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