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.

Helpfulness and Cultural Sensitivity — Tuesday 8 November to Friday 11 November

Tuesday was the "be helpful" day. I started off by turning the bin back over after SOMEONE (flo, conor, felicity, and maybe adam) turned everything in the kitchen over. Chairs? Check. Stools? Check. Theme night bottles on the windowsill? Check. Speakers? Check. Microwave? Check. Coffee table? Check. Toaster? Check. Electric kettle? Check. Bin? Check. Recycling bag? Check. All the papers on the bulletin board? Check. The random hairspray bottle we have on the counter? Check. The basil and parsley plants? Check. My cup of dried out, perfectly good white tea leaves and a tea ball? Check.
I was impressed, if peeved. I turned the bin over, since I had to throw my teabag away.

Chairs and coffee table. Bob, significantly, was not turned upside down.

Stools.

Speakers, and the weird Christmas moose.

Microwave, kettle, toaster. The kettle still had water in it...

The bin hadn't been turned over yet when I took the pictures.

They had only turned one paper over, but all the others got turned over when they got back.

We actually had someone come in from the office and ask us to turn our furniture back over. Apparently it's a safety hazard.
Since it was raining in an irritably misty fashion, I decided that I needed a head covering. The high volume of practicing muslims on campus makes me leery of wrapping a scarf around my head, I didn't feel like wearing the hat I did bring, and I don't have anything with a hood that I would wear outside my own flat. Besides, hoods are difficult with my hair. They just don't like each other. I had planned to meet Freya, the girl who I'd helped monday, on tuesday afternoon, so I went to the library, got a book to read for history seminar, perfected my lab report, and went to H&M for a hat, all between 10:30 and 12:00.
I got a call from Freya (the lab report girl) as I was heading back from H&M. The guy with the neckbeard from biochem's computer had crashed, and could I email him a word document so he could redo his entire lab report? Thanks.
I would never leave a fellow biochemist in the lurch, especially one who is as baffled by the lack of mathematical education in this country as I am, and especially one with such an impressive neckbeard.
History lecture was the most boring thing. Usually, there's something that can be concluded from the historical records. Today? Nothing. We could only conclude that we really don't know what went on with literacy and education in early modern england, but first we had to go over what we might possibly conclude, and why it was wrong.
The high point was when a random australian who sounded oddly american came in and excitedly told us about a "summer abroad volunteer" thing. Delphine, the french lecturer who is also the least annoying lecturer I've had so far, looked a little peeved when she poked her head into the room, but allowed her to come in and bounce off the walls. There was a theory that she was some random street person who made up some fliers and put on an australian accent to mess with people.
The afternoon was consumed by biochemistry. Freya had just had a death in the family, so she decided to push her due date back while getting as much done as possible, but I had to figure out the library turn-in system. It was pretty easy; you just need your name, student number, module leader's name, date the assignment is due, date it was assigned, module name, module code, and the assignment title. I still felt pretty accomplished when I turned it in.
When I got home, I made crepes. I will never let a crepe tuesday pass me by. I still haven't quite figured out the way that the hob (stove) heats, because sometimes, 6 isn't hot enough, and other times, 4 is too hot. Whatever. The crepes were pretty good; I suspect that the few that Jessi didn't eat have either been hidden or devoured by the party downstairs.
I've been having trouble getting to sleep because there's literature assignment all over my bed making me feel guilty and there's thumping music downstairs.
Funny story. I got an email from whitworth a while ago with the registration schedule. I was all set to register at 3PM Wednesday, when I remembered the time zone thing. Panicked, I tried to remember when 3 PM pacific time was in london time, and convinced myself that it was at crazy early in the morning. No, it's not. It's at 11PM london time. I reset my google calendar, discovering a cool time zone feature along the way.

