Jackie I'm Kidding!

I have started buying weekly passes to the tube because it encourages me to do more sightseeing as well as saves me quite a bit of money.  So this week  I got to go and see a lot of stuff.  Tuesday Paul, Andreas and I went to 
St. Paul's Cathedral (which is the first picture) it's absolutely beautiful,
and the inside is absolutely amazing.  I wish that you could take pictures inside, but alas, you can't.  It's so intricate, all of the domes are speckled with gold and so wonderful.  After going there Paul and I crossed the Millenium Bridge and went to the Tate Modern Museum and saw some fantastic work by Picasso among others.  When we got home we were 
told by Becky and Emma (who's in the next picture) that it was 
PANCAKE DAY!  So Emma made pancakes and I, being the piggy that I am, had 5 (3 with nutella 2 with sugar and lemon).  They were delicious!  
Wednesday I stayed in like a good girl and did homework.  Thursday 
I came back from class and Andreas and I decided to go to the Imperial 
War Museum, which was absolutely amazing as well.  (and just like the 
Tate and St. Paul's, it was totally free!)  So we went through the Blitz 
experience among other things, but my favorite was the propaganda 
exhibit.  Some of the posters, especially those from Germany during 
WWII were fascinating and really weird.  A lot of weird demons and 
night time creatures as well as really odd slogans on some of the english 
posters. The last two pictures are from the Imperial War Museum one 
of the museum itself and the other of me with a piece of the Berlin Wall.   



     

I Don't Know Nuffing

     I think I'll just pick up where I left off.  After the hospital incident things calmed down for a bit, we had a pretty low key week (much different than I anticipated, but very welcome).  Well, I suppose it was just as low key as you might expect, you know, being an American in London and all.  Monday night we went into central London for what we thought was going to be a fairly quiet night at this bar Tiger Tiger (rather than staying in Wood Green we thought we'd just venture to a bar instead) and it turned out to be much more of a loud, club atmosphere and we ended up dancing all night.  No complaints though because we had an absolute blast, at the end of the night the people at the bar started giving away free hats, we had quite a good time with that and then a bit of an adventure getting home as Jenni and Katie got lost on their way to the bus and we had to find them, not knowing where they were.  The picture is of Becky, me, Chris and Elena after the club in our sweet hats.  

Tuesday night Chris, Jenni and I went back to KoKo to watch a band, Stars, perform.  They were absolutely stunning and the vibe was very calm and soothing.  Wednesday I had class, studied most of the day and then Liz and I decided to be productive with our study breaks and traveled to Trafalgar Square to the National Gallery and spent a few hours looking around.  I was in absolute awe for two hours, first when I saw Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks, which is monumental and absolutely beautiful.  The second time was when we got to the modern art and I walked into a room that was half dedicated to the work of Vincent Van Gogh.  The way he uses color mesmerizes me every time, I think that that room will become my happy place while I am here (most of the museums, including this one, are free so no sweat off my back if I want to go sit for a bit!).  Also, seeing some of Georges Seurat's work up close is always really interesting to examine, he invented pointillism so to first look at his work, and then to look at the work of a bunch of amazing people who imitated his style was very interesting.

