...) which are right in front of this beautiful spire:

If I feel like being touristy, I'll go to the castle and see this stained glass window of William Wallace (made popular by the movie Braveheart) in the St. Margaret chapel (built in the 12th century):

While in the castle, I will be reminded of my favorite Phi Mus and have a chat with the lovely Sir Fidel who guards one of the buildings in the castle's Royal Square:

Finally, each night I will look up at this view, visible from every spot in the city:

I don't even see him at Case

2005-02-13T12:59:00.000Z

Yesterday, I woke to the jarring sounds of Sarah pounding on my door, pulled my earplugs out and looked at my alarm clock (which had been going off for 35 minutes) and said a four-letter word very loudly. I had less than 5 minutes to get my stuff together and make it to the bus for Edinburgh that was leaving at 8am sharp. I grabbed clothes and cameras and ran out the door with Sarah. Although I looked disheveled (no makeup, black mascara marks under my eyes from the night before and unbrushed hair) we made the bus in time.

After four hours on the coach, we arrived in Edinburgh city center and I was floored by my surroundings. It was so incredible, I didn't know what to do with myself. On the hill to my right loomed Edinburgh castle in all its medieval, imposing glory. ::high-pitched girl squeal:: In front of me were several middle aged men dressed in kilts with Scottish flags tied around their backs as capes and berets on their heads (they were headed to a pub to watch a giant rugby match between Scotland and Ireland). To my left were old churches with large spires and Princes Street with some of the finest stores in the nation - no, wait - Kingdom. After taking it all in for a few seconds, we decided to head up towards the castle. I'll detail all the fun parts of that in the other blog I am working on that talks about my travels, but suffice to say that it was like stepping back in time and being in the world of William Wallace. After the castle, we went to some of the tourist shops and as I was stepping out of one of them I heard a deep, very familiar voice. I looked at the source of the sound and had to blink twice and check if that what I saw was real and not sleep deprivation.

SEAN BECKER was standing right in front of the gift shop with a group of kids from his University. We didn't plan on meeting, in fact, we hadn't spoken to one another since mid November at McNulty's when he mentioned that he was going to St. Andrew's for the semester. (Since I'm a girl, my first reaction was disbelief then irritation. Why do I have to look like death run over when bumping into the perfectly coifed and attired Becker?) Regardless, I incredulously, I said "SEAN?" He looked at me and I could see my own shock mirrored on his face. "Ohmigod." We stopped and chatted for a bit and I found out that he was only up in Edinburgh for the weekend and I was only up for the day. It was just the weirdest thing in the entire world. I mean, while we used to travel in similar circles, I haven't really hung out with him since Freshman year. This past semester, when he lived nearby and we had classes in the same building, I saw him only a handful of times. Yet, I go across the Atlantic ocean and run into him in the capital of freaking Scotland. How Amazingly Random.

So, to sum up, Edinburgh was freaky, but I love the city and want to move there.

Pulling a Brittany

2005-02-11T01:59:00.000Z

I may have posted about this before, but I'm too lazy to check. If I'm repeating myself, check out other blogs.

In England, when someone fancies someone else and hits on them, the act is called "pulling." For example, if it were Case and Johnny went up to Sally and said "I just got Halo 2 for my Xbox Live. Do you want to come over and play some time?" Johnny would have just pulled Sally. The word "pulling" can also encompass "snogging" (making out).

However, if someone buys coasters for their coasters (the things you put drinks on to keep from leaving a condensation ring on a table) and an observer goes "She just pulled a Monica," a Brit will have no idea that this is a reference to the character Monica Geller from Friends. (well, maybe an American wouldn't know that either... but I can't think of any other good examples right now). The Brits have no concept of the phrase "pulled a ----."

This can create problems.

The other night we were at the club and Heather was acting all crazy (which was very similar to the way Kate usually behaves) I said to her "Oh no, you just pulled a Kate." She suddenly got a horrified expression on her face and replied "I don't fancy girls. I do have a boyfriend you know. Why would you say that?"

It took me a good 2o minutes to explain the different phrases to poor drunken Heather and reassure her that I did not think that she fancies girls.

Moral of the story: Don't use the phrase "pulled a --" in England unless you are willing to accept the consequences.

Here's a pic from Heather's Birthday night...
P.S.: the jackass pose was THEIR idea... i'm so proud! :0)

Fairy Cake Fiasco

2005-02-10T23:02:00.000Z

As we all know, my cooking skills are somewhat limited. While I am the occasional master of such delicacies as boiled water and toast, I tend to struggle with more difficult dishes such as pasta. The past few weeks, however, I have experienced a sort of culinary rebirth. I successfully marinated and grilled chicken (which I triumphantly documented on a previous post) as well as made grilled cheese. Sadly, this string of culinary coups (sp?) came to a tragic halt yesterday.

It was Heather's 19th birthday and, as a present, Sarah and I thought it would be nice if we baked her a cake. We popped down to the shop around the corner and found that it was somewhat lacking in baking supplies. There was mix for eccles cakes (weird, currant-filled, icky pastries), brownies (yummmm) and "fairy cakes." The pictures on the box of the fairy cakes looked exactly like cupcakes, so we figured that that would be a safe bet. (although, I must confess... I gave up chocolate for Lent and I didn't want to have to break/adjust my Lenten sacrifice on the first day... for the third year in a row... ) So, anyways, we bought the fairycake mix and with the utmost stealth, snuck into the kitchen to bake. We quickly realized there weren't any muffin pans, but decided that a cake would work just fine. So we got a mixing bowl, opened the box and quickly emptied the two packets of mix into the container and added what we figured was about two tablespoons of water. After the suggested 15 minutes of baking, we checked it and quickly realized that something wasn't quite right... the middle had sunk to the bottom and was burnt while the outside was all liquidy. Very appetizing. We figured the middle was a goner anyway, so we stuck it back in for a few more minutes. After about 25 minutes of baking, the outsides looked kinda brownish (the inside was even grosser). So we took it out, cut out the middle and plopped it upside down on a plate. We then took the decorating icing we had bought (the only icing in the store that we could find) and figured we'd just cover the cake in icing to disguise the mess up. (it tasted fine... a little sweet, but fine) Then, we stuck the bottle of Bacardi Breezer we had bought her in the middle to make it look like we had planned to have a bunt shape cake all along (aren't we smart?) and presented our masterpiece to Heather.

She was quite thrilled and made sure everyone had a piece. We were all eating and although it tasted odd, I thought that it was a success. That was when Katie turned to Sarah and I and asked if we had added BOTH packets from the box into the cake. We replied "well duh." She graciously explained (between bursts of laughter) that we had used icing as cake batter. It turns out that the Brits don't buy premade tubs of icing and instead mix their own from powder included in baking mixes.

So to sum up... this incredibly long and verbose post is basically about how I managed to make Icing Cake that was simultaneously runny/undercooked and burnt. What a feat.

Whirlwind Weekend

2005-02-07T21:06:00.000Z

"When you are bored with London, you are bored with life." I had heard this quote numerous times and always dismissed it as the saying of an overexcited and easily amused individual... however it is so so true. This past weekend was an incredible mix of history, culture, adventure, independence and fun. I'll save my descriptions and reviews until I have finished gathering pictures from my group (I videotaped the whole experience and left the digital picture taking to others). So mom, you'll have to wait an extra day for the details :-).

Since I don't want to start working on my essays and doing the loads of reading I've been assigned, I'll procrastinate by posting the second installment of V-Day restaurant suggestions.

~*We've Only Just Met*~ (ideal for couples that are on their first or second date and the verdict is still out on whether or not they can keep up the conversation for the whole dinner)

Sushi Rock - Located in the Warehouse District, this uber-trendy restaurant is not just for sushi afficianado's. Those who adore raw seafood will find a plethora of delightful choices while those who are a little queasy about uncooked food will have options as well. While the sushi isn't the best in the city (I hear Renaissance room is the finest), it is certainly above average and sure beats the stuff you get at Giant Eagle. Ultimately, it is the New Yorkish atmosphere that makes it a winner for first dates (particularly if you go on Half-Priced Wednesday). Possible conversation topics can include the critiquing of other patrons' outfits, whatever sports game is shown on the large screen and you can play the "guess who is in the mafia" game (several of the regulars are part of the Cleveland mob scene).

