Macaroni and Rage — Tuesday 25 October to Thursday 27 October

Monday night/Tuesday morning was consumed by unexpected insomnia due to very unexpected sinus congestion (I couldn't breathe through my nose at all, and I hate falling asleep with my mouth open, so I lay there and tried to breathe through my nose for a few seconds before gasping and freaking Jessi out. This went on for at least half an hour before exhaustion finally set in.) Another potential cause of my insomnia was the fact that I had tea with sugar about an hour before trying to settle down for the night. This would not normally cause a big problem, but I usually have honey. Sugar seems to affect me quite differently from honey. Happily, I didn't have class until noon.
Class was fine. I got a dirty look from Josh the hairy, irritable southerner for working on my presentation more than three days before it was due, but I may have earned that. Worse things could have happened.
I made crepes in the evening, seeing as I had slept in so as to stay awake in class. It's a pretty good time to make crepes, since people are around and can help me dispose of them. Unfortunately, Jessi always tries to eat all of them. She suspects me of putting some kind of addictive substance in them.
We went to Asda, and while I found macaroni noodles sort of, we won't be doing American night for a while because people are busy or unable to make things in the time they have. And then we're all going to Edinburgh this weekend. With luck, next week. I bought coloured medium cheddar cheese just for this, so hopefully it lasts. I'll check the expiration date and freeze it before then if I have to.
Regarding macaroni:
Aldi and and Tesco don't have it. I suspect it's something of an american pasta. This is what I was looking for:

This is what I found (minus the "cheese").

So this is what I got.

Same basic principle (small tubular noodles with a bend or five). 

Before bed, we played a few rounds of hearts that ended up taking longer than I expected. However, I made a valiant attempt to do more of my biochemistry when I realised that I would have to do the whole report, with four graphs and several calculations, in one day.
It was all pointless. I couldn't figure out the equations we got. I eventually went to bed well after midnight.

Then there was a freaking fire drill that woke me an hour before I would have had to get up. They even timed us as we staggered out of the flat. Snarl. Cold and irate, we were allowed back in at 07:35. I turned on the heater to warm up the room a bit before I had to get up in about half an hour and learned a valuable lesson: the heater keeps Jessi up. She flops around, makes grumpy noises, and gets up to turn it down. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an "off" switch, so she tried to turn it down three times in the half hour before my alarm went off again. I was kind of too sleepy to move, but I did feel hideously guilty. I also felt that saying something would give her rage an outlet in me, so I stayed out of the way. I realised that night that she had experienced a sneaky hate spiral, and shared the hyperbole and a half post with her. Her laughter was very gratifying. The history seminar was fine; I took notes on the order of the presentation and suchlike. Then I retired to the library to try and puzzle out the calculations that were driving me insane last night. They didn't get much better.

I've almost attained A Beautiful Mind status scribbling capabilities.  Only a few steps left to full-blown schizophrenia.

There was this equation that I needed to get from the data collected to the manner of analysing it, and it had some random centimeter. I'm normally quite good at going from equation to equation, once I get warmed up and set on the right path, but this had me scribbling random exclamations and drawing arrows, crossing them out, and redrawing them. At one point, I crossed out my query of "enzyme?" before turning around and writing "enzyme yes" above that. I was going insane. I had reached that weird conjunction of rage and confusion that leads to madness.
The situation improved somewhat after I decided to just forget that the stupid random centimeter was there, since it goes away in its usual equation without affecting the answer. I hope it won't cause me to fail miserably...
Things got better after coffee, since my mood was vastly improved after an hour of drinking a white chocolate blended mocha from starbucks (it was worth the money) and thinking about something other than biochemistry (I outlined my presentation). They didn't get better after lunch, which was a fifteen minute break for a cold cheese and onion pasty and a juice box of ribena (long i and e, rye-been-a), because I switched to the uni computers to edit the graphs so I could print a nice, not-demented report. It proved easier than I was expecting, although trendlines remain the bane of my excel existence.
My calculations are ALL WRONG. Well, it's more like my data are ALL WRONG, which is true enough (*guilty cough*). I ended up attaching the full graph at the end while putting in an edited graph that makes any sense at all in the body of the report.
Finally, I finished it at 19:15, after 7 hours of work. I think it's actually my best report yet, thanks to my extensive explanations. My plans of going to Aldi for two flapjacks and an energy drink were scrapped because it was too dark to walk alone, and Aldi closes at 20:00 anyway.
I didn't get to do laundry, either, because I was too tired when I got back home ten hours after I left that morning. I need to to that Thursday evening or Friday morning, or I'll have to get new clothes in Edinburgh. While it's not an unappealing thought, I don't really have the money for that.

