Friday 20 January -- Old Stuff in London

"Today, I walked by St Paul's Cathedral, took pictures of the Old Bailey, saw some cool stuff in the British Museum, first-bumped an ancient egyptian statue, walked through the Tower of London and went to evensong at Westminster Abbey."


I have pictures of these on my computer now. Here they come!

This was on Great Ormond Street. I'm not sure what it's for, and I've seen similar enclosures elsewhere in London.

This was in front of the "Ladies" whatsit.

This is a London dragon. Later in the week, I got a picture of the big one on Fleet Street/The Strand, but these little guys mark the main streets in and out of the City of London proper, or it might be called the Borough of London. I forget.

This is the Old Bailey. I read a lot about it in English Lit 1700-1789 and more practical documents from its records in English Social History 1500-1750. 

The statue on top is so ominous.

It's still the central criminal court. There were lots of people lined/queued up outside, but I didn't think it would be appropriate to take their pictures.

Justice with her sword and scales on top of the Old Bailey.

This is St Paul's Cathedral. Very big, imposing, and has a big dome. I poked my head in, but it was ridiculously expensive for a tour.

 This was all seen before 11. I developed a pattern in the hostel of falling asleep around 21:00 and waking up between 5 and 7 AM which haunts me still. Actually, I wake up a lot during the night; I'm not sure why that persists as no one comes in and talks loudly in french right by my bed between midnight and 3 AM.
At 11, I went to the British Museum to meet up with the Whitworth group again. I hit up the tourist store outside for something for Andrew and found him a "My sister when to London and all I got was this lousy shirt" shirt with a british flag on it for authenticity. Then we went through Egypt, China, a little bit of India, and Japan.
I fist-bumped a statue in the Egypt section. You'll see why it was so appealing:

He was clearly waiting for a reciprocating fist bump.

This is my favourite painting. I mostly like it for the wave, as I'd never really noticed the mountain lurking  in there. It's a very famous Japanese print, and I'm not sure if this is the original, and if it is, how the British Museum got their hands on it.

The Tower of London. I think the whole thing is the Tower, since there are several towers inside the walls.
It was expensive to get in, but so worth it. I saw the crown jewels and also the place where lots of people were beheaded. 

The Tower Bridge! Not London bridge, as many are wont to assume.

I would have taken a million more pictures, but my camera was full. It was a good day. After the Tower, we went to Westminster Abbey for evensong, which was okay. The choir was good, but I prefer men's choirs to consist mainly of men's voices. All I could hear of this one was the kids, who sound oddly feminine. I believe that this was also the day that I tried "apple and beetroot juice" (beetroot being the british word for beet), and it was pretty good. I was mostly intrigued by the pink and the oddity of seeing what is generally a vegetable reserved for the table (unlike carrots, which go well in juices) in juice.

Thursday 19 January 2011 -- The Day the Laptop Vanished

This is also the day that I went to Westminster Abbey (and met up with the Whitworth pre-med friends), Buckingham Palace, Regent's Park, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221 Baker Street.
Pictures! I'll do my best on the captions, because it was about two weeks ago.

I walked down Oxford street (down which you cannot go 90, although the demon Crowley did) and may have also passed SoHo (home of funky little bookshops and interesting inhabitants) on my rather circuitous way to Westminster. Most of my interests in London were of a literary, and often Pratchett-inspired, nature. Speaking of which, I saw either Sir Terry Pratchett himself or a remarkable doppelganger hurrying past me when I left King's Cross station on Wednesday, but he was moving too fast for me to stop, balance my luggage, and ask him for a picture and an autograph.

Edward (possibly "VII" and definitely Victoria's son) built that for Victoria, as people who can read latin would know from the sign. It's basically a huge gate-y thing outside trafalgar square.

I really like this monument. It has all the uniforms and/or trappings of the jobs that women took over in the absence of the men.

There were no pictures allowed inside the Abbey itself, but this is in the chapel outside the abbey and is fairly representative of the architecture inside.

This unremarkable old door is actually THE old door. See below.

See? I love the "most likely" and the comment of a Whitworthian that they could just go around slapping "oldest" signs on most old things in London and no one would know any better.

St Stephen's Tower, home of Big Ben the bell. Taken in much better light than on the bus tour.

The houses of Parliament. Just like in Sherlock Holmes! The movie, that is. I'm always impressed by how spiky everything is.

Pelicans and also a heron in the background in St James' Park. There were so many birds.

Shiny statue outside of Buckingham Palace. I think I caught this on the bus tour, but from a different angle through some trees.

There it is. The sometimes home of possibly the most famous people in the whole world, or at least in the western world.

Cool gate, bro.

Bearskin hat! I fail to see the point of those.

This is from the tube station at Baker Street. The little dots that this is made up of are that same silhouette in  miniature.

ZOMG 221B Baker Street OMG OMG.
I don't care if Sherlock Holmes was made up and never lived here, it's a real place that featured prominently in some of my favourite stories.

It was less cool than I had hoped.

Still, we had fun with it. Megan's on the left and Gina took the pictures.

The hat looks lopsided because it is. My hair is not hat-friendly.

I rather suspect that they put that in after the movie, but the attendant indicated that he did that in the books. Of course, she kept referring to everything as if it was real, which irked me.

A pipe collection. I was pleased that not all of them were those funny curved-stem affairs.

I like it that they included all the stuff that would have probably been in the rooms of Sherlock Holmes, had he been real.