Johnny Mango's World Cafe - If you like burritos, fajitas, crazy juice drinks & milkshakes as well as other "international" foods, than you will love this place. It's located in Ohio City and is always inhabited by an artsy, interesting crowd. The jury is out on their burritos (I don't care for them, but others think they are the best in the city) but their pad thai noodles and chips with guacamole are out of this world. Quench your thirst with the Chocolate Eclipse or Zoni Beach and you will not regret it! Besides the good food, this is a great spot because it has a wonderful atmosphere and the meal is pretty quick (i.e. - if you don't like your date, you will be out soon and if you do, you can go for coffee or drinks somewhere else in the Ohio City/Treemont area).

Great Lakes Brewing Company - This place is a sure bet for several reasons: 1) as far as pub food goes, this place raises the bar. Moderately priced with large portions, there is something for everyone on the menu. (my favorite is the Mushroom and Fontina ravioli made locally at Ohio City Pasta) 2) Great Lakes Beer. Provided you don't depend on chick drinks, that speaks for itself. 3) It's on a quaint tree-lined brick street adorned with twinkly lights. 4) It is right across from Talkie's Coffee shop (Not only do they have fantastic fresh coffee but they show old movies for free inside).

and finally, my all-time favorite... this is the restaurant I went to on my first date with the boy and is basically the reason why I've been dating him for so long - I know he'll take me back there if I ask!
The Fulton Bar and Grill- The menu here is fabulous and it's difficult to find a dish that won't tickle your tastebuds (hehe wow that's corny...). I'd recommend starting with the ahi tuna appetizer (raw of course and accompanied by sticky jasmine rice) and the hummus (delicious fried pita bread is served with the giant portion of perfectly prepared hummus). For the main course I'd go with one of the specials (always fantastic), the fresh halibut in banana leaves or the pad thai noodles. AMAZING. Finally, while all of the desserts are superb, you must get the chocolate liquid center cake (essentially a Grand Marnier souffle where you stick your fork into the warm cake and hot chocolate sauce oozes out). INCREDIBLE!!! Additionally, the location of the Fulton is perfect. If you and your date have decided you just might like one another, the Fulton is very close to the Treehouse and other bars so that you and your date can have a post-dinner drink!

Fine Cleveland Eateries

2005-02-04T13:32:00.000Z

In the past few days, I have had a few chances here and there to catch up with people from Case and one of the topics that keeps coming up is Valentine's Day. Since I have had the chance to go to several restaurants in and around Cleveland, I am repeatedly asked to give suggestions for dining out on the 14th (or the previous weekend/ following weekend since it's on a Monday). I figured I'd give a few pointers here (with just enough time to spare to maybe get a reservation at some of the nicer places)...

disclaimer: I must first warn you that I am extremely spoiled when it comes to restaurants. My parents were rotten to me while growing up and placated my picky eating habits by allowing me to order filet mignon at age 10 instead of the standard grilled cheese off the kid's menu. They continued to indulge this behavior by having me order delicacies such as escargot, foie gras, etc. in an attempt to refine my palette. This addiction to fine food was exacerbated by dating Lou. Instead of seeing a nice college boy who was grounded and would take me to T.G.I.Fridays/Applebees/the Double Dragon in Parma for dates, we went to Lola's or the Fulton. So... if you are looking for a review of numerous restaurants where the drinks come with bendy straws and you are only given one fork, you'll have to ask someone more normal (although, i have included a few for fun :-D )

The restaurants will be my top 5 or so in three categories (Broken Hearts Club, We've Only Just Met, We've Been Dating So Long We've Started to Look Like One Another) so that everyone can have a good meal on the most heinous of Hallmark Holidays.

*~Broken Hearts Club~* (ideal for groups of girls/guys who are wise and aren't dating)

Tommy's - This is one of my favorite restaurants in Coventry. It is a big draw for the animal-loving vegans, birkenstock wearers and new age crowd. I don't think many of these people will celebrate such a consumer-based holiday, so you can enjoy your evening with others disillusioned by the event. Also, the food is delicious! My personal recommendation is a milkshake and the "Colleen" (falafel, sprouts, tomato, cheese and sesame sauce on a toasted pita). However, they make outstanding fresh cut, thick french fries and hamburgers for the less adventurous.
price (for food & drink): $10.00

Chuck E Cheese - Find your inner child and celebrate the day the way you used to when boys had cooties. The food isn't great, but you can run around in the balls and play the gopher game (imagining that each head is your least favorite member of the opposite sex).
price: i have no clue, not much though I'm sure

Champps - Champps is a great sports bar where you can have a cheap drink, good food and yummy dessert. Again, it's a sports bar (i.e.: lots and lots of cute guys). I'm sure you will be able to figure out what to do with that.
Meal suggestions: Salads are HUGE here and all are tasty. My pick is the pot sticker meal (very filling and comes with the best sticky rice and vegetables). Follow it up with the cookie ice cream sundae (the cookie is as big as the plate and warm)!
price (drink, meal, dessert): $16

Chinese Take Out (not Chopstick) and Blockbuster/Movie from the Network - Stay in, eat good Chinese (I recommend the Moo Shu Chicken from Hunan) and watch chick flicks with your girls. Obviously, I recommend Bridget Jones's Diary (the slightly plump, ever awkward girl gets the guy).

Mama Santa's - As far as your basic Italian food goes, it's hard to beat Mama Santa's for their combination of good quality and low prices. The pizza is wonderfully greasy (and always a bit burnt) and the homemade noodles are scrumptious. It's a great place for a group and, after dinner, you can walk right up to Gilly's and have donuts or, my favorite, the mouth-watering, sinfully delicious double chocolate chip cookie with two layers of icing and M n' Ms. (it's not like you have to eat like a rabbit to impress any boys)

Olive Garden - I have been to Olive Garden on Valentine's Day as both a single diner and as part of a couple. No matter who is there, how big or large your group is, it's always more fun when you are single. My belief with Olive Garden is this (keep in mind I'm a snot when it comes to Italian): they serve rather sub-par, fake Italian (which is fine... never ending salad and soup bowls are amazing) and any couple(s) that go to Olive Garden for Valentine's Day have either a) just started dating b) are boring and can't think of anything better c) are in a large group. Regardless of the good intentions, every table ends up fighting by the end of the meal. As a single person, this makes for a hilarious and entertaining dinner as you sit and watch everyone around you and thank the Lord you are by yourself for the night. My favorite dish: portabello ravioli and the chocolate, black tie mousse cake!

Reviews for We've Only Just Met & We've Been Dating So Long We've Started to Look Like One Another will follow in the next few posts... (I've had to stop so that I can finish packing for LONDON and make the train on time)

Improving International Relations, One Jackass at a Time

2005-02-03T01:23:00.000Z

Before going out to dinner tonight, we were taking pictures and I finally managed to get the Brits to do a jackass pose. It took a few shots, but I think they got the hang of it. Now I just need to learn how not look like a wierdo...

Hannah (nearly a jackass) and Kate:

Still not top jackass quality from Hannah and Katie:

they actually regressed on this one:

A Tribute to the Greatest Post in the World

2005-02-02T17:08:00.000Z

A few days ago, I made the greatest and best post in the world. This is not that entry, this is just a tribute. Couldn't remember the greatest post in the world.

(can you tell i've been listening to a lot of Tenacious D and watching a lot of Jack Black movies?)

Anyways, I’ll sum up what was a hilarious entry about my history and current dabblings in the world of hoops with a dry, un-funny post. As a warning, this entry will only be appreciated by about three people (the ones that have known me since 8th grade and before and read this quite a bit).

So... to those three... brace yourselves - - - on Monday I made the Lancaster University Women's Basketball team's first team travelling squad. An actual, legitimate team that travels to other Universities and is filled with athletic, talented girls. I didn't want to say anything before in case I didn't make the team, but now you know why I've been running so much and trying to get in shape.