Thursday started off with a trip to aldi to get flapjacks and an energy drink. The weather today is nice walking weather: cool and cloudy, without noticeable rain while I've been outside.
The biochemistry lecture was much better, since the professor is an immunologist and also assumed we knew how to tie our shoes.
I printed my edinburgh ticket during the break and holed up in the library's very purple study room.

So much purple!

The second part of the lecture felt a bit long, but that might just be because I suddenly had a spurt of creative energy that could not be acted upon. Hence this blog as soon as I got out of class. I was going to eat my second flapjack, but I happened to look for the nutrition information. One of these delicious little bars has "457 kcal" (so 457 calories as reported by US companies. In fact, the calorie is such a tiny measure that kilocalories was quickly adopted as the standard for food, but the k in front turns people off of perfectly healthy food, so the FDA allows companies to report nutritional information in the form of "cal" instead of "kcal").

I decided to maybe save the flapjack for later and also look up less excessive recipes. 

Lab was irritating.

You recall that lab report that took me 7 hours and considerable frustration on wednesday?

It's due next week, and this week was spent in learning how to do the graphs for the report.

Yep. So I spent two and a half hours in lab rehashing the stuff that I'd already taught myself to do. I'm really, really good at Michaelis-Menten and Lineweaver-Burk plots now, though. Also, I was doing them right. Bam. No centimeter was ever mentioned by the lab instructor.

My frustration at rehashing was not helped by the fact that the lab instructor was the lady who talks to us like we're kindergarteners. Granted, she's better at explaining things than the impossible little frenchman, but she pauses in weird places. Her emphasis habits really grate on the nerves after about ten minutes of uninterrupted talking, and she lectured for forty minutes. She says Lineweaver (which I heard at least once as "linweaver" and therefore adopted that pronunciation) as "linear-weaver" and it drove me insane. My tic started acting up, which usually leads to RAGE. I powered through on the fact that I saved all my work to a USB stick and can refine my report based on the new instructions we got.

Things got better when I got home and had, like, five pieces of toast to try and use up my bread before we leave for the weekend. I did my laundry, and then got sucked into "a quick game of hearts." 

Five hours later, we finally finished the sixth or seventh game.

I shot the moon. Twice. This has never happened to me before, and I've only seen it done twice. It's a caveat of hearts — if one person gets all 26 points (13 hearts plus the queen of spades), then they get 0 points for the round while everyone else gets 26 points each. It's hard to do, because you need really bad cards that don't give you away right at the beginning. Both times I've done it were unintentional.

I felt like a champion... until everyone ganged up on me the next round and I ended up with 25 points while everyone else except one person got 0. Ouch.

I'll be in Edinburgh until monday afternoon, so I won't be responding to any texts, emails, or comments. I could take my computer, but I doubt that I'll have internet and it's not worth the risk of having my computer nicked from the hostel room, because I'm not carrying this thing all over edinburgh for three days. No. I will take my camera, extra batteries, and a notebook so that I can make good blog posts when I get back.