This was intriguing. I think it was originally written for east asians, as the first set of descriptions were in asian characters. I don't know enough about them to distinguish language, just cuisine.
Anyway, the brochure thing has some hallmarks of the Holmes craze as well as some lesser-known but more book-common features. It debunks the deerstalker hat myth while pointing out that, yes, Sherlock Holmes did hard drugs.

 More stuff. I didn't photograph the preserved ears. It's anybody's guess as to whether they were real.

THESE. Why are these plants blooming with tropical scents in the middle of January?!

Regent's Park, which features in one of the hallmarks of my childhood, 101 Dalmatians. 

Water feature in Regent's Park. They were everywhere, and very pretty.

I'm not used to the regimented neatness of London parks. I'm more used to the "here's some grass and some trees. Don't hit the trees when you play games, okay?" style of parks.

It was big and had big avenues running through the whole thing.

Griffins? Or just winged lions?

The fact that my laptop was stolen when I got home rather ruined the peace and tranquility of the day, but it's coming back to me now.

I'm back!

Most of you who read this know that I'm back in the states; actually, I think most of you have seen me. Well, I'm moved in to my new house (dubbed "The Manor" by its inhabitants), which I keep trying to call a flat for reasons that don't make any real sense, and am about to change the title of the blog to simply "Raeann's Adventures", as I might keep updating with tidbits about my life that strike me as adventurous and interesting but that happen here in Spokane.
But not before I fill in the London blanks!
Posts to follow in the approximate order of their dates.
Oh, and I'm posting this from BruceWayne (or just Bruce in company). It's a rather dashing-looking black Lenovo that can't hope to be as awesome as Max (aka the Mac), so I named it after Batman to increase its coolness factor. I'm thinking about getting a batman logo sticker/skin, either to make it look cooler or to replace the manufacturers's protective sticky thing that I've left on the cover to protect it while moving and haven't got around to removing.
In spite of my still-strong attachment to the Mac, Bruce is growing on me. For one, he has a name and gender. I still think of the Mac as an it, even though I named it Max in the last few months of ownership. I'm rather enamoured of the fingerprint logon for Bruce, and the fact that he does in fact have two-finger scrolling capability was ridiculously exciting. The keyboard is nice, even if the number pad does get in my way sometimes. The processor is way slower than the Mac, but I really only watch movies that I've seen a hundred times before and am just watching now to fill the silence, let's face it. Also, it can hook up to a TV if I have cables, something that the Mac would only have been able to do for several hundred dollars.
Is this my new favourite computer? Absolutely not. I miss the Mac, and the multitouch, and OSX, and the more sensitive scrolling, and the fast processor, and the way I had conformed it to my needs. But, in the absence of the Mac, BruceWayne will have to do. After all, he's secretly Batman.

London -- Sunday 22 January

Today, I took advantage of the fact that the trip that Megan and Gina are on is a church-centric trip and went to mass at Westminster Abbey and a eucharist service in the evening at a "new monastic" church called Moot. Details may follow.
My slight inclination towards a cold, in the form of a stuffy nose and cloggy throat when laying on my back, turned into a serious cold that turned my nose into a snot-pumping machine ("I'b sick. I need SOUP," although it was CHIPS in my case); I wasn't exactly on top of my game. This was not helped by the fact that I woke up at 0430 by some late-night partiers returning and being... noisy. I was planning on going to St Paul's for the early morning service, since I was up anyway, cough cough shut up cough, but I had to buy kleenexes. I ended up getting a whole box, which I carried around the whole day. I used about half of it, and it's coming on the plane tomorrow. I missed the service because my sickness and exhaustion and lack of having anything nutritious in my stomach (just night-draining snot and some "pineapple" juice drink, oh boy!), and decided to hunt for some chips. For some reason, they were fixed in my mind as the thing that would make me feel better. Unfortunately, while I was too late for the service, I was too early for anything to be open, much less serving a lunch menu.
I had a lot of fruit smoothies today. Sorry, bank account.
I met up with Megan and Gina and the tour group at 10:30. The service was interesting, and explained the line in Good Omens about Crowley looking a bit guilty, like someone who hasn't been to church in a long time and has forgotten which bits you stand up for (this is at the beginning of the second little prologuey thing, when Hastur and Ligur begin to recount the "Deeds of the Day" before giving him the infant anti-Christ). My enjoyment of it was lessened by my being sick, since my head is so clogged up that I get dizzy when I stand too fast and my ears keep being plugged.
I was hoping to hit the Twinings store when it was open, but I also wanted to go on the harry potter tour, which ended up being less awesome than I had hoped. I did see some cool stuff that I had wanted to see and learned some non-harry potter stuff (didn't actually learn a whole lot about that...) about London. I saw the great fire monument, for instance, and got some nice pictures of the Tower Bridge. I also ended up with some chips. They weren't too great, but they were quite filling. By the time the tour ended, we were on the other side of London from Twinings and it was 10 minutes to closing. Sad day. I got pictures anyway.
We went to Moot, and it was... interesting. They were basically anglican with some different formatting thrown in. The study trip group described it as a mix between the monastary they stayed in in France and the anglican churches, with some modernity thrown in. It was nice.
After that, I trailed the group to The Blackfriar Tavern, which was out of their only vegetarian entree. I went with the fried mushrooms and the tomato soup instead, and the fact that I'm sick probably helped my hunger to be sated. Plus, the soup was acidic enough to burn my poor, badly-chapped lips. My nose and lips are horribly chapped; remember that half a box of kleenexes?
Now, I've been switched to a new room, my luggage is all present and accounted for, and I have booked a taxi to the tube station to avoid putting myself in a terrible mood before I even have to deal with people by dragging my uncooperative luggage around. I've given myself lots of time to navigate the tube station, and I should arrive at Heathrow well within the recommended two hours prior to my flight.
It's weird, that I'll be leaving England for the foreseeable future. I've done so much and made so many friends here that it's really weird to think that we're all separate now.