     Thursday night was a quiet night in with some of my favorite people, Liz, Paul and Chris.  We really just spent some time hanging out around our place.  Friday night was the Riverboat Disaster (which actually ended up being quite fun).  We walked onto the boat after about an hour long bus ride (which was late picking us up by about 45 minutes) and stepped into what we referred to as Little India (we're terrible).  For a bit we all felt very much like we'd like to walk off the boat while we still could, but stayed out of obligation to our £10.  It turned into a night full of memories: we had our own little karaoke session on the dance floor to Journey, Andreas was molested by two drunk girls who thought he danced funny, and I was propositioned to the seaside by an Indian gentleman who made it a point to mention that he could come pick me up in his spacious and comfortable Lexus (which he bought because he works for BT and makes VERY good money for his age... apparently I look like a gold digger?) anyway, after talking for, well it was under 5 minutes, he said "what are you doing tomorrow?" to which I (being sick still) responded "sleeping" "well how about I come pick you up in my Lexus at 8 and take you with me to the seaside for a couple of days," to which I so smoothly responded "I would, but I'll be busy... sleeping."  Andreas came outside looking for me (knowing I'd probably be trapped by some random dude) and I grabbed his leg and shouted "HEY BABE!!!!" and he swept me away like any good stand in boyfriend would.  This picture is of Erica, Andreas, Chris, Paul, Liz and I on the boat.  The next picture is the view from the Thames of the Houses of Parliament and, of course, Big Ben.
     Saturday we spent the day in Notting Hill at Portobello Market.  I got 3 amazing scarves and two pairs of vintage shoes which I am super in love with.  Unfortunately I only managed to talk the woman down £5 so it was £35 for two pair, but my justification was that number 1 I'm in London and number 2 I'm SUCH a sucker for vintage shoes when I find good ones.  They are both sassy little pumps, one pair is a really great blue and the other is black, both are leather and have detailing around the front.  After shopping we stuffed ourselves with our first great Indian meal at this place called Khan's in Notting Hill.  It was absolutely delicious.

     Today was another fantastic day, I slept in, did some reading and then headed into central with Erica and Ben to make a trip to Borders and then eat lunch at this nice little cafe, baguettes and tea... so delicious.  We came back thinking we weren't doing anything tonight and found out that plans had been made to go watch the Super Bowl at a pub in central that had no cover charge!  We seriously had the best time rooting for the Giants, such a good game.  The only sad thing was that we didn't get the commercials (BOOOOO!)  It was Becky's first experience with American Football so that was lovely, her first question was "why do they call it a bowl?"  This picture is of Becky, Liz, me, Erica, Barclee, Andreas, Paul and Ben (who you really can't see in the bottom right corner).  It was wonderful, we ate staple American dishes (nachos and buffalo wings) and drank beer, so cliche.  We even stood when they played the national anthem with our hands over our hearts, I'm sure no one knew where we were from.  Oh man, you all should have seen Ben's face when New England scored that last touchdown, he looked SOOOO pissed!  It was fantastic, I have a picture (but it takes so long to load them on here!)  and then Erica was shocked when the Giants came back and won it, so much rubbing in the faces happened.  
     More travel plans have been booked as of tonight.  We have what is called "reading week" in mid February so some of us girls, Becky, me, Erica and Liz are taking a trip to Barcelona from the 16th to the 20th of February.  We booked it tonight so yahoo for Spain!!  We're all so excited and Becky has been there before so she knows a lot of wonderful places we can go.  We've already discussed going to the Salvador Dali museum (and some of you know how much that excites me!!!).  Man, I feel like so many wonderful things happened within all of these experiences, usually I feel pretty confident that I've relayed the best parts to all of you.  This week I'm not so sure, which makes me a bit sad.  It might be due to the fact that it's 5:21 am here at the moment (watching the Super Bowl 8 hours ahead will do that to you... especially when the tube is closed and you have to take a bus home).  The things we do for America.

Love and miss all of you!

UNFORGIVABLE!

     This last week was jam packed with a whole lot of interesting experiences.  I'll give you the highlights because there's just way too much!  Tuesday night was the epitome of a train wreck here in the halls, who knew college could be so dramatic?!  So the synopsis goes like this: Heath Ledger died; Andreas got too drunk to get to the club so he got off the tube mid-journey and stumbled himself home; Barclee forgot her id and couldn't get in once we got to the club; at the club I went outside with some people and, because the bouncer was a pooper, I was not let back in, partly because I was saucy (and I swear it was partly because I was wearing the worst shoes ever that I trip in stone cold sober, let alone after having some drinks in me...but maybe that's just me trying to make excuses, hehe) so he wouldn't let me back in so Paul and I left; got some chinese food with Paul and got back to the halls only to realize my keys were in Becky's purse so I slept in Paul's bed, he on the floor; woke up in the middle of the night to people yelling at each other in the stairwell; few minutes later there are more people yelling because one of the Greek girls, Vivian, got her door superglued shut and had to hammer a hole through her door to open it; Jenni got left on a bus by herself super late at night and the result was pretty much everyone had a crappy night and an even crappier morning.  I woke up feeling as if someone had punched me in the nose and broke it because I was SO stuffed up, basically I was slightly sick until the middle of that night when my body attacked itself and decided it hated me.  Whew, RIDICULOUS!  SO, that night was a huge adventure, we all just laughed about how ridiculous it was. (okay, so it sounds dramatic, but what's studying abroad without a few crazy adventures, right?)