Birthdays and Thoughts on Growing Up — Friday 21 October to Monday 24 October

Friday was Conor's 20th birthday. We got him a card and cupcakes.
Saturday and Sunday were highly unproductive days for me. I looked for a card for Jessi's 21st birthday (which is/was Monday the 24th) on Saturday, but I started too late and everything was closed. I did burn my finger on the oven, but it's getting better.

Burnt.
If anyone has any theories on why my burns tend to hurt a little right when I touch the hot thing, not hurt for twenty minutes, and then start burning again, please comment.

Sunday, I found a card at The Bridges, and looked ineffectually for a cake. All the bakeries were closed. We were going to watch a football (soccer to you americans) game in a pub, but we didn't know that it started at 13:00, and so missed it by about seven hours. It was too bad, since it was Manchester City vs Manchester United, which is an ancient rivalry and involves one of the teams having been bought by some foreigner who brought in really good international players that aren't british. So they kick the other teams' butts, and not many british people like them. I think this is like the basketball players that tried to form something of a "dream team" to win whatever it is that NBA teams play for by pulling star players away from their usual teams and into a predetermined team. I opposed this in principle, although I hate basketball. Hate watching it, hate playing it, hate hearing about it. Aaaanyway.

Wall! Much better than basketball.

Walls make me ridiculously happy. I love how they're in varying states of repair, like old burnt bricks and new bricks in the same section.

Monday, I looked again for a cake and found that the bakeries don't really do cakes. I ended up getting one from Tesco. I also found  blackcurrant jam, but I did not find macaroni noodles. I'm afraid my macaroni and cheese for american night might be more of a penne and cheese or maybe fusilli and cheese. We're going to look for macaroni at Asda.
After I found the cake, I ended up wandering around the bridges for a while before sitting down to ribena, biochemistry, and what turned out to be a belgian waffle at Esquires Coffee in the bridges.

Mmmm, waffle.
Mmmmm... Mmmm.

This is how the second bite of waffle made me feel:

From Hyperbole and a Half.

The first bite was confusing, because I was expecting light, pancake-like kind of crunchy waffle, and I got heavy, sweet waffle. 

Speaking of breakfast foods, I've discovered flapjacks. We don't really have anything that similar except some softer granola bars. I was expecting pancakes, but they're fairly firm oat bars, with fairly uncooked oats, that are fairly soft. They are not fairly delicious, they are exceedingly delicious. I get Blackfriars ("wickedly good") flapjacks for 49p at Aldi and take them for lunch and snack on Thursdays. 

After the bridges, I took the long way to the bus stop (and just made it, by sheer luck)

The pictures in the bottom window things were the target of the photo.

Seriously cool old building atmosphere. I guess this is sort of like downtown kennewick without the sketchy parts.

Sunderland Minster from the gate.

 I'm thinking that "Minster" is sort of like "First (denomination)" because we visited the York Minster in York.

Minster from the side. I'll need to check sometime on when it was built, because it's got some of that fortressy thing going on.

Wall! This is attached to the Minster.

These are across from the Minster. They're old buildings with nightclubs in them.

