Anti-American-ism

So for the first time today I experience a true "I hate America" attitude in full effect. Now I've been around plenty of people that make jokes about it just to be silly but would never say anything offensive to our faces. But today in my Jim Crow history class, we were having a little debate in the seminar about the tactics of Booker T. Washington and W.D. and W.E.B. Du Bois during the post-reconstruction era of the south (around the 1870-ishs). I was the only American in the seminar that day (normally Kevin is in there, but he got to play in the Rugby game today!! YAY!) It was a pretty heavy debate, with most of the people in my seminar favoring Washington's tactics when one of the students went on a rampage about how he can't stand Americans and how they did this and how we treat immigrants and how we discriminate. His word choice was a lot more colorful than that brief sentence and had a very different tone then my words can express. 

I wouldn't express my self as one of those outrageous Americans that thinks the rest of the world is beneath us and wears red, white & blue on a daily basis, but it was quite offensive. Especially since I was participating in the debate and it is very obvious that I am from America. The girls around me just stared at me, not knowing what to say and I could tell they genuinely felt sorry for what had just happened. But at the same time, no one in the class stopped him from going on. The teacher wasn't even in shock from the words coming from his mouth. She then ended the debate and dismissed the rest of class. She did come up an apologize to me profoundly and told me she wasn't going to have anymore debates in the seminar because of what happened. 

Since the purpose of this blog is to give you all an idea of what it feels like to be here, I won't lie. I had to put a brave face on and tell her that it was alright and that I knew at some point in the class someone was going to remark like that. But it did take a stab at me. It was almost like being back in middle school and being bullied again, but this time it was just because of the country I came from. (Quite ironic actually, that he had all those nasty things to say about the American people - including myself - because of how bad the American looked upon the African Americans at that time, yet he was doing the same thing.)

I went to one of the other American's rooms and told her what happened and I received even more horrifying stories about how some people here treated the American students. She told me that one kid in her class won't let any Americans sit in the same row as him "because those seats aren't for those people." And another girl had a kid in her class ask about how many African Americans we kill now-a days. It was a big reality shock to hear all these stories and experience my own little bit of hatred.

But thankfully, most of the students here aren't like that and typically we don't have to experience anything like it. I knew it was bound to happen at some point here, so today was that day!

Dublin!

I just got back from my trip last night from Dublin, and I am completely whipped out from the trip. Trying to see a the city in just days is a lot of work, but Kevin and I definitely got most of it in it seems like! I Figured the easiest way would be to break down the days of the trip day by day, so here it goes!

Wednesday
This is when our travels began! We had to board a 9:40am train from Twickenham and begin our journey to Gatwick Airport, just 50 miles outside of London. It was only about an hour train ride, but we figured to better be safe than sorry! Getting through the airport was a breeze and then we just sat and waited for our flight, which was around 1:30 pm. The flight was only about an hour long, gate to gate, so it went by quick. I was able to catch a few pictures before landing on my ipad though!

Once we landed, we hopped on a bus and rode into Dublin! We were staying at a youth hostel which was located in Temple Bar - the heart of Dublin. Hostels are a very interesting type of accommodation. Its almost like living in a traditional style dorm again. You are staying in a room with multiple bunk beds, there is a traditional hall type bathroom that everyone shares (there are separate sex ones though), you have a common room, and there is a dinning area. For what Kevin & I needed, it was perfect. It only cost $12 per night per bed (so $24 a night for the two of us), we really only needed a place to shower and rest. However, since it is cheap you do pay the price by having a not-so comfortable bed and not the best breakfast in the morning (cearal & toast). But for the price we paid it was great. We even got free wifi! (which a lot of hotels in Europe don't offer). 

After checking in, we went out and began to explore. We found a local place to eat and then went to a bar Kevin wanted to check out to listen to some Irish music. While flying over to Dublin and staying in Dublin was cheap, the food and beer here cost LOTS. a single beer was about 5 euros, which is abotu 7 to 8 dollars. yikes!

Thursday

This was our first full day so we were prepared to take it all in! We left our hostel around 10:30 and started heading out. We ran into several cathedrals and got to take pictures in several of them (St. Augustine & Christ Church Cathedral). We went to the far west side of town to see the Kilmainham Gaol (Gaol is gaelic for jail), which Kevin's aunt had recommended to us. It was probably my favorite thing we did the entire trip!

