Reflections -- 22 February 2012 (slash 25 July 2012)

I wrote this a few months ago (in february, in fact, and it is now july) and then forgot about it. I just got turned into an "ISEP Ambassador" (in something of a fit of irony, given the issues a bunch of us had with ISEP) which reminded me of this, and I also have to resit an exam which is making me think about having studied abroad again. So here's my reflections from just a month after having studied abroad.


Tomorrow, I'll have been back for a whole month. It's kind of crazy.
I'm already so absorbed by school that I have a hard time sitting down and thinking about England. Fortunately, I have a lot of homework to avoid, so it happens more than it should. Right now, for instance, I should be thinking about inorganic chemistry.
So.
I was pretty close on my "what I won't miss, what I will miss" predictions. I really miss the people; I get excited when I hear australian accents before remembering that Josie is in Leicester, and it's weird being on facebook and seeing people from Sunderland friend people that I don't know and go places I'll probably never be.
And, yeah, I miss the easy Sunderland workload (but not the work itself) and cheese and onion pasties. I miss being somewhere where people know what a pasty is... and how to pronounce it. It is fun to explain the "putting stuff in pastry" phenomenon, though. Also, the "irish" pub that moved in across from Whitworth is reported to sell at least meat pasties, so I'll be checking that out sometime.
I don't miss the exchange rate at all, but I'm still confused when I cross the road. I have to think about where I would be sitting if I was driving, and where the center line would be, and therefore where a car will come from when it hits me. Ah, it'll be from behind. Better get on the grass, just in case they aren't paying attention. Note: this is only on campus. I'm very careful when I cross the street from my house to the Whitworth side.
I'm doing pretty good on the "not talking about England ad nauseum" thing, except when I get together with other long term study abroad-ers, and then none of us want to shut up. I found one girl who went to australia and knows the university that Josie and James went to, which was amazingly exciting, although it would have been cooler had she gone to their uni. I also met a girl who went to Northern Ireland (and who confirmed my suspicion that the northern accent is much easier to understand than the republic's), and who shared my frustrations over "I'm from Washington. No, not DC. Yes, there is a state called Washington. Where is it? Um, it's by California." conversations as well as my longing for pasties.
I've stopped saying "uni" so naturally and dropped back into "college", even though I use uni as a texting abbreviation.
I do miss being able to say "chips" and have people think "delicious, deep fried, soft, thick potatoes" instead of "crispy potato slices".
On the other hand, I've settled back into Whitworth pretty well. I've made new friends, even.
I blame my newfound gregariousness on having been somewhere where no one knew me. For the first time ever, there was no familiar face, no one I knew from church or liberty or whitworth, and I think I branched out without knowing it. If I wanted a familiar face, I had to get to know people. So I did. It helped that everyone else was dealing with the same sort of thing, and so were more willing to share my effort, but I could have made no friends. I know people who did just that, and I'm ridiculously proud to say that I'm a successful human being now. Last year, in Duvall, I did not make a single friend in my dorm.
This year, in England, I made several.
Of course, it's still hard for me to just strike up a conversation with someone, but I've definitely made strides in the "being able to function in the real world" department.

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.

A Walk In The Park, And Also Food — Sunday 18 December to Wednesday 21 December

Before I get into the post, I have a blog post from a kindred spirit, at least as regards my crepe stand plan. I can't find the post where I detailed my plans to open a crepe stand if the whole scientist thing falls through, but I think it was pretty detailed. If anyone has information on where I talked about that, please let me know. It's bugging me.
Sunday, I went back to Barnes Park. I think I've mentioned it to at least one person who reads this, but I'm not sure. I didn't have my camera the first time I went here, so I kind of had to go back.

This is the big grassy area before the park. Good for dogs, kites, frisbee games, and football games.
The lensflare/glory rays were completely accidental. I wasn't even looking at the screen at the time, due to the sun being really bright. 

Some of the toys, which were all at the front of the park.

This was to show off the snow behind the gate. I don't know what the big, flat depressions are. They have stairs, so they might be for sports... It was also really icy; this walk in the park was no walk in the park.

