Coming up on 4 weeks

And here I will attempt a real update.

This Monday, I will have been in England for 4 weeks. Not bad. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I certainly feel like I have been here longer, but at the same time, nothing's second nature to me yet. Like a normal human being, I do miss home sometimes, but I surprisingly have not felt miserable here (yet?). We'll see.

I've had classes for two weeks now, certainly enough time to form some first impressions:

• Intro to Financial Mathematics: Scary Russian prof. Not sure what's going on in this class, but the work hasn't been difficult.
• Numerical Analysis: SO MUCH BETTER THAN NU METH. zomg.
  
• Statistical Methods: Prof is lazier than Vlachos (prof for Intro to Prob Stat I at CMU), but everything's been review so far.
• Random Models: Excellent prof. Reminds me of Dr. Eng from high school in appearance, but is much nicer and personable. Material also not difficult at time of writing this.
• Culture of Cities (Geography): This feels like a joke.
• Brain and Behavior (Psychology): Shoot me now.

Yea, pretty run of the mill. As usual, there's a class that's painful for me (psych), a class that feels like a joke (geography), and a class that makes sense (all math classes except math finance).

Speaking of school, I've been paying attention to the names of the cafés in each of the academic buildings where I have class. Try to match the name with the academic building (answers at the bottom).

Café Name	Academic Building
a. Pi in the Sky	1. Schuster (Physics, Mathematics)
b. Byte Café	2. University Place (Manchester's version of the UC)
c. CaFe2O4	3. Alan Turing (Math)
d. The Error Bar	4. Chemistry (Chemistry)
e. EATS	5. Stopford (Psychology)
f. Rock Café	6. Kilburn (Computer Science)
g. Medical	7. Renold (Interdisciplinary)

In other news, I have been to Liverpool twice within the past week. I found the city to be much more aesthetically pleasing than Manchester, which, come to think of it, is not difficult. Liverpool is somewhere between London and Manchester in terms of the modernity of the buildings. At least measures were taken to preserve many of Liverpool's historic buildings, though Liverpool did not feel it had to get stuck in history like London did. There are many places that are all touristed-up, like the docks (oh yea, a cool thing about Liverpool: IT IS NEXT TO THE OCEAN). The docks are nothing like California docks or anything, but I like that they tried anyway. There's a Beatles museum on the Albert dock (which, despite having been to L-Pool twice I STILL have not visited it), the Tate Museum, and small cafes.

Why have I been to Liverpool twice in one week? The first time I went was with the Arcadia peoples. The highlight of the trip was the Everton vs Bolton football game, so the tour of Liverpool was quite short. The game, however, was amazing. For one thing, it was the first professional sporting event that I've ever attended! (My dad never succeeded in getting me to go to a Mets game) I was unsure about how enjoyable this would be, considering I don't like watching field sports like soccer or baseball or American football etc on television. But I had a great time. I had a great seat in the Lower Bullens. The crowd was really into it, which is not something to expect at a Man Utd game because those games are full of people who are going because they're overrated (people generally liken this to going to a Yankees game in the US). Everton was the home team and, per advice from Arsenal fans at CMU, I was instructed to root for them. I wish I had looked up the chants before the game so I could fully participate, but I managed to learn the chant that just repeats "Everton! Everton!" four times. Good enough.
Some notes about a football match:

• Meat pies, instead of hot dogs/hamburgers/whatever they serve in US sporting events of the like, are served. Things resembling pot pies seem to be popular in the UK.
  
• Since neither Everton nor Bolton are hugely popular like Arsenal or Man Utd, the crowd was quite civilized.
• For the same reason in the above point, the fans actually knew the chants.
• If you're obese, you can't enter the stadium. Seriously, the entrance for our section of the stadium was about 1.5 feet wide.

Why did I go back to Liverpool again? I shall continue in my next post... (in other words, I'm going to sleep). Tally ho!

(Answers: a-3, b-6, c-4, d-1, e-2, f-7, g-5)