While walking and taking cool pictures and looking at houses, I started noticing that I've been really wanting a house.
I noticed this about my school housing situation (having two "homes", neither particularly permanent, for four years). My room at home is going to be not mine, probably within three years. My rooms at school are only mine for nine months. Unfortunately, I've developed an intense desire to have my own little house with a little kitchen and a little garden. I find myself lusting over kitchen supplies (utensils, teapots, pots and pans, etc.), garden decor (big, permanent plants, fancy planters, little statue things), and house decor (pillows, rugs, chairs, couches, wall hangings of various sorts, paintings (at least, the kind of thing that goes in a frame with glass that can be hung on a nail that you're allowed to put in the wall because it's your own frigging wall), lamps, curtains, and the like). The problem is intensified by the fact that I'm not staying in Spokane, which is the most immediate location for more permanent lodging. It gets worse because I now want a little townhouse in Sunderland.
I know.
I'm not staying here, and I'm probably not coming back for any long period of time, ever. But I find myself thinking, as I walk down skinny streets with terrifying drivers lined by iffy sidewalks and tiny houses, that I really wish I could live here. I've started thinking that I have an accent, not the other way around, and I'm practically used to the "wrong side of the street" thing. I actually had a hard time picturing getting in on the right side of a coach on the way to Durham. Seeing houses that are separated from any other house seems a bit frivolous. Instead of wanting a big yard, I don't really want one at all.
I know.
It really doesn't make sense. But these little places are perfect student/busy person housing. No yard to speak of that needs attention, and small enough that it will be hard to fill it with so much junk that you can't keep if you have to move back in with your parents. They'll probably drive me crazy when I hit the bottom of my w-curve, but for the time being, I think they're the best thing ever.
The thing, I guess, is that I want it to be mine. I'm really not looking to settle down in the "have a family" sense, since I'm neither in nor likely to be in a long term relationship in the near future, but I am looking to put down serious roots of my own. Right now, to extend the plant metaphor, I'm like a cutting. I've been part of a healthy, solid family with some healthy, solid roots. They've nourished me and provided me with everything I need to be a healthy person, but it's time for me to put down my own roots. Okay, so I'm more like the slightly parasitic offspring on some succulents than a cutting, but the basic principle is the same. I've grown past being able to be healthy while still attached to my parents' house; it's about time that I got my own.
I think I'm going to have to settle for a few awkward years of not having my own place, though, since I think I'll be much happier if I keep up my transient status until I find wherever it is that I'm supposed to stay. I'm reasonably certain that it's not sunderland, and I'm almost sure that it's not spokane, either.
Sigh. First world problems, I guess.

I do love the garden areas.

One thing that's struck me about england is the odd atmosphere of beauty and decay. There are beautiful things, ornate pathways, gorgeous buildings, and they're almost all slightly run down. I find it oddly appealing and grotesque at the same time.

Such a pretty pattern, but it's so beaten up.

I think this one is unoccupied, so there's some excuse, but the juxtaposition of ornate mosaic and unkempt courtyard are striking. Lots of houses have this sort of thing going on.

Also, Josie got back from London tonight, which was pretty exciting. Jessi's cake, the one from Tesco that cost £3.87, turned out to be really delicious. Chocolate with chocolate frosting and chocolate curls on top. I was in shock. And she thought the cheap candle ("21" with "Twenty-One" written below) was incredibly awesome. I win.
Conor set the flat low score in hearts at 7, complementing his flat high score of 120 (most times, the loser gets 103-111). Adam worked his usual magic of not really being noticed.
My blogger page was being weird and refusing to update, so sorry if you looked for a post under my advice and couldn't find it.

Monday 17 October to Thursday 20 October

Monday was pretty uninteresting. I mostly watched old doctor who episodes, and grudgingly went to class to discuss gulliver's travels. My edition was randomly abridged, and it didn't tell me. It cut out all the scatology, or discussion of awkward body functions and characteristics. While I don't mind not having the rather disgusting descriptions, I was irritated by the uninformed exclusion, especially when it's for a lit class. Gross as it is, it's a part of Jonathan Swift's writing style, and there's actually an essay question on it.