     Moving on, Thursday night one of the girls on the third floor, Jo, decided she wanted to have a Spice Girls party, so we all got dressed up like spice girls and went to the party.  I made my best attempt at becoming the white version of Scary Spice, Liz was Posh (and a very good one at that) and the boys dressed like various members of boy bands.  The picture is Liz, Paul, and Andreas in the back, and me and Chris in the front (if you saw the full body shot, you'd see I'm wearing knee socks).  needless to say... PHOTOSHOOT!  So we went upstairs and had a grand ol' time with the girls upstairs listening to nothing but Spice Girls music for hours.

     Friday night we went to the student union where they were having a little dance of sorts, felt like we were at a jr. high dance so we didn't stay long.  On our way back to the halls we saw some of the Brits: Matt, Tom, Zainib and Lloyd, who were all heading to KoKo to go dancing.  We, of course, decided to go along, well, it was a lot to get in and we didn't really have a good time (we being the Americans, the Brits had a great time somewhere else in the venue, which is huge) so we left.  We found our bus but it was leaving so we all ran (and I mean, we sprinted) after this bus to the next stop (which was kind of far) and finally made it there (me being ill, as I was, was successful in reaching said bus) and so we hopped on and headed home.  Funny thing about that is that at some point the bus "terminated," well we were nowhere near home, why? you might ask, because we took the bus to the end of the line in the entirely wrong direction!  Stupid Americans!  So we had to find another one going the right way and took about another hour to get home, it was hilarious.  By the end we were all starving and so we went to find food.  Well, at home this usually means Del Taco or some other cheap Mexican food, here we have all night Kebab places (seriously, delicious and way cheap), so all the boys got kebabs and I got the largest and most delicious hummus and pita bread of my life.  This little piece of heaven solidified how much I love it here, cheap hummus and pita bread on every corner? I'M IN!

