Monday 23 January -- On the edge of sunset

After something of a mad dash to the tube that included running down to Twinings, being late for my taxi, and struggling through King's Cross with four items of luggage, one of which doesn't like to balance nicely, I finally ended up lounging on an impressively long train ride to zone six. Fortunately, the fact that I'd bought a zone 1-2 daypass to get to Twinings didn't end up costing me more money; an airport employee saw my luggage and used his card to help me through the barrier. I found the trolleys (carts in american), which were free (shocking), and took a circuitous route to bypass the elevators. Once I reached icelandair's checkin, my bags turned out to be underweight enough for me to actually unload some stuff from my carryons into them, which was a pleasant surprise.
As always, my liquid baggie got tested during my journey through security, but that was it. I had to wait about half an hour for my flight to start boarding, so I felt that I had timed things rather well.

Mine!

The weather was about the same when I left as when I got to England.

Flying!

I was hoping to enjoy iceland, or at least the keflavik airport, a little more than last time, but my flight was actually on last call by the time I got there.
Eight hours is a long time to be in the air.
It was dark when we set out from iceland, but once we got above the cloudcover, we flew in the dark for about an hour before we hit sunset.
 

If you embiggen the picture (and the next one), you may be able to see that I was trying to take a picture of the icelandic coast.

Atlantic ocean and also Iceland.

It was really weird, and I couldn't sleep (although I blame the fact that WE'RE FLYING! more than the light, because I could have shut the window if I hadn't been so darn excited. I was feeling especially poetical as I watched us flying backwards through the day, from night to sunset to daylight before circling above seattle through sunset until it was night again, and dubbed it "flying on the edge of sunset".
It was also pretty, but not like sunsets are on the ground. I think because we were so high, the sunset just kind of lurked around the horizon instead of dominating the sky, but I could see all the colours concentrated in a deep pink band that sometimes fuzzed into a really pretty purple.
Customs and baggage claim was really smooth, rather smoother than getting into England (probably because I wasn't wearing fancy, foreign-looking clothes, my suitcases are as cheap as I could manage, and I'm returning to my own country instead of being a slightly disreputable-looking person trying to get into another country that has some impressive immigration issues of its own). Even though I started off on a bad foot with the passport inspector by texting in line (in my defense, I didn't see the sign and it's never been a concern before), she warmed up to me by the time I was done being inspected. All my luggage came through, and I kept all my forms in reasonably decent order, at least for my first time solo through american customs and with four bags.
It was incredibly good to actually see my family in person. I kind of did the whole England thing on my own, and it was good to be allowed to let someone else support me (emotionally, that is).

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.

Pretty things in Sunderland

I needed to do this post because of this.

Image swiped from my.ilstu.edu and modified by me.

After a day of feeling like everything was going wrong and walking down the road muttering about how much I hate this place, I decided to use the pictures I took of the cemetery before I went to bedford.

Here are pictures of the cemetery up the road. It's very pretty, and makes for a nice walk.

I was on the hunt for these, but I couldn't find any from much before 1800.

Huge group plot. I think it's for people affiliated with a church, like possibly a convent or monastery. 

All the stereotypes about cemeteries are true here. Huge crooked tombstones like jagged teeth... 

And then huge empty spaces.

Lots of the stones have broken; the pieces are all kept together.

A real, live holly tree. I think I was feeling a bit festive when I took this one. The tree was huge, by the way.

The ground here is really unstable. Almost all the headstones are tilted, and most of the monuments have sunk.

The "family burial ground" thing is kind of odd to me, somehow.

There are a lot of stones for people that were lost at sea or other far-away places.  Sunderlandians got around.

Marble: pristine. Stone: so worn you can't even tell there were letters there.

There are these huge old buildings scattered throughout the cemetery, with broken windows and fences around them.

Like so. I do like the little round bit off to the side of the main building, though.

Entrance? 

Fancy.

Lost at sea.

War graves always get me. "In memory of so-and-so, who failed to return"

Also, cat.

Our flat (now consisting only of Conor, Jessi, Flo, myself, and occasionally Adam) kind of adopted the Ginger Clanny House Cat, known alternately by us as Clanny, Kitty, Look Who Followed Me Home, Can We Keep Her, *tchk tchk*, and The Cat.

She follows us from further up the block, knows which flat is ours, knows which door inside the flat is ours, and also comes to the window to be let in. 

Jessi bought some ham for Kitty's consumption (because that made more sense than cat food?), and despite the inherent dietary flaws, Kitty's not sick and she keeps coming back and eating more ham, so... 

She's got a routine. Get into our flat, eat some ham, maybe have some milk (we have some spare containers of it, I don't know whose, and they're not bad yet, but they will be, so...), curl up on the chairs, and sleep until we put her out. 

I hate putting her out. I feel so cruel. Jessi hates putting her out more, though. She seems to be afraid of cats, which quite mystifies me, and flinches away whenever Kitty moves her paws, claiming that she never knows what cats are thinking.

Well, this is true. She's terrible about figuring out what mood the cat is in. But I blame the single claw attack she's suffered (at no physical damage to her person, I might add) on her not knowing the warning signs of sudden rage and repeating her offences.

So here's some more things that I liked in Sunderland, mostly to remind myself that I ever liked it.

British houses

That random door in the cool wall

Wall

Good flatmates

Cheese and onion pasties... Mmmm.

Old churches

Walls

Walls

More walls

Even more walls

I do not tire of these pictures

But I'll throw in a picture of nutella, only 99p for the small glass.

Brick walls in various states of decay

Mosaics in entryways

Wall

That park down the road

A "stumpery"

Wall! Leading to the prettiest place I've found in sunderland.

Wall

Pretty bridge and autumn colour (in december, but still)

Pretty river

You guessed it: Wall.

Not wall. Slippery death trap, actually. But it was pretty.

Natural wall from where the river was

Little secluded area

As excited as I am to be leaving Sunderland and returning to Whitworth, I'm still going to miss this place. Of course, staying doesn't hold much of an attraction for me, since almost all my flatmates, who became my best friends here, are leaving, too.
So I'll think fond thoughts about Sunderland as I've known it, with two brits, two germans, two americans, and an australian as my companions, and be happy that I'm going back to a university where more of the faculty is sane and likeable.