Wednesday, I really didn't want to go to class. I got to bed late on tuesday night (stupid lit assignment), and I had slept well but short. It was freezing outside my covers because I think Jessi opened the window when she got home, why I don't know. In any case, she didn't close it. After closing the window around 7, I went back to sleep until 7:45, when my first alarm went off. I then slept intermittently around my alarms, which I only seem to be able to turn all the way off when I'm still asleep. I seriously considered sleeping through my seminar, seeing as the sky looked bleak. It sounded like a good idea, and a perfectly valid reason, until I considered the fact that my professor can actually tell if I skip that class. I regretfully dragged myself out of bed.
After class, I helped Freya (whose name is actually spelled Freeha, but she hates that spelling and tells everyone "Freya" to simplify things, which sounds like my "I'm from oregon" modus operandi for identification here) with her lab report. I was starting to feel a bit used, but in the long run I'd rather feel used than mean.
I won at registration, and I got into almost everything that I'd planned to take. I resigned myself to intro to public speaking instead of interpersonal comm, and got a fitness-wellness gen-ed in the form of water aerobics (held monday, wednesday, and friday at 8). My next MWF class is core 250 at 10:25, so I'll have time to change and such. Win! I also got both of my 3rd year chemistry classes and their labs at reasonable times, and I think my core d-group is with a cool leader. I also have karate 2, which claims to have Sensei Canon (instead of the new guy that he called on to take over so he could get a new job that he liked better). I'm not getting my hopes up, but it would be awesome if he was back.

Thursday I skipped my 0900 lecture. I looked outside and it was all grey... I couldn't make myself get up. I did go to the noon part of the lecture, which was kind of interesting. I had a nerd freakout, though, when I was thinking about how small molecules of water and air are to fit inside cells and capillary electrophoresis tubes and that sort of thing. I was actually briefly claustrophobic because I was thinking about all the molecules that were completely filling the room and smashing into everything. I was in a huge room that wasn't stuffy or even that warm, with no one sitting right next to me. It was really weird.
Between seminar and lab, I called this haircut place called Sherlocks, mostly to see if they were walk-in or appointment, since I had a coupon and needed a haircut. They took walk-ins but preferred appointments, so I made one for Friday at 13:00 (1PM). The connection wasn't good, so I ended up giving my name as Anne because Raeann would have been too hard to spell. I may have also given my last name as Hudson by accident. I ended up nearly gaining a northern accent when I was giving my mobile number, the last three digits of which are 116. For some reason, my pronunciation was confusing, so I slipped from my fairly broad uh (wuhn) to more of an oo (woon). I hope I'll be able to pull this off in America. It will be nice being able to say "Washington" and having most people know that we're either there already or that I'm not talking about the capitol of the country. I'm tempted to switch to Anne anyway, just because of the wide range of spellings that I get for Raeann in America. I'll respond to it, so...
Lab was... pointless. There were only enough gels for 8 groups, which meant that one person got all the experience. Also, no one got all seven bands that we were supposed to get. Fail. I had odd flashbacks from senior year at PNNL, since that was my project for the last few weeks. I didn't actually learn to read the gels, but I was pretty good at preparing and running them.
While waiting for the gels to run (90 minutes), Freya and I went for coffee. Neckbeard tagged along, and I discovered his latent veronica capabilities. He doesn't seem to be able to stand silence. I also came up against the strangest instance of cultural insensitivity that I've ever witnessed. This could be because most white americans, especially in a study abroad situation or a university setting, tend to be really cautious about offending. Even if you think someone is dead wrong, chances are that you won't say a word.
A small amount of backstory is required for this to make sense: 1. Everyone in england smokes. Not everyone, but pretty close. There are cigarette butts everywhere.
2. Freya is pakistani, which I don't consider asian, as such, but I guess it really is. I think of asians as eastern asians (oriental is a type of rug).
Freya also smokes, and she did so on the walk to starbucks, which is right by an entrance to the bridges (so fairly visible). She commented on how awkward she feels smoking in public, because there is apparently an asian social stigma against asian girls who smoke in public. It's not considered a very, um, moral thing to do. Neckbeard, who is bulgarian, flipped out. He thought it was ridiculous, which it kind of is (let's face it, every culture has something that another culture considers ridiculous embedded in it), but he also thought that it was somehow offensive, and kept insisting that she didn't have to be sneaky about smoking. She obviously didn't want to be seen as a person of loose character by other asians, and kept trying to change the subject while maintaining that she doesn't like smoking in public.
The only thing I can really think to compare it to is this. It's as if someone moved to a place where general opinion was that underwear is all you need. Naturally, most (sober) people from the first world, at least, think that pants are also required. They're going to keep wearing pants because they're just not comfortable without them. Then someone who doesn't think pants are necessary comes up and belittles their insistence on wearing pants over their underwear. No one else in that society cares if they wear pants, and no one has really commented on it to date because it's not that big of a deal, but this local makes a huge deal out of it. Of course the pants-wearer is going to keep wearing pants.
Of course Freya won't just start smoking in public.
Geh. It rather soured the afternoon. Plus, neckbeard doesn't know how to shut up, seriously.
After having a frustrating discussion with the impossible little frenchman about exams, I went home and flopped into the kitchen, where I stayed for a few hours. It was very relaxing, not needing to do anything.