That turned out to be something called a "stumpery", for the purpose of growing ferns like the victorians did. I think this whole park has been restored to something resembling its presumably victorian glory days.

The lake has a set of stairs leading down from it. I don't know why.

Frozen lake. I tossed a rock, and it bounced.

Ducks!

Okay, this tree bothers me. I see them around, but I don't know what they are or why people like them. They resemble pines from a distance, but up close...

It looks like something that should have been extinct for a really long time.

Do not like.

I was going to walk by the gazebo, but I think I would have ended up with a broken something, or maybe some more bruised cartilage.

Up there is the large grassy area from the beginning of the post. It goes very up, and this part of the park also goes a little down.

I brightened up the picture to make the cool bridge in the middle less invisible, but I might be able to see it just because I know it's there.

I love this funky little structure. If I'd had more battery, I'd have taken more pictures. Alas... 

Prettiness! In Sunderland, even!

I had planned to go further, but with the battery issue and the fact that it was really friggin' cold, I decided to go hunt down the cafe that I'd seen signs for at the park entrance and see what they had in the way of hot drinks. What I found was more of a small kitchen behind a candy-and-crisps counter. Fortunately, the kitchen contained a coffee pot, a hot water pot, possibly a microwave, and a friendly local. It had been a while since anyone commented on my accent, and I soon found myself chatting with a stranger (not for the last time) about my Christmas plans. I got a cup of hot chocolate with a generous portion of whipped cream on top, and it was pretty good, even if it did get grainy at the bottom and didn't do much for my hands freezing off. It was tiny, but cheaper and rather better than anything I'd get at starbucks, and also whipped cream.
That night, after my hands thawed out, I made plans to get up early and Do Things on monday. My christmas plans took form, from an abstract list to a firm idea of what I needed.

Monday, I got up before 9 AM and Did Things. I walked down Pallion, the startling street behind Clanny, and found cash, chestnuts, and a sweet shop in the style of Badger Canyon Herbs and Tea. I got some weird candy, in lieu of candy canes, my main objective. I realised that, although I'd planned to get fruit and soup makings monday, it would be a week before I'd end up using them. So, I ended up getting candy and nuts. I also went to the area outside the Bridges (mall just down the road from the university) and hunted for a tacky Christmas sweater, but they didn't have anything. I mean, there was plenty of tacky, but no Christmas.
I was disappointed, but I headed for the bookstore across the bridge. I'd seen it, but couldn't remember the name. I could, however, remember that it is on the road that the bridge is on, so I walked across the bridge with some chips from a fish and chip place outside the bridges.
I cursed myself for forgetting my camera as I walked across the Wearmouth bridge, which I've been wanting to photograph, and also saw the gorgeous-looking park thing underneath the bridge (I've made plans to go back, initially on tuesday, although that got scrapped when I woke up sick, but more on that later).
The store was closed. I almost got killed by cars three times trying to get to it, and it was closed.
Unbelievable.
Well. Maybe it was just closed for lunch... I began my hunt for the St. Peter's campus, a place I'd been exactly twice, and one of those was on a bus. The other time was when we skipped the treasure hunt during orientation and got lost on our way there before coming at it from the kind of opposite direction (almost exactly four months ago; it doesn't seem like that long ago that I didn't know some of my favourite people). I ended up getting slightly lost in a residential area, but kept following the sidewalk in hopes that I wouldn't have to turn around and go all the way back.  Luck was with me, and the sidewalk dumped me out by a sign that said University.
St. Peter's is a lot prettier than City Campus. The libraries aren't much different, although the view is better from St Peter's. I looked up the "Bridge Books and Music" store, which doesn't have a proper website, and decided to try again after the lunch hour, as it's supposedly open all weekdays.
However, unless the lunch hour is really long, Bridge Books and Music is closed for the holidays, so I'll give it another shot after new years, probably. I'm a little sad that I can't find any second-hand bookstores, and the only bookstores I can find are large chains, which are invariably expensive.
I walked home, which entailed the following: almost dying three times in roundabouts, checking the charity shop for a sweater, and getting a library card to check out Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.
The library on Kayll Road (it collides with Pallion, the street of the fruiterer and three pizza places within twenty meters of each other, and I don't know why the changed the names, but whatever) is pretty limited, but they do have Terry Pratchett. It was here that I had my second discussion with a stranger over my Christmas plans; the librarian was quite friendly.