     Next night we all wanted a really lazy day so we stayed home pretty much all day, got super bad cabin fever after watching Knocked Up on my lap top and went for a walk.  We came back and had an early night (which was great for me as I was STILL sick!)  Sunday we were determined to get out so we went to one of the little outdoor weekend markets, kind of like swap meets and oogled at the delicious pastries an such that they had to offer, I wanted to buy a scarf but it was £5 and I was feeling exceedingly cheap that day.  Afterwards we headed to Harrods (exceedingly cheap?  Harrods is JUST where I want to be!) and Liz and I picked out some hideous dresses for each other to try on, a sample of which you can find below.  Aren't we cute?!  We walked so much this day, which was really good for us all, I bought some delicious dark chocolate covered coffee beans and we headed out (or rather, got kicked out because they were closed).  I, like a good girl, went to bed early so I could get up to finally go to a doctor.
     Funny story about the doctors here, I can't see them!  So before I left the states everyone told me I absolutely did not need a visa to be here, which, in those words, is technically true.  However, no one told me that once I got here I could do pretty much nothing except exist in this country without it.  All residents are entitled to free health care, however, you must prove that you intend (key word, because if I had a visa it would show that my INTENTION was to be here) to be here for more than 6 months.  I don't have that so I get nothing.  I spent my morning searching for a doctor that would see me and realized I'd have to go to a walk in at the hospital which I thought would cost me upwards of £100 but turned out it only cost me £25 (don't go crazy, I wasn't about to see a doctor for that much, my cheap butt would sooner die).  So I see the doctor for what I'm sure (as usual) is going to be a severe sinus infection and she tells me it's a severe viral infection and she tried to hand me a box of ibuprofen for my precious £25, NO EFFING WAY!  So she leaves to go get me the medication and I turned to Liz (who was gracious enough to come with me) and said "watch this, I'm turning on the waterworks and the vocals and I'll get what I want," because I'm just that big of an ass.  So she came back and I said, "so what happens if this doesn't work?" (she said she was "pretty sure" I had a viral infection) and she said I'd have to come back for antibiotics and pay all over again, to which I so sweetly responded "so you're telling me that if this shit doesn't work I have to come back and pay again? I don't have a job, I couldn't afford to come the first time!" and she got SO pissed!  she pointed to the medication and said "THIS?!  This is not shit!  This is medication, this is not shit!  Did you see the sign outside?  I don't need to take your abuse, I can call security and make them escort you out!" and I said "well this is ridiculous, when I came to this country I thought I had free health care and now you want me to pay £25 pounds to walk away with ibuprofen? I DON'T THINK SO!" So I kept yelling and she, of course, finally gave me the antibiotics I wanted and told me, as I left that I "need to behave better next time."  It was fantastic.  I proceeded to go to Boots (the drug store) and buy ibuprofen for 99p (I figure she knows what she's talking about and I'll try the decongestant first and if that doesn't work, at least I don't have to pay again to get the antibiotics and if not, I have them for next time... I'm so resourceful!).  

     After 10 days of being sick I'm finally feeling better, I have a busy week ahead of me, I'm seeing a band called Stars tomorrow night at KoKo, which is the place I went Friday and it was a beautiful old theatre.  Friday night is the Riverboat Disco I've been telling you all I have planned so that should be interesting and there is talk of other various clubs and such.  Somewhere in there I will be reading several novels which is always a good way to keep my feet on the ground, I love my classes, I feel like I learn so much more the way the modules are set up here than at home, much more time for discussion.

Love you and miss you all!

Ashley

The Field of Chefs

     Just got back from 3 fantastic days in Sheffield.  We arrived by train at 2 am so we pretty much went straight to sleep.  Nick (Erica's boyfriend) has an amazing student flat with 7 rooms in it.  It is right down the street from the Uni in Sheffield (which is also beautiful).  I'm quite jealous of their comfy accommodations compared to my little cell block.  Some of his roommates were out of town for the weekend so Liz and I got quiet, roomy beds all to ourselves, such wonderful nights sleep!  So Saturday we girls were on our continued mission for boots and jackets.  I found an amazing pare of boots that I didn't buy because they were £100, did find a wonderful and cheap scarf, though!  We ate at a nice little sandwich shop and went to Champs to watch the football game (Sheffield Wednesday vs Sheffield United).  Then it was off to the mall where I bought a fantastic jacket and a really cheap dress and top.  We ate dinner and went back to the flat where we met up with some of Nick's friends/roommates and headed out to a bar and then to a new club.  The picture is of us (Nick, James, Sam, Me, Erica, Craig and Liz) at a bar before the club.  Such a fun night!    

 Next day we got up and drove to the countryside where we ran in the mud after some sheep (never caught any, of course) and got a bit muddy.  It was beautiful nonetheless and this picture is of the area we walked through in Chesterfield.  Then we headed over to the town of Bakewell (which they do) where Nick went to school and had a rather unsatisfying lunch (as we were all starving) and so we decided to hit up some of the bakeries to see what we could find.  I, personally, found a toffee fudge cake that I needed (yes, needed) to buy a slice of.  It took me three sittings to finish it all, but I did it and was totally satisfied.  We came home, relaxed and went to the movies to see Dan In Real Life (sappy, but good aside from watching Dane Cook be ackward in a serious role).

     Nick's friends are super fun and hopefully I will get to go back to Sheffield before I come back home.  For now, I have a lot of reading to finish for later this week, but just so you all know, Nights at the Circus (the first book I'm tackling) is more amazing the further I get into it.  If you like a bit of fantasy with your fiction, you should definitely consider it.  Love you and miss you all!