The jail was built in 1796 and is made out of limestone, which does not retain any heat and retains lots of moisture. So the jail was always freezing. It was intended to only hold 1 inmate to a cell, but because of the material the jail was made of the first floor of the jail could not be used because of its temperature and flooding. So the jail immediately ran into problems with were to put their inmates. During the potato famine, one year there were 9,000 inmates that went through the jail even though the jail could only hold roughly 300 people. Because of this, cells were flooded with people and even the hallways were being used as sleeping quarters. To make matters worse: there were only 4 toilets in the jail. During this time, even children around the age of 5 were being imprisoned. but for many whom were starving, being in prison and getting a little bit of food each day was better than not being in prison and starving. An addition was eventually added to the jail after the famine and as the numbers went down the jail was able to met its ideal one inmate to one cell ratio. The jail was also famous for having public executions right outside the front. Many famous people during the multiple rebellions during this time were executed here - Joseph Plunket, William O'Brien, James Connolly, etc. The jail also has its own museum full of history on the multiple rebellions in Ireland during the duration of the jail, lifestyles of the inmates, and history on several inmates.

I know that this is a lot information, but this isn't even half of it. so I found some links that talks more about the jail and those who served time in it. 

Kilmainham Gaol

Kilmainham Gaol 2
Joseph Plunkett

James Connolly

1916 Uprising in Ireland

Potato Famine

After the Kilmainham Gaol we headed up to the Guinness Factory to do their tour. It was an amazing, and HUGE, facility! It was broken up into 7 floors (crazy, right?) The first floor was just were you entered and ticketing, the second floor was the orientation and it talked about the ingredients used to make each Guinness, the third floor went through the steps to brew it as well as old machinery used in the factory and tasting!! Fourth floor was about advertising where it showed you old bottles and old commercials used, fifth floor was the drinking IQ and tracing Guinness roots, the sixth floor was the Guinness Academy, where they showed you how to pour your own Guinness the proper way, and the final floor was the Gravity Bar. The Gravity Bar was a room of windows that lets you see a total panorama of the city. It was amazing! Plus at the end, you got your Guinness to enjoy. I'm not really into it, so I gave my cup to Kevin but I did take a few pictures to at least pretend like I drank it :)

The rest of the day we just hung around and cooked our own pasta dinner (because the kitchen had its own fully equipped kitchen) and then went out and checked out a few of the pubs in the area. We even saw the oldest pub in all of Ireland, and perhaps even Europe!

Friday

We started our day by going off to Trinity College, also known as Dublin College. It was a beautiful campus (puts every college I have ever seen to shame!), but it is really known for being home to the Book of Kells, which is a gospel book that contains the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  We Unfortunately did not get to go see the book itself, it was a little too pricey of an exhibit for us to actually see. 

After walking through Trinity College, we headed over to the National Museum of Natural History and Archaeology  The Natural History Museum was a collection of animals throughout generations, mostly from Ireland. It had a huge skeleton of the Great Irish Deer that once roamed through Ireland. The Archaeological Museum discussed a lot about the ancient history of Ireland, including jewelry that dates back to 900 BC to the age of the vikings. It was really neat because it was all collections of things I had never really seen or thought of as being apart of Ireland's history!

 After the museums, we headed back to the hostel to catch a break. After that we headed out and tried another set of pubs!

Saturday

This was our last day in Dublin, but we practically had all day to finish seeing any last minute things! We headed down to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is the largest cathedral in Ireland. It is built over the spot which St. Patrick was baptized at, giving its name. 

Afterwards, we took a stroll down O'Connell Street and paid a visit to the General Post Office where the 1916 uprising occurred as well as many monuments dedicated to the men that fought for Ireland's freedom.

After that we rested and headed back to the airport and started our journey back to London.

It was an amazing few days, and this blog nor my pictures do justice to how awesome Dublin was!

Be sure to check out my facebook album to see the rest of my pictures form the places I talked about plus random sites and pictures from the streets!

Key boards

This post is quite random, but its something that I meant to post about a while ago. Coming to London, I was expecting a lot of differences: food, currency, accents, day to day lifestyles, etc. However, it did not occur to me that our computer keyboards would be so very different. Part of the keys are cut off in the picture below, so I added a layout I got from the internet to help you visualize! 

so the left-side shift key is the same size as the letter keys.

The left-side shift key is smaller then ours, its about the same size as the letters. Its more difficult to adjust to then you would think. The " " key and the @ key are switched. They have both a $ and £ sign. The enter sign is smaller because there is an extra key for the # next to the enter key. And the | and \ keys are on the opposite side of the keyboard. 

     

On a separate side note, I leave for Dublin on Wednesday so get excited for a nice blog post when I get back :)

Happy Valentines Day!

today is going to be pretty calm, Kevin and I decided not to go into London because we figured it would be a very popular day in the city. The last few days have been fairly tame. Most of my days consist of going to class, reading, watching One Tree Hill (I needed something to kill all the random down time I have here, so I decided to rewatch it all!), and just hanging around. 