Tuesday, I woke up sick. I blame the fact that I walked, quite literally, all over Sunderland in the rain and cold. The bus wasn't there when I was, okay? Don't judge. I slept in until... late... and then dragged my sorry behind out of bed only to go downstairs and see that there was nothing I wanted to eat. I put a load of laundry in, after forgetting my detergent, and went to the supermarket that seems the least sketchy for crepe mix. I wasn't really up to making the (admittedly not labour-intensive) batter on my own.
Conclusion: I like mine better, but it was fun making the batter in a bottle.
I spent the rest of tuesday sleeping through movies, getting bored with them when I was awake, planning Christmas, and craving soup.
I drifted downstairs sometime in the evening and decided to make soup happen. Micha left gobs of pasta, and we have a bunch of leftover vegetable bouillon from various and sundry theme nights, and Josie left lots of frozen vegetables...
It was pretty good. While chicken noodle soup was kind of out of the equation, vegetable noodle soup was pretty darn good. I think it was the noodles in hot broth thing that did it for me.
Today, Jessi redeemed herself for every time she was a horrible, insensitive, ranting b-word. She was nice to me when I was sick, and that makes up for every argument I've had to lose to preserve the lack of hostility in my room. She's lent me quite a bit of money over the course of Ireland and me not having change for laundry a few times, too. I was in a good enough mood, also triumphant after making soup, to play go fish and lose at egyptian rat race twice (blasted sandwich rule; I cursed it even when I remembered it). Jessi's not a very good winner or loser, but she was very nice when I was sick...

Wednesday, I would have stayed in bed forever, but we were supposed to have a fire alarm test, which means the incredibly loud alarm going off for three to six seconds over five to fifty second intervals for one hour. It's the most miserable time to be trying to be lazy. I decided to do my mall shopping: I got a santa hat to make up for my lack of a sweater, some mince pies that I'm hiding from Jessi until after christmas, at which point she can finish them, some fancy cheese, crackers/biscuits, lentils, sparkling white grape and peach juice (non-alcoholic; I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find any non-alcoholic cider, so I went with the first sparkling thing that reminds me of christmas that I could find), a whole lot of tomatoes, and a strange melon that I've never attempted to eat, to my knowledge.
I should explain the tomatoes. I've taken to reading food blogs; not sure how that happened. I think I was looking for a spiced cider recipe when we planned out Christmas Night, and ran across Accidental Hedonist, who had a guest writer a while ago who writes a blog called Tomato Kumato.
As I read through Tomato Kumato's archives, I find myself resonating with Emily, who's lived all over the world. No, I've never lived in or even been to New York, Toronto, or Paris, but I do know how it is to have so many "homes" that it gets a bit confusing. I know how it is to wish that you could stay in your new home, with your new friends, new cultural norms, and new habits. I know how it is to want to make your own place in a big world. I've been forcing myself to stop looking eagerly at "to let" signs that pepper Sunderland.
Of course, Tomato Kumato is a food blog. Emily posts a lot of recipes (including one for garlicky tomato soup), and I'm almost quivering with anticipation for cooking my Christmas food. Then I got sick, and felt like a master chef when I managed to scrape together tuesday night's soup. I decided that I could make a garlicky tomato soup from scratch, especially after reading about someone who's been cooking with fresh vegetables. I've always been one to jump on a bandwagon, so two pounds of tomatoes came home with me.
Unfortunately, I have no food processors at all. Josie took her potato masher with her when she moved out, and we certainly don't have any kind of blender. Of course, I was far too excited to bother with this, figuring that I don't mind a few chunks of tomato or some tomato skins in my soup.
I'll just skip to the end... It wasn't the texture that got me, it was the salt. I think I got my salt requirements for the week out of that soup, even though I tried putting potatoes in it. It was okay if I dipped some bread in it.
So, note to self: Don't try roasting tomatoes for soup until you have food processing equipment. Also, the garlic would have been garlickier if you hadn't roasted it. Since the point of the dish was to clear your distressingly clogged sinuses with a blast of garlic...
In any case, I don't feel sicker. Actually, I think I'm doing a lot better. I'm on quite a culinary trip. I made latkes while waiting for the soup, something I've wanted to try since I read the story "Latkes for Dixie" in Highlights (Dixie was the family dog, a collie, if the illustrations were to be believed). I finally pulled it off, although I have no idea if they tasted right, never having had any before. In any case, they were the success that the soup was not, and I enjoyed them with leftover apple sauce from Christmas Night.