A little background for those that do not understand the significance of this event - I played basketball for about 8 or so years, including four intense years of Varsity at a Quad A program (Quad A is equal to Div. 1 in Ohio). This was a real basketball program... none of that Sewickley Academy BS where the girls had relaxed practices and could also be on the cheerleading squad or play other sports. No... it was a minimum of three hours a day, 6 days a week, 11.25 months a year (and that's not counting the AAU, North Stars league and personal gym time that the starters all did). The upside of all of this hard work is that the teams that I played on excelled. We made it far in the state playoffs in high school each year (no small feat in Pennsylvania Quad A where I had to guard against girls that are now playing in the WNBA) and my AAU team saw many a championship game. The downside was that by senior year I hated basketball. I hated my coach and dreaded practices and games. When we found out that we had made the playoffs my senior year, myself and Dawn (a fellow basketball burn out) celebrated by throwing ourselves on the pavement behind Tara's car. We figured it'd be less painful to be run over than to have to keep playing.

So, recap- played basketball for long time but grew to hate it so much I'd get disproportionately, ridiculously nervous every time I played (even when it was just for fun at Case). The last three years, I wouldn't play ball on pain of death. When I did, I played SOOOOO badly that I considered transferring schools, hiding in my room or denying that I had ever heard of the sport.

However... I can play here. Maybe it's being a 9 hour flight from the opinion of anyone I care about or the fact that I like the girls, but I can actually play and have fun. The athleticism that had been laying dormant since senior year came back in full force the minute I stepped on the court. After a brief warmup, I started the scrimmage by sinking a three and then, with my confidence built, I was able to make a drive past a mammoth Spanish girl, make the foul shot for the extra point and then I sunk another three shortly after. It's like I am playing under Peaco or at Alpha again.

For the record, I personally prefer self deprecation to self aggrandizement, so it's weird saying this, but, I was good. The nervousness and ulcer-style stomach aches that I used to get were completely gone. It was sooooo weird.

Anyways... sorry if this was boring or if I sound really psycho getting all worked up over playing a stupid sport... like I said, the only people who would really "get" this one would be the ones that I cried and blasted angry music with every day during high school.

Saw the Rest, Pledged the BEST, Go PHI MU!!

2005-01-31T23:39:00.000Z

WOW!! I'm soooo excited! Just spent the last hour facebooking and stalkernetting every single one of the new Phis (is that bad?... I'm not sure...). All I can say is...

Great job ladies!!! I didn't know a lot of the girls rushing this year, but we got every single one of the girls that I had met and thought were awesome last semester! I can't wait until next semester when I can get to know all of these Phabulous girls!

Also, there were two girls rushing this semester (*cough* janna and christy*cough*) that I adore and it's great to finally make "official" what everyone already knew... that they were Phi Mus. I mean... Janna spent more nights in the four pack than certain other girls who will remain nameless. Plus, this solves the problem of who was going to have to dump their boyfriends to take Janna to formal. Now she'll get to bring her own date and the dance offs can continue... ;)

So... yeah, more proud than ever before to be a PHI MU! :-D

the profile, away message and facebook updating may begin...

where is the email??!!

2005-01-31T21:53:00.000Z

It's almost 10:00pm here and I still don't have an email... my poor corridor mates... i am going to keep bugging them until i find out who our new Phis are...

right now, i realllly miss being at the house... gathering around the phone and listening as the names were called out was so incredible, as was the bid dinner afterwards and the porch scene :-(

just call me Brittany "ace basketball player" Spencer

2005-01-31T19:51:00.000Z

my entire post was just lost - it was long and witty and the greatest post in the world

GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

also GRRRRRRRRRRR to the fact that it's 8:32pm and there is still an hour till the new Phi list gets sent out

productive saturday :)

2005-01-29T16:56:00.000Z

Went for another run and tried to take some pictures of the scenic landscape... unfortunately I'm a retard and didn't bring fresh batteries, so it didn't quite work out. I really need to plan better because not only was it a pain running with a camera, but the sun was just starting to set on the ocean and the sight was breathtaking. Oh well, picture taking can be my impetus for running tomorrow.

Remember how I never set foot in the gym back home? Well... now that I can't go without paying, all I want to do is go to the gym. Me!! Go figure. Fortunately the weather isn't too cold so running outside is fine, but seriously... This is so like me - I never want something until it's unattainable.

I also spent a small fortune to do my laundry this afternon. One load of wash is $3.20 and the dryer costs $2.00 for 12 minutes. I boycotted the dryer and now my entire room is filled with wet clothes that I am letting drip dry on hooks, backs of doors and shelves. Boys were walking by and they had a full view of my under things... super.

After the craziness of last night, I think tonight is going to be pretty chill. There is an American Football team party that we might pop by (mostly because I want to be around normal boys for a bit) and then it is going to be a wine and movie night for the girls. Napoleon Dynamite, Ice Cream, French Wine (at only $3.00 a bottle) and gossip! I can't wait :)

finally... i must confess that i have found a new way to procrastinate online: at the top of this site on the far right there is a button you can click on that says "next blog." you click on it and it randomly takes you to another blog. it's oddly addictive to see what you come upon. some are really wierd (the guy on that one has a fetish with getting fat) and others are really interesting (this one is from an American who worked in the White House and is now in Iraq). either way, it's my amusement of the moment :)
*Warning*: you may come across innapropriate ones! Just skip by them quickly and don't blame me!

i shouldn't make apost now...

2005-01-29T01:15:00.000Z

but I will anyway.

Tonight, we went out to the bars on campus. A brand new one just opened and they were having a big RnB night. The music was pretty awful but the atmosphere was wonderful. I tried taking pictures but everyone I gave my camera to was too drunk to take proper pictures. Now that I am back in my room and have loaded them onto my computer, I notice that only one picture actually turned out ok. The rest are of the floor, half of people's faces and two pictures were actually set on "movie" instead of image so I have two three second films of stupidly grinning people. Wonderful. I've posted a few of the reject pictures below.

Tomorrow, when I'm in my right mind, I'm sure I'll take them down, but for the moment, I feel odly compelled to post...

this pic is from the beginning of the night... i started out the evening by tripping and pouring my entire drink on people i had just met... everyone decided that the best way to deal with that embarassing episode was to drink more :-P

take four... (it took four shots (two of which turned to be movies) to get everyone in the pic) i still look hammered

kate was worse than me...

"Y'all right?"

2005-01-27T22:47:00.000Z

At least once a day for the last three weeks, one of my corridor mates would stop in on me in my room or in the kitchen and say "Y'all right?" The exact words were hard to figure out at first with the accent, but eventually I was sure that they were asking me if I was alright. I thought maybe they were concerned over whether or not I was adjusting well in the beginning, and I thought to myself "Oh, how nice, they are making sure I'm okay." After the first week though, every time they asked I always felt like I must be looking really "tired" (i.e. like crap) or something for them to keep asking if I was all right. As a result, I kept giving long answers to justify the state I was in.

I'm so daft. Turns out "Y'all right?" is a greeting. Like "what's up?" or "what's going on?" When someone at home asks "what's up?" they never actually wait for an answer, it's just as perfunctory as "hey" but gives the slight illusion that you care.

So... if a Brit asks if you are all right, they just mean "Hi", they don't want to know your life story.

i have too much free time

2005-01-27T16:05:00.000Z

There was a week last semester where I had eleven meetings, 13 hours of work and the usual schedule of classes/homework/studying. I know some of the other talented phi mus can handle schedules like that with out any problems, but it was a bit much for me. It was after that week that I really started looking forward to coming to Lancaster. I assumed it would be amazing because I wouldn't have to be on the exec board of any clubs or have a job. My only real commitment would be school and fun.

Unfortunately, I just can't motivate myself to read the 3,000 or so odd books I am required to and, without a bazillion meetings, I have nothing to do during the afternoon. I've actually started to run again. As in, outside. Like exercise. It can't possibly have anything to do with motivation (i have none) and I'm not looking to impress any of the fruitcakes over here so... I think it's due to boredom. It's kind of amazing really. The other day I ran down near the supermarket (fortunately I didn't have any money or I would have stopped and bought some chocolate just to balance out the running) and then around the whole campus. I was able to check out the picturesque countryside and even some cute little sheep. I even saw the ocean! Gorgeous.

