mates, chips, and pints....oh yeah and classes :)

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Hello everyone across the pond!! I have been dreadfully horrible at keeping my blog updated, I am very sorry. I will be better, I promise!

Starting off here again, I am a bit upset.  I just typed up a really long blog to try to catch you all up on what has been going on, only to have it all deleted when I tried to post it. GAH!! I will try to recreate the stories, but bear with me!

I have been here exactly 20 days and have had some awesome adventures already. So weird to think that so little time as passed, while at the same time I feel like I have been living here for ages! First things first…

I have changed around my class schedule, so now I don’t have classes on Mondays or Wednesdays. I picked up a class on Thursdays from 10 am to 1 pm. The class I picked up is, get this...Introduction to Knit!! That’s right, I, Cassie Fallon, will be taking a knitting class! Too bad my mom won’t be here to help me with it, I may need all of the help I can get with the hand knitting! The machines we learned how to use last week are actually really neat and fun to use. I think it will be fun, so we will see! Wish me luck! All of my other classes are the same, one class on Tuesdays and then on Thursday and Friday.

I am having a hard time remembering how I transferred to a different topic in my first writing, so I will just get started on the every day here…

I cannot possibly give you a play by play on my every day life here, so much has happened! I can give you a look into my typical day though.
On Mondays since I don’t have class until later in the day, I usually just wake up whenever my body tells me it is time too. I hope in the shower, which I have mastered! Well, not really…I know how to use it now thank you again to the cleaning lady, but it still changes temperature and water pressure for no apparent reason. I then usually sit and let my hair dry while going through facebook, playing online, typing blogs (ahem…) or hanging out with Aubrey across the hall. She has class though, so she can’t be a bum like me. 
This Monday I went out around town to get some things done. I walked everywhere it felt like to get some knitting needles and wool yarn…easier said than done! I ended up heading over to the outdoor market where someone in an art store told me I could probably find them. Yes, it is January and there is an outdoor, yet covered, market. That reminds me, I need to tell you about the weather…hold that thought, I’ll get back to it.
So I headed over to the market, and I asked a lady I saw where I might be able to get the needles and wool…she had a measuring tape around her neck, so I thought who better to ask!? She made a comment about how no one does that anymore and when I told her I was a student and taking a class in it, she got so excited! She turned to me and said with a big smile “Oh are you luv? How wonderful! Over here luv, I know where you need to go,” in her very cute English accent. People are so nice here!
She took me to a booth in the market who is owned by a lady named Ann. She sells pillows, knitting needles, wool, and a number of other garments. I looked a bit silly because I have no idea what I am doing, who would have thought I would need knitting needles?! I have found though that if I laugh and say things like ‘I’m a silly American, forgive me!’ or “I’m just a lowly student” people will laugh with me and be very nice and willing to help. I was silly though, I forgot the papers saying exactly what it was that I needed though I thought I remembered…Ann acted appalled that I would need the size of needles I did, so I second guessed myself. I walked all the way back to my flat (my dorm) to get my notebook. I waited for Aubrey to get out of class though, she had errands to run and I thought she would like the market. It is just lovely (they say that word a lot here) with neat things to look at and to just people watch. So we went back and got the things I needed…hopefully they’re the right ones I need!
While that may not be a typical day, I do usually end up wandering around the city or running errands with other people during the day. Weird how I really don’t like shopping, but I always end up doing just that. I also hang out at the flat with my flat mates, Aubrey and sometimes Niharika. When running around campus or town we tend to run into other international kids and talk to them also. I hang out a lot with Vanessa and Matt too, the couple from California. They’re fun!

So, yes…the weather. It is actually not very cold here, and (knock on wood as I say this please) the last week or so has not been very rainy, yay! Of course between the first time I typed this and now, it has actually rained. Knocking on wood didn’t work! I have been waking up to sun, or at least clouds with the sun trying really hard to get through it. For a while, I thought I would see rain every day. If I wake up to the sun, it will rain in the afternoon/night...if I wake up to rain, it will also still rain in the afternoon/night. It really made grocery shopping fun by the way. I am usually fine here with my P-coat and my scarf (I got a new one from Liverpool! I am getting ahead of myself again…so sorry.) and my gloves. The gloves help keep the cold air from going up my sleeves, even if I don’t need them for my fingers.  This also makes me think of Scotland, but that’s later…

Here in Preston, there is something always going on and there is always something to do. They have special deals for students to attract business and it’s so unreal that everyone seems to go out every night here. I need to get better about it, but whenever I hear that people are going out or doing something I never want to say no! I don’t want to miss out on anything! Story of my life right? The International Kids all hang around together, and I can’t help but want to go, too!