Kevin & I leave for Dublin next Wednesday so we are very excited about that! We are going to go the Guinness Factory, see a couple of museums and of course (Kevin's favorite part) go to some of the Irish Pubs. There will be plenty of pictures to share from our trip!

But what I'm in even more excited for, in exactly a month I will be in Paris! We booked an awesome place! It is very popular down there for locals to own apartments or rooms in the heart of Paris that they rent out fairly cheap to tourist. Kevin & I were able to book a room for 3 nights for 110 pounds (roughly 180 US dollars) and the room has a balcony that faces the Eiffel Tower! It was an unbelievable find! I am super excited!!!!

other than that, there isn't much to report! so Happy Valentines Day!

PARIS

Just wanted to announce that I have booked my trip to Paris France!!!

I will be in the lovely city in a little over a month! March 13 to the 16th!! 

Rugby Match

Twickenham is known for being the home of the National Rugby Stadium. Other teams play there every now and then, but this month is the big 6 Nations tournament. The 6 Nations tournament consist of 6 nations (England, Ireland, France, Wales, Scotland, and Itlay) playing one another over the course of a few weeks to ultimately become the National Champion. Today was the big match between Ireland and England, so we went with a few others to a local pub called Cabbage Patch. I learned a lot about the sport when I was there, for example its 80 minutes long and the clock doesn't stop. The game goes by so much faster than a football game! It was so much fun! The game ended 6-12 with England winning! Here are som pictures from the pub we went and watch the game.

Eating in the Crypt

Kevin's Aunt is in London this weekend so for our tourist thursday event we met her down in central London! Kevin went down a few hours early and had lunch with his Aunt and I went down later in the afternoon and caught up with them. We all went and ate at the coolest place ever (this has been on my to do list since I read my first England travel book). St. Martin's Crypt Cafe. That correct, a cafe located on top of a crypt. Its one of the neatest places ever and I plan on going back again!! Other than that we didn't do anything to crazy. Kevin had heard of a good resturant a little outside of central London called Dick's brew & que and got to try England's own BBQ. It was defiantly an experience!

Life in London cont.

I forgot to add a picture of my homestay house, so here it is!

The picture kinda looks like its cut off because there is an identical half to the right of it (so think of one big symmetrical house) but its split in half so there are 2 occupiants. This is how majority of the houses in the area are.

School Life in London

Since my post yesterday was about what living in London is like (so far), I figured I would do a post on what its like going to school in London. Its a lot different in various ways then I had pictured. I am currently enrolled in 4 classes: Foundation of Christianity, Revolutions in Thought (ethics course), Romantic Revolutions (english course), and Jim Crow America (don't laugh, no other history course would fit so I'm taking an American one). I decided the easiest way to describe this to you would be to break it down into various sections.

Majors

Here, your major is referred to as your course (and classes are called modules). There aren't very many modules at the school I am attending, but the biggest ones are history, drama, and education. There are no science majors here, which is why I am taking a variety of classes to finish off my general education requirement. From what I have heard from some of the British & Irish students at the university, there aren't that many schools with science majors. For many students I was one of the first science majors they ever met. 

Students here also only take the classes they need for their major. There are no general education requirements like we have back at home. Because of this, all the classes I am enrolled in are full of students who are majoring in this topic. Back at HPU you always had  other people in the class that didn't really know about the class topic, whereas here I am the only person in the class that doesn't know the topic nor interested in it for the most part. For example, in my second religion class we were having a class discussion on the Didache and there were students in the class starting shouting out bible versus that the passage reminded them of. I was way out of my comfort zone. 

Schedules

Get ready for your brain to be blown for this one. Classes here only meet once a week for about 2 hours. period. You can do the math on that one, 4 classes x 2 hours = 8 hours total in class. One of my chemistry labs last semester was 6 hours alone!! Scheduling here is also nice because you can plan out your free time easily, and as an international student it gives Kevin & I lots of time to go out and see things. I was able to work my schedule so that I only have classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday giving myself a 4 day weekend every weekend!

However, scheduling is a bit more difficult here for international students. Because the full-time year round students here don't have to take gen. ed classes like we do, the faculty in each major makes a schedule to fit the needs of their students. Because they don't have to provide numerous sections for each class, most classes only have 1 time slot. This causes a problem for international students sometimes because they are enrolling into classes of various topics, and because each departments faculty don't work with one another, it was hard to find classes that didn't overlap with one another. This is part of the reason why I am enrolled in the American History class (and because I didn't want a class on Friday). Hopefully that made sense haha.

