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.

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.

The Christmas Post

On Friday, I slept in more than I had expected. Still, I found candy canes, magical elves, and a chocolate orange after a long hunt through every store I could think of before drifting out of the rain into a bookstore. Also, I found turkish delight in a pound store.

For the win!

I actually grabbed all different colours from two different containers without looking.

A magical elf.

At last, the hard-won candy canes!

It's real!

Of course, it was pretty gross. "Rose" isn't a very strong flavour, so I mostly got "sugar" for that one, and lemon actually tasted exactly the same.

I had read Hogfather the day before, so I watched the movie, a made-for-tv affair. It was okay, and nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Almost all the actors were british, and they followed most of the plot pretty well. Death was a little weird; I always figured him as pretty impassive, but this one had an angry skull. The voice wasn't too bad, though. Susan was played by, as Jessi pointed out, "the girl from Downton Abbey," which sounded more vague than it was, and she did okay. Mustrum Ridcully was played by Joss Ackland with a beard, which disguised him pretty well, since he was bald and beardless as the Russian ambassador in The Hunt for Red October (and also as the villain in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey).

Saturday, I slept in again It is vacation... Or, as they say here, holidays. Jessi had already left to meet her parents, probably at the airport. Over the course of the afternoon, I decided not to go with chinese takeaway because it just doesn't sound appealing. Also, the restaurant that's closest to Clanny is pretty pricey for just one dish, and I felt that I'd already spent a lot of money on food.
In the interests of exploration, I tried blue cheese for the first time in about 17 years. It started as "For SCIENCE!" and ended as "I know too much science to eat that." The non-blue parts aren't too bad, but thinking about putting large quantities of concentrated, highly visible bacteria into my mouth freaks me out (I added those qualifiers because, you know, we put a ton of bacteria into our mouths on a regular basis, we just can't see it). I killed some in the oven, and it didn't taste too bad, but... shudder. It's that horrible feeling that you get when you touch something gross... Just... ugh.
It wasn't just for exploration and science, it was that lots of people I know like blue cheese (also the food blogs, but I really do know people, real people, in real life that like the stuff), and I thought, maybe I've got this all wrong and I'm letting a barely-remembered incident and my parent's opinion colour my perception of this rather famous, generally accepted cheese.
Now, it's my opinion. If you got rid of all the mould, it wouldn't be too bad.

To distract you from blue cheese, here's some pictures of fairly delicious candy!

Hawick Balls (mint, if you can believe it).

Rhubarb and Custard thingies

Dandelion and Burdock bottles

I think these are either rhubarb or strawberry 

Silver things. They turned out to be kind of minty, but I mostly got them because they were shiny.

Sounds exciting...

Nothing too magical.

Barley sugar, I believe. I always wondered what it was, and I still wonder why it's called that.

Treacle Toffees: Purchased out of curiosity. Such things exist?

Clove somethings

Around the plate of candy, which includes the above plus some chocolates not mentioned, we have a mince pie, a chocolate orange, cookies, a slice of fruitcake, and oranges. Also Hogfather between the cookies and the cake.

Repast. And yeah, I was kind of into taking pictures of my food that night.

Pure Heaven white grape and peach non-alcoholic sparkling beverage.

...Which had a fancy cork! 

Luckily, Adam had left his leatherman in the kitchen, so I set about opening the first cork I'd ever encountered.

After a long and arduous battle, I won.

Someone left a wine glass. I took advantage of it.

I roasted chestnuts. From left: uncooked, cooked, opened and half eaten.
They weren't very good, actually. A little to sweet and spongy for me.

I had a santa hat, and I wore it all day. This is my facebook profile now...

In addition to stuffing myself with cheese, I watched a lot of movies. I forget all of them, but I watched Polar Express and Nativity Story on Christmas Eve for sure, and I also watched, during the course of the weekend, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Miracle on 34th Street, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Home Alone, Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Gremlins (those last four are all set on Christmas and/or Christmas Eve), and all three of The Santa Clause series.