I had another successful crepe Tuesday, and it's become a recognised thing in the flat. "Hey, you're up early— Oh, yeah, it's tuesday." The day went downhill, as I was forced to discuss politics in history. This is topic that I try to avoid if at all possible, whether I'm at home or abroad, because politics creates artificial divides in casual friendships. Closer relationships, like dating relationships, should probably be based on a mutual agreement about the way the world works, but I'm not looking for that here. People want to talk politics with me because I'm American, and American politics are kind of related to everyone else's, but I don't like talking politics. The day was salvaged by a) crepes for lunch and b) the Early Modern Mafia.
The Early Modern Mafia is what my history professor called the general perception of the criminal underworld in Early Modern England. I want shirts of that, and I'm thinking about doing my final essay on it. It's pretty fascinating, the perception of crime versus reality versus how can we tell?!
Tuesday also included a ton of homework. I'm trying to get my history presentation going and my lit essay question figured out before we go to Edinburgh, since they're due either the week that we get back or the week after. I also worked on my lab reports, which were miserable. I had to explain to Jessi why I couldn't just drop my terrible data points that killed my results. It's a crime against science, and something that one does not do.
Tuesday night, we talked about prostitutes because Adam needs to interview one for his documentary. First, his plan was to wander around sketchy parts of Newcastle at night with his film partner, but then his mom (mum) set him up with the location. Flo made lots and lots of jokes. "Oh, are we going to pick up the prostitute now?" "What's your mom's name? I need some advice." Poor Adam is actually kind of nervous about this, because he doesn't want to seem like he's a, um, customer, but he does need to attract their attention so he can interview one. I'm hoping that he shares his documentary with the flat.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful. I mostly did homework, and then blogged instead of doing more homework. I also discovered Dr. Horrible, which is a short musical done during the writers' strike a few years ago. It's pretty much awesome. I would have stayed up later to watch more of it, but the internet was being flaky.

Thursday was lots of biochemistry, as usual. My lab partners were Adam, who I keep thinking of as Peter for reasons unknown to me — do I know any Peters that even vaguely resemble him? No.— and Jedward, whose real name is in fact Edward. The experiment was frustratingly repetitive and dull, and we were ready to go way before we were done. The impossible little frenchman was as impossible as ever. I'm really hoping that the class improves, not that I think it really will, because this sucks. The lectures are uninformative, the labs are tedious... I'm a bad scientist. Really all that I hate about lab is the impossible little frenchman and the tediousness of science without fancy instruments.

I switched to the new blogger layout, which has been around for a while, I think. I'm having some trouble figuring out the labels format, since I finally got used to the old one. This is what the old one should have been like, but now I have trouble with it. Go figure. I'm blogging now to avoid circulating Conor's birthday card, seeing as it would involve stealth, which is not my best quality, and actually knocking on people's doors.
You're probably still thinking about how bad of a scientist I am. So am I; but here.
I'll make you forget that I'm a hideously bad scientist by distracting you with pictures:

Cool wall!

Delicious!

More delicious!

EVEN MORE DELICIOUS!

The Flatmate Post

The flatmate post! I looked up the pictures on facebook.

We'll start with Michaela (Micha and Ela, depending on how long you've known her) in Room 1. She's german, and came over because her university requires it of her degree programme. She's studying tourism, which puts her in the business school here. She's 26 years old, which makes her the oldest in the flat. Despite the fact that she lives across from the kitchen, I don't see much of her. When I do see her, she's nice enough. No pictures because I can't find her facebook.

Next is Conor, in Room 2. He's American, but he's probably more different from me as anyone in the flat. He's studying ceramics, and doesn't really know what he wants to do with that. He's a classic art major: has a mac, is liberal, doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, etc.. He's from a little town near Boston and goes to school in Florida. I think he came over here for the same reasons as I did (wants to go to europe for a while at fairly minimal expense, actually speaks the language sort of). He currently holds the highest score in hearts  for the flat (which is a bad thing; hearts is like golf).

Conor. Fairly typical of him on trips.

Adam and Conor, the other american.

Room 3 belongs to Josie, who is an Australian who wants to do public relations, mostly for charitable organisations that send her to exotic places safely. Her mom is german, so she's fluent in english and german. It's amusing when she's around a big group of germans. She came over mostly because her boyfriend James is English. I've mentioned him before, I think. He stayed here for a week, and it got so that we kind of thought he was a flatmate. Josie taught Jessi, Adam, and me hearts, which started off a massive amount of hearts-playing.

Josie.

Adam and Josie, the australian who only doesn't "pull a face" when someone asks her to smile.

