Manchester (trampoline competition)

Okay so i'm backdating QUITE a bit, and I have pictures from Reykjavik, other parts of Iceland and the whirlwind London day tour, but Machester, England is a city in its own right. So we went for the University Trampolining Competition at Manchester Uni (don't laugh...they take this stuff pretty seriously) and we got to traipse around the city. I guess the common stereotype of Manchester involves grime, dirt and stabbings, but I found sushi and metropolis and had no problems with it whatsoever.

so here's Manchester!

Thanksgiving, Leamington Spa Style

so the truth of that matter is that Thanksgiving is an American holiday. other people just don't care. Unless...you cook for them! so that's what we did, we meaning me, david and a team of my flatmates. it turned into a 15-people feast and VOILA!

(Royal) Leamington Spa

Here's the moment you've all been waiting for. Pictures of my home sweet england. It starts with a tour of my flat, the view out my window, the view from the front (our windows are the one above the Sandu Estates buildings) then onto the greatness that is Leamington (named after bloody lemmings that jump off of cliffs in sheer stupidity) including tmy place of employment. Mom, please note the falling apart curtains! From New York City to...this.

Birmingham (England)

So I've heard a lot of negative media on the second largest city in the UK (by the way of ugliness, dead industry, etc), and I figured it was about high time to take a look for myself. Saturday proved to be good respite from the dredges of my impending presentation of Juliana Horatia Ewing's work in fantasy, goodness and the Victorian child.

So I met up with the lovely David promptly at 10:30am, ran to the Leamington Spa train station and hopped aboard the 11:11am to Birmingham New Street station. at approximately 11:43 we arrived in the midst of something called the Bullring which seems to be a gimungous roundabout that city planners disguised behind the world's largest market/shopping mall. I can't complain though--there were two H&Ms, an apple store and actual people of color. I almost felt like I could breathe that new york goodness in once again. The details of the day are pretty mundane: shopping for books, shopping for work clothes, shopping for shoes (david, not me). we had coffee and pub lunch at some offshoot in the city, got fed up in the mall and then ventured outdoors to find everything just about decorated for christmas. please note that it's 5 November.

Our adventures took us past Town Hall, the jewelrey district, Louis Vuitton, some old statues of dead people and some minorly narrow cobbled streets. In total, I don't think we got the "complete" Birmingham experience, but what we did see surpassed our expectations by a lot. Next time, we'll explore the hundreds of canals (more than Venice) and see the true grit that is the B'ham. I took a few pictures...of some building attached to the mall, a cathedral, Town Hall, the classic red phone box and the poetic irony that is the bestselling song in the UK right now--Put Your Hands up For Detroit. If they only knew.

Stratford upon Avon

So i'm a bit of a literary nerd. and i live about a 30-minute bus ride from Stratford upon Avon, the home of the great William Shakespeare. People support me in my nerdy habit--for Christmas, David bought me an action figure of the Bard. and this weekend, Elizabeth, my Northwestern English alumna friend, came to visit. so we all went to Stratford.

go figure it's the capitalistic mecca of everything literary. but it was fun and took my mind off of my impending thesis proposasl deadline. plus, we got to eat pasties, play with soap in Lush, drink at the oldest pub in Warwickshire and see where a man broke the Guiness Book of World Records by playing the Organ for 33 hours and 12 minutes consecutively. great country, that england:0)

Prague Finale

now it's time for the drunk Scottish men in the city centre! and Franz Kafka's grave. let me just say, if you're ever looking for a Jewish Cemetary and don't know if you're in a Jewish Cemetary, then you're not there yet. after searching around for about two hours, running into the Christian cemetary followed by the Russian Orthodox one, we found the beautifully manicured and Star of Davided one. then we knew we were there! the only other news about these pictures...after leaving the drunk scottish men to go back to england, i later found that the Hearts lost to Praha by a lot. sad.

and then, after this, i promise i'll have photos of the country i actually live in. i haven't taken any yet, but Leamington Spa is lovely in the AUTUMN (not the fall. people look at you funny when you say fall). But Elizabeth is here this weekend bearing tidings from my old edinburgh world, and we're off to explore the faraway lands of Warwick, Stratford and everything on the X17 bus route in between. until then, the last of Prague town:

Prague semi-finale

so i'm almost upon my one month anniversary of moving across the pond, and i guess life has just gone to show me that you can never expect what will happen next. i've overly lamented, cried, wailed and gnashed my teeth frankenstein style, but i'm still here. grad classes are unbelievably challenging, and short of carrying a dictionary to class and looking things up whilst my professor speaks, i'm hanging on by my shoelaces.

but i've discovered some previously forgotten lovely little cultural nuances. the british love everything on a sandwich ie. onion bhaji, hommous and cucumber, five cheeses with pickle on bread. then they put it in a little sandwich plastic indestructable-o box so you can carry it in your handbag with minimal squishing. delicious. i have also grown to appreciate bad bell ringing during monday night practices, instant coffee, flavoured everything crisps and things that should not be spelled with "u"s having u's in them again.

there are, of course, photos to come. elizabeth is ending her three-month european journey in lovely leamington spa this weekend so i'll make sure to sport my camera. in the meantime, i'm posting the rest of Prague including wonderful street performers, cathedrals, things written in czech and generally old buildings. oh, and the 200 Scottish men we found pregaming in the city centre one particularly sunny czech thursday. (wait, i lied the programme is not working tonight. those are what's yet to come...)