So, exams? Biochemistry modules all have their exams in june. Even the fall semester modules. Even the fall semester modules that end in december.
What.
And the exams are all accredited, so I can't have them just write up a slightly revised version that I can't pass along to my classmates to their benefit unless I managed to get the whole biomedical sciences department to back me on wanting exams in january.
Unlikely. And I'm probably not going to be able to just write an essay. Looks like I might have to go to a british embassy or consulate, where I am, in essence, on british soil, and sit the accredited exam five months after the course finished. I don't know what this means for my credits, and I'm not sure if I can choose to just not transfer them. I'm trying to not stress about it right now, since I still have an essay due in less than a week that I still haven't really started.
Of course, if my credits won't transfer... I have to wait until monday for a lot of things, like getting the exam schedule so I can look into going to london at the end of January, setting up a meeting with the ISEP lady here, and call iceland air to move my ticket up about a week. I'm thinking I might just go to London and leave from there, although the luggage situation would be a little tricky. I don't want to take what will likely end up being three suitcases and my bag on what will probably be the megabus, but possibly a train.
We'll see.

Friday I slept in until almost noon, for the win, and then went to get a haircut. Jessi came with me to get out of the flat and do some gift shopping, and Josie came to get a travel bag for Bob Diddyfish, who has been the subject of a few inquiries by the university. I was a little nervous about the haircut, since the plan was to get a rather dramatic shortening, but it ended well. I'm still in the confused stage between "My hair looks awesome!" and "Oh, it's so short! Where did it go?"
It's pretty short around my face, which is throwing me off when I try to move it out of the way of food or something because grabbing the ends means brushing it away from my face instead of tossing a lock over my shoulder. Lunch was around 14:30, and was obtained at Fatso's, which has jacket (baked) potatoes, soups, and salads. Possibly also sandwiches. I got a jacket potato, which sounds cooler than baked potato, with cheese and a smallish salad that came with it. We ate at Murray Library, where we ran into Flo, who'd just come from his first day at Liebherr, where he will pretty much be a translator between the Sunderland branch and the main corporation in Austria, which apparently refuses to speak english to its english branches.
When we got back, I got all my books for my lit assignment out, then fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was about to head downstairs for dinner when Jessi hurriedly informed me that Adam was about to go to Asda, and did I need anything?
Yes. I decided to use next week's food budget to stock up a bit, and as a result, I shan't be getting anything from Aldi next week. When I run out of milk, I'm out until the week after. Of course, I can just use everyone else's until then, so I'm not worried. I got lots and lots of fresh fruit, which was exciting, and a new container of flour for crepes. I may have gone overboard on the fruit juices and yogurts (sometimes pronounced yaw-gurts). I'm going to miss hazelnut yogurt a lot when I go back home.
I am a bit worried about the going back home situation, but I'm kind of trying to forget that over the weekend. I need to focus on writing that thrice-accursed assignment.