Oh, Christmas plans... I wouldn't normally share the details beyond "watching some christmas movies and generally relaxing while my roommate's off with her family, and I'll be skyping with the family sometime and eating delicious food" except I'm getting really excited about this, in spite of the fact that I can't find candy canes anywhere.
Friday the 23rd, I'll be reading Hogfather and then judging the movie.
Christmas Eve, I'll be watching Polar Express before midnight and trying not to finish the whole bottle of sparkling grape juice. I'm torn between ordering chinese and just eating some cheese (I have a lot of cheese), bread, and apples. I'll have mince pies and cookies, in any case.
Christmas morning, I'm making the berry strudel that's been in my freezer drawer for a few months for breakfast before heading to St Gabriel's (Anglican church just down Kayll Road) for the 10:30 service.
Lunchtime will be leftover strudel and the cheese combination. I'll probably watch more Christmas movies, and I will put on my hat.
At some point in the day, I'll be skyping with my family.
Dinner will be a grand soup. I'm getting so excited about this soup. It will have everything. Lentils, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, hopefully courgettes (british for zucchini; I kind of wish Americans had picked up on the french version instead of the italian one), mushrooms, garlic... And more!
And bread. I just need to find some and hope that the place I get it from is open the day before Christmas eve. I'm thinking I'll get some not-all-the-way-cooked baguettes from aldi Thursday, just in case. I'll eat it eventually, I'm sure.
Then... I haven't planned. The great soup might be before the skyping; it might be after. For all that I've laid this all out, I'm not sure what goes in the middle of the things I'm doing.

I've got batteries, so I'll be putting up more Christmas pictures soon. And, with any luck, I'll be feeling like I can go outside without needed to wear all my clothes even though it's not that cold out (so much for all that "worst winter on record" stuff, unless "worst" is actually defined as "most disappointing").

Jessi Insulting People (at a football match and the Durham Lumiere Festival) — Saturday 19 November

The title was inspired by this video:

I started off my day by printing the e-ticket for the football match, which I got in october. After something of a debacle with the people handing out the real tickets, due to our large and unwieldy group of nine (it took about three counts for them to get all of us), we got our real tickets and split up into normally sized groups. I stuck with Jessi, since I know her, and she stuck with Felicity, who tends to act like she knows what she's doing. It was her idea to storm the castle, by the way. I made a new friend in Lauren from australia, who stuck with us for the rest of the day.
We took the bus to the Stadium of Light, the brand new pretty football stadium that sunderland just built. We all got excited and Jessi took a lot of pictures. I took one, too.

Outside the stadium.

 When we couldn't find the turnstiles listed on our tickets, Jessi performed her first insult of the day by accident. She has this habit, which is starting to get on my nerves (1. w-curve. I should be getting fed up with everything pretty soon, not just the university itself. 2. We are not the most compatible of people. It could be way worse, but it could definitely be better. I refer you to the end of the edinburgh post. This is not a repeat of the rant.) of saying "for God's sakes!" in this really angry tone when she's confused, frustrated, or just angry, and even when she's in a good mood. In any case, the numbering system for the turnstiles is pretty weird. She vocalised this by asking if they couldn't count here, "for God's sakes!" when we were standing right behind a stadium worker.
Oops. He laughed it off, but it wasn't the best foot to start off on.
Getting in was exciting, followed by being disappointing. We were over an hour early, due to intelligence that the stadium would be bedlam, but no one was there. Our search for food led us to "food kiosks" that sold no chips (in the french fry sense of the word) at all. We reflected that perhaps we ought to have gotten food beforehand. I would just like to say that gesa stadium's concessions are way better than the stadium of light's. I suspect that it's becuase of the fact that SoL is still recovering from being hideously expensive, but I feel that chips would be a good start.
We waited forever for the match to start, and I forget how we amused ourselves. Our seats were up in nowhere, but we still had a pretty good view of the field.
As a group, which included Flo and Lisa and a few other germans as well as some people that some people know, you know, we lost interest pretty quickly. Flo and Jürgen, who sat on opposite ends of the "lauren felicity jessi me" group, kept yelling over us in german. Jessi later explained that they'd been commenting on how much better they were at football than the teams. Unsurprising, somehow. Felicity instituted a pretend drinking game to keep herself busy: drink every time people clap when we don't know why, every time someone falls, and twice when random people come onto the field. She lost count pretty quickly.