Sunday, I was planning on going to St. Gabriel's for their Christmas Day service, to be in church when I couldn't be with family and friends, and to see what an anglican church is like. I'm curious, after learning quite a bit about their formation in Core 150 and English Social History 1500-1750. We don't really see many of those in the US; probably something about being the whole reason that the religious establishment in the states was what it was.
Unfortunately, I woke up ten minutes before the service was to start, due to my really annoying habit of turning my alarm off in my sleep. I ended up getting up around 11, again.
In the afternoon, happily after I was up and had made my bed and stuff, Jessi and her parents came by. Fortunately, they spoke enough english to make things not-awkward, and Jessi translated when their english failed them. My german never came into play, although I did pick up on some of what they said. They were pretty nice.
After they left, I got started on dinner, and it resulted in this rather suspicious-looking concoction.

Soup. More of a stew, actually. I slaved over this.

It was delicious, and ended up feeding me for three days.

I skyped with my parents in the GMT afternoon and the rest of my dad's side of the family in the PST afternoon, which was nice. I've been talking to people back home more and more, and I'm getting pretty excited to get to the house in spokane, and to be back at whitworth, and to see my family in person. I haven't actually had a major W-curve depression moment, although I'm pretty disillusioned with the University in general. That sort of depressed mood hits me at whitworth, too, like when I get a particularly bad mark, or I'm having a hard time with an assignment, or a professor isn't being helpful. It happens a lot less at whitworth, and the professors are a lot less unhelpful than here, and I also have a great advisor at whitworth who has proved her worth by helping me get here and by not judging me for having a breakdown in her office over physics. I think she probably sees a lot of that from science major freshmen, you know, the ones who were pretty darn smart in high school, were at the tops of their classes without trying, who never had to study (oh, how I miss those days)... 

Overall, Christmas was a success. It was helped more when my flatmate that moved away (causing the sad puppy whimpers from me) invited me to visit her at her boyfriend's house in Beford for a few days and maybe spend new years eve with them and another flatmate who's been traveling. I didn't start any big traditions (I was hoping for Chinese on Christmas Eve, like crepe tuesdays. In retrospect, I didn't have any family or friends around to make it a worthwhile tradition, so I just continued in the family habit of eating cheese and crackers for Christmas Eve), but I didn't have an emotional breakdown and I don't think my family did, either. 

Oh, and I intend to call christmas lights "fairy lights" for the rest of my life. It just sounds so much cooler.

Miscellany — Last week of November, first week of December

Before I get into the week, I'd like to share this link to help explain my ochem veteran views on the natural food craze: Organic Water
It kind of revives my faith in humanity, or at least in people that aren't chemists by trade who still take the time to look up some definitions. It also reminded me of the chemical free salt from ochem last year.

My days are pretty boring. Since I don't have class before noon until wednesday, I stay up late and sleep in a lot. I have 8 AM water aerobics MWF in a couple of months, so I'll need to change that habit, but it's really hard to get up when there's nothing to do. There's no weekly homework, hardly any reading to do (and only for one class, to be honest; my lit prof doesn't really expect us to read beforehand, which is just as well because I don't like any of the assigned works and we read them out loud in class anyway), and no regularity to my schedule. Last spring was very structured. MWF, I ate in saga with my fellow ochem students, went to ochem, sat in the same seat next to the same every day, ate a piece of gum, spat it into the same garbage can on the same route to german, sat in the same seat every day next to the same people, went up the stairs to writing, sat in as close to the same seat as possible, next to pretty much the same people, had another piece of gum to keep myself awake, then went and got a cheese and tomato six-inch sub on italian herbed bread with olives and mayo in the cafe-thing, then kind of knocked around and did homework and stuff for the rest of the day, sometimes eating dinner in saga, with karate in the evening. TTh, I had a raspberry scone and a small white chocolate mocha for breakfast before arthurian lit, then went either to work or to lab, ate lunch (usually the sandwich described above), did homework, and probably ate dinner in saga. Weekends I went to church and winco and/or walmart. It's a testament to how regular my life was that I can remember exact details seven months later.
Now, I have to write down details of my day to remember what I did. I wake up as late as possible, and haven't gone to bed before 1 AM since time immemorial. When people ask what I did over the weekend, I have to think about it for a really long time.
I'm looking forward to getting a new routine, because eternal vacation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