Bath -- Saturday 21 January

Firstly, forgive my capitalisation. I'm on a very sluggish computer and feel lazy.
So I went to bath, with the intention of taking a jane austen walking tour. Unfortunately, I didn't plan out my tube trip to Paddington (I'm at king's cross, if you feel like looking it up on a map), and the line that would have taken me there in about twenty minutes was down (I took the wrong line anyway, and only discovered the faster way after I realised that my connection wasn't), so it took me an hour to get there. Just in time for the train that was an hour later! Unfortunately, I'm bad at timetables (obviously), but fortunately, the conductor didn't kick me off at the first stop (it was Reading, pronounced redding, which threw off the asians in front of me).
Bath, once achieved, was pretty nice. I soundly missed the tour, but decided to have a look around, find the jane austen centre, and get my flip phone unlocked.
It has not been a good week to be my technological crutches. Computer: stolen. Earbuds: one little rubber cushion thing lost (kind of defeats the noise-cancelling effect that I love when my roommates are noisy; I have to use an earplug to even begin to block out the noisy french people, the snoring guy next to me, and the coughing guy in the bunk below me), my SD chip is quite full, and, to top it all off, my cruddy little brick pay-as-you-go phone decided to die last night. I tried putting it on the charger, thinking that it might have used up all the battery in the two hours since I'd checked the time, but to no effect. I tried switching my sim cards, since both phones are samsungs, but my t-mobile phone was locked and angrily informed me that I was using the wrong sim. Since I needed a clock, I put the US sim back in, making sure it was on airplane mode. While we have t-mobile over here, I doubt the US network would smile upon me, and I wanted to avoid the roaming charges.
So I was on the hunt one of the many little, slightly unofficial phone stores that advertise repairs and unlocking, resolving to do whichever was cheaper. In the end, it was £10 (the exact amount of cash I had) to unlock the US phone, which promises to come in handy anyway. Besides, I've really missed that keypad. I hate the one on my brick.
I digress. After leaving my phone with the capable-looking store lady, I went in search of a cheaper SD chip. I couldn't roam bath, with its wealth of "roman stuff", without memory space. Luckily, I found a 4GB chip for just £8, a vast improvment over the £13 for a 2GB that was in the phone repair shop.
After collecting my phone, which works beautifully with the new sim, other than all my UK contacts are gone, I went in search of the Jane Austen Centre.
I finally found it, and it was pretty well worth the £6 I paid to get in. The presentation was informative, and the exhibition was nifty. It was a better deal than the sherlock holmes museum, actually. Of course, Jane Austen was a real person... I even got a picture of one of the places where she actually lived, just up the street from the centre. I think they went for the house they have because number 25 is a denstist office now, and that's probably quite different from in the early 1800s.
I also got another badge for my bag; it says "I [heart] Darcy"
Fact.
I caught the proper train and resolved to search for the twinings store, and also one of the older pubs in london, as per the Big Bus Tour (on the same street, if memory served), mostly to see where they were and if I could access them Sunday. I found twinings AND the pub (Ye Golden Cock or something -- Ah, Ye Olde Cock, and funny story about the Ye thing: older versions of english had a character for the "th" sound, sort of like greek with the "ch", I guess, and it looked sort of like a Y. When printing came around, they just used the Y instead of making a new letter block for the TH thing. Hence "Ye Olde Everything", now pronounced with as yee, but properly pronounced as the. The more you know...)
I found them both and took pictures just in case; I will go back to twinings, but the pub is less certain. I'd like to eat there, but it's not vital.
If you're an arachonophobe, you will want to skip this paragraph. If you weren't, you probably won't be after this.
I've been shooing a determined spider away from my computer area for about half an hour now. I don't feel like going and getting a big enough piece of paper to squash it, and no one else feels threatened by it (cough jessi cough), so I just make sure that the little crawlings on my neck are from my hair in the draft rather than a smallish arachnid. He's really not that big.
Sorry to the arachnophobes in my readership.

NO MORE SPIDER TALK NOW. IT'S SAFE.
So, tomorrow I'll be frequenting a few churches (a service at st paul's by myself, then a service at westminster with Megan and Gina and the rest of that trip), and dragging megan and gina to yarn and tea stores.
I'll probably post tomorrow night, but after that, I think I'll have to pay for my internet.
Because I'll be in airports!
Laters.

Oh, ps. I just realised that my computer was stolen on a thursday. I hate thursdays.

London again -- Friday 20 January

Today, I walked by St Paul's Cathedral, took pictures of the Old Bailey, saw some cool stuff in the british museum, first-bumped an ancient egyptian statue, walked through the Tower of London and went to evensong at Westminster Abbey.
I have pictures of all these things, but I can't get them from the card to the computer.
I actually had a really good day. I'm coping with the lack of computer as best as I can, and trying to keep myself busy with London. One of the workers at the hostel told me that I'm not alone in my dilemma, as lots of computers get nicked. I'm a little angry with the girl who was on reception duty for not pushing the locker harder, quite frankly. If all these computers keep being stolen, they might at least make a bigger deal about the locker.
Grump, grump, grump.
Tomorrow I'll be in Bath on a Jane Austen tour! Yay!