Way up in nowhere seats.

Mascots. I think they're the black cats or something.

Players coming out onto the field

The asian (not sure whether japanese or korean) who kept being in the way.

Getting ready to kick off...

And kicked off.

 As halftime approached, we made plans to outside to the food vendors we saw, eat, and come back in. We made extra sure we had our tickets, and asked a stadium worker if we could go outside and come back in.
No.
Okay... we tried another guy.
No.
Hmm. We tried the guy at the door.
No.
Jessi tried another tactic: reasoning. She's not very good at accepting defeat. Unfortunately, she started off on a very, very bad foot. It was more of an elbow as far as feet go. She asked if we couldn't go outside, say to get food or something, and then come back in? I mean, what if someone forgot something in their car?
If I learned one thing from concessions work, it's that herds of children with change are the worst. But I also learned that most of a stadium's income is concessions. Gesa stadium doesn't allow outside food for this reason. I'm actually not sure if you're allowed to go out and come back in, now that I think about it.
We knew, as soon as she mentioned food, that the answer would be no, even if it could have been yes. Which it couldn't have been; they use a turnstile that scans ticket barcodes, so they can't really just flip a switch, I'm thinking.
We returned to the game rather peevishly. Something exciting happened while we were in the entryway to our seating area, but the score was still 0-0 when we got in. When the game went into overtime, we all decided to head out, even if there was no way we'd beat any crowds at all.

Crowds.

More crowds.

We actually ended up walking all the way back to clanny, hungry and cold, but happily planning dinner and Durham, which would involve being all bundled up in winter clothes and real gloves and scarves and hats and warm socks. Oh, yeah. It was going to be friggin' sweet. And warm.

Durham's Lumiere festival (click here for much better pictures) was awesome. The group ended up being Lauren, Felicity, Adam, Jessi, and me. We took a cab, deciding against a return booking because we weren't sure when we'd want to head back (depending on how awesome or terrible it was), but we were pretty confident about our ability to not spend too much money on fare.
When we got there, we decided that maybe we should have, you know, looked more closely at the website before getting there. We had no idea where to go or what there was to see; we'd kind of expected to just follow people around until we saw all the cool stuff.

Following people. Lots of them.

Giant blue glowing thing!

That statue is there all the time. It was there when Jessi and I went to Durham, at least.

Snowglobe!

We had acquired a pamphlet with a map of all the cool stuff, and were headed for the rainbow bridge and lit-up cathedral when we were informed repeatedly that we couldn't go the way we were heading; we would need to turn around and go over the bridge from hell, which we had already crossed and deemed not fun. I say repeatedly because we stopped where we were standing when he first said that we couldn't go, which was just past where he was standing, and tried to deliberate. Taking our complete and total lack of motion for insurrection, he told us that we couldn't go that way for our safety five or six times in about a minute. And he wasn't just talking to the people behind us, he was looking straight at us. As a rule, I felt bad for the event security/police (not sure if one, other, or both), who had to stand there all night and repeat themselves to over-excited and occasionally belligerent crowds over and over and over, but this guy was less than informative. Okay, first in our minds was the huge, mob-like crowd on that bridge. That was not fun, and I, at least, got a lot of elbows to the shoulder. So, we looped around. Upon reaching the entrance of the rainbow bridge, which had acquired something of a mythical status in our minds (this thing was turning into the friggin' bifröst), we were informed by a portly security/police man that the whole thing was one-way.
Oh. That would have been good to know. Jessi performed her third insult of the day by saying "Are you f***ing kidding me?" loudly and angrily as soon as he said that we couldn't go across (in her defence, we had been walking for a while). He replied that he was not "f***ing kidding" (which made me feel kind of bad for him; poor guy had probably been dealing with this sort of thing for two days already), which did not bode well for our trip across. Way to endear yourself to the security guard so that he doesn't think that we're going to sneak around him.
The entrance to the bifröst was guarded by two security/police men; one of them was the portly one that Jessi insulted. The skinny one kept vanishing. It is perhaps for this reason that we decided that we could sneak past him, no problem; we also saw several people doing the same thing. We stood in a little huddle for a few minutes, waiting for the right time. Finally, Jessi made her move. He saw her, and made a little "Oi!" noise, but she was actually running by this point, and he probably decided that one person was better than leaving the entrance and having all of us get across. We all got across anyway, as soon as his back was turned all the way. My camera didn't really capture all the awesome, but it was awesome.