On monday and tuesday, I didn't do anything of note. On wednesday, however, TWO things happened. First, the university and possibly public transportation had a strike, so I didn't have my history seminar. I'm a little bitter that they went and picked 30 november for the strike. 1 December is just as good of a day to strike. Plus, it would have got me out of my 9-5 class day... Actually, general consensus in the flat was that striking for pensions is kind of a stupid move right now, give the economic state of... everywhere. Would you rather have a pension or a job? This surprised me, frankly, since my flatmates all seem to be more liberal than me. Perhaps as a break from politics, we had english night. Josie made shepherd's pie, which I didn't eat because its base is "mince" (ground beef), and Adam masterminded 'bangers and mash' which is british for sausages and mashed potatoes. We also had peas. Felicity and I had vegetarian, um, 'bangers'. I keep forgetting that I'm not the only vegetarian at our communal dinners now, but I'll get used to it just in time to go live in a house of carnivores. Yay!

Thursday turned out better than I expected, other than accidentally sleeping very late because I couldn't fall asleep until very early. This may be due to my erratic sleep cycle. Sleeping in until after noon the day before was not my best idea. After miraculously finishing the practical lab work very quickly because I was unusually on top of things (I'm never on top of things in lab), we ended up analysing the GC data from last week, which took forever, but the software was incredibly similar to the software that whitworth uses for NMR spectra, which I used almost once a week last year, yay ochem. I think I may have restored some good will between the impossible little frenchman and myself by totally pwning everyone else in that area. Much to my surprise, I'm becoming rather good at the computer aspect of chemistry. Too bad they kept making us do hand graphs for everything else, and this practical isn't even assessed. Grumble.

Friday I made three trips to the post office to mail a package. I ended up mailing two, because one kept being too heavy and potentially costing three times as much as a package weighing 100 grams less. I also went to see Dream House with Freya (my pakistani-british friend from biochem), which I spoiled for myself before going because I really am not that big a fan of movies that bill themselves as "suspense/thriller". It was very good, though, and I didn't really need to spoil it.

Saturday was paintball! Jessi's friend who is now also my friend Keri organised a trip to newcastle's Delta Force paintball course. It was really great, and I had a really good time other than the bit at the end where my team decided that moving forward was not the best option and ended up lurking behind bunkers for the whole ten minutes while the other team stormed our castle in about five minutes and I was a sore loser. I recovered and still recall the whole experience very fondly; just don't put me on a team with a group of people including someone who looks like kim jong il. Yeah, blame the eastern asians. It's funny how much the non-oriental aisans dislike the ones further east, and I've had to amend my definition of "asian" from "formerly called oriental, before that wasn't politically correct" to "everyone who's from the continent of asia" and this causes some paradigm problems. Say "asian" and I think china, and not much west of that. I've got a pakistani friend who describes herself as asian, and I'm sitting there thinking of oriental instead of vaguely arabic. Anyway. I made friends with more internationals: Ramin (Azerbaijan), Hazma (Turkey/Germany), Vincent (France), Jenna (Germany, possibly Turkey), and Ricky (India). Again, my knowledge of everywhere except the western hemisphere plus a small amount of european history and eastern asian cuisine types (I can generally identify the american versions of generic chinese (I don't do regions), japanese, korean, thai, indian, and possibly vietnamese foods) was highlighted. What's the official language of azerbaijan, anyway? At least I've heard of the country, and kind of almost know where it is, so I guess it could have been worse.
I've got some annoying little bruises on my left hand and wrist, my merrills will take some tlc and a lot of water to recover from the mud, and I slept for almost five hours after getting back. In the grand scheme of things, I consider this a success.

