Spring has arrived!

Daffodils in St. James's Park. London.

These past couple of weeks have been pretty great.

Spring comes a little earlier here in the UK than back in the states, though so far the weather's been so much milder anyway. Lovin' the sunshine (or cloudless days). It makes waking up and walking to class much more bearable.

I've found that the attitude amongst students here is much more relaxed. Of course, I'm comparing it to CMU's. But it's really nice and refreshing to be around people who aren't completely stressed by their studies. Instead they take time out to enjoy life's finer things, or just to take a break. When asking my friends what they did over the weekend, or even since last class, I don't get replies along the lines of "Oh I was working all night on my Algebra problem set" or "I was revising for my Algebra midterm exam." Instead I get replies like "I was out drinking with my mates for St. Patty's" (mind you, St. Patty's fell on a Tuesday this year) or "I was out clubbing." I'm impressed by how laidback British students are, but I think the education system lends itself very well to letting students discover themselves on their own time, and pretty much just grow up with their true passions as their guide. Students at the most competitive colleges in the US are drowning in problem sets in classes they don't even like, in a major they also don't even like but would get them a decent job after graduation. Yes, those things are important, but it's important to pay attention to the self and what makes it happy. If you required every British and American student at a top university to keep a twitter and aggregated the tags, the most popular tag for the British would be "fun" whereas the American one would be "fml."

These were posted in the Maths building. This made me smile and love this school/study abroad experience slightly more. If you ignored the paragraph before this, this pretty much sums it up:


School aside, I've been doing some light traveling on some weekends. Last weekend I went to Cardiff, Wales. I have mixed feelings about Cardiff since it was just like any other British city I had visited already, but at least it had a very picturesque bay that we were lucky to visit on a sunny day.


All in all, Cardiff Bay reminded me very much of the Jersey Shore. In fact, there were so many swanky boutiques, small chocolate shops, and restaurants that I thought I was at Pier Village. Alas, it was still very relaxing to be near the water. I do quite miss the beach.

As if the spring-y weather and general laid back attitude here weren't enough to make my time here so much more enjoyable than if I were back at CMU, my two friends from high school decided to spend their spring break in the UK! I had a blast seeing them and I was quite flattered that they came to visit/go to the Dr. Who museum but that's irrelevant :P.

As a result I returned to London to hang out with them after classes finished on Wednesday (at 11am btw :) )

London Eye, as seen from St. James's Park. Disappointed that they drained the river/lake and the trees haven't regained their leaves yet, but still pretty.

Obligatory Big Ben picture.
Tower of London! Unfortunately it was closed by the time we arrived there.
The Tower Bridge. Even though it was twilight, there were still a ton of tourists snapping pictures on the bridge.
I'm currently less than a week from spring break ("Easter holiday" as they call it here), which also means I'm less than a week away from the crazy backpacking trip through Europe for 3 weeks. It's going to be intense and frankly it hasn't quite hit me yet. Of course, I have to get through two midterm exams before I leave. Boo. But the one nice thing about CMU is it has more than prepared me for the academic challenges here.

Gastronomic Firsts: Pasties, Fish and Chips, Profiteroles, Muesli

Since orientation is finally over and I'm done shopping for stuff I need, I have time to properly write about some notable gastronomic firsts.

Pasties:
*Pronounced past-ee, past like "the ghost of Christmas past."
John and I first tried pasties during the Arcadia orientation last week in London. A pasty (singular, and short for Cornish pasty) is essentially a calzone, but with pot pie filling. Depending on what filling you get, it could very well be just like a calzone-shaped Hot Pocket. I had two pasties during the course of orientation from The Pasty Shop in the London - Euston train station. The first one I had was chicken and vegetable. The crust was soft and flaky, but not so flaky that it left a crumb trail down the front of my pea coat. The crust was lightly greasy, thus enabling the pasty to be sufficiently filling and a meal in itself if needed. The filling was just like that of a chicken pot pie -- chicken and vegetable in a thick broth-tasting sauce. Very delicious.

The second pasty I tried was a chicken balti. Thanks to my Interp class freshman year (the food class), I knew that balti implied curry in terms of food in England. So I ordered one and it was quite good as well. Not too spicy, but not too bland; exactly as you'd expect curry chicken in a pot pie to taste like. Actually, I really liked it a lot -- I'm getting hungry just writing this.

Fish and Chips:
OK, not much to say here actually. Fried fish filet with potato wedges. Mayonnaise comes with it (not tartar sauce!), and a wedge of lemon for seasoning. Quite alright, but I didn't notice anything distinctive from just taking a Gordon's fish filet and adding a side of fries. However, fish and chip outlets are plentiful throughout the UK, and I've only tried it at the food court in the mall on Queensway (London).