That's How I Do... EVERYDAY!

     Too many funny things get said around here, I can hardly keep up.  I wish that I could tell them to you all and that you'd laugh as hard as I did/do, but of course, "you had to be there" would surely be the product, so I will satisfy myself by titling my blogs with nonsensical phrases that float around.  

     In other more notable news, my first week of classes if over and I'm pretty excited about the reading for all but one of them (as it always goes).  But I knew that would happen with this class because it's Renaissance Literature and I happen to be here during the poetry (versus the drama) portion of the show.  We are spending the last SIX week on Milton's Paradise Lost (which, as poems go, is about as heavy as they come, but it could be worse?  Let's tell ourselves that because I really am not a poetry person, let alone a Renaissance poetry person).  My first novel for Gender and the Postmodern is Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (which is about a woman who is half swan and travels in a carny show, I love fiction that has an element of fantasy to it!).  Literature and Otherness is probably going to be my favorite class, the professor is so far my favorite (and I have her twice!!) and the material is similar to my World Lit 3 Class (post colonial world literature) and I ate the stuff up last semester so I'm really excited about diving back into the concepts and the works and learning even more about them (starting with none other than Salman Rushdie!).  19th Century Literature is going to be a lot better than I thought (I hope).  We're starting with Charles Dicken's Great Expectations (unfortunately she cut Peter Pan from the schedule due to time).  So that's how that all goes.  Classes Wednesday through Friday is nice, school is different here in that it very much relies on the student to be self motivated, but I like that, it makes it a challenge.

     Finally, I'll be heading to Sheffield later tonight so when I come back I'm sure you all will have a lengthy blog about the whole experience.  Probably won't take my computer so I won't be skyping you this weekend, I know you're all disappointed. :)  Love and warm wishes!

Everybody say London!

     I'm not really sure where to start, so much has happened already!  I'm very much settled in at this point.  I have made a great group of American friends that you will all hear about repeatedly.  As things progress I will try to post various pictures to give you faces to go with the names (In no particular order: Ben, Andreas, Paul, Chris, Randy, Liz, Barclee, Erica, Jenni, Katy).  Most of us live in the off campus dorms at Wood Green, which is about a 30 minute tube ride from both central London and our Trent Park campus. 

     We're on a pretty international floor, which is nice; I have a guy from Cypress next door, a girl from Spain across from me and there's an Italian guy down the hall as well (to mention a few).  I expect we will meet some more Brits when school starts.       Speaking of school, I was misinformed and I actually start class tomorrow.  Here are two pictures of my campus, the first is of the Mansion, where most of my classes will be held and the second is of the view from Mansion of one of the (many) fields and the lake (which is kind of hidden behind all the shrubbery).  It's fantastic because I only have class 3 days a week, Wednesday through Friday.  Most of us only have class between those three days so the otherdays some people have internships and others will just be studying and hanging out.  I am going to do what I can to get a job because, of course, everything is so expensive here.  We're all being super cheap and eating a lot of meals at home as well as sharing a lot of things which means healthier and more money for travels (though I did do some shopping today... but let's be honest, how could I not?!)  OOOOH, on that subject, we've already planned some things!  On March 15th I, along with most of our group, will be traveling to Dublin, Ireland and spending 5 days there for St. Patrick's Day!!  We booked the flights and they were only £43 when all was said and done.  Also, this weekend Liz and I are going to meet Erica in Sheffield, which is where her boyfriend lives.  We will be there from Friday night until around Tuesday, since we don't have class until Wednesday. (okay, I feel like I'm repeating myself, hmmm, ignore me if I am!!)