James and Josie.

Josie also shares her room with Bob Diddyfish, who is a rapper goldfish. He stayed in Jessi's and my room for the weekend because Josie and Conor, who normally looks after Bob when Josie's gone, both went to London. Goldfish smell bad, and I think Jessi may have overfed him. Technically, we're not allowed to have him in the flat, but Josie decided to keep him anyway. He's got his own facebook page, and he's something of a flat mascot.

Bob Diddyfish.

Bob again. He's called "Diddyfish" partly because of the glasses.

Room 4 houses me and Jessi. 

If you don't know anything about me, I'm studying biochemistry and came over because I wanted to see europe and I don't speak german well enough to attend classes held in german. I want to do research.

Jessi's real name is Sibel (pronounced si-BEL, it's way prettier than the american "Sybil", but Jessi discovered when she went to Colorado in high school that speakers of english can't pronounce it right and switched to Jessi, derived from her middle name Yasmine). She's studying law, wants to be a lawyer, I guess, and is very good at English. She gives me an inflated view of my own english skills whenever she can't remember the right word or when she's interpreting her criminal studies textbooks. I think she came over here because she wants to improve her english, and Sunderland was cheaper and less competitive than Florida State (the usual reaction to that statement, after verifying that she did indeed pick england over florida, is "Whaaaat?"). I think she also prefers the english accent (but not scottish). She also loves welsh and irish accents. She talks a lot during hearts, and would be terrible at poker. "Are you kidding me?!"

Jessi.

Jessi and me.

Room 5, which was vacant for the first week, belongs to Thomas. I've talked about him before because he came in late, but I don't feel like hunting down that post. He's irish, plays hurling, and is studying english and history. He wants to be a middle school teacher, which I think should hone his hurling skills. I believe he came over to england as something of a CV booster (sort of like a résumé), but possibly also for the history from a different perspective. Jessi has a crush on his accent. He doesn't play hearts, and isn't around enough for anyone to teach him. No pictures because I can't find his facebook.

Florian (Flo) lives in Room 6. He's a german studying mechanical engineering, and he actually just decided to stay in england to finish his degree. He's a new incarnation of "that guy" and his english is good enough to include heavy sarcasm and self-deprecation that almost covers his massive ego. He's pretty bad with relationships, and tried to break up with his girlfriend back home via text. He came over to improve his english and to boost his résumé. He played hearts a lot last year, so he tends to be pretty good at strategy. Everyone has a moment at least once a week where they hate Flo.

Florian and two girls I don't know.

Florian and Ingmar, also known as Ginger. Ingmar doesn't live in this flat. He's the one with all the hair.

Finally, Adam lives in Room 7. He's the lone english guy, and is studying film. I'm not really sure what he wants to do with that; probably make films. He's going to Maryland in the spring, partly because his girlfriend is american. I have some suspicions about her; she claims to be from North Dakota, so it's possible that somebody is making up stories. In any case, Adam is probably the mildest person I've ever met. I've never seen him really express strong emotion, unlike everyone else in the flat. I think the pictures of him with other people illustrates this fairly well. This mildness probably helps him win at hearts because people forget he's there. I skip him when he's before me.

Adam, the lone English guy.

Here's a few group photos, which are hardly representative of the whole flat. We don't have a whole flat picture at this point, but I'll post it on here if we ever do.

It might help if you click on this one to embiggen it. From left, James, me, Jessi, Conor.

From left, Kari, me, Jessi, Conor, James.
Kari is Jessi's friend from germany who is also in law. 

I nearly forgot the Ginger Clanny House Cat! He's a resident of Clanny House, and even has a collar that says "Ginger Clanny House Cat", but he wants to be a resident in every flats.  I don't know where he actually lives, but he does have a facebook page.