Assignments

Personally, this was the biggest shock of them all. I am use to having lots of reading, with lots of homework, and test frequently. Here, however, there are no test and no homework sets (at least in none of my classes or any of my friends' classes). There is a fare bit of reading for each class, but its no more than I was already doing back at home. Instead, each of my classes have 2 essays as the grading assignment. Normally, this would make me freak out because I am not a writer, but each of my teachers have told us that they would review our essays and work with us on them if we needed help (I don't know about everyone else, but none of my teachers at home ever offered that much help for an essay... but then again I have only written a few since college began). Its been a bit of a shock not having much work, because I am normally filled with task & assignments to work through whereas here, I can do almost all my work in one sitting. 

Grades

Here is another mind blower. Passing a class at St. Mary's only requires you to get above a 40%. I kid you not. 

also sidenote, this is what public sinks look like in England.

I am not entirely sure how to actually work it just yet, but the hot handle is on the left and the cold handle is on the right. I'm not sure why they are separate, but thats how they are here. They also have a drain plug, which again I don't know why.

Living in London

As many of you know, while I am abroad I am living with a host family just off campus. It has definitely given me a true dose of what life is truly like while living in London and I am a littled shocked by how many differences there are. I decided I would share some of the differences between my living arrangement here and back at home with all of you!

Walk-In

As you can tell, the entrance isn't very big. Underneath the staircase is a little rack for coats and 'about it. The front door also has a little slip in it where the mailman can push the mail through because there are no mailboxes. As well as no mailboxes, some houses don't have doorknobs, such as this house. Instead it just has a little lever that you grab on to pull close or you just push the door open. Its quite annoying really. 

Kitchen

the kitchen is very tiny (as you can see in the picture) and it consist of just a narrow hall. There are no pantries or walk in closets full of groceries. The lady I am living with goes to the store quite frequently (every 2 or 3 days) because there is little storage area in the kitchen for large quantities of food. The ovens they use are also very different then the ones I see at home. As shown in the picture, it has multiple compartments but no windows to look through. The dishwasher is also very very tiny. Probably about half the size of the ones we have in the states. There is no trash can in the kitchen because basically everything is recycled. Food scraps, plastics, glass, paper, EVERYTHING. even the clipping from cutting your grass gets recycled. Its crazy. In the kitchen is also the washer. notice that I did not say dryer. This is because majority of homes in London don't have dryers. Which means all my wet clothes get hung and take at least a day to dry. 

Living Room

The living room is pretty much the same as the ones back home. So nothing much to note about.

Bathroom

typically in most households here there is only 1 bathroom, maybe a 2nd with just a toilet & sink. However my household only has 1. Everyone takes there showers/baths in this bathroom and other bathroom needs. Thankfully the house I am in only consist of a mom and her son, so there isn't too many battles for the bathroom.

Upstairs

the upstairs is fairly simple. It consist of the single bathroom, my room, the Mom's room and the office. The ladder that you see at the end of the hall leads to the attic where the son's room is. As you can see there is no real "extra space" in the house here, which is how most houses here are.

My Bedroom

My bedroom is very nice and simple. I have one armor type thing (the open one) and the other one in the corner holds seasonal stuff of the family. I also have a dresser drawer off to the side. Guess it was a good thing that I could only bring one suitcase and a carry on over here. I am very fortunate enough to have a nice full size bed (Kevin has a tiny twin bed haha). The Master bedroom is about the same size as my room, and as mentioned before there is no master bathroom. 

Greenwhich

Today was the second part of our program package that we got as a part of the St. Mary's study abroad program (the first part being the part being the walking tour of London on my 21st birthday). Today we were taken east of London to Greenwhich. It would have never occurred to me to go out to this part of London, but it was so beautiful here! Too bad it was another miserably cold & windy day! 

The day started off with me & several other of the girls heading into central London a little early to a restaurant one of the girls knows about called wagamamma. It wasn't my go-to restaurant  it was an asian-y type restaurant. However it did clear up all my sinuses that I've been bogged up with here for the last few days! After lunch we watched a few street performers and then met up with the rest of the group.

We took a boat from Central London over to Greenwhich, which was about an hour long. It was a different view then what we got before so it was a nice change in scenary. Once we got to Greenwhich there were lots to see. We got to walk about the old Naval College (previous a Naval Hospital) including their gorgeous Chapel and their Dining Hall which every inch is painted! It took the artist 19 years to complete! Greenwhich also included the British Naval Ship from centuries ago called Cutty Sark. Greenwhich was once a huge part of England's Navy since its one of the first ports the River Thames meets. The rest of the city included a small Market, many shops & restaurants and a observatory. While it was all very pretty, the major gust of winds made for a not-so pleasent time. But we will be back for a visit once the weather improves!

Naval College Dining Hall that is entirely painted

Naval College Chapel

Naval College Campus