     To backtrack a bit, Sunday was our bus tour of London, which was great and we saw a lot of neat sights, most of which I've seen before.  The picture is of, from left to right, Barclee, Liz, Me (duh), Chris, and Ben.  At the end they dropped us off in Covent Gardens and

 we got to walk around for about 4 hours.  We saw some street performers, which is always entertaining and ate some delicious and cheap sandwiches with the pigeons.  The woman behind me got poopied on right before we left, it was fantastic.  We did a lot of walking and wandered through the British Museum.  It's great because most of the museums in London are free.

     Yesterday we all had a very frustrating day of orientation (mine was probably the least frusterating, thank God).  Middlesex is ridiculously unorganized and screwed a lot of people's schedules up.  It is much harder to change classes here than at home.  My small issue is one that I decided to handle the old fashioned way... by doing nothing at all.  They emailed me before I left telling me I had a class conflict and that they were trading Gender and the Postmodern for Literature and Otherness... except they traded Literature in the Media with Literature and Otherness.  So I'm taking a different class than I originally thought, fortunately they are both classes I wanted to take so I'm just going to leave it.  I'm excited because I have someone from the group in each of my classes.

     Today was a very full leisure day.  We all slept in and then Chris, Liz and I took the tube to Trent Park to go for a run.  Afterwards we regrouped and Ben, Paul and I did a little exploring of our new area, more specifically to find envelopes, coffee, and tape (exciting, right?!).  We then met Liz at the tube station to head in to central London to meet up with Erica, Andreas and Jenni.  Liz and I were on a (so far unsuccessful) mission to find black boots and everyone else was just up for exploring.  We headed to Oxford Street to Primark (the UK equivalent of K-Mart) and did some excess shopping along the street, I also managed to find a UK Borders, which made me feel very at home :).  I finally got the finishing touches purchased for my re-decorating and managed to decorate my room for under £15, which is super exciting and I love the way it looks!  Liz and I shared 2 for 1 bedding, I bought a cheap shower curtain and some 99p wrapping paper and presto, bedroom!  Finally covered up the random Native American curtains, so ugly!!!

    

 

So here are before and after pictures of my bedroom.  Sorry they're kind of sloppily placed, but seriously, uploading these pictures is a bit of a pain.

Nothin But Blue Skies

     Just woke up to my second day in London and so far it has been nothing short of interesting and wonderful.  I flew with my friend Chris so that was really nice, especially when we ended up having a 3 hour delay in Chicago.  We got on the first plane and had to get back of because of some engine problems, finally got on the second plane and then it started snowing so they had to spray the plane down, we thought we'd never leave the ground!  I'm sure you all could go without hearing this (I could too...) but when am I ever short of unnecessary details?  Once on the plane Chris and I both took melatonin (gotta love it) an knocked out for most of the flight, it was a pretty turbulent flight and right in the middle the captain came on the speaker and said "everyone get in our seat and buckle up immediately, it is too dangerous for you to be walking around!" So I looked over at Chris and was sure that the captain had just induced panic on the plane but everyone was fine and we're here safely.  

     At the airport I heard what no one wants to hear from the people picking them up in a foreign country, "Ashley Liberio? We didn't know you were coming!"  AWESOME!  Again, crisis averted because Middlesex send competent people to take care of us.  After getting our welcome packet we went outside to get on our bus and to my amazement the sun was out!!!  The cloudy sky looked absolutely beautiful.  I realize I will get few of those moments here, but it was nice to start off with a little welcome from such a special guest.  So we got a tour and finally to our little rooms.  I took before pictures and when I am done unpacking I'll show you all what I've done with the place, let me just say, despite the tan brick walls, it has potential. :) 

     Best part of yesterday was, of course, the night.  We met the other abroad students for dinner on campus (which is where I'm headed shortly) and met the other 8 people from Chapman, a neat guy named Ben and this really fantastic girl Liz from New York.  All us rowdy kids have been put in the off campus dorm house of Wood Green and we're already in the works of planning a trip to Ireland for St. Patty's day.  We hung out in the kitchen once we got back and had so much fun hanging with some of the students that are actually from this fine country.  

     Wow, for not having done much I've already said a lot and I'm still in my pj's!  I need to get dressed!  Love you all and I will, of course, write soon!