London -- Thursday 19 January

Other than the torrential rain this morning, most of the day was pretty good. I met up with my whitworth friends at westminster abbey, and then we wandered and saw the sherlock holmes museum. It was okay. I also saw regent's park, which was very pretty and peaceful.
Unfortunately, I can't post my pictures because my computer was stolen. It was stupid of me to leave it without a locker, but I've never had any problems with theft in England. Heck, my wallet, lost in a  huge mall, was turned in with no money taken. I guess I'm just lucky they didn't take the passport that was in the same section of my bag. That section (by the way) was at the very bottom of the pile that my bag becomes when set on its back. This is probably where my sense of false security came from.
If anyone has advice on how to deal with stolen laptops, I receive texts at 208-820-1496. I'm going to file a report with the police in a few moments, if the note on the door hasn't been effective.
Luckily for me, I have all my data on my external, having backed up the day before I left sunderland. It's not all bad. And I do plan to enjoy as much of London as I can. I'll just have to figure out what to do with my pictures, since I still plan on taking more than my SD chip can hold. I might be able to get them onto the internet via the computer to which the hostel has given me 5 free hours of access.

I'm in London! Also, Tuesday — Tuesday 17 January to Wednesday 18 January

And the plan is to stay out of the hostel as much as is humanly possible. My room smells funky, probably because it's a mixed dorm for, I think, 18 people. Whatever. I'll change in the shower and wear myself out during the day so that the smell doesn't bother me when I sleep. And it could be worse; it could smell like booze.
So, yesterday I went to a yarn store and got some really pretty yarn that I can't decide whether to keep or give to my mom for her birthday. I also found three bookstores and bought too many books. I did turn down the compilation of Jane Austen novels that was only £3 because it was way too heavy to pack home, but the others needed me.
Josie and I went to the museum, which has no less than three mummies in the egypt section and also some Picasso ceramics, which were kind of boring. It was a pretty good way to spend 45 minutes.
I also experienced a pie shop (urban pie), which reminded me of the mind and hearth at whitworth. It just had a really nice, chill, university-y atmosphere. The music was low-key, the light was good, and the staff was no older than 25. I also made crepes that were really weird. It turns out that Josie's flour was self-raising, so I got really thin american-style pancakes instead of "traditional" pancakes, i.e. crepes. They still tasted pretty nice.
I took pictures!

Where is Batman?

The houses in Leicester were really cool.

Josie's house. It's a monster.

That's Oscar. He cuddled with me. 

So today, after a crazy dash through the train station, I caught my train with about two seconds to spare and dozed all the way to London. I got my luggage off in a much more leisurely fashion, then tried to drag them through the station.

It was a nightmare. My luggage doesn't like being nice. I didn't have quite enough cash on me to pay for a taxi, and by the time I had cash again, I couldn't find any taxis.
In the end, the nicest lady in the world actually helped me carry my luggage to the hostel, which, while pretty close to the station, is nowhere near enough. I thanked her profusely several times.

I'll probably put up pictures pretty regularly, but we'll see about when and stuff. Now I'm going to hide my computer and go for a stroll after eating some bread. Sorry about the disjointedness of this post, but I'm pretty tired after the luggage debacle. I have blisters on my hands from the big bag+carry-on combo.