Oh, and on monday 5 december I successfully made white sauce without any measuring spoons or cups and had a fairly delicious dinner of spaghetti, garlicky white sauce, and broccoli. For the win!

A long week of skipping class and getting stuff done, and Northumberland — Weekend to Friday 18 November

First off, I would like to apologise for the parenthetical abuses on Thursday. I'd also like to apologise for the soul-killing that happened Thursday. I just kind of need to get this off my chest, because I'm terrible at telling stories out loud and I don't want to foist this on my flatmates. There are pictures of Northumberland at the end! Hang on until Friday!

This weekend all I did was sleep. I did take a walk in the fog, but that was fairly uneventful except for the part where I didn’t know where I was. Not to worry, I figured out where I was and only ambled down one dead end before I finally got back to the road with the cemetery. 

Anyway. Monday, I skipped english literature in favour of writing my assignment, and I got to 1200 words that night because of it. Apparently nothing happened at all in lecture, so all I regret is the possibility that my prof might ask why I skipped. Not because I feel guilty about skipping, but because she'll try to make me feel guilty about not having started my paper until approximately three days before it was due. She is of the opinion that she gives us a lot of useful information in an awesome way that we can really use on our assignments (not that useful, not that awesome, and there was nothing AT ALL on the topic that I picked), and she would sound so offended if she thought that I thought that the two months she gave us wasn't enough time. Okay, we read for my topic about two weeks before it was due, but okay, sure. That was more than enough time. And I would end up agreeing that her module is, like, the best thing ever when in fact it's the most horribly structured literature class I've ever taken. I feel like there were better authors during the seventeen hundreds. I'm sure of it. There had to have been. 

Tuesday I skipped history to work on the lit assignment. I got a late start because I stayed up late the night before trying to write, but I had a hard time getting many more words in, anyway. I was also on an apple cider craving, and I haven’t really seen it here. I need to check again, but I think I’m down to my last few packets, and I’m saving them for the next assignment and my history assignment. 

Wednesday, I agreed to meet Freya, the girl with whom I did extensive work on our last lab report. Before that, I read for my history seminar, went to my history seminar, and finished my essay. Win! I think the main problem was that there simply wasn’t enough to say about the criminals portrayed in the play that was related to a thesis that I could write down. When we finally started working on the lab report, it went slow. Neither of us really cares that much about electrophoresis (I usually like it, but nothing much is interesting in this class), and the results were bad, and I, at least, didn’t actually attend the lecture in which we may have learned how to interpret them. I'm not sure if that lecture even existed; the only slides up on Sunspace were ones from the seminar part. Again, there wasn't that much to say.

Quickly, before I get into Thursday, I need to draw attention to the fact that I really, really do like biochemistry. It freaks me out sometimes, like when I get oddly claustrophobic thinking about how tiny biological molecules are, and the fact that they are in an aqueous environment, so how small are water molecules, which have air dissolved amongst them... How big are the spaces between molecules, and what is in that space? How many tiny voids are in a glass of water... Are in me?

At that point, I usually have to take a massive deep breath because I realise I haven't been breathing. 

An xkcd comic that just came out really sums me up. I'm just posting the part relevant to me, but you can click the link at the beginning of the sentence to see the whole thing. It's about the type of map that people like based on what they're like, and the Peirce Quincuncial is really my thing.

No, seriously, I really love looking at hands. They are incredibly cool. To wrap this up, I really do love biochemistry. Please, please, do not take Thursday as me hating biochemistry. And there are pictures after, I promise. You can even skip Thursday, as I wish I had been able to do, and I won't care.

Thursday I finished up the lab report in the nick of time after skipping both lecture and seminar. Again. I'm really, really going to go to both next week. Really. At least this week, there was a greater purpose than sleeping in... After finishing, I went to lab, which was billed as a revision session (revision equals studying and/or reviewing here, something that I just got recently). I had high hopes of being able to leave early after being left pretty much to my own devices for a while and showing that I knew what I was doing, as happened last time we had a workshop instead of lab. Distressingly, this was not the case. Instead of Monica, the condescending lecturer who says "lineweaver" as if there's an extra R (linearweaver), we had the impossible little frenchman. I almost hope he reads this, because I think it would really clear the air between us. Unfortunately, he still has to grade two more lab reports and my final, so hopefully he never sees this. To put this in a small amount of perspective, I'm writing this after having an awesome day Friday. The post gets better, and I'm not really bitter and hateful.

