Clanny House

Here it is, folks — the long-awaited Clanny House post.

Well, maybe not long-awaited, but it was definitely promised as a result of much hinting by my parents that they don't really know much about my humble abode.

This is the view from the doorway of block 1 flat 1, which we share with flat 2. 

The other side of the parking lot. These are pretty typical british cars, and the parking lot is usually about this full. It's a huge switch from Whitworth, where you have to be extremely lucky to get a parking space in the same zip code as your room. 

Block 1, in its entirety.

Every door gets a sign.

My flat's sign, shared with flat 2.

There are more flats than this in block 1, but I ran out of battery in my camera. There are hundreds of rooms, throughout Clanny, though.

Like so. There are at least 11 blocks.

The entrance (shared between flat one and two). 

Artsy? I don't think I really can be artsy with my camera. I was just going for imposing.

Inside the entrance: The fire escape stairs and our door, which gets fliers stuck on it sometimes.

Mail slot! So far, I've got a voter registration form.

Ground floor of flat one. "Store", the closet with no key that I suspect holds cleaning supplies straight ahead, room 1 on the right and the lounge on the left.

The phone that the cleaning lady answers, I think.

I don't know what this phone is for.

Things I'm not supposed to touch.

Secret storage space! Actually, we're not allowed to use it.

It's probably a fire hazard, but I think it'd be great for umbrellas and the vacuum. 

Self-explanatory, although it also houses the kitchen. This provides some misunderstanding, since the "kitchen door" is supposed to be kept shut to prevent the smoke alarms going off, but there is in fact no door between kitchen and lounge. 

Lounge. Our "couch" is three chairs next to each other, and we also have a coffee table and four stools.

Weird stools. I always sit on them backwards or sideways and then fall off when I try to put my feet up.

Refrigerators! The fridge part is on top and the freezer is on the bottom. It took me a bit to get used to that.

We hadn't done the dishes for a few days when I took the picture. We kind of have cycles of piling up the dishes and then frantically cleaning ALL THE THINGS! (from hyperbole and a half, occasionally profane but always hilarious)

Stove, grill, oven. Grill on top, door opens down. Oven underneath, door swings open. Oven is too skinny to hold the grill's cooking tray. Adam calls the stove "the hob".

A typical counter scene.

That's Adam's speaker/ipod dock thing. It has some faulty wiring somewhere, but it's better than nothing.

James the vacuum, who currently lives just inside the lounge, where he trips everyone up. This is why he should live under the stairs, where he is accessible but out of the way.

Up, up, up the stairs we go...

We interrupt your climb up the stairs to bring you... THE WINDOW. We have two stairwell windows, just like all the other flats. My floor doesn't get one, and the lack of outdoor light makes the miniature landing thing rather depressing.

The "down" view isn't that impressive, since we just have the beer bottle that a previous resident left and the broken wooden thing. The roof is for what I believe is something of a shed for the flat that we can't actually access. I think that all the flats have them, although I have not personally verified this.

I think this is the second floor, which houses the shower that mostly the girls use. I don't know about the guy who lives on the second floor, but the guys who live on the fourth floor use the shower that's up there.

This is why there is no shower on the first and third floors: the shower takes up a lot of space.

This is the bathroom, which houses only the apparatus for bathing.

See? Bath. The shower is operated by a little white box with some dials on it for temperature and intensity. The water has to be turned on for each bathroom.

Up, up, up. The stairs are really steep, but not too long.

This is from the top (fourth) floor looking down between the railings.

I think this is a better picture.

The stairs seem steeper going down.

I think this is actually the second floor, but it looks exactly the same as the third floor when you come around the turn in the stairs.

Not my room, but the best way for me to tell if I'm on the right floor yet, i.e. the first thing I see when I  come around the turn.

Another clue. I think this may actually be the only fire escape door in the flat that's not on the ground floor.

The room with the toilet in it, here labeled "WC" for water closet.

It's a very closety sort of room on all floors.

My room! It's a nice sight after a long day.

Not too messy, even. My bed is the one by the window with the classy duvet cover. White and black will always be in style, and they go with everything. Jessi actually just upgraded from the awful bedding pack duvet cover (see my first, or maybe second post for my awful duvet cover) to a pink Glee cover (it's a little pinker than in the picture).
The lighting outside is pretty cool as well. I hadn't noticed that before.

I almost forgot the Ginger Clanny House Cat! 

I got this picture from his facebook profile; I didn't actually take it. 

There it is, Clanny House as far as I'm concerned. I'm extremely fond of it, since it quickly joined the ranks of my homes (like my previous dorm rooms and pretty much anywhere that I stay for over a week, now that I think about it) — it's become a place that signifies safety, warmth, and friendship. Also, I really enjoy doing my own cooking. The only time I don't is when I'm on campus and have to spend at least £2 for a decent meal with a drink instead of just eating something I already paid for and drinking juice that I already bought for way cheaper than I can get anything on campus. Ah, well, c'est la vie (in an awful american accent. My accent has been bothering me lately, to be honest...). Oh, and  I don't like having to cook when I'm sick, but then again, I don't like going to the cafeteria for some toast and overly sweet cranberry juice, either. Besides, my flatmates are all really nice and would cook for me if I needed that much help. They've already offered.

The Adventures Begin

Hello, readers!
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?

(Edited on 23 May 2011)