I've made it to Leicester — Monday 16 January

I'm out of Sunderland! In spite of several factors, I might add.
1. Adam, who I was hoping would drive me, texted me (after a text, a call, and a pounding on his door from me) that he was sorry, but could I get a cab, and that he hoped I had a safe trip. I'd kind of been expecting this, to be honest. I was just bummed that I didn't actually see him during the week and didn't really get to say goodbye.
2. I accidentally neglected to inform national express that I was packing four bags (limit: 1 to stow in the luggage area and one to carry on, oops). I didn't really even notice the thing on the site saying "luggage allowance" until the drivers looked behind me to my mountain of luggage. In my defence, the carry on bags are far skinnier than when I came over, but there is an extra check bag.
In any case, I made it out of Sunderland. I felt embarrassed by having the drivers lecture me about how if everyone did that, they would run out of room, although they'd let me skip the fee this time (£10 per bag! Ouch.); I was called "Flower" and "Love" multiple times. I kind of wish more people called people "Flower", but I'd prefer to think of myself as a flower that fights back. Roses are pretty brutal, for instance.
The ride was okay; the drivers were both pretty bad about stopping. Neither of them liked to stay still, and would come to at least four complete stops at each light or stop sign. I got seasick at stop signs.
It was cool driving through Nottingham; I saw but was too sick to take a picture of the sign for Sherwood Forest and the Robin Hood thing. I also saw a "Sheriff's Pub" (ahaha, sheriff of nottingham, yes). I was hoping to see signs for the university (birthplace/home of periodic table of videos), but I may have been shoving my head against the seat in front of me to alleviate my carsickness. I'm a little mad at Jessi for using half my carsickness-preventing medicine, all of which I paid for, then getting her own when I ran out and not offering to share any of it. I didn't ask, so I'm not letting myself get too upset, but still. I offered her mine after sitting next to her on the bus to York, where she was pretty much nauseated the whole trip.
ANYWAY. I was pretty happy when I got in to Leicester, and the drive was really pretty. I was just about to Leicester when the sun set after a lengthy, hazy sunset around the whole horizon. There was some really pretty purple to the south.
Oh, it is interesting to note that part of my inner compass failure can probably be attributed to the fact that the sun never reaches high noon. There are always long shadows, as I saw driving through the countryside between 11 and 13. Some of the fields still had the thick frost in the shadows to the north (which I cleverly identified by the fact that all the signs that I could see pointing the way we were going said "The SOUTH"). I was pleased by the sunset, although it never went above the haze around the horizon, versus the massive, sky-on-fire sunsets at home.
The taxi drive in Leicester was not fun. My driver, pretty clearly not a native speaker, had no idea where Josie's house was (yes, I gave him the street address), and kept turning before I actually pointed out that he should turn. He was pretty fair about getting lost, though, and let me off £1.70 of the fee.
It was really good to see Josie. While the distressing case of no one really liking Jessi has made me a little wary of people actually liking me (although I like to think they do; and I'm not too paranoid about it), Josie seemed as happy to see me as I was to see her.
I'm really going to miss having her and James in the same country.
Her house is really cool. It's this huge thing — fits 11 pretty comfortably, I believe, as well as a cat — and is just a cool old house. Her housemates seem pretty cool, too. There might be pictures, although I think it would be awkward to walk around photographing someone else's house. I'm pretty sure I'll get a shot of the toilet room, though.
That's another thing. Toilet and shower go in different rooms here. The only times I object is when the sink is in the shower room, and someone else is using the shower.
Now, Josie and James have gone to Bedford, as Josie has an early morning interview there, and I'm sitting in the huge TV room downstairs watching QI, which may be my favourite non-dramatic show. It's people with british accents talking about arcane topics. Arcane is right up my alley. I've learned a lot about cake and biscuit (not actually cookie, I don't think; cookies are still the round, thin, soft things with chocolate chips in them while biscuits are crispy little affairs): the difference is apparently that, when stale, cake goes hard and biscuit goes soft.
Every now and then, I'm right about some random bit of arcane knowledge, like how baby boys wore pink until fairly recently because pink was considered the close relative of red, which was considered a very strong, masculine colour.
Good to see my random collection of facts comes to good use.
It's a lot like jeopardy, only without the timer. It's less competitive, although they do have some kind of scoring system; they mostly discuss the topics and crack weird british jokes and puns about their crazy rabbit trails. For instance, the american on this episode just said that the term for a group of baboons is "the pentagon", and the host, Stephen Fry (Mycroft Holmes from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; he is considered by the british to be just about as british as one can get and has a great accent), just insulted the irish (specifically, the irish guy on this episode, although the whole country was implicated) with this little zinger: "Do you know why the grass in greener in Ireland? No, not the limestone; it's because you're all over here walking on ours."
And I was right about Anders Celsius inventing the Celsius scale of temperature. I can never remember if it's Anders Fahrenheit or Anders Celsius. Wikipedia says that Fahrenheit's given name was Daniel Gabriel.
Back to the house. It's got ivy growing in through the toilet room window, and antique locks on all the inside doors. I think I'd like to live in this house; they've got a lot of plants scattered about, including a christmas cactus. I was pretty excited about that.
The cat, Oscar, is adorable. He's a long-haired grey tortoiseshell tabby-type, and he's very friendly. He's not allowed in Josie's room, as he's after Bob Diddyfish, who has a ceramic turtle friend now and seems to be enjoying his new house. He's doing less almost-dying than in Sunderland, in any case.

Two items of note: the key, which is one of those cool old ones that you see in antique shops and on jewellery* these days, and the doorknob, which is kind of odd. 

Bob! What a rap star.

So cool! Can't wait to move into my house in Spokane and then promptly start house hunting, hopefully!

So far, I do miss Freya, Conor, and Flo, but I don't really miss Sunderland. I might eventually, but my brain is currently convinced that I'm just on vacation, and is way more interested in my new surroundings than in the fact that I've brushed my teeth, made a cup of tea, slept, etc., for the last time in Sunderland. I didn't even take any "parting shot" pictures. In other words, "So long, suckers!"

*I've changed my browser spell check to british; jewellery just looked wrong and I kept trying to spell it "jewelry", so I looked it up. Wikipedia says it can also be spelled jewelry. Those crazy brits.

The Last Days in Sunderland

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving Sunderland, quite probably forever. I may never see some very close friends again, unless they send wedding invitations, which is probably unlikely in most cases. My life as far as I know it is packed up into four bags, and I'm oddly unemotional about it.
For the plan-happy amongst you, I'll be in Leicester for two nights and a day and in London for five nights, and also in Bath for one day and zero nights. I'm sure I can find some internets in London, if not in my hostel, then nearby, so I'll post pictures as I feel like hogging the bandwidth and might give short daily updates if I don't feel like using a lot of internet. They'll probably run something to the effect of "Oh, my days, I just walked through Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey!" with a picture or two as teaser. You can substitute any historical thingy that I've always been interested in.
Like the Sherlock Holmes museum, which is within easy walking distance of my hostel. (!!! my expectations are so high that they'll probably be dashed. This will in no way diminish my picture taking habit or plans to purchase something to stick on the flap of my bag or something to commemorate the time I visited Sherlock Holmes's house.
In the meantime, I've been planning for my return home. Specifically, for The Questions.
Every traveller, whether to the next town for a few days or to the other side of the world, knows The Questions. I always struggle with these, quibbling with myself out loud about how hard it is to answer them before launching into an hours-long rambling story with enough rabbit trails to be the hundred acre wood. So, this time, I decided to plan ahead. And, disclaimer, Questions 2 and 3 are not generally asked to day-trippers, but other-side-of-the-world-travellers seem to get them a lot, and I always want to ask them, so I'm answering them.