I think I will be tired of this idleness very soon, but, for the moment... cheers to boredom

i messed up the template

2005-01-26T21:20:00.000Z

disregard everything i said in previous posts about having figured out templates. i lied. i managed to screw up the fun one i had before and had to switch back to this one.

on the upside, i figured out how to add a counter so that i can now keep track of whether or not anyone bothers to read this.

i think the late nights, constant rain and poor diet are getting to me and making me sick. rather than add a nice post about the last few days, i'm going to bed early (9:00pm) and will put something in here tomorrow. :)

Classes

2005-01-26T18:03:00.000Z

After two and a half weeks of classes, I finally have a complete schedule that I am pretty sure will transfer nicely to Case. Thus, I am now able to comment on the classes that I am taking and can reassure my parents that I am indeed going to class.

Ac.F 311 - equivalent to Acct 301 - One two hour lecture per week and one 50 minute seminar. The professor is from Italy and seems to really know his stuff. I'm a dork and like accounting, so this isn't a bad class. All of the material covered in the first few weeks was already covered in 300 so, for the first time in my life, I actually have a clue as to what is going on in an accounting class. The professor is no Tom or Julia Grant but he's leagues above a Garen, so I'm optimistic overall.

Econ 314 - equivalent to one of the required Bafi's - Monetary Economics. Taught by this brilliant and slightly eccentric professor who is an authority on Hayek (economic theorist). I love his style of teaching and am actually fascinated by the course... I just wish it wasn't so over my head. I need this class to transfer for the BAFI so I can graduate on time and there weren't any other options due to conflicts so... to get into it... I kinda sorta exaggerated about my economic background. I've only had 102 and 103 and to take this class you needed at least two more intermediate econs... I told the guy I could handle it... I don't have a prayer of handling it. I'm going to have to make some friends in the class and then work extra, super hard (i.e. one less bar crawl a month) just to pass. This should be interesting...

Engl 204 - equivalent to Literature and Language GER - I LOVE this class. American Literature. I should be able to handle this. We are doing the Scarlet Letter right now, AP English, anyone? If I don't get an A, immigration shouldn't let me into the country.

R.Stud 332 - equivalent to Global and Cultural Diversity - Manifestations of the Goddess in India. Absolutely fascinating course. It's all about the role of women in Hindu society, past and present, and traces the evolutions and manifestations of goddesses. Amazing.

I know I complained about the reading list (I will probably do that alot in the coming months), but one cool thing is that you don't actually have to buy any books. Every single book you need is in the library or online. Soooo much money saved! I mean, the cost of my upcoming trip to London is equal to one Accounting book. So, that's cool :)

after 12 or so hours of searching online...

2005-01-25T01:23:00.000Z

i have finally found a website with lots of fun templates that can be adjusted with almost zero knowledge of html design. i have a negative ability when it comes to making blog skins, so this works well for me.

i picked this one based on a link Lou sent me a bit ago. he is devout follower of all things apple (don't even bother trying to talk to him while he is reading an interesting issue of MacWorld) and told me about the iPod Shuffle (shown on the left). it is Apple's newest in it's line of mp3 players. it's affordable and may be fun for avid exercisers, but i don't think it will be as wildly popular as the previous iPods because it's just not as practical. what happens if there is a song you really want to hear - do you have to go through tons of songs to find it? that's not to say it won't sell well though, i mean, people will buy anything right now that has an "i" on the front of it and Apple knows it. people would probably spend $20 for a bottle of iWater.

anyways... i think i will change skins alot based on mood, events, etc. now that i have figured this out... compensate for a lack of interesting things to read with interesting things to look at! :-)

there's no place like home

2005-01-23T13:36:00.000Z

Yesterday was the first day of rush and right about now, everyone is probably waking up, putting on matching shirts, checking hair and makeup and making sure that they look just right to hit on girls. I mean... make friends.

Last year, I had a lot of mixed feelings on the formal recruitment process at Case. From certain angles it seemed so superficial and painful. From the sorority girl's point of view, you meet these incredible girls and stress for a week and a half over whether or not they will join your sorority - if they do, you are thrilled and it is all worth it, but if they do not, you feel like you have failed in some monumental way. If you are participating in recruitment, you are constantly worrying about whether or not you will end up in the same chapter with your friends or whether or not you will be able to keep all of your friends after all of the decisions are made.

However, being so far away, I have a little bit of perspective on the whole thing and I really miss it. I genuinely do. I miss being able to meet fantastic girls, but most of all, I miss hanging out with everyone. I think rush last year was when I realized how amazing Phi Mu really was. Any group of girls can have fun under formal, contrived circumstances that involve large quantities of alcohol, but we were having a blast just hanging out. Whether it was hanging balloons, eating food, coloring in posters or making of fun of those ridiculous songs we have to sing... I enjoyed every minute of it. Everywhere I turned there was someone wonderful to make a sarcastic comment to or laugh with. Anyone who has been through high school knows how hard it is to find a group of girls where you can just be yourself and be liked for that.

The only things I liked better than rush were living in the house and Greek Week (mostly for the random fun everyone seems to have).

So... I wish everyone luck today and in the upcoming week and weekend. Not being able to participate, you'd think I would be afraid of the outcome. Actually, that hasn't even crossed my mind because I know that we will come out of rush with the most amazing group of girls at Case... (the ones that are in touch with their inner jackasses, who aren't afraid to make fools of themselves, who can have fun just sitting around the dinner table, who have a certain quality you can't quite put your finger on, but that makes them stand out from all the rest; the individuals who will add another dimension to the chapter, the ones who don't just follow the crowd)... we always do.

that looks terrible, you probably think i'm losing it

2005-01-23T03:33:00.000Z

i just saw what that picture looks like. it's pretty awful. i guess it's one of those things where "you had to be there" to appreciate it. oh well, that's the last time i'll try and be cute.

i promised myself that i wouldn't get too specific on this thing because i'd rather not broadcast anything beyond the superficial stuff here. i mean, a journal on a website is not the best place for one's innermost thoughts.

however, it's 3:41 am and i'll be a little PDA-ish (by my standards) this one time. suffice to say that i miss the boy, it's wierd to be in a school setting and not spending 10/11 hours with him and i've taken to thinking very mean thoughts in my head about all the happy couples i see. next time i try to do something that he'd appreciate, i'll make sure I use the zoom function on my camera better so that the rest of you don't think i'm a complete and utter psycho who takes pictures of windows with blurry writings.

also, i'll work on getting a better connection to the network so that i can send emails with attachments and not have to rely on this site for relaying pictures.

Soon to be top world traveler...

2005-01-23T02:42:00.000Z

ok, so maybe not world traveler, but at least ace traveler of Britain.

At Lancaster University, esteemed purveyor of higher education, there is not one, but two travel agencies on campus. At first, this kind of bummed me out because I would walk past these big posters of beautiful people blissfully vacationing in the sunny Canary Islands. They were basically saying "Ha ha, these people are tanning while you walk in the rain and become ever more Casper-like." However, once classes began in earnest, big sandwich boards started to appear outside the travel office, advertising day trips to various parts of the UK. Which, instead of making one depressed, are a source of excitement because these are packages that are very affordable. So... I stopped in, had a chat w/ the travel agent and some of the other international students on campus and now have two trips planned in the next four weeks!

Adventure #1: For 19 pounds (about $38.00), myself and some of the other Americans and Australians will be heading to Edinburgh, Scotland. After a bus trip through the highlands, we will be dropped off early in the morning and have roughly 10 hours to walk around the city and see the old castle, visit museums and check out street markets. To prepare for this trip, I am watching anything on the network featuring Sean Connery and trying to find copies of Highlander (either the movie or USA tv series).

Adventure #2: 3 nights and 4 days in London completely unchaperoned and unencumbered with itneraries or duties. I will be going with an amazing group of people (5 girls and 1 guy, all American) who want to check out everything the city has to offer. Thanks to T, I have an amazing guide book on London with all sorts of great tips so I already have an idea of the best places to go. Everything from Buckingham Palace to Picadilly Circus to Hyde Park will be explored... and laboriously detailed on this bloggy thing later like a mini travel guide. Finally, Sarah went ahead and checked out what's going on at the different clubs so we already have some hot spots lined up for each night. I can't wait!

