DC for the weekend?

So, we decided last weekend we were going to Washington, and the weekend has come upon us so quickly I can't believe it. I need time to massively slow down now, the first week went really slowly but the last two have whizzed by! Still, only week 3.


eeeeeeeeeeeeeee Washington tomorrow. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Mon pere et moi last time we went to DC, I'm hopefully seeing some of my parents friends they met out in Kuwait there too which will be SO awesome!


Everyone's organising spring break too. So stressful but also exciting. I feel so Americannn.


Every day still feels like I'm walking a film set.
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Monday [sky] blues

For a Monday, today's going pretty well!

I had a 9am this morning which wasn't too pretty, but then went to the library and had a productive morning until my class at 1. We had a reading quiz on Oedipus the King, and watched the film adaptation of Angels in America. Niiice class. Then I bobbed into the DTH offices on the way home to see if they'd put up the hiring lists and guess what.. I got onto the Arts desk!!! yippee. Very excited but also a tad nervous..

The weekend wasn't hugely eventful, I went with some of the study abroad's to a kickboxing class on Friday and ohmy, it kicked our 'butts'!! I woke up on Saturday with the ability to feel every muscle in my back but and legs. Not good. Suppose that shows we worked hard..? Running on Saturday was p.a.i.n.f.u.l!! The kickboxing woman was cool though, so enthusiastic, I felt like we were in a pump it up DVD or something haha. We also decided to go to DC this weekend. Jane called me up and was like, you in? So yah, we booked a coach up there for a sneaky $20! So cheap. I'm VERY excitedd hehe.

Also we sat next to a potential next miss America at dinner last night! She is Caroline's little, (a sorority thing, basically like her little sister as when she joined they were assigned to one another. So you have bigs, littles, grandbigs. Twins. Don't ask). She's won her town title, and is going for Miss Carolina in the summer. So who knows, if she gets through that she could be promoting world peace this time next year.. And still be eating 4 sticks of celery with a small pot of dip for her dinner.
Each unto their own.

Later Ginger is taking me along to her sorority house for dinner! Quite exciting. They all have their own chefs but i'm not sure how it works.. or how many of the girls will be there.. so nice of her to ask us though. I'm off to an e.a.s.e coffee meeting thingy at a place called Cariboo soon, so shall go get ready methinks. My mentor is coming too which'll be cool. She's so crazy. 

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Ooh I have also decided to add an addition to my posts, being one phrase of Britishness or a crazy Americanism which has cropped up in the day. They happen so often and I know i'll just forget them otherwise!
  So, right now the one that crops to mind is Caroline after dinner yesterday. She was asking about DC and said who y'all going to Washington then? Took me a few seconds to realise what she'd said... before answering how many of us were going.
  Oh and I love the way they say 'swole' over here, especially with the southern accent. Meaning fit basically. I think its something Evan invented just so he can go on about how much of a muscles-man he is haha.
  A girl was visiting Danielle from Jersey over the weekend (yes, as in Jersey shore), and she said down there they say things are 'ill'. Like some people might say something was 'sick'. or Cool. -- Huh?
  Last night I was talking to Melissa who lives opposite me, and I said that Freud's Oedipus complex theory came "yonks" after Sophocles' play. Took her a few seconds to burst out laughing... ohh dear.

The Game.

GO TARHEELS! 
So, we ventured to our first game of the season yesterday. Wow wow wow. I have never seen anything like it, and it's hard to believe that this is a college team playing in the middle of a campus. There were fans there from everywhere, and the stadium is HUGE. We got tickets just before and headed on down in all our blue gear, face paints galore :) There were real-life cheerleaders, the pom-pom ones. (Apparently they're not 'proper' & a bit embarrassing according to one of my hall mates Lindsay. She's a competition cheerleader -- bring-it-on-style!). They paraded their award winning gymnasts, had massive advertisements and videos of famous players giving little cheesy emotional speeches about NC during the game, crowd chants, flags... And to top it off, the tarheels won! What a night.