1. What was your favourite part/thing?
I would have to say that this is one of my least favourite questions ever. It's really hard for my decision-making-impaired brain to narrow down a whole range of generally enjoyable experiences to just one, unless I had a terrible time, in which case the pessimist within insists that "leaving" was my favourite part. Usually, nothing stands out that much until years later, when I only remember the best part and have forgotten everything else but the worst.
In this case, I'm going to say "cheese and onion pasties, cheap nutella, being called "love", "darling", and "pet" without a southern american accent, and the friends I made."

2. What are you going to miss the most?
Similar to the first, but not the same. I'm really not going to miss being called love all that much, but I will miss being able to microwave a cheese and onion roll for a quick, filling, and delicious breakfast quite a bit.
And I will really miss my friends. I've never made such close friendships with people that I know for a very nearly fact that I won't see again. I've made friendships this close in high school, and I still count the Inklings as some of my closest friends ever; I've made friendships this close at Whitworth as we bonded over difficult classes and the odd batty professor and core, and I plan on being friends with these people for a very long time, and will probably be going to their weddings, even if they scare off all the timid whitworth boys. But none of this has prepared me for making friends, to a sibling-like point, with people with whom the only thing I have in common is that we lived in the same flat for four months. I almost can't remember not knowing Josie, Conor, Flo, and Adam. And I never want to forget them.

3. What will you not miss?
I will not miss the friggin exchange rate. I will not miss being unemployed. I will not miss being unable to understand the cashier's accent. I will not miss the sidewalk being paved with cigarette butts. I will not miss having a roommate (especially one that gets snippy when she's tired). I will not miss the University of Sunderland. I've been here long enough that I can think of these very, very easily.

4. What was your least favourite part/thing?
Easy. The impossible little frenchman. Not only could I not understand half of what he said, he didn't like me. The only time he showed any lack of somewhat haughty condescension, like I was a particularly stupid breed of moron who was soiling his oxygen, was when I dominated the GC software.
I don't like being thought of as stupid. It didn't help that I was completely unfamiliar with lab habits, lab report expectations, and the labs that were prerequisites. I have the knowledge. In fact, I solidly passed organic chemistry and its lab. But I didn't take PBM103 or any of the other first year biomedical science modules at Sunderland, which put me at a severe disadvantage when it came to figuring out what was expected of me.
The other thing that I didn't like was having a difficult roommate. I'm a little mad that she even signed up for a double room. When I asked her why, she replied that she had never roomed with anyone before and felt that if she was doing all these new, unfamiliar things, she might as well share a room, too. This was not fair to me. I was expecting someone who, like myself, had no need for the stupid little "how to not to make your roommate hate you" pamphlet.
I know, I know, life's not fair, but I'd like to have a word with whoever assigned us to the same room. Flatmates are one thing. People who are predisposed not to get along can still be in the same building; kitchen use just needs to be regulated. People who are predisposed not to get along cannot share a room without misery on both sides, if not open hostility and the urge to scream into your pillow, except you can't because she's sitting right there. The most annoying part was the vague superiority complex, except where english was involved. Look, all right, you've been to a million more places than I have, you know more about the world than I do, and you speak a lot more languages than I do, but at least I'm not rude, loudly, in public. The worst part is that I think we would have got along fine if we hadn't been roommates. It's certainly not that she's german. I've met several other germans, and I like all of them. It's just that we are not the sort of people who can room together without starting to hate each other a little bit.
That was a downer of a Question to put last, but it always seems to come up last. So...

5. Would you do it again?
Absolutely. I'd do a few things differently (get a visa or an internship with a stipend or something), but I'd do this again in a heartbeat. It wouldn't be the same — nothing ever could be — but I seriously doubt that I'll ever regret this. I might, in a fit of reverse culture shock, regret having turned my life upside down, but the friends I've made, the experiences I've had (including the ones I'll never wish on anyone)... I'll always pine for England, at least a little bit. I think it's fair to say that this has changed my life, if only in that I've done something that's made it so that only people who've at least done something similar can really relate to me for a few months. This isn't to say that I won't be friends with my friends that I left a whitworth or various and sundry other universities across the pacific northwest, but there's going to be a bit of a divide between the "us" who have lived abroad and the "them" who haven't.

It's my last week in Sunderland...