Fact: I was never awfully fond of him. Initially, his inability to really express himself in english put a damper on the possibility of me liking him as a lecturer, and his subsequent displays of incompetence in understanding what anyone else is saying clinched a vague sense of dislike towards him. Normally, I can overlook this and we got along pretty well. My lack of experience with this university's procedures and previous classes seemed to put him off a little, but he was generally reasonable. Today, though, he was in a rotten mood. He snapped at everyone who came in late, which he doesn't do when it's a proper lab and time actually matters, and was generally irate and condescending. When he collected our lab reports, he grumbled over my lack of staple. A whole one lab report of mine has been stapled, and that was done by the library staff when we did that weird remote turn-in thing. I put my name on every page, and it's never been a problem before. I'm also kind of trying this thing where I don't spend money, so I haven't bought a stapler that I will just have to leave here because I already have one in my desk in Pasco. I was in a pretty good mood, and commented that I didn't have a stapler. 

"Buy one." Instantly, I was on the offensive. I went from a little nervous about how short my report was to stiff and speechless with rage in about a heartbeat. It was like that time in high school when I was literally shaking with fury when some smug little middle schooler punk insulted a friend who was doing something right. I don't usually get the urge to "slap that smug little look off your (demi-or-straight up-swearword) face". In fact, I think this has happened about twice in my whole life now (in real life; that scene in King Arthur where the bishop tells Arthur to bring his men home if he wants them to get their freedom doesn't really count because it was designed to do that to people; I looked for a video clip on youtube but couldn't find it). Twenty one years is kind of a long period of time to have something happen only twice. I don't really know why the impossible little frenchman brought this out in me today over something as stupid as a stapler. I know I respond poorly to insult and the "wrong" tone of voice, and, on occasion, an irate eyebrow twitch in my direction, but I can't help myself when it sneaks up on me. I'm not proud.

I quickly determined that I was unlikely to get out early because the impossible frenchman explains in great detail every single aspect of some questions (he actually went into the properties of light when explaining spectroscopy, using terrible metaphors and analogies. It was worse than Dr. Gårdestig the swedish physics professor; he started off with a random green beach to talk about waves. I still don't know where the beach came into it. His accent made it slightly hilarious (because the long e sound gets kind of turned into a short i sound, haha, he said a dirty word), but not funny enough to excuse the fact that this isn't helping anyone.) while skipping over others completely. One of the questions involved an equation that we'd never seen before, which was... messed up. Unless they're handing out an equations sheet, I don't want to see this nonsense on an exam. We haven't used this ever before, so don't put it on the exam. kthnxbai. 

He'd been slipping in composure throughout the slightly too long time that we were given to work on select questions, but he lost it about two questions in. Two guys didn't seem to be paying attention (was anyone?) to his oddly detailed and unhelpful explanation, so he "asked" if they wanted to leave. Of course they wanted to leave. Everyone did. We'd all been plotting it every time he walked out of the room, which he did quite a lot. In any case, the atmosphere in the room was awkward and chilly as Adam (not from my flat) and Jedward walked out rather triumphantly (although they still looked a little embarrassed; getting kicked out of class gets kind of old after grade school). This didn't stop Freya, who was giving me a ride home, from trying to talk to the girls at the end of the bench. Things got more and more awkward as the class dragged on. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. War was being declared on the impossible frenchman, who should have followed his country's historical precedent and surrendered. I did get a hint on how enzymes work, although I need to look that up sometime, but that was all that I gained from the class. That, and a growing sense of a firm dislike for the impossible frenchman, since the incredible rage and desire to actually inflict harm on someone else subsided pretty quickly. No more vague irritation (he really is the worst at explaining anything at all, and never seems to get when someone has decided that the topic would be best pursued with someone —anyone— else. All he does then is ask repeatedly "Do you understand" (left the question mark off on purpose; he doesn't really use it) until you give up on noncommittal grunting because you hate to lie and finally say "YES! I understand, and I really have to go now, I'm late for something, anything, please let me leave now." Sorry about the long parenthetical; I'll just end the "No more vague irritation" sentence now.). 