We had an E.A.S.E get-to-know-you event tonight in the music block. Pretty good fun! They were telling us about more events they're organising, and signing up for sports etc. We're going to make a tennis team I think, and do volleyball or something. And touch ball?!? We did international'y activities to find out more about the other exchanges, filling out one of those 'find someone who can....' forms. I filled the 'find someone who is shorter than 5ft3', category hehe. Some of us played this ninja game on the stage too which was so silly, the guys who run E.A.S.E are just so chilled out and fun. Then a couple of us went to jack sprat, a bar/café, afterwards, and that was the most English people I have been with for a very long time it seems! There were 5 of us and 2 Aussies. Felt quite nice to speak to someone with the English accent again, and for someone to actually nod in comprehension instead of utter confusion and stifled laughter when I tell them I'm from Bourton on the water, Gloucestershire!


OOH, and yesterday I attended a DTH meeting.. 
The first day I came here I saw the newspaper boxes around campus and picked one up from outside my halls, noticing it was a student-run one. And it was made out to look like the Mail, called: The Daily Tarheel. It looked pretty good and we had a flick through. Then I went on their website and oh, my, its impressive. Seriously puts Kings to shame!! I asked Nick's mentor about it last weekend and he was telling me a bit about it, its a DAILY newspaper (!!) and apparently the editors of it come out of school and basically straight into a job with the NYT or something. Its rather prestigious. 


So they had a meeting about joining and I took an application form, you have to go in for like a whole day not just submit random articles for it like you can for ROAR, but you can leave for classes etc and just come back whenever, your story must just be in for the next day's edition. Pretty neat. When I walked into the offices I was a little awestruck. They have their own HQ really near to my halls, and it looks like a professional magazine offices of something when you walk in. With plaques spelling: The Daily Tarheel posted on the wall and framed editions of the paper underneath. AH.


First essay due in tomorrow, I hope its ok : / Its really short. REALLY short, like a page. I have to 'turn in' 3 of these one page'rs overall and they make up 10% of one class' grade. So I'm not too worried, and its my first one also, but it would still be nice to do ok on it!


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[[If your interested here's the URL for the paper's website: http://www.dailytarheel.com/ ]]

Supersizing

Hey y'all!

It's Martin Luther King day tomorrow so we have a long weekend this weekend, brilliant!

Things are finally calming down a bit now, we've sorted out all the international'y stuff that takes forever and can start just being students... All our classes have closed I think so we can't take any more now, only drop them. I got into the Arthurian class I wanted and also the Milton one which I was v happy about! The drama one is so much fun, I love it, the teacher reminds me of Cameron Diaz and speaks just like her... I'm also doing African poetry which is going well. Its just basically getting nitty-gritty with poems and the teacher is so enthusiastic. I was sat in her class the first lesson and it made me laugh, as whilst she was speaking the ceiling opened and there was this sci-fi-esque appearance of the projection screen from these opening panels, and it just zoomed on down. It was so weird to me but the others didn't even flinch! They're quite high tech here. My Arthurian Romance class is looking promising too, its run by an amazing old guy who smells like my grandparents, and is very comical when speaking. It was so very strange in that class as he was putting up postcards of where he's visited in the UK, and a picture of him with Hadrian's wall. He also started off with a picture of the Excalibur hotel in Las Vegas [[example of Arthurian legend pervading culture today]] and one of the girls was like, I live there! To me that is so crazy, Vegas would be an incredible place to live though I'm not sure i'd want to from what I saw! You can barely step outside in the middle of the day without dying of heat as its literally just a city plonked in the middle of the desert. Visiting's just enough for me.

I do still have to go pick up a duvet though! Still sleeping under a sheet.. Which isn't too much of a problem right now as my room is like a little sauna, always so hot. My suitemates' room is always freezing because they're next to the outer wall of the building, so I don't like to turn it off but consequently my room is boiiiiiiiiiiiling.

As it says, this post is centred around the sheer excessiveness of everything over here. It's crazy. About 10 times a day I think to myself...Only in America.

Even the gym was huge. What an experience. They all run laps round a circuit which is basically a huge balcony running round the basketball courts [ no complaints! ;) ]  I got onto the cross-trainer and it felt like I was slow-mo running for a film or something, the machine's are just massive. And getting onto the leg weight machines felt like I was on a flipping roller coaster ride, they're super-padded too. Maybe the sense of size is heightened because I'm short, but still.. When I got back people were so surprised I'd gone to the one on the "other side of campus" (i.e.a 15 minute walk), the concepts of distance here are insanely different when I'm used to London. They're all horrified when I say I walk 45 minutes down to uni every day!