So, I'm leaving Sunderland for good in a mere three days. Rising to the top of my mixture of emotions is the panic of not having packed — or even having enough suitcases, in all likelihood — at all, not even sorting my stuff.
Of course, this has been a week of more "lasts" than I can remember having since my high school graduation. I was in denial about graduation for three months before it until two days before it, when I finally read through my speech and got the panics.
I had my last day with my british biochem lab partner Freya, who's been featured on this blog before.
I turned in my last assignments.
I've been busily not buying more food, since I'll just be leaving in a few days (I use jessi's milk instead).
I returned all my library books. I really will not miss that place. I spent too much of my time cooped up trying to write lab reports on the top floor.
I keep realising that each day is my last "day of the week" in Sunderland, probably ever. I probably won't see Conor, Josie, James, Adam, Flo, Jessi, or Freya ever again after I go home.
Of course, I won't have to deal with that impossible little frenchman ever again (except for when I have to take that exam in friggin' June, not that I'm bitter). I won't have to feel like I'm wasting my time by going to lectures (I hope. I've never felt like I didn't need to go to a Whitworth lecture).
It's just as well that I'm done with my papers, though, since I had my last packet of alpine cider this morning.
A couple of funny stories about words with different meanings:
1. Cider. Cider in the UK means the alcoholic kind. It's like beer with apples, I believe. Comes in cans. Cider in the states, unless preceded by "hard", means "cloudy apple juice, I guess" or "hot, spiced apple beverage that is mostly sugar". I got some funny looks when I said that I write my best papers while drinking cider.
2. Fanny. In the states, it's sort of like saying "bum" in reference to someone's hindquarters: a fairly polite word for a culturally amusing body part. We even have fanny packs, which sit either on the bum or on the stomach.
In the UK, fanny means, ah, "ladybits", as Adam so delicately put it when we pried the definition out of him.
I probably wouldn't think this was such a funny word if I hadn't grown up with it as a quaint, funny way of saying butt.
Snrk. Yes, I am five years old.
3. The Garage. Here pronounced GARE-uhj, which still seems foreign. Although, I use and hear this one enough that it's making guh-RAHJ sound weird and foreign. In the states, a gah-RAHJ is the thing that holds your cars when you're not driving them. I think it's normally that way for GARE-uhjes here in the UK, as well.
However, there's a petrol station that I think of as "behind Clanny", although it's really more to the side. Anyway, it's the place to go for late-night food hunts that don't include hot pizza or any other kind of takeaway. Do we call it "the petrol station"? No, we do not. Someone in Clanny House, past or present, started calling it "the GARE-uhj", and the name stuck. If you say "I'm going to the GARE-uhj, does anyone need anything?" then everyone in the room will either reply that they'll come with you or thrust fivers at you with orders. I think that if I tried to call it "the petrol station", no one would know what I was talking about.
The thing that makes this really funny for me is that I still don't think of a GARE-uhj as a place to put a car, but rather as the petrol station behind clanny. Guh-RAHJes are where you keep cars.
I'd like to think that I'll be too busy packing and eating the rest of my food to post again before London or Leicester, but who am I kidding? I'll put it off until late Sunday night, and we all know it.

Liverpool — Saturday 7 January to Sunday 8 January

Got up at ungodly-o-clock, before metro runs. Feh.
While I got up ridiculously early, I had banked on the metro running before 06:00.
It doesn't. I weighed my chances of walking to the bus station in time to catch my bus, and decided that they were extremely bad. So I called a taxi and paced in front of the Aldi, checking my phone nervously every couple of minutes seconds. However, the taxi came, and every light we hit was green. It was a miracle. It might have been because it was so stinkin' early, but I saw lots of cars stopped at the lights that we made. Lots here meaning three or four.
I actually would probably have made the bus if I'd waited around for the metro, since it was about ten minutes late, but if I'd tried it, the bus would have left on time exactly, about ten minutes before the metro rolled in.
I slept nearly all the way to Manchester. It was great. I think I was tired enough and it was dark enough for me to ignore the jostling of my head against the window, because I certainly couldn't take it on the way back. But that's for later.
After nearly failing to disembark at Manchester's Sudehill Interchange because I couldn't be asked to wake all the way up, I looked around the bus stop for national express. I ended up looking at my tickets and realising that my (very cheaply booked) coaches were centred at different bus stations. Armed with the sole employee's directions of "towards Arndales, then left at Debenhams, and it'll be just past there, or you can take the tram, but it's just a five minute walk", I set out sleepily.
I didn't actually take any pictures of Manchester. As I was hopelessly lost in my attempts to get from one bus station to another in just twenty minutes, I didn't really feel like I had the time to take pictures.
But not to worry, I found the bus station after going into an information centre and discreetly inquiring the location of Chorlton Street of the bored-looking attendants/salespeople. As it turns out, it's just past the tram stop just past debenhams, and the tram doesn't actually stop at chorlton street at all.
In any case, I made it to my bus on time, and stared out the window eagerly all the way to Liverpool.

If you embiggen this picture, you can see "Biosciences Building" written under "University of Liverpool" on the brownish part of the building. However, it's the windows to which I wish to draw your attention.
They are packed full of enough clutter to give my room at home a run for its money. That is the mark of a quality scientific establishment, let me tell you.

This is George's Hall, I think. I'm really not sure about that. All the writing on the walls was in latin.

There were lots of statues about.

I sat here for a good twenty minutes. My old friend that I was supposed to meet was busy figuring out where her temporary roommate (also from the tri cities, as it turned out; what are the odds?) had got to, and it was admittedly quite early to be up on break.

I found myself thinking "Hey, Sunderland's got an Empire Theatre, too!"
I guess I like this rather boring and dingy city more than I'd like to admit.

Victoria, as I determined from the "Regina" on the base. 

This one had Albert's name on the base; no guesswork needed.

A cool old church, St. Luke's, I believe. If you can tilt your screen, you probably should play with that, just to see if you can see the church tower any better with a different angle. It was dark outside; it's not my fault.

Liverpool strikes me as a place that did its best to fall apart, but was foiled by various attempts a few decades ago to put it back together. Since then, it seems like the whole place kind of dislikes the newer areas, and cool old buildings mix resentfully with shabby old 70s buildings (think the federal building in Richland, just more brick-y and shabby), while vacant, bulldozed lots sport huge piles of brick-infused soil and signs that say things like "rebuilding neighbourhoods!" The outer areas of the city seemed dingy, although that might have been the weather.
I rather liked the city centre, and would have liked to visit the museum and some of the old churches, but,
Unfortunately for my little weekend holiday, I got quite sick. Rather than spending the night hanging out with an old friend, talking about old friends who've grown up away from us, and reliving a bit of middle school (it wasn't all bad), I spent half the night resting my chin on a toilet seat and heaving violently while she googled what to do with a violently ill friend.
I have no idea how much sleep I got; it wasn't enough. I remember spending way too much time shivering violently because her window was open, but I was too sick to get up and close it. I feel like I spent a lot of time in between sleep and awake, which resulted in me being exhausted. Lucky for me, I was alert enough to notice the light coming in the window and dig my phone out of my neatly-folded coat and see that I needed to get up and pack if I wanted to catch my bus.
I have no idea why I thought that leaving at 10 am was a good idea.
I prepared for my walk by drinking a few sips of water (but not too many, lest I invite nausea again) and letting my friend know that I was leaving and that she was a goddess for taking care of me. After that, I set out about forty minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave, just in case.
And it was raining.
However, it was a pretty light rain, so I tucked my scarf more firmly around my neck, tried to ignore the sour smell of my hair, and trudged down the street.
Still, I managed to take a few more pictures of Liverpool. I wasn't leaving that city without something besides a headache and a bad taste in my mouth.