Another thing. Freya is the type of person who will interrupt boldly as a self-preservation and diversionary tactic. If she's bored, she just starts talking, whether over the person who's talking to her or to a person who's talking to someone else. She tried to save me from the frenchman last week when I was trying to figure out why I couldn't take an exam early, but nothing stops him when he's on a roll. In light of this, it's not surprising that she gave up listening to the frenchman in favour of talking to the girls at the end of the bench, although I was, at the time, a little surprised because the frenchman had just cracked down on Adam and Jedward talking. This is when I really started avoiding eye contact with everyone. I'm pretty passive aggressive; I'd have stayed to the end of the class no matter how irritating his voice was. Besides, he had already been short with me regarding the staples (and it still makes me angry a day later, wow), and I didn't want to make things worse, especially after I had almost inadvertently insulted his teaching style in a lab report and gotten a 0 on that particular section. It wasn't that bad, and the instructions really were scattered. How else was I supposed to explain the fact that our enzyme was probably cold because he just explained here and there that you were supposed to warm it up for a bit, and my lab partner for the day didn't hear it because she was already at the front getting the enzyme off the ice? It's not my fault that he's the worst at explaining. However, I was beginning to think that the animosity was not one sided, and that, like my former podmate hating me over the hair in the shower, he hated me for the lack of staples. I didn't want to make things worse, but it might have been too late. Frankly, I get the sneaky suspicion that he doesn't like any of us. Fact: no one in the class likes him, so it's unsurprising that he'd pick up on the low-level animosity at some point. We've tested this in karate, and multiple people directing emotion at someone does tend to affect the target. I was, in any case, on damage control, trying to make as few enemies as possible.

Freya, however, was going nuts. She hadn't eaten much all day, preferring to sleep over eating breakfast, and, as mood and gastrointestinal happiness levels are related, she was in a pretty foul mood. When the frenchman insisted on a break over the class's protestations that we'd rather power through the very last question and then be done, we made an attempt to sneak out. I do say we, because I wanted my ride and I'd already put my bag with my computer in her car. Impossible frenchman kept coming back into the room, though, and he asked Freya if she was going somewhere. 

I sensed danger, and kept my head down. Freya was all the way gone, though. She was hungry, she was cranky, she was tired, and she was leaving. And my bag was in her car, so I was leaving when she left. 

She replied that she was leaving, yes. She said something about her head and started around the frenchman, who had accosted her on his way in and her way out. I didn't see what he did, but I hope he didn't turn around when I hurried out the door behind Freya. I'm still a little nervous about how this will affect my grades. We signed the register, though, and he marked us down on some sort of personal register, so I don't think I can be counted as absent from lab. I'll be needing to keep my head down, though. No more skipping lectures, and I really need to study up on biochemistry stuff that will be on the exam in spite of never being in a lecture. Yes, I'm bitter about that. I'm trying not to be bitter at people, because I know myself, but I can be bitter about poorly constructed exams.

Friday! Friday! No more Thursday! If you skipped Thursday (and especially if you didn't), PICTURES!

Adam (from my flat, not the one who got kicked out of lab) had promised a week ago to take a few of us (limited by car space) to Northumberland. In the end, it was just Jessi, Felicity (whitworth senior art major from Clarkston, WA who lives next door who I had never even seen before coming to Sunderland), and me. 

We went through a tunnel under a river. Jessi saw a van coming straight at us on a skinny road and reacted by yelling "CAR! big!" This became something of a meme for us; why did she try to describe it? "Car! Big! Green!" "Car! Big! ...Uh, it has a white top!" (this was followed by "I was panicking even more because I couldn't tell if it was blue or white!"). Jessi was a pretty good sport about it. 

