Another post

So I'm still here. Yup. Still alive and kicking. Just living life in Leeds. Going out. Doing some reading. Getting distracted by girls. Standard affairs, you know. Last Saturday we went to Manchester. We were told beforehand that "Manchester is a shit hole". We were a little dismayed by this, but as we had already paid the £15, we were determined to go. When we got there, we found that Manchester was actually very nice. We determined that this was because the guy who told us it was going to be lame was from London. Those southerners are always so posh and "holier-than-though". They can suck it. Why not enjoy everything?

 This is a pagoda archway at the China town square

 There's an actual pagoda. Notice the moss on the top of it. It's pretty cool.

 This is just an alley way. It looked cool.

 A building in downtown. It was really early when we got there, as you can tell by the fact that the sun is so low on the horizon.

 More streets in Manchester.

 Mimi and Olenka

 This is the square of Manchester. This is a statue of a very fat queen, who I can only assume is an English queen.

 They had a bunch of wooden ducks,

 They had feet! Cute.

 More pictures of the square

 More!

 Primark is like is the quality of Target met the price of Walmart. And the store in Manchester was enormous.

 They still have Burger King!

 They also have trees.

 I think I always take pictures of my feet. Make sure I was there.

 They had police on horses!

 They had a huge ferris wheel.

 And we went on it. Here's a view from the cabin.

 Another view from the wheel.

 More

 More.

 Here's a picture of Mimi on the ferris wheel. She's the girl I'm dating. I think she's very cute. (She says I only like this picture because it's the face I always make)

 More views from the cabin.

 This is the Manchester Cathedral. It was really cool.

 More Cathedral.

 Inside the cathedral. You can't see it from here, but they had a lot of tables set up inside that people were having tea at (it would be out of view to the left of this picture above). What I really liked about that was that they actually use this piece of history. It's a very old building, and they integrate it into their daily lives heavily. I really liked that. They probably have to do this in England because EVERYTHING is that old. They can't just use the new things, because nothing is new.

 Picture of the stained glass. The windows weren't really that impressive, but the building itself was really cool.

 View of the alter.

 The alter was ready for its closeup.

 This painting if suppose to be a non-traditional representation of God in our lives. The center piece is the bringing together of God (father, son and holy spirit(the holy spirit is traditionally a feminine quality. I liked that they chose for her to be non-white)). The ketchup is the blood of christ that is spilled for us, but most importantly that God gives us substance, and that the sacrifice, while important, is not everything. We're meant to enjoy the life that God gives us. You can't see it, but up on the train tracks there's a man and an angel on either side of the bridge. It's meant to symbolize the divine presence is in our daily lives, whether or not we recognize it. We are the real and the divine. The part to the left is the unchaining of creativity. The part to the right is a headless man who is devoted to God. The people around him can't see the divine because they're too distracted with life, while the blind are attuned to it. It was a good painting.

 Cool building.

Museum of Art

 Cool glass

 A desk

 A very small set of furniture.

An ancient Egyptian Idol. Made between 1200-400 BC. That's so old!

Um, for the record, I know that most people know already, but I've started dating this girl named Mimi.

She's really cool. She's from Bakersfield and she goes UCSC. The irony of going to England to date someone from CA is not lost on us. But I really like her. And I don't like it when there's a set end date on anything. It makes it seem real pointless.

So yea. There's a post of sorts.

I Sorta Wish I Was Back In The States

But only because of the "Occupy Wall Street" thing that is happening. I want to be there. I want to stand up for my country. It's our way of life that the people in Wall Street (and Washington) have endangered, and I'm angry about it. It's time that we stop listening to what they tell us. We need to be courageous. We need to have guts. We need to rip ourselves from our comfortable lives and do something worth while. I've said for a long time that people should be pissed at America. When they had the riots in the Middle East, I said people should be as mad here as they were there. And now we're getting there.

I'm proud of all those people who are standing up to the Police, taking time from their jobs, their classes, their comfortable lives that the rich have successfully pushed onto us that has numbed our brains and made us complacent with everything going on. We need to stand up and fight. The boondocks called for this revolution long ago. In "Return of the King", a Boondocks episode, aired January 15, 2006, Martin Luther King Jr gives a speech. Here it is.