The Cathedral of Christ the King, also known as the star wars church and the space church. No, I don't know why it was built like that, but it's a fun talking point...

Liverpool has a remarkable amount of street signs, and they're all really cool. And such cool names.

This is a youth hostel. By youth, I mean approximately 18 to 30 years of age. Younger would make me question the parents' sanity in letting their offspring travel alone (or in a group of similarly aged youth), but older just seems kind of creepy. We've discussed this sort of thing in the flat. For comparison, think of a 35-year-old living in a dorm.

We are demanding the sun.
Graffiti I can live with.

I was shocked to see a Kimos, even if it is a cafe and grill, not a sports bar and grill.

I made it to the bus station, feeling slightly weak, but still on time. I dozed all the way to Manchester, where I decided to try food.

A pretty fountain next to the tram stop that isn't Chorlton Street.

Whoever Peel was, he's got a striking, imposing statue with a pigeon on his serious-looking head.
To be fair, the pigeon looked pretty serious, too. 

I had an hour to kill in Manchester, and as I always feel awkward sitting in cafes without ordering, I had nowhere to kill it in. I'd also finished my book in Liverpool. I ended up buying the cheapest bread I could find in a little supermarket and eating a few bites in the bus stop.
I've decided that I prefer National Express to Megabus. For one, their site is much less annoying to use. They also load your luggage for you. And, to top it all off, they are infinitely more organised than Megabus. Their coaches all say the major stops they'll be making, and they pull into stations a good interval apart and have well-informed attendants to direct people who can't read the front of the bus to the proper coach. Sure, it tends to run late, and sometimes their timetables are confused, and their coaches are less than top-of-the-line, but it's a generally pleasant experience, as far as boarding and riding a coach goes.
Megabus, on the other hand, has surly attendants who yell at everyone. Two buses pull into the station at the same time, so the frightening old man yells for everyone who's going to Leeds and Newcastle to go to one bus, but say nothing about Sunderland, York, Middlesborough, London, Birmingham, or Oxford, all of which are intended destinations for the rest of the crowd. In my case, Newcastle is right next to Sunderland, although I've never had a coach go through it. No way a megabus is just going to two destinations, so I decided to queue up and see if it was going to Sunderland, just in case. The angry old man who turned out to be a driver said no, so I ambled over to the "other" bus. It said that it was going to Leeds, via a number of interesting places, like Oxford, Birmingham, Leicester, London, and Coventry, among others. I was informed by the silent attendant that it was going to Sunderland.
Right. After waiting for the Leeds and Newcastle bus to leave, I finally stowed my luggage and claimed a seat at the front of the bus.
Unfortunately, I was unable to really sleep or even doze off all the way. The coach kept lurching and smacking my head against the window, the seat in front was too far away to lean my head against, and the armrest was too skinny to actually rest my arm on. This is not a commentary on the circumference of my arm; my elbow, arguably the boniest part of my body with the least superfluous flesh, kept sliding off the darn thing.
So, I stared at the reflections of the windscreen in the window (which weren't helping my headache) and picked at my petit pain (I have no idea what the translation is there, but it's like a mini-baguette, and it's pretty ubiquitous in England. I've never seen a bakery without them here.) and drank water like I'd found an oasis in the desert for three hours.
When I got home, I didn't feel like the odds of the green-vested men in the metro ticket area not being ticket inspectors were that good, so I walked home. It was almost nice, and I felt much better for having consumed an entire bread thing and bag of cheese-flavoured "potato crisp snacks", so I walked back to clanny without too much ado. After that, it's pretty much a blur; nothing exciting must have happened (surprise!). I did go to sleep at 20:00 (8pm), so it's not really surprising that I don't remember much between about 17:00 (5pm) and then. I probably had some food, and cheese and onion pasty is ringing some bells.

In other news, I've started thinking about light.
It's everywhere. Oh, GOD. 
Hello, irrational claustrophobia. I blame the reflections from the bus windows. Light is insane. Little tiny bits of energy (and also matter? what?) that can't be held or felt by conventional means, but that have a profound effect on everything. They can't actually be stopped, although they can be blocked. However, they still bounce around enough that deep shadows are very, very hard to find during daylight, even if you can't see the sun.
All this means that these little bits of stuff are zooming around this room, bouncing off the walls, my duvet, my computer, my dresser, my roommate, my window, me...
Breathe.

Anyway, only two weeks until I'm back in the states. I'm not sure if I'm excited, nervous, or bummed about this.
I'm excited to get my own room.
I'm not excited to have to pay rent.
I'm excited to be back at whitworth with sane professors and my whitworth friends.
I'm not excited to not be around my friends from here (although, I wouldn't be around them if I stayed. Conor and Adam will be in America and Josie will be in Leicester.)
I'm excited to see my parents.
I'm not excited to pack, in England or America.
I'm excited to fly back home.
I'm not excited to fly away from England.