P.S.: Today, went shopping again in town for food. AMAZING time as usual on the little streets and found an incredible Italian restaurant. I showed astounding restraint and forgoed the delectable, mouth-watering pasta dishes for a savory Salmon salad with pesto dressing (mmmm!). The English sure know how to cook Italian.

After lunch, I saw the funniest thing in the windows of one of the very old houses just outside of the main square: the words "Don't Panic" in red. It was such an odd juxtaposition of stately, old-world elegance and... I don't quite know... modern something or other with a dash of Douglas Adams. I immediately thought of the one person I know who could appreciate the irony of the situation as well as the words and for that boy (who promised he would finally read this once his stupid iBook is done being dead) I took the following picture... I couldn't get the right angle to show the old building, but I got the words and that's what'd he'll appreciate most anyway:

don't worry though, i'm not panicking, i have my towel.

p.p.s: if you've read the book being referenced, you will understand, if not, step away from the computer and read a book and then I won't seem quite as nuts

The Girls on My Floor

2005-01-21T00:34:00.000Z

Since I am so ludicrously brilliant and figured out how to post pictures to this thing, I figured I would take the opportunity to put up the few pics I have of the girls on the floor and give short descriptions of them. (more detailed, anecdotal descriptions will come at a later date... stay tuned)

Katie: Very smart, down to earth and from Bolton. I can't understand half of what she says when she gets really excited and talks fast. Amazing girl all around.
Kate: Really welcoming and fun to be around. She's the type that can brighten the worst day. She's from Berry (sp?) and also is hard to understand at times. Really great at sharing (she let me borrow her curling iron... and I think it was out of true kindness, not an unwillingness to be seen in public with my frizzy hair)
Hannah: Reminds me alot of Meg Sharik! Kind and has great taste in music and movies. Really fun to talk to, great sarcastic side.
Heather: The young'n on the floor (is still 18 while Katie and Kate are 19 and Hannah and Sarah are 20). She's right across the hall and leaves her door open alot so I feel like she is my roommate. She's very naive, silly and wonderfully awkward. (she and I have a lot in common.)
Sarah: my fellow American. From Iowa. We have tons in common besides nationality and she reminds me of Tara. need i say more? :)

Left to Right: Katie, Kate, Me, Hannah

Left to Right: Kate, Me, Heather (Heather is dressed up for Naughty Schoolgirl Night)

Sarah:

Another fun one of Hannah - completely impromptu:

apparently I am immature and fat

2005-01-20T02:10:00.000Z

it's late and i am about to fall asleep on my keyboard, but I want to write down word for word what happened tonight before I forget...

SO. Tonight Sarah and I went out to a couple of bars and then the University club out in Morecambe with the girl's football team (i.e. soccer girls). To make a long story short, a few minutes after we walked in, I ran into a couple of the other international students that I knew and was introduced to their British friends. It was really loud and hard to talk as a group, so everyone kinda got paired off.

I was stuck with a 6'5" skinny albino-looking kid. Before even asking what my name was he asked how old I was. I told him I was 21 and he went, "oh, huh, wouldn't have guessed." I wasn't sure what he meant, but I figured I'd continue with the small talk and ask him the same. He said he was 25 and doing postgraduate work at Lancaster. Even though he said this very haughtily, I continued in my efforts to be friendly and asked him if it was difficult to live with 18 year olds. To this he replied that it was fine, but that I couldn't really understand his situation because clearly I "act very young for my age and would relate well with younger girls." I didn't know how to take that comment, so I looked around for someone else to talk to and, finding no one, made an another attempt at conversation. Since he was so tall, I asked him if he played basketball. He said yes and asked if I played any sports. I said no but was thinking about maybe playing basketball. and this... this is where i became irritated... he looked me up and down and said, "Well you would need to work out first." I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and said "excuse me?" To this he gave me another look over and replied "Yeah, you definitely need to exercise." At this, I turned around and walked away.

UGHHHG! I don't care if I'm 245lbs.... you just DON'T say that to a girl. I realize I am not the same size I was in high school and I would love to lose 10 lbs and look better, but I'm okay with where I'm at. Arrogant, pale boys like him are the reason that not many girls can say the same thing.

This is why I love my boyfriend... on first meeting me, he did not tell me I was an immature heffer.

I am a culinary genius

2005-01-18T22:42:00.000Z

As many of you know, while living in the house this summer, I existed on a diet of pasta, butter and parmesan cheese. On very special occasions, I would make myself wraps that contained turkey, muenster cheese and mayo. Oh! I also bought lots of tortellini to change things up. Anyways... this was an ideal diet for me: lots of carbs and little effort.

Much to my dismay, it is difficult to do that here because the girls on my floor actually cook real food and get their proper daily allowances of healthy stuff. The past week, I have felt like the odd girl out because I didn't have an entire refrigerator full of wierd stuff like vegetables, meat, rice, beans, etc. My personal food consisted of a jar of nutella (which I ate in 3 days), a giant loaf of bread (ate in 2 days), two boxes of pasta, two boxes of tortellini, assorted kit kats, mint Mn'Ms, orange juice, milk, hummus and carrot sticks (to prove I eat vegetables). Is it terribly obvious that I went grocery shopping without the supervision of adults and without a list?

Thus, to fit in with my British counterparts, I made a proper trip to the store. I bought all sorts of junk like yogurt, rabbit food (lettuce), chicken & turkey breasts, marinade and assorted vegetables :shudder: Then, today, I defrosted, marinated, grilled and, heaven forbid, ate chicken salad with sauteed vegetables.

I think I am going to go into carb withdrawal.

p.s.: they all regularly exercise too, but don't get excited... i don't want to fit in that badly

It's hailing and i can't figure out how to shut my window

2005-01-18T11:32:00.000Z

it's amazing how the tiniest things can be used as an excuse for why you don't really need to do something. for example, right now i should be trekking across campus to find a professor and get 1) permission to take her class and 2) some guidance on the reading list. I really need to do these things because it'd be good to have my schedule finalized and the reading list contains over 30 separate books as well as assorted journals and websites. However... it's hailing outside and I really must wait until that stops before I can go anywhere. what if I went outside and got pelted in the eye by a hail stone and died? that would just be a waste of my not-very-cheap return plane tickets. also, her office hours are until 3:00, so I should be fine.

for the record, this is one of the more plausible excuses I've used in the past two and a half years of college. there have been numerous stupid ones, but the winner would have to be from my freshman year. i skipped class because of a bad hair day. i woke up in the morning and instead of nice, manageable, wavy hair... I looked frighteningly similar to Edward Scissorhands. if that happened now, i'd probably still go to class, but freshman year i was still preoccupied with stupid things like looking nice. althoough... now that i think about it... a certain roommate of mine skipped class as well because of the obvious stress of looking at my bad hair... she wins for lame excuses :)

Wierd English Thing of the Day: Ridiculously long "suggested' reading lists. If I understand this properly, in the U.K. the emphasis is not on having students methodically go through textbooks and critically apply material that is presented to them by professors but rather on students learning everything for themselves. In each class (even my accounting and econ... grrrr), a syllabus is given and for each lecture or seminar, there is a list of suggested reading. For example, my econ seminar tomorrow has two textbooks, 3 journals and a website to peruse... and that's just for tomorrow.

First Official Weekend at Lancaster

2005-01-17T00:55:00.000Z

This weekend was pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. Some of what made it so fun is hard to put into writing, but for the sake of my ardent fans (re: my mom) I'll try.... The weekend was a great chance to go out with the girls on my floor and meet alot of other crazy Brits. The following is a recap of my doings as well as my latest observations:

~Friday~
Friday night was my first official bar crawl with my corridormates. As I said in a previous post, these Brits can drink. They take down pints like it's their job and regularly drink giant fishbowls like the one Alex brought for cup night at Filomena's.

The only thing I wonder is whether or not I am a fair judge of heavy college drinking. Case isn't exactly a breeding ground for binge drinkers even though I would probably put my money on select Case guys versus any state college kids. They'd drink 'em under the table and then sit down and ace a final. Although, in my defense with regards to thinking everyone here is a pro drinker, several of the people here are Irish. I have it on good authority that from birth their bottles are filled with one part milk, one part whiskey.