One of the Auzzie girls Freya  had to leave this week which was SO sad. Her modules(classes) didn't comply with what she needed for her course so she had to go all the way back home. I think it's pretty ludicrous that they made her return and couldn't let her stay or have told her BEFORE flying half way across the world to be here. Apparently they said she'd have to do another year in Australia or something so she didn't think that was worth it. Would be so hard to go back now....

We went for lunch with her to say bye on Wednesday  :'( What an experience though. I went over to the campus restaurant a that's where the others have a meal plan for, and its huge. I lived in a London hall last year called Commonwealth and this place is about 5 times the length of the little food counters we had in there. You have to walk all around first and check out the different stalls/counters/stands/refrigerators just so you don't find something else you want after your plate is full - this ALWAYS happens. Hence the excessiveness of many American eaters. Anyway we were walking around there and they have a whole bunch of pizza's, the end one of which is a caramel'y colour. No, I think, they wouldn't just put a sweet pizza in here casually hanging out would they?!? Lo and behold, yes. Not caramel, but a peanut butter and chocolate pizza. Ah. Only here would they POSSIBLY even think to do this... It looked so gross.

So. of course, we tried it.

It was Olivia's (Australian) 21st birthday yesterday, so we all went to the 'mall' and then out for dinner and a bar in the evening. The mall was amazing. SO big, and very pretty with about 4 fountains along the street of outside shops, leading up to the big indoor center. Thing's were cheap too, however there were mainly shops which are expensive in the first place, (Urban Outfitters, Shoe shops, A&Fitch, etc) so we want to go find some old navy's or something... We went to 'Spanky's' for dinner [[don't ask me what they were thinking when they called it that!]]. Then to a bar. They have all these '18 and over' nights here, which is SO wierd. I feel like such a 15 year old again, everyone being all paranoid about i.d and being questioned about drinking. It's bizarre.

Anyway, off to campus to pick up some stuff and then the gym -- things may be supersized over here but they 'aint gonna supersize me!

xxxxx

First day of "class"