So here is the weekly events of places to go…
Sundays we go to a place called Manyanas, it’s a club and they have 2 for 1 night. It’s self explanatory, but certain drinks are 2 for the price of 1. This last week when we went, we got there early so we sat there looking at each other until someone said how it would be nice to have cards…well lucky us, I had some in my bag! So we played a game until the night got hoppin’ and then we danced!
Mondays we go to either Roper Hall or Squires, they are also dance clubs. I have never been to Roper Hall and have only gone to Squires, but it was expensive to get in and the drinks were as well. Roper Hall is apparently 1 pound for a pint. I need to go there next time! Squires has 2 rooms, one where they had regular dance music and another where they played High School Musical and Mama Mia soundtracks…weird right?
Ok, moving on…
Tuesday is Karaoke night at the uni (university) club, that’s the one on campus. That is usually a fun night, last week we hung out with a group of people from Ireland who were visiting their friend here, who is flatmates with one of the girls in the International Posse. Confused? Yes, I know sorry. Friends of friends of friends if you will! It was a fun time in all.
Wednesdays we go to a club called Lava, you have to pay to get in but it’s a fun time…you guessed it, more dancing! We dance all of the time, it’s a great way to work off all of the pints and fish n’ chips! We walk EVERYwhere too!
Thursday nights we start out at a pub called Adelphi’s where it is a pound for a pint, and then we move on to the bigger uni club, 53 degrees if you had thought ahead and gotten a ticket. They start out cheap in the beginning of the week and get more expensive each day. There we as you may have guessed, DANCE! I have gone every week, and have had a great time.
Fridays have turned into laundry nights for a bunch of us, and last week we all ended up going to the Guild, most of group’s favorite pub. Last week we ended up staying in and playing games and talking with the big group. We have started going off somewhat in our own directions, hanging out with our flat mates or people we meet through flat mates and so on. For the most part though, we do stick together and at least communicate with each other plans and trips and so forth.

This brings me to the weekends!!! These are of course different every week depending on travel plans and whatnot.

Going back 2 weeks then…
Edinburgh, Scotland!! Now, there is so crazy much to tell, I will do my best to fill you in on everything. Don’t get mad at me though if it’s really long, there was a bunch of things to happen. Pictures may help, but let’s be honest…they still don’t do anything justice. I just have to tell you to come over here and travel on your own!!!

Ok, so planning the trip…everyone just talked a lot about it and it was getting late in the week so a group of 4 of us, Matt, Vanessa, Aubrey and I, made the executive decision to book the hostel and get our train tickets. We left early Saturday morning and sat on the train for the 3 or so hours looking across the English and Scottish terrain. It was really pretty! Sometimes it doesn’t look too different from the fields and hills in the US, but then I had to remind myself…wow, I’m in England! Because it can be so unreal at times, we remind ourselves by saying to each other “Hey guys, guess what?! We’re in England! Or Scotland!” or wherever we happen to be at that point. Makes you chuckle, no matter how many times you say it. 

We got to the train station and had to find our way to the hostel, but we had to get maps first. There was some more standing around with the big group, trying to decide which way to go and waiting on some people who ran to the toilet. (It’s not a bathroom or a restroom unless you actually plan on bathing or resting!) Valuable information: you may indeed have to pay to use the toilet in Edinburgh! We got to The High Street Hostel (which you guessed it, was just off of High Street…close to everything!) before we were allowed to check in. They let us drop off our bags while we went exploring. Let me tell you, it was so much easier with a small-and I mean small-bag compared to Dublin when I had my huge luggage and my 2 small bags with me. Whew!

The main lesson of this weekend that I learned is that traveling in such a big group-there was 15 of us!-is just really hard to do, and you can’t make everyone happy. There was a lot of standing around waiting for others and making plans so that none of us probably got the experience we could have, but it was still fun!! We agreed to meet up later that night for a haunted tour of the underground vaults under the city’s bridges. That’s also a later story…
I hear the others talk about how cold it was there, but I don’t recall having the overwhelming feelings of being cold which is weird…I do remember the wind. I am sure that most of the weekend I looked like Medusa with my curly and wild hair!