Aside from their affinity for alcohol, which is similar to American boys, their is quite a large subset of British boys that are very different from Case guys. These differences include:

- mohawk/mullet... guys (and their girls) adore the "fashion mullet." I realize this is an oxymoron... nevertheless, this mix between a closely cropped mohawk and mullet is present in about 1 out of 5 "fit" (i.e. gorgeous, popular) guys on campus.

-drag... a couple of the guys here really enjoy dressing up in women's clothing. whilewhether it is a themed event or just a random night out, there are several guys that like to take advantage of the various styles afforded to girls. For exmple, on Friday, the theme for the bar crawl was "naughty school girls." the boys had the option of wearing pimp outfits or school shorts or whatever, but they instead chose skirts, bras and women's underwear from the Salvo shop. ewww.

-style... when not in drag, some of the guys here really know how to dress. i've seen several wearing top designer label clothes or cool indy/thrift store t-shirts with just the right jeans. And... they are always perfectly accesorized and coifed (even the mohawked ones). you never have to worry about them wearing the same hoody/fraternity t-shirt out every single night.

anyways... friday was cool... after the bar crawl the 6 of us girls sat out in the hallway with the mulleted/mohawked guys in the pictures below among others and talked about all sorts of random stuff... we also made some of the boys drink a mix of bailey's and ribena black currrant (not a fun drink... the bailey's curdles almost instantly)... stayed up until about 2-3 am and then passed out :)

~Saturday~
Saturday was pretty sweet as well... went shopping in the town for several hours to find a curling iron so that I could stop being frizzy girl. Alas, my search was in vain as I could only find one curling iron in the whole blasted town and it was one of those stupid ones favored by old ladies with perms. (although... i'm sure Lou loved hearing about my misfortune... a guy would have to be blind to think about hitting on me with my crazy hair).

After the failed shopping trip, we went out to the Sugarhouse, a club in Lancaster town affiliated with the university (because 8 bars on campus and a nightclub in neighboring Morecambe aren't enough). It was, by far, the best place I've been to yet. There were free drinks between 9-10, tons of people, good music and free drinks between 9-10.

I, the girl of two left feet who spent her time down in the warehouse district drinking beer and sitting, actually danced for multiple hours. Me. Dance. Hours. hah! Here's the most unbelieveable part... I was sober! I had one chick drink and then had free diet coke the whole night. Thing is, we all danced in this big group and just acted like jackasses (the girls on my floor would make such great Phi Mus...). It was brilliant. The guys and girls from Friday night all got in a big group and we just jumped up and down to the music. I had the best time and finally got a chance to burn off the loaf of bread, jar of nutella and box of pasta I had consumed in the last two and a half days.

Afterwards, I stayed up until 4am talking with that crazy boy from back home... 17 months (that's 66 more weeks than anyone -even us- gave it)... i like beating odds with him :)

~Sunday~
Slept in forever, talked to the boy some more and then went to the bar. At the bar, I got into a fight with some of the guys about football vs. futbol. Not only did they make fun of American football and say it was for sissies because the guys wear pads, but they said mean things about the Steelers. Oooohhh I gave it to them good.

Now, I'm updating this.

Overall, A for the weekend :)

Figured out how to work pics!! See below :-)

This is a picture of some of the boys that were hanging out on the floor Friday night and dancing with us Saturday night... it's hard to tell from this picture, but 2/4 have the odd mullet/mohawk:

Some of the drag queen boys. There was no themed party. They dressed this way for a night out at a club. Some were wearing women's underwear and stockings. Nearly all of them had frilly parasols. I got this picture off of the club's website and didn't really get a chance to talk to them individually to find out why they were dressed this way...

Pictures

2005-01-15T12:14:00.000Z

as i said before, the internet here is pretty awful and I can't figure out how to get around the firewalls to post pictures on this site. SO... I made another webshots of pics here. I wanted to put them into the blog so that they could have descriptions and you wouldn't think "those people look weird and the buildings are exactly the same." Although, I realize the buildings will be absolutely boring to all of you, so I will keep them in a separate folder you can just ignore :)

Here's the link:

http://community.webshots.com/user/BrittInBritain

(I know, really original name... I'm just trying to be consistent)

Housing

2005-01-15T11:40:00.000Z

Just got an IM about housing for next year, so I'll post a bit about where I'd like to live (because it's a whole lot easier for people to read this than actually talk to me given everyone's crazy schedules and the 5 hr. time difference)...

At first, i was a bit thrown off by having this single (or, to be more accurate, walk in coffin). I kept having thoughts pop into my head and I'd start to say them out loud before I realized that I dont have a roommate. I also found it quite strange to be at school and not be on the top bunk. The first few mornings that I was here I'd throw my legs off the edge of the bed and be absolutely shocked that the floor was right there and that I didn't need to find a refrigerator, chair or desk to help me get out of bed.

However, after a week, I am now spoiled and will find it very difficult to going back to living with lots of roommates. So... here's my two ideal conditions: live with as many of you wonderful girls (you know who you are) as possible and have my own room.

Here's what I'm game for:

- House within WALKING distance of campus where I could have my own room. I may have car issues again next year and I don't want to have to worry about car pooling or taking a bus to campus. I'd also probably get another boot because I suck at life and those aren't fun. (if 6 or 8 - i dont know the exact numbers - of us could all get Amanda's house, that'd be the best ever)

- The new dorms would be cool because I heard they have double beds and they would be close to Phi Mu. That way, I could still be on the house meal plan (oh how I miss dinner table conversations and the lovely Nick cuisine... but i'll post more on that later) and would be close to Weatherhead. Also, dorm beds imply extra-long beds and they are also sweet because my toes don't hang over when I stretch out. Here at Lancaster I have a shorter bed and my toes poke out and get cold... I understand people may have trouble with the new dorms because they might be expensive, but I lucked out for various reasons (scholarship, guaranteed job and the nicest parents ever), so if anyone is up for those, I am too.

- Phi Mu house. Disregard the "I want a single" crap. You girls are so fun, I'd probably live in the 5 pack.

- Single on Northside. I know the amazing Tera Davis is doing that right now and it sounds like lots of fun. Again, it would be close to the house and PBL.

- a cardboard box off of Ford. the one everyone made for "Let's Shack Up" looked pretty sweet. i could handle that and, besides, I'm sure I wouldn't have to worry about roommates.

- a beautiful, gigantic mansion in Coventry with a chauffeur. i bet if we gave Amanda till room signup, she could find a rich doctor who'd want to give her his house. i don't have those kinds of skills... but I do some mean vacuuming and would be more than willing to do that in said mansion to earn my keep.

so yeah... that's where I'm at... hopefully I will catch one of you online in the next few days :)

p.s.: thanks to everyone who leaves me wonderful IMs. the internet here is pretty crappy so when I try to IM back with "hi and thanks" either I get kicked off or the person is already gone. thus, i'm not trying to be mean :)

when i get back, i may not be a cheap date anymore

2005-01-15T02:44:00.000Z

oy vey. it's 2:45am, so to avoid falling asleep on the keys, i'll make this short.

I'm sure I've told you this once, twice or a hundred times, but there are 8 bars on campus and 52 within about 5 miles of campus. It seems that the British don't care one bit about the history that surrounds them or the cultural avenues that are available to them. All they want to do is eat potatoes and drink.

So tonight, I was a true Brit and did a bar crawl with them. I quickly dropped out after I realized just how low my tolerance was and decided that I'd rather watch them all be crazy. Let's just say they'd give Damon and Pat a run for their money...

I'm afraid this is going to be a long one...

2005-01-11T18:35:00.000Z

It's been a busy two days and I'm going to relate it all right here, so for your reading pleasure, I'll make a bulleted list and you can skip to whichever part you fancy...