So, my first day of classes over and done with!  
Today started off on a funny note, I went down to breakfast in the Agora --the halls restaurant-- and got some tea and cereal, then thought I'd get an omelette seeing as this meal was going to have to last me the day. So, I go and ask for one with cheese and tomato. 
   'Cheese and wharrrt?' 
cheese and tomato.    Oh, tu-may-to
    'Yeys I know what you said I just wanted to hear it agayne'.  LOL. 
Then the cook guy was like, 'I've been having English lessons and that's haw I knew you were from there when I heard the 'tomarto'.' 
hehehehe. oh deary me. Yesterday some people found out that my friend was Australian and they were just like, ohmygawd, SAY something! What was he supposed to say? It's like being the new species in a zoo.
School...
So. Class was excellent. The way they do things over here is so different! They don't really differentiate between seminars and lectures [[from what I've had]] and its like a school classroom set-up where everyone participates all the time but there's always a teacher too. We had to introduce ourselves and the moment I begin to speak I can sense the US brains registering my weird accent and becoming immediately....'interested'.  There's so much assessment all the time here, but that's amazing  in a way as I always feel I have no indication of where I'm at at home where we only hand in something at the end of the terms work. However, it takes a WHOPPING 90% to get an A here. And 60% is a fail. Literally. - At home a 60 is GOOD. actually its pretty good and you only need 70 to get a 1st class. I e-mailed my study abroad guy though and he said that the conversion makes it weigh out which is reassuring, apparently its pretty easy to get an A over here so I'm not complaining! Its so much like English senior school in that you just have to put in the effort consistently and your basically there. 
My drama class looks awesome. We get credit for going to the theatre and bringing back the ticket stub!! The 2 classes I had today were drama and American authors which is looking at a lot African american texts and civil war stuff. The drama one sweeps from Greek all the way through renaissance to Ibsen and the lady seems heaps nice.[Auzzie influences coming through here :p] 
Partying...
Last night my room mate ginger took Nick and I to the frat and sorority house parties. OH. MY WORD. it was like something straight out of a frickin movie. 
  Its rush at the mo. so all the girls and guys are trying really hard to get in to the houses, and they're really stingy with letting in guys that aren't on their 'lists' to rush. Kind of like how girls are let into mayfair/posh LDN clubs and guys have to pay £20... Ever seen Mean Girls? Well that's how these kids act. Like animals at a watering hole, scrambling to get in, be cool, get their feed of the exclusive life. We went to a sorority house first which was absolutely amazing, what I never realised was the functional normality of these houses too. They look so posh from the outside but I kind of just assumed they were wreckages on the inside, just party places. But the girls ones are LOVELY. They even have their own chefs and huge kitchens. And they have all their pictures up on the walls. And they're huge, like 50 girls to a house. Its seriously like another world. The frat houses weren't too special inside but still the one had a live band which was really good. There's also free alcohol all over the place. In the first house we went to it was basically a pub-crawl but in-between the different rooms, so each one had tables of shots in them. Then the other one just had a hatch where guys were making drinks for you. We had jungle juice, which is basically made up from the most sugary stuff ever in the world which is a kids' drink, mixed with a lot of goodness-knows-what alcohol. Which you can't even taste. So anyone who knows me will understand how dangerous that is! Anyway, it was an interesting experience, and good fun,- it's so cool to finally meet Ginger after having e-mailed for so long. 
Home
I finally have internet in my room! Which is awesome. I haven't been able to skype anyone at home yet which sucks, but hopefully tomorrow I will! It's already half way through the night there. At about 4pm every day here I always get sooo tired and ready for bed. The guy who picked me up from the airport took Nick and I to get him a laptop today and I just fell asleep in the back of the car...nice one. I spoke to my parents though on the phone. My mum sounded so surprised to hear me which made me giggle. And then Dad called a bit later. I used up all my credit on my American phone but hey ho, I don't really mind if it means some home-communication.  I tell you what, I miss being able to get a simple cup of tea. The water tastes a bit funny and my milk is in my friends room right now as he has a fridge (and my room is SO warm that when I had a bowl of cereal yesterday the milk left in the bowl had curdled by the time I got back a few hours later!) Tea bags are also horribly expensive. For a basic necessity. We met a girl from Bristol yesterday though and she seems Lovely! Her name's Issy. She gave me her kettle as she never really uses it, everyone here is like that though. Just incredibly nice and friendly. There are lots of nice people down the other end of the hall, who I'm getting to know, alongside the girls up my end. Whether it's false southern charm or genuine friendliness though, its better than English severity and the must-keep-to-ourselves culture. Seriously I don't know how anyone manages to cope with the rudeness of the English, and Londoners in particular! No wonder my friend from L.A., Ashley, used to complain about customer service in London..

Weather [It has to be done I'm English!]

It snowed today!! It is absolutely freezing here . I can't wait for this infamous sunshine the students keep talking about because it sure ain't warm right now. It's lovely when it snows but I think we have had enough snow in the U.K to tide me over till next winter... Anyway classes were cancelled between 5pm today and 11am tomorrow so that's ok! They were super prepared here, the grit was down on the paths before the snow had even left its clouds [its green here too! hehe]. They are just so much more organised that us. England gets snow; Puts a bit of grit down over the next 3 days; Realises there isn't enough to cover one village so people are sliding about and abandoning their cars everywhere; and then puts it all on the news like its all a massive calamity. 

Anyway, I'd better go do some reading and get some sleep! Trying to pump up with energy to counter the ridiculous amount of new stuff my brain and memory are currently absorbing.

Bonne nuit! 

xxx 

$8 on a meal -- never again!!

So, I'm currently sat in a Starbucks in NC!!

It's amazing, we've done so much already and I'm still getting over the jet-lag -- my body falls asleep at a pathetic 4pm hehe.

I got picked up from the a.p. by the UNC e.a.s.e. guy (thy help all the internationals get settled in etc.) and he took us out for a meal with his friends which was nice of him! They were all SUCH typical American guys from what I imagined, all into their football and talking about Sarah Palin and the gym.. Just like english 'lads'-turned-American. He took us to a Mediterranean place where we got a buffet, I ordered 4 different things and they put it on the plate for you. It was, no joke, nearly the size of my HEAD. Deary me. I could have been full on the $3 meal! and I got a grapefruit juice thingy which was so good, but again it was in practically a chalice!