What happens at the end of this clip, is that the black community rises up, and starts standing up for themselves. They gain respect for their community and then America becomes a better place. This is what should be happening now. They should be angry now too. It's mostly white people from I can tell. What should happen is that minorities should be up in arms as well. What they don't realize is that these banks and the rich have been keeping them down for 200 years. They should be angry about that. Aaron McGruber (the creator of the Boondocks) is truly a head of his time. He saw the corruption and the flaws of this system 5 years ago. and the rest of the country is just now realizing it. C'mon America. Make this count. Here's more I have to say on the subject.

I wonder if there was an actual revolution, if I could even get home. What if I'm stranded in the UK for a while? lol.

Week 2 of classes! I got through the first 6 chapter of Ulysses. and man was it hard going. And I haven't even gotten to the hard parts yet. Sheesh. Some book told me that reading a book that helps explain Ulysses on your first time is cheating you out of figuring it out for yourself. Basically, "You're doing it wrong". I don't think so. I can't get through it otherwise. I'm not smart enough. Sorry.

Finished up the trilogy of plays called the "Oresteia". Now I'm on the Oedipus the King for my Tragedy class. I check out a book from the library about the last play "Eumenides". I brought a lot of the ideas from that book to my seminar and I think I sounded really smart. Little did they know....Anyway, one of the tools thats helping stay really organized is Microsoft Word. I've been putting everything about the books I'm reading and the lectures into it and its serving as a really good central resource for everything. It sounds really lame, but I think I'm more excited to study here than to see the country. There's different things to be gleamed from traveling abroad. One thing I KNOW I'll never get another chance to do is study at their institutions. Anyone can sight see. Anyone can drink a lot all day. But how many people get to go to school here? Not many. I'm going to be taking advantage of that opportunity so much.

Started this book called "Waiting for the Barbarians" for my Postcolonial Literature class. I got about 5 pages into it before getting distracted. I'll finish it soon though.

These are the books I have so far. Still waiting on most of the ones for my Tragedy class. Yes, on the left, that is a casebook for Ulysses (collected essays about the book), Ulysses (the version for my class. has interesting notes at the end), another copy of Ulysses (from my Irish Lit class. Has lots of notes and annotations in it. Very useful) and "The New Bloomsday Book: a Guide through Ulysses" (a chapter by chapter summary of what happens in the novel). When I read the book, I have that and I go through the book at the same time I'm reading the summary, just to make sure I know what's going on.

I've been skating a lot and I actually got the ollie down. Don't care if 10 year olds can do it. I never could. It took me a while. But like my father taught me: "Practice, practice, practice". That's the only way you can actually get good at anything. Now I've got to just keep practicing and I'll get even better. Too bad the weather is about to go south.

I'm going to Manchester on Saturday the 15th. Should be fun!

I'm seeing A Day To Remember on the 14th of November. Should also be fun. 3rd time seeing them, but they put on a great show. August Burns Red is going to be supporting them, so maybe I should listen to them. And Living With Lions. And A Ghost Inside.

Leeds

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's just been a long time since I've had the internet and the time to write something. Leeds is incredibile. The town itself is a weird cross between a small town and a big city. There are high rises and lots of shopping centers, but the town isn't geographically large.

I moved into my house just fine. When I moved in there were only 2 people moved in, Channing and (what I think her name is) Fanny. When I was leaving today, another person was moving in, but when I went to introduce myself, no one turned around for like 2 or 3 minutes. So I just decided they were busy and left. My house is Headingly, on 168 Ash Road (the corner house. Google Maps thinks its somewhere else for some reason) which is a small suburb of Leeds. It reminds me a lot of IV. It's mostly students and the town itself isn't more than a small strip on a street or two. But that is a good thing. I've been to big cities before. I want something really different. There's a grocery store about 5 minutes walk from my house. I go there to get things for dinner. At about 5:30 (17:30 English time), the place looks like Black Friday.