- Scheduling. I am currently signed up for one class which may or may not be equivalent to Acct 301. The other two classes I was hoping to get approved for this morning are both full and I am about a mazillion and half people down on the waiting list (okay, so I'm fourth on one and 10th on the other, I like to round up). I adore Case, but if I'm a Super Senior because of this blasted study abroad thing, I am going to stick the bright red nail polish Ms. Anderson so adores up her surgically altered nose. (in case I didn't tell you, the three classes she approved were only offered last semester)

-Office Hours. I went to a professor's office hours today to get into the accounting class I hope is equal to 301. Equivalencies between Case and Lancaster came up because the course which uses the same book as 301 is a graduate level class and off limits for me. Anyways, he had the audacity to madk a snicker about the quality of teaching at Case. Ooh boy was I mad. This hairy old man, poorly in need of a session with the orthodontist on Extreme Makeover was telling me how Case and American schools in general were inferior to Lancaster and then, to cap it off, made a depracating remark about a restaurant in Cleveland. All I could think was, "Your people have had two thousand years to refine cooking and the best you have come up with is baked potatoes and black pudding (congealed blood in pig's intestines). Besides, didn't you get the memo from President Hundert? Case is going to be the most powerful learning environment in the world." Instead of saying this, I just smiled and nodded.

- Clubbing. It turns out that Angela (scary pierced girl) is on another floor of my building and that all of the girls on my hall are absolutely wonderful. Thus, I went out last night with these crazy, fun, nice girls. They decided to show me a few of their favorite bars, so we started out the night at "Varsity." It was a really casual, well designed bar with a bit of a jungle theme. We took some shots at the bar (I think I'm going to have a whole repertoire of tasty new drinks when I get back) and then had a few drinks on these giant leather sofas. They were ever so comfy and I was able to stretch my legs all the way out and only my ankles hung over the edge. After Varsity we went to the Friary, by far the coolest bar I have ever been to. I’m not sure if it was sacrilegious or not, but it used to be a church (built in the late 1700s). It had old stained glass windows and a super high cathedral ceiling. There were balconies and all sorts of fun stuff. It was just an amazing atmosphere. I made sure to get water there. Partly because of the drinks at the other bar and partly because I refused to get drunk in a place that used to be a church. I'm not sure where God stands on being drunk in his house so I decided to play it safe.

-Club Liquid & Fire! After the Friary, we went to Club Liquid. It was pretty standard on the inside as far as clubs go... very nice but nothing special. We met up with some of the study abroad kids that I knew and the group of us all went onto the dance floor. Unlike Cleveland clubs, there wasnt anywhere to really sit, so I couldn't figure out how to get out of dancing. I tried offering to get a round of drinks and standing by the wall, but they wouldn't here of it. So, I actually walked out on the dance floor and "danced." Fortunately, I noticed pretty quickly that some of the Brits were dancing really wierdly. So, I goofed around with the other Americans and we were complete jackasses, making fun of all of the other people dancing. Only thing is that they had no idea we were making fun of them and thought we were quite good. It was really odd, because anyone with two eyes can tell I can't dance.

After a while of doing that, some of us took a break and stood by the railings to watch the crowd. That's when the group of us (an American boy, an Australian boy and an American girl) noticed the oddest thing. The boys were dancing with each other. Now, any girl will tell you that the reason girls go out to dance clubs is not to dance with boys, but with their girl friends. If they meet a boy that is sufficiently cute and decide to dance with them, then that is okay, but it is not the purpose of the outing. I think the British boys do the same thing. (ick!) (As a warning, this is a bit of a generalization, there were boys dancing with girls and tons of boys just standing by the bar, but there were at least 6 groups of 3-5 boys dancing with each other.) They were grabbing each other, pointing at each other and pushing one another against walls. Either they were all of a controversial orientation or this queer eye for the straight guy/metrosexual thing has gone too far in Britain.

Finally, the night ended around 1:00 am when the music started getting softer and yellow hats could be seen bouncing through the crowd. Then, the doors directly behind where we were standing opened up and we were pushed through by men yelling "Fire." Turns out there was a fire downstairs! The weird thing, however, was that the “Fire brigade” got there before people were ushered out. Either way, we stood around outside for a bit and then went walking to the bus station. That part was kind of funny because all of the stick insect girls who were wearing absolutely nothing except barely-there dresses and skirts that left nothing to the imagination were all stuck freezing in the cold with their skirts blowing up! Hehehehe! It was very Marilyn Monroe-over-the-vent except they weren’t as good at keeping themselves covered! I bet they were jealous of my jeans, tank top and blazer :)

ok, that's all :)

Wierd English Thing of the Day: They sell over 6 types of kit kats (mint chocolate, dark, orange, strawberry, white chocolate, regular, etc.) and several kit kat knock offs but NO Hersheys products whatsoever! (How does one get through finals without Hershey's?)

brittany spencer, workout addict

2005-01-10T17:35:00.000Z

I just spent the last few hours trying to get my schedule all squared away... didn't quite succeed due to carpet malfunctions and vanishing professors, but I was able to run into some of the other study abroad students. When I walked up to them they were all worked up over something, so, in a concerned voice, I asked what the problem was. They said that they were outraged over the gym. Apparently, entrance to the gym is free but use of any of the services (machines, weights, the track, the scale, pretty much everything other than the front doors) cost a pound or more ($2.00 +). The two boys (who are big, football playing, weight-lifting types) said they were really upset and that they didnt know what they were going to do. I started to complain along with them about how unfair it was and said something along the lines of "you are so right. I don't know what I will be able to do either if I can't work out." and then...
I listened to what I had said.
Me? Workout? I guess I am a regular gym rat if you consider that I've gone twice the entire time I've been at Case. Actually, I think this pay for each service thing is a brilliant setup. Now, when people look at me critically for not exercising, I can tell them that it is because I am frugal and not lazy.

hmm... i bet Amanda would pay... :)

I am Scrunchy Girl...

2005-01-10T15:07:00.000Z

Do you know those girls on campus who, for whatever reason, just seem to stand out a bit? For example, there were several girls in my accounting classes last semester who liked to wear scrunchies. Like, the big, neon type that you used to wear in grade school which doubled as bracelets. While scrunchies are certainly practical (they hold back the hair without breaking it), their time has passed and they are firmly in the "what not to wear" category. I, unfortunately, was one of the mean girls who used to poke fun at the girls that would wear scrunchies and other slightly odd styles such as pleated, tapered leg khaki pants.

Well...

Here at Lancaster, it appears that I am Scrunchy Girl. (Karma is a witch) Everyone is back on campus now and I've had an entire day to check out what people are wearing. All I can say is that I don't quite fit in with my standard Abercrombie wool sweater, jeans and flats. My casual school clothes are just a bit off (and by a bit, I mean alot). Here is what some of the girls on campus wear as outfits:

- Spiked heels, tights, mini skirt, giant belt, polka dot shirt, striped blazer, cashmere type scarf
- Tight jeans tucked into suede boots with straps and buckles all over them, sweater with holes all over the arms and front and crazy colored t-shirt underneath and a messenger hat overtop of their two-tone blunt cut hairstyle
(essentially, they all dress like the funny looking punk people from CIA...)

Now, i'm in no way saying that I ever dressed even remotely trendy at Case, BUT... when I made an effort and wore something to class that I thought was fun, I typically got a compliment. At the very least, I was typically wearing something similar to everyone else and was able to blend with the class. ha. Tonight is the first time that I will be going to a big club... I can't wait to see what they will wear to go out.

Unless I decide to cut up my sweaters or wear boots that make me 6'3", it appears that this will be a golden opportunity for me to stand out in a crowd... in my American Eagle and A&F clothes. Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds.

Weird English Thing of the Day: what girls wear to class. (see above)

"New" in Lancaster = 1650

2005-01-08T21:33:00.000Z

Today we got a proper tour of the town of Lancaster and all I can say is WOW! Contrary to popular belief, I did not come to England to do bar crawls and get wasted every second of the day (in fact, haven't had a drink yet). I actually came because I wanted to experience the history and culture of a place completely different from my own. AND, today... I actually got to do that free of charge and free of rain.