This was the brochure picture. It didn't quite look like this, but it was still awesome. 

So pretty...

So close...

Even closer!

On the bridge! We win!

The awesome was increased by Felicity's immense sense of self-satisfaction at our successful rebellion; this was increased every time she noticed that we were going against the crowd.
We saw a bunch of human figures (made out of some kind of white stuff) suspended above the street, and took pictures of them in between being kept out of various attractions, like the "ring of FIRE! thing that we glimpsed (jessi made it past one guard but was repulsed by a second while the rest of us were stopped by the first), and the lit-up cathedral.

First

This guy was sitting down.

I think this one was floating down on his back.

Lady.

Sitting on top of a building

Flying

Zooming down the street, if he'd been moving.

We also saw this lovely addition to the festival.

This one was my favourite.

The cathedral was really, really cool. Unfortunately, my camera didn't take any good pictures (the earlier link for much better pictures has some really nice ones).

I cranked the light fill all the way up. The cathedral is not usually red.

Jessi got in her fourth insult by saying that the guy in the white hat was ruining her picture, but he heard and turned around. It's kind of true; the white really stands out in the picture.
After the show, we decided not to go through the cathedral because of the really impressive queue. We ended up going back around through the cathedral yard to stand in line because the rings of fire were that way.
There was a cool display, which Jessi declared to be "just like Harry Potter!" and it was pretty magical. They had suspended candles that were in white shirts all through the nave, and there was a guy making eerie, monk-y music all by himself with a lot of microphones and a guitar.

The pictures make them look even more mysterious and floaty.

It was really cool sitting in the middle of this. Even with hundreds of people crowding around, it was oddly peaceful and quiet.

From below

I don't know why they used shirts.

One man monk choir

After taking a while to sit, rest our feet, take pictures, and admire the lights, we set out for the rings of fire.
We found them.

We hadn't seen this before. It was in the courtyard of the cathedral.

A fire fountain?

Fire! It was everywhere.

We decided to look for what appeared to be a lit-up dance floor, but ended up going to a completely different display. On the way, we saw this:

We felt that this should stay up all the time.

The display where we ended was cool too, and there's a picture on someone else's camera of me looking incorporeal. Mine was out of memory.
After this, we were hungry, so we looked for a pub with little luck. We saw this on the way, and figured that we should have seen this one before the everything will be alright one.

"the future will be confusing"
This was accompanied by a mixed-up alphabet. We don't know why.

We also saw this pretty waterfall thing on the way to food:

I've heard it described as the waterfall fountain. It's off a bridge, I think.

The one we did find with seats available only had toasties (like grilled sandwiches, I think), and they didn't have those, either. We moved on to a takeaway pizza place, where we all got the same pizza (margarita, or cheese) by accident. After this, we decided to look for a van cab (since they're the only ones that will seat five). Jessi wanted to call the one we took to get to Durham, but we figured we could find one that was only a few pounds more expensive. We ended up paying a lot more than we should haveThis was a cause of bitterness that I will gloss over, because the night was really awesome and we really did have a lot of fun.
After all, we crossed the bifröst! Without permission! And we stormed a castle yesterday. We're unstoppable.