And I've never spent time with so many auzzies in my life. The guy who got picked up from the airport with me is from Australia and he turned out to be on my floor so we're spending most of the time together. Seriously I feel as though I'm in an episode of neighbours half the time. It's amazing.

The first night we didn't have any of our welcome packs, so we had to sleep on our bare mattresses and I ended up drying myself with a t-shirt as I had no towel. We also didn't have internet or phones and neither Nick or I had written down where orientation was yesterday so we set off 2 hours before and went to try find a library or something! The first one was shut, but we found a map and outside the 2nd one was this guy who, SO flukily turned out to be the vice-president of E.A.S.E. ! He saved our lives. It was the best coincidence ever, we were so happy. And Americans are even more friendly than I remembered. They're actually awesome. One thing that made me laugh in orientation. The lady was telling us all the places that are good to visit, ('heaps' of them it seems!) and she was like.. 'Ah, Carrboro is a really artsy place to go, it has a CO-OP.'
Hehe. I actually laughed when she said that and I was sat in the front row... I doubt that the coop is the same thing here as at home but the thought of our little supermarket being called 'artsy' was so weird. We have one right buy our house in London and the people there are actually a bit weird about it! They once threatened to report us to it for making too much noise. Again, we had to stifle laughs.

Anyway, we're going to target soon, its basically the walmart here. Need a few bits and bobs so that'll be useful! Classes start tomorrow I'm rather excited but also a bit scared, they sound so hard core!!

Will be back as soon as I have internet again!

Much love xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

David Gray

So I'm being met at the other end.
So, if someone's waiting for me, I guess I'm definitely going?
I'm awful at making decisions and actually getting onand deciding to do things, so it still hasn't really sunk in. Even when I tell people I'm going on Friday it doesn't fee like I'll be half way across the world. Even when I see the visa stamp in my passport, with my picture. Even when Ginger e-mails me..

It is so nice I'm being met, though! Will feel much better knowing that and hopefully save me the $30 taxi fair too. Am being picked up from the Airport by someone called Andrew Fu. ooh er. Not sure how I'm supposed to know who this Andrew is. I'm hoping he has some sort of massive banner or something, or knowing me I'd go and stand right by the guy looking around expectantly for someone with a UNC E.A.S.E. top on or something : /

It's my last few days in the Cotswolds. This holiday's I haven't been able to see ANY of my friends because I had 10 essays to write, and because of the snow. Boo. 12,000 words over one holiday is far too much in my opinion, its dissertation worthy!!! For some reason KCL seems to give us a gigantium amount of work in comparison to others. --It was like this last year. Out with the complaints though. I'm slightly burnt out now so a plane journey of sleeping and reading a book I actually don't have to make notes on (every English student's dream), is in order I think!! eek.

Just listening to a nice bit of David Gray.. lovely. Should really pack soon...

xxxx

I've been told that you are from the UK and that is so AWESOME!!!

So your from the UK... that's AWESOME.

I really am going to have to keep this 'British' thing up, eh.
eek. I've been assigned a mentor for my course (hence the above quote), and have been e-mailing my new room mate too, things are getting closer and SO exciting.

Also rather sad. Spending time with friends for New Years made me realise how much I'll miss the UK, and knowing so many people! Until uni I never realised how much change there is in life. School was just one massive expanse of comfortable time, where a few people came and went but most things stay the same. I know some people have really crazy times at school, my housemate lived in about 100 different countries before uni so I suppose ironically change isn't too different for her. But I didn't expect uni to be so much change, all the time. My friend Ashton and I always complain that 'no-one told us life was gonna be this way', though I think London plays a big part in that. Last year a LOT of my close friends left because they were international students only here for a year or on masters programmes or something, and I wasn't surprised to see UCL's student population is 26 % international, KCL 16% and SOAS a whopping 30%. Anyway, now its me doing the changing..

My flat mate just e-mailed me, she seems lovely and the cultural differences are making me giggle already. I wrote "faff" in a reply to her and she was like, what's a faff?? I do have some traits which are not strictly representative of England though, more of ... well, me. We did a French-exchange during A-Levels and whilst some went home with English swear words stuck in their heads mine went home saying "oh my gollaaay". My friends were desperately trying to tell them it isn't that normal to say that over here, but they didn't seem too bothered.

AH. less than a week to go until fly-day!!

Happy New Year!! 

~x~