I figured out why people don't skate here for transportation. It's too wet.

I still have yet to get a bank account. I'm going on Tuesday at 14:00 to set one up. I was able to get a phone however. The best deals are only available to those with bank accounts, but I was about to find a pay as you go TMobile deal for £45. I'll go back when I get my account to get a better deal.

There's a lot of drinking here. I can dig it.

People's style here falls under two categories. One, they have nice style, looking slightly hispterish, but not like they're trying too hard. Two, what the heck are they wearing. People were parachute pants and sweats. People here also have some really dumb tattoos. And people here seem to have kids really young.

I'm trying out for the football club Saturday. It should be interesting. I'm not getting my hopes up as to making it. People here have been playing their whole lives. I guess all I can do is run hard and try hard. My ball handling is not superb, but I feel like I have a good idea on positioning and play making and I can run pretty fast.

I also think I'm going to go to the metal club. Just to meet people. And people tell me Bring Me the Horizon and Parkway Drive aren't the kind of metal they had in mind (what, like they're actually good?).

Classes start on the 26th. I only have one class right now. James Joyce's Ulysses. I need 2 more, I think.

I'm sorry I don't have any pictures. Haven't had anything too picture worthy. I'll get some though, I promise.

The weather here kinda sucks. It's stylish to have nice coats.

Leaving Edinburgh

Sorry I didn't post yesterday...well not really. It's my life and my blog, I'll do what I want. Plus, I was having entirely too much fun yesterday to get time to. I'm here to live England, not blog about it after all. Anywayyy...

So after my nap (which was entirely too short. I barely shut my eyes and all of a sudden an hour was gone) that I took after I wrote my last blog, I went downstairs to the lobby of the hotel for the first meeting that we had for our program. I am one of two guys in a group of 13. I am definitely ok with that. We met and discussed our program for a little bit and then headed off and took a small tour of the city. We went into the cathedral, as seen here in this picture.

After that, we toured the city a bit more, and it was cold and blowing and raining. Reminded me of San Francisco a little bit. Except it wasn't foggy, it was a light rain. And the wind was much stronger. In fact the wind was so strong at some points that it almost threatened to knock people over. So I didn't really take any pictures during that, in fears of getting my camera wet for some average looking pictures. We went to the EAP study center to go and get acquainted with it so that we would know where it was and we wouldn't get lost trying to find it the next day. After that, we went to a little restaurant called Mums which advertised itself as "Extreme Comfort food". I got a new kind of beer: Trashy Blonde. It was really tasty.

The waiter there was funny. Self described as a "Scotsman that you can never get a straight answer out of. It's a curse". After dinner, we all went back to the hotel. A couple people said they were going out (Christine) so I wanted to go. Before that happened though, I went with my hotel roommate Davey to the train station to pick up his bag that he couldn't carry up here. Unfortunately, when we got back, a bunch of people had left already. I went and wandered around for while, sticking my head into the numerous amount of pubs that were around our hotel. No dice. I was wandering down some alley at one point, and I was alone with only two other guys. I may have been imagining it, but I think one of them made a move at me (he may have just been drunk and stumbled). I didn't flinch and I kept walking the other way. But it freaked me out never the less. That's when I decided maybe finding some people to drink with was not worth getting mugged on my first night here, so I went back to the hotel in a hurry. I bought a 4 pack of Heinekin to drink by myself in my room and had one before I got really tired and just went to sleep….I think it was 9 o clock. I fell asleep almost immediately, 

I woke up at 5am and could not fall back asleep. I blame a couple of factors. One, I was still jetlagged. The whole layover thing in Amsterdam really messed me up. Two, I was really excited to get up and start seeing the city and exploring England. Three, the bed was extremely uncomfortable. It was short, the blankets were short and not heavy enough and the mattress was not very comfortable. So, I laid there for about 45 minutes trying to fall back asleep, unsuccessfully. So, I decided I would go for a run. I laid there for a while longer because I didn't want to run in the dark. I got up at 6:30 and went running. I ran downhill from the Royal mile all the way down to the New Restalrig Church about 1.8 miles way. It was a very nice run. I felt really good on it. On the way back, I got a little bit lost, but was able to find my way easily enough. I got back, took a shower, and went and had a nice big breakfast. I was initially by myself, but then people started to trickle in and eventually the whole crew was there. After breakfast, we split off into two groups and our group of 6 (Tammy, Mimi, Davey, Heather, Madi and I) all went for a tour of Edinburgh castle. It was amazing. Everything in Europe is so old. You get such a feeling of rich history here that one doesn't feel in America. The castle itself was so old, but it was in use for such a long time. In fact, it still is in use. Here's a huge slew of pictures from the castle.