We picked up Adam's dog Lilligan (it always sounds like he's saying "Lillian") on the way to a castle with a beach. She's a jack russell terrier, which Adam had mentioned in his attempts to describe how hyper she gets, but she's also long-haired, which Adam didn't mention. I was expecting a dog that looked like wishbone, but she looks nothing like that unless she's wet. 

She does get very hyper. Adam's descriptions were a little bit over-the-top, but I think that he's trying to get himself out of the centre of discussion. Two of our favourite topics as a flat are Adam's dog and Adam's mum, one of whom he is very fond and one of whom he is rather embarrassed. I think he's out of danger from demands that we meet his mum thanks to introducing us to his dog. I think that it's because he's the only one of us whose dog and family are in driving range. Most of us feel that his mum would be pretty cool to meet, but Adam steadfastly refuses to accept this. This conversation regarding Adam's imitation of Lilligan happened, however, that really highlighted his feelings on his mum: 

Jessi: "It was hilarious!"

Adam: "I don't remember this at all."

Me: "You were trying to demonstrate how terrifying she is." 

Adam: "Are we talking about my mum now?"

Felicity: "I am so glad that that segue just happened." 

After getting Lilligan, we headed for the coast and castle Bamburgh, which took a surprisingly long time. When we finally got there, though, it was well worth it.

This is the Bamburgh castle.

There were a whole bunch of island-y things out in the North Sea. We never really figured out what was on them, except probably lots of birds.

The sky was really pretty, but my camera doesn't like doing cool sky pictures.

I had some striking memories of sand traps at golf courses as we tried to find the beach.

It was quite imposing.

Lilligan. She was moving pretty fast.

Pretty sky, pretty landscape.

Gorgeous sky, nice silhouette 

Beach! Finally... 

Lilligan had this thing where she would set her stick down, decide that it was buried, and start digging. The problem with this was that she kind of went backwards with the force of her digging.

It was a very clean beach. 

Imposing castle silhouette! And Adam's head in the front left corner there.

We all wrote our names in the sand and made fun of Adam's handwriting.

Jessi had fun with the dog.

Jessi was probably more fun to watch than the dog, actually.

That backwards digging thing again.

And the stick was in a tide puddle.

More castle silhouette!

We decided to storm the castle, but felt that this wasn't the best way to go.

Adam, Jessi, Felicity in front of Bamburgh village

Not storming on this side, either.

We saw a secret staircase and decided to climb it.

See that dark slit-like thing on the wall? That's where the stairs ended. There's a gate and a lot of pigeon poo in there.

I'm not sure why it has a fence around it, but it's a cool rock...

I think we tried to hop this part of the fence. We failed.

Behind the gates? Rubbish bins. Such a fancy enclosure...

In spite of our valiant attempts to scale fences and sneakily climb likely-looking walls, all the gates were locked and all the walls were either impossible for us to climb or were guarded by sneaky piles of grass clippings. After we finally gave up due to not wanting to get any more nature all over us, Jessi drove Adam's car for a while. We were doing pretty well until Adam yelled that she was turning into the wrong lane while she was turning (she wasn't), but she recovered pretty well. Felicity and I didn't get to drive because we don't know how to drive manuals. After dropping Lilligan back with Adam's sister, we went and had dinner at the pub in his hometown. The food was kind of weird, but we experienced some cultural things, like "pie" means "food with puff pastry set on top" and custard is something you pour over your food. Felicity also gave Adam some tips on how to pick up girls with his accent while he's in Maryland.

When we got home, this greeted us.

"Oh, and there's a huge spider there, if you haven't seen it."

I thought Adam was being mean to Jessi, who was up on top of the chairs on the other side of the room by the time he finished saying "spider", but it really was there.

Hence. Jessi hates spiders.

Don't worry, I killed it. Tomorrow we're going to a football match, so I'll have a new post for that.