I'll try and be brief, but mom insists on full details, so.... we started by touring the oldest church in the area, dating back before 1000 or so and got to see one of the crowns the former Queens of England used to wear. Then, I got to see my very first castle. Before coming to Lancaster, the always amazing Ms. Anderson had told me that I would probably get to go to seminars held by the university in the castle or maybe even take classes there. ha. Her information was a bit off, because the castle is actually a prison, just as it has been for over 600 years. Regardless, it was really cool. After the church and castle, we toured the town of Lancaster and that was incredible as well. Everything is cobble stone streets and old stone houses in the Georgian and Ionic styles. We checked out the old and "new" town hall (built in 1650) and went to tons of stores and outdoor markets. I took some pictures and will post them once I have internet access in my room. The pictures can explain it better than I can. All I can say is that it blew my mind to be able to shop in the same markets that people have been shopping in for centuries.

After the shopping, a group of us went to this quaint little teahouse and I had a French brie, Tomato and Mango panini; seasonal salad, milkey coffee and a scone with creme (all scrumptious and pretty reasonable at about $8.00).

The rest of the day has been spent hanging out and talking with two of the British girls that moved into my corridor and, as far as I can tell, they are pretty fantastic (normal hair, minimal piercings and no glares when I smile at them).

Finally, I bought pasta, butter, parmesan pesto, nutella and bread. Obviously, this was huge. I think I just may be okay here. :)

Wierd English Thing of the Day: It's considered improper to tip in restaurants and is only done by the "most ignorant and common of people."

Here!

2005-01-07T00:35:00.000Z

ok... so. After three planes, a taxi and more paperwork than I've ever done in my life I am finally here at Lancaster with access to a computer. A lot has gone on in the last three days (I started flying on Tuesday and arrived here at 4pm Lancaster time on Wednesday) so I'll just sum up the interesting parts: (it's REALLLY long... i'll sum it up in a sentence if you don't want to read it: My flight was ok, my room sucks, the campus is full of concrete and the town is beautiful).

- The flights. I only had a few delays and actually managed to navigate both the Paris and Manchester airports all by myself. Didn't even have to ask any stupid questions! :) One interesting thing about the flights was that I flew out of the Atlanta airport at the same gate we flew out of for Cancun last spring. I had a bit of teary de ja vu and decided that it was a good omen. That was a good trip, so this will be a good trip as well. The other semi-interesting thing was that on the 8 hour flight to Paris I sat next to a lady who had a dog on her lap. One of the little white fluffy ones. It was reallllllllllllllllly smelly and kept yapping throughout most of the flight. To be honest, I could have done without it, especially since I smelled like "dog" for the rest of the day. That was okay though because the French smelled very similar.

- My room. Ahh... my room. The pictures of the rooms on the Lancaster website were absolutly gorgeous. Well lighted, spacious, clean and complete with window seat and sink. Hmm... let's just say that my luck came through once again. My room is a tad on the small side (think smaller than a southside single) with peeling paint, a bar across the window (no window seat) and cracks/holes between the bricks that people have put icky toilet paper in throughout the years. Additionally, the $40 bedding pack provided by the university for international students contains a pillow not larger than the one offered on the airplane. Sweet... Also, all of the furniture in the room is bolted in place. This in itself is not extraordinary, but what is truly odd is that there is a faux headboard nailed to the wall. If it were part of an actual wooden bed frame it would be quite nice, but instead it stops above the mattress and there is a 2 inch gap between it and the bed itself. So really, the whole effect is rather ridiculous. Finally, my door is not very tall and when I was trying on my neighbors' big heels, I had to duck my head to get in the room. Again, sweet.

- The people. Pretty much the only people on campus right now are study abroad students and most seem very nice. The girl that lives next door to me is from Iowa State and seems great. We were able to bond over our mutual jet lag, leaving behind wonderful boyfriends and our shitty rooms. I met one of the girls on my "corridor" today. Her name is Angela and she has multiple piercings (bellybutton, several earrings, nose, tongue, eyebrow), black hair with purplish streaks and enjoys applying lots and lots of bright pink blush. I'm sure we will have tons in common seeing as how I have lots of piercings and hot pink blush.
Oh. I went into the town last night with a large group of American girls and guys and we all got food together (paninis, yum!). We saw alot of the British students and, while the boys looked like typical American boys (although more punk and less prep), the girls were in a class all their own. They were either super trendy or super punk. Regardless of whether they enjoyed the designer look or the rebel one, they all had super high-heeled boots or Suede furry things and mini skirts that didn't cover their tush. They also had very little on up top. The six American and Australian girls in the group were all wearing hoodies or sweaters or blazers with jeans. Apparently we missed the memo.

- Money. Everything is soooooooooooooo expensive here. Earlier I worried about not liking any of the food. Turns out that won't be a problem, because I can't actually afford any of said food. A box of pasta, butter and parmesan cheese (my staple foods from the summer and well, life really) at the campus grocery store came to around £7.50. That's not too bad, but since the exchange rate is absolute "bollocks," that equals $15.00. Perhaps it will be better once I find a non-campus grocery store.

- The campus. It's mostly a lot of concrete slapped on the ground in bunches of squares with bits of grass in the center of the squares to form "park areas". The campus is surrounded by beautiful fields, forests and lakes and the sunset is supposed to be breathtaking (if it ever stops raining, I will have to check that out). I think people must have been tired by all of the beautiful scenery so they put up all the concrete to block it out. I can't really tell if it is as big or bigger than Case because the blocks all look the same, but it seems pretty large. One cool thing about it tho is that everywhere you walk there is an awning so you don't get so wet from all the rain. Which is good because I am sure all of my clothes would be soaked right now because it hasn't stopped raining since I got here. At least it's consistent.

-The town. It is soooooo amazingly beautiful. It completely makes up for most of the other difficult adjustments. It is very quaint and has stone streets and several pedestrian only walkways. We took a double decker bus into the town and passed through residential areas and those were adorable as well. There are more pubs than I could count and most of them had great names like "Wheel and Barrow" or "Boot and Horse."

Once it stops raining, I will take pictures and post them here or on my webshots. I don't have internet in my room yet, so getting on a computer requires a long walk in the rain (the sideways rain still gets you even with the awnings), so it may be a bit before I am on IM or am able to post again (this means lots of long posts... sorry!).

I miss everyone lots (homesickness is a witch) :-( and hope you all have a great weekend of partying before classes start!

One last thing...
Wierd English Thing of the Day: Oat Crispies. This is a cereal equivalent to Honey Bunches of Oats. The tag line on the box is "ludicrously good..." I'd buy it to see if it really is ludicrously good, but it's about $7.00.

I love Christine!

2004-12-15T05:20:00.000Z

FYI: Christine is the best! :)

semi-update

2004-12-13T01:51:00.000Z

Couple of updates:

- Thanks to the omniscient Jen VG, I now know that I will be able to use IM abroad. So... um, if anyone wants to talk to me, they can! :)

- FYI, plane tickets = expensive. My parents have always had free miles from credit cards/frequent flying and booked far enough in advance to get good deals. However, since the not-so-omniscient didn't pass on the proper information (she was too busy to forward an email from Lancaster) my flight didn't get booked until less than a month before departure and it was way more than I initially expected.

- I'm having all sorts of trouble figuring out the cost sheet Case needs so that they can cover the Lancaster's tuition with my scholarship. Again, Claudia Anderson outdid herself by noting that 1) the tuition has changed since last year 2) the amount should be somewhere on the website 3) she wasn't sure what that amount was or how much of it my scholarship would cover

- otherwise, 2 finals left then home on thursday!

It's finally official

2004-11-27T21:19:00.000Z

Finally got my acceptance letter on Thursday (during a commercial of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) to Lancaster University! I am excited beyond words and am trying (in vain) to keep myself from constantly checking student travel websites and the like.

To those of youwho may be wondering, I have set up a "blog" because:
- I am fairly sure that my mother will have a conniption(sp?) if I do not keep her updated on my every activity while abroad
- I want to give everyone at Case another computer-related procrastination outlet once Facebook dies down
- I could send update emails, but everyone gets a bazillion anyway and I don't want to be presumptous and send them to people who are rejoicing in my absence

Someone mentioned to me that AIM doesn't always work abroad. I guess that makes sense seeing as how it's "America" Online. I don't know if I buy that or not, but just in case I'm never on AIM, I'm giving people (i.e.: the three of you that will check this now and then) a chance to see the address.