Blogs from Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Sunday the 6th of May 1973 Was, as it turns out, a special day for me When a little blonde boy who has long since gone. He hated Sundays, they were empty, quiet and long But this was a Sunday like no other As he waited in a purple hotel with his little brother In came the heroes of yesterdays FA Cup Some wore suits, some still looked like they were all 'shook up' A ginger player took him by the hand And introduced him to the players of Sunderland With the goalie he took a champagne sip And often when he goes on a memory trip He wonders if when he left the room, all quiet and shy He didn't turn around and say goodbye And now 41 years later, the boy is but a ... read more

A hearty hello to you all! I apologize for taking so long to get back here --it turns out there's been a bit of clamoring for a bit of Tom Jacob insight back at home -- and fortunately I am more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately, I can't say that a whole lot has been going on in the past week or so! I've firmly settled into my flat and my classes. My classes are going very well, they're all very self-guided with little homework, which just means I have plenty of extra time on my hands for reading and, potentially, more traveling. In fact, I just booked a flight for Dublin with some friends for Tuesday, November 25th, for around three pounds. What a deal! And tomorrow we plan on heading to Newcastle for the ... read more

So I've only completed two days of classes here at the University of Sunderland and as such my general feeling for the place may be a bit premature and skewed toward the negative side of things, but I figured it'd be best to give as appropriate an account of the school as I could based on my initial perceptions of things. The Campus Two campuses, really, one at the center of the city and one along the coast of the Wear River. It's about a 20 minute walk to the City Campus from my off-site apartments and another 20 minutes from there to St. Peter's Campus across the bridge. Both campuses are fairly large at first glance but really only contain a handful of buildings each. At the City Campus sits the Gateway and Edinburgh buildings, ... read more

Got back from a field trip to the Beamish Museum, an open-air recreation of an early 1900's settlement. Great fun! I've been experiencing some difficulty regarding uploading photographs I've taken, so bear with me while I try to fix it. The problem no doubt stems from the incredibly poor internet connection I've had to endure. Anything else... Irish pub with a killer local cover band last night (at one point I even thought, "the only thing that would make this better is if they played Radiohead. Sure enough, "Creep" was the next song). Tonight is a roller disco at the Campus Bar, should be a good time assuming i show up early enough to score a pair of skates.... read more

As I guess you all know Charlotte and I are now officially bums and will be traveling for the rest of 2008! Our basic plan is to spend 3 months traveling through Central America over land (and water), then (most probably) sailing into South America from Panama. We hope to be in South America for about 4 months and then a little randomly we fly from Chile to Australia where we will spend 2 months. In case we are feeling a little stressed by all this excitement we then have a week in Bali, returning to Blighty in the middle of December. I can taste that Christmas dinner already........ This is obviously subject to change especially given the fact that I´m pretty much planning on a daily basis and haven´t done much reading or pre-planning... other ... read more