Ginger Clanny House Cat. Wants to be a resident of all flats.
I can has ur fud?
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

Durham — Saturday 15 October

Today, Jessi and I went with the Students' Union "Connect" group to Durham, which has a castle and a cathedral. I got a window seat, but the bus pictures are quite blurry.

The latter half-ish of a cool looking house.

The blurry countryside is less interesting than the seat cushion pattern reflected in the window. All coaches here are like this.

Tower!

To get to the cathedral, we walked along a river that had some cool terracing.

It looks so... epic. Also, that's a CASTLE to the left. A CASTLE. For reals.

Duck!

The river also had mallards. The water was gross, but they are cute.

More towers.

Towers...

A cool little lodge place that rented canoes, I think.

That was literally right on the water.

The weird tall thing. I never found any inscriptions or anything on it to tell me what it was.

A different tower!

Cathedral. It's a monster.

I think that tower had bells.

Spires...

This is right across from the Cathedral. People live right next to it.
I was impressed.

Imposing camera angle!

I think that Jesus is in that garden, but it could be a saint. It's the brown thing. The face starts at the curved parts at the top of the fence.

It's so... spiky.

Castle.

It just kept going. The place is huge, as I hope my pictures convey.

I'm not sure about the light in the middle there.

It looked cooler in real life. The cross was the point of the picture.

Tower. It was legit.

Accidental silhouette. 

The gravestones were all in latin.

Some of them were statues lying down.

A new angle on the tower.

It looks a lot like somewhere to live.

Monster tower, up close this time.

I think it's a war memorial.

Detailing on the cross.

Since 1093.
My basic reaction was shock and awe.
1093!

This was a sanctuary knocker, explained in the next picture.

Below that, it said that the knocker was actually a replica.

Cool old courtyard.

This was blocking me from the courtyard.

It had a cool wall!

Looking out over Durham.

And there was a train,

 After the cathedral, Jessi and I (mostly I, actually) wanted to see the castle. It was sort of closed- I think there is a school in it. Durham University, maybe.
I was jealous.

At the castle. My camera was threatening to die at this point, so I was sparing with pictures.

Seriously tall wall.

After the castle, we went to the green part of the map to look for the botanical gardens. On the way there, we walked past at least four colleges. Or universities. I'm still not sure if there's a difference.
Then the botanical  garden was £4, so we decided not to go. It probably wasn't that cool anyway.
I did see this:

It reminded me of southwest Oregon.

 We managed not to get lost — I'm better at directions than I ever thought I could be — and ambled around the city centre for about four hours because the bus didn't come back until 5 pm.
I had an interesting experience, though.
Up until my conversion to vegetarianism at the beginning of my freshman year of college, I would classify myself as an adventurous eater. There are not a lot of foods that taste like nothing I've ever eaten before. Sure, I discovered cheese and onion pasties (which are delicious), but I've had cheese, onions, and puff pastry before, so the combination was hardly unheard of. Blackcurrant lozenges and pastilles taste like fruit in general. I think all cough drops taste about the same, just with varying degrees of medicine and menthol.
Blackcurrant juice tastes like nothing I've ever tasted before. I literally cannot describe it in terms of food I've come into contact with in the past. There is a hint of orange-ish flavour, but I think that's because Ribena, the particular brand of juice that I bought, puts vitamin c and citric acid in the juice.
It's so delicious. And it's easily found, if a bit expensive, in Greggs, Wilkinson, and Peter's Bakeries (which have oddly spicy cheese and onion pasties). I also found a weird concentrated form (not ribena) at Aldi. It's like concentrated juice in the US, but it's room temperature and in a bottle that (I think) you dilute bit by bit. In any case, I'll miss it when I go back to the US.

A saint, possibly Bede, at another church in Durham.

Statue in the city centre.

Another tower.

Imposing wall. That may have been a castle, but I'm not sure.

Not the Durham Cathedral. 

Classic red telephone boxes.

I couldn't resist. It smelled bad in there, but I needed the picture.

So, that's Durham.