Entering the castle

View from the top

The battlements.

Entrance

It's a real portcullis

View of the city

More

View out the archers station

More castle

Castle

Stained glass windows

Better picture

Line of scottish kings

More

They went from pictures on the wall

To real statues

Crafting the royal scepter

Mockup of the royal sceptor

Mockup of the Crown. They didn't let us take pictures of the real thing.

Portrait of someone...

Me!

Great hall

Thatched roof the of the great hall

Suit or armor

Pirate gun wheel

Looking down into the dungeons

Writing by prisoners on the cell doors.

Model of a ship...forget which one lol

Painting of the castle!

After the castle, Madi, Heather and I(all SB bros) went to lunch at a place called Tron across the street from the hotel. They gave us free burger coupons and had £2 drinks. That was right up our alley. We ate that and had a couple drinks. Then we had to rush off to our EAP orientation meeting. We got pretty lost. We had a map and none of the streets that we saw were on it. So we ended up taking a £4 cap ride to the place. With such cheap lunch, it was affordable to us. We went to meeting and then after that we headed off to dinner. We had Pizza Express. It may sound super American, but it wasn't at all. It was a great place. The Pizza was amazing and the desert was incredible. The ice cream and the chocolate cake especially. After that, we had a ghost tour of the underground of the city. I don't personally believe in ghosts (there are lots of explanations for those sorts of things; ultrasonic vibrations that cause people to feel dread and hallucinate, dust in photo lenses, etc) but when we were down there and she lead us into a small room and told us people got bruised in that room, it was a bit creepy. This picture is a grate that she explained that if you took a picture there, you may see a little boy named jack….I don't see anything, do you?

After that, the crew of 13 went out to the pub Tron. It has a really cool downstairs area and £2 drinks. We were there for a while before wandering over to another pub called the Frankenstein. We were told that at midnight, they dropped a coffin from the ceiling and all the bartenders got up on the bar and danced. This didn't happen. We were told by a very drunk Englishman that they had already done it, before midnight. We were a little bummed. Walking home, we found the birthplace of Harry Potter. In this cafe, The Elephant Cafe, is where JK Rowling first got the idea for it. Here's an extremely good (/sarcasm) picture of Heather and Christine in front of the cafe.

After that, Christine and I went out and tried to go to a club down the street because it was playing dubstep and drum and bass until 3am. Unfortunately/fortunately, Christine had had her entire bag stolen at the Isle of Wight concert festival a week before, with her ID, her passport, money and clothes and all. The fortunate part is that someone had found it completely intact and that person was friends with a guy she's living with in Leeds. I honestly can't believe that luck. But that meant that when we tried to get into the club, we needed at ID that said she was 18. She didn't have one, which I thought was really funny that they wouldn't let her in. Who needs an ID to be 18? Seriously...we gave up after trying another bar that asked for her ID. We called it a night after that. I went to bed at 2:45, pretty drunk. I woke up at 7am and could not go back to sleep. I blame the 3 previous reasons that I blamed before. I got up, went to breakfast, and after that headed off to the train station. I collected my tickets and boarded the train to York, which I am currently on now. I'm about to transfer to Leeds.
There are a lot more blonde people than I'm normally use to. I've also started saying "cheers" in somewhat of a British accent. It's funny/awful. I still need to buy a phone. I still need to figure out where to live. I need bedding, a clothes hanger, and probably a lot of other stuff.

I have this weird pump on the top of the top of my right shoulder....hello free British healthcare.