Profiteroles:
This is a very delicious dessert pastry that I had during my first night at homestay. At first appearance, I thought they were round eclairs, but they taste slightly different. For starters, profiteroles are moister because the chocolate sauce poured over the puffs does not harden. Also, the chocolate sauce may contain liquer (there was sherry in the chocolate sauce on the profiteroles I had). If that's not moist enough, cream may be poured over the puffs as well (which is how I had them). I consumed these cold, but I'm not sure if they can be consumed warm. Definitely recommended for chocolate lovers or just sweets lovers in general. Again, I'm getting hungry just thinking about them. ::Eyes jar of nutella, the closest thing I have to it::

Muesli:
I had some muesli at breakfast while I was at homestay. At first look, I thought I was having trail mix for breakfast, but my host family told me to add some milk to it and eat it like cereal. Indeed, it tasted just like I imagined trail mix with milk would taste. The muesli I had was a blend of almonds, coconut shavings, sunflower seeds, dried fruit pieces, and rolled oats. Definitely healthy and nutritious; I enjoyed it very much. It wasn't very sweet, but for not having any added sugar or honey, it was pretty tasty.

Wrapping up London

OK now that I'm at Manchester, I have proper internets for updating!

I'll start by summarizing what happened in London.

So in case people are a bit confused with the orientations that I've been doing, I'll explain. I'm studying at the University of Manchester, which is in Manchester. However, I applied through Arcadia University's Study Abroad Office, so they had their own orientation for all students studying in the UK who also applied through them. Arcadia's orientation was in London. There were students studying at the University of Manchester and University of Nottingham, as well as students participating in Arcadia's own programs, like the internship program and the semester abroad program for freshman. Orientation was Monday - Wednesday and consisted of informational sessions in the morning about adjusting to life in the UK. They gave us the afternoon free to explore London and helped us by graciously providing unlimited tube passes and tickets to a play Wednesday evening.

London was unreal. It's definitely a city, but it's too clean and too royal-looking. Re: cleanliness - the tube did not reek, and there was no graffiti anywhere. As for the architecture and the like, the buildings were very consistent. They all look like they were built during the same era (like 1600s) which was nice to look at (Manchester's not the case). This also made London very historically-rich. It was definitely very pretty, although it seemed like a fake city for being so ... nice.

In London, I ended up doing a bit of sightseeing, though I didn't get to everything. During orientation, I met the other Manchester students. Actually, I would like to note that everyone else is either a business or an English major, which was interesting for me as a math major. Ok, so I met Ivy, a student at Grinnell who studies English, and Filipe, a student at Hartford who studies business. John and the rest of us went down Fleet Street looking for a barber shop, but to no avail. However, along the way, Ivy spotted a couple secret houses that belonged to famous English writers, so that was cool and off the beaten path. Eventually we made it to the British Natural History museum, which was super cool but we didn't go in. A bit further along, we got to Parliament and the Big Ben. We went into the Parliament to sit in on a House of Commons proceeding, but it was too full so we ended up sitting in on a House of Lords proceeding. We preferred the House of Commons because we've seen on CSPAN that it looks like a pub; the MPs would be throwing things at each other and telling jokes, lots of fun. There weren't any seats left, so we sat in on the House of Lords, which was supremely boring, but I had fun counting the number of Lords who were passed out haha.

We saw a play, as a group, on Wednesday night, The 39 Steps. It was a comedy based on a Hitchcock film of the same name, and referenced a number of Hitchcock's works, so it was a nice little game to spot the references. I can officially say I've been to a British play.

That's a pretty good summary of London. Right now I'm going to go grocery shopping with John and Filipe. Later tonight, we're going to dinner and a pub crawl to celebrate Filipe's birthday so it'll be lots of fun. I'll write more about gastronomic firsts and my homestay when I get a chance. Bye!

JFK-LHR

(Note: Due to lack of free internets in London, this post has been published later. Post date and time are reflective of the approximate time at which this was written.)

I have arrived in London!

Sorry for the tardiness of this post. There is no free internet in London.

The transatlantic flight went very smoothly. This was my first time flying with British Airways, and it has left me very impressed. For starters, a small bottle of wine came with dinner! I was so confused when the flight attendant asked me, "Red or white?" Yes, I'm a total n00b. For posterity, here's a list of food that I consumed on the flight:

• pretzel bites
• orange juice (lots of it)
• chicken and pasta
• a slice of dutch apple pie
• salad
• dinner roll
• Kit Kat bar
• milk tea
• red wine
• apple bear claw

Yes, a lot of food for a 7 hour flight.

I tried sleeping on the flight, but a mixture of excitement and general inability to sleep on flights kept me awake. Thus I ended up watching and episode of Flight of the Concordes (Bret battles self-image issues, exacerbated by Jemaine's accusations of him being bulimic), How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (coincidentally, the last book I was reading at home but did not finish. This movie wasn't that great, despite Simon Pegg being in it), and an episode of Friends (Rachel gets an Egyptian cat, Phoebe decides to move in with the dude who was on Boston Public, etc etc).

Eventually, we landed in London - Heathrow at around 6am local time. After clearing through immigration, John and I waited for the Arcadia shuttle to the hotel (it didn't arrive until 9am). While being shuttled from the airport to the hotel, we couldn't help but notice that London looked so eerily similar to Hong Kong; the road signs and the cars were the same. Of course, this wasn't too surprising, considering Hong Kong used to be a British colony.