I paired up with another girl, Elizabeth from Kentucky, because we both wanted to do the castle. It was 10 pounds, but I figured that’s the one big thing I would do while in Edinburgh. We could have spent aaaall day there, but we had to limit ourselves because we were there only for less than 2 days.
Oh! You would never believe who I ran into at the castle before we got in line…Aimee, my Australian friend from the hostel in Dublin! She had just been on a tour of the highlands, and I had no idea she would be in Edinburgh, not to mention the castle! What a small world! She ended up going along with us for most of the weekend too, making our group a whopping 16! It was really fun, she got along with almost everyone. The castle was really neat, it is just crazy to think of people living there so many years ago. The view was breathtaking walking up to it and on the other side, the city is so big we could not possibly do it all in 2 days!
The part that struck me the hardest about the castle was the memorial to honor those who have fought for and given their lives for Scotland. I know there are lots of these, but there was a saying in part of it, about the unknown names of these people that I really liked. It read “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. There nothing can harm them: they are in peace. Others also there are who perished unknown; their sacrifice is not forgotten and their names, lost to us, are written in the books of God.” It just seemed that those who made this memorial were apologetic that they did not know everyone’s name, and to say even if we don’t know them, God does so they are not forgotten. Alright, enough of the serious talk.

Edinburgh is such a pretty city! All stone and the roads and sidewalks are all cobblestones. It is amazing to think about how long people have been living there. There is a crazy number of stairs everywhere, and some of the buildings are so thin and the streets so windy and narrow also. There were men dressed up in costumes on the street leading to the castle, one was of course William Wallace with the blue face paint and everything. He looked amazingly like Mel Gibson in Braveheart too. He would shake his plastic swords and passers by and yell things and take pictures. He was doing this to raise money for leukemia, vallant effort I thought. We stopped at a little sandwich shop, where the workers weren’t the nicest but it was a good sandwich and cheap, so no complaints from me. Good luck finding a bin around that city though. As ‘eco-friendly’ as England and Scotland claim to me, you think you would find more bins around. (Oh bins by the way, are our trash cans. They have no idea what trash cans or trash bags are, they are rubbish bins or just bins. Yay for cultural differences!)
After this we met back up with a group and went back to the hostel. The day was almost all gone, so we rested for a bit and moved into our rooms at the hostel before the scary tour of the haunted vaults of Edinburgh. It was fun, though not worth the amount of money I paid for it. Learned some interesting things though, and it was nice that the whole group agreed to do it together. I will borrow my friend Jori’s account of the haunted vaults here, I cannot do better in describing them.

Curtousy of Jori Stanek:
“So they built these vaults that were supposed to be for storage under the city, only they used volcanic rock, which is porous, meaning that if it rained up top, it rained down there too, making the vaults no good for storage. So they got shut down and homeless people started hanging out there (because it was actually illegal to be homeless at that time), and it got gross and disease infested cuz there were so many people and awful sanitation, so police men didn't go down there, so criminals kept head quarters down there, so it was pretty awesome all around. And by awesome, I mean horribly awful. Oh, but speaking of bad sanitation, I learned something cool. So, they used to have the buckets for excrement, right, which got dumped out the window at certain times of the day. The last time it got dumped was at ten o'clock at night, which also happened to be the time that bars closed. So tourists and stuff would be just wandering (possibly stumbling) home at that time, when they'd hear "gardy loo" (or something like that, which meant, well, you're smart, you know what it means) from out a window, and prolly stop and look up as an automatic response, and promptly get a bucket of poo to the face. Which is where the term "shitfaced" comes from. Isn't that neat? Anyways, the vaults were pretty cool. I didn't hear the footsteps of the guardman or feel any little orphan boy hands looking for his mum or sense any negative energy or see any figures scrambling around trying to get out of the fire that trapped them in the most haunted vault there (a 3 on the supernatural scale, with 95% hauntedness) or get any bruises from them kicking me in the process. Maybe next time? Joke. It was still cool. The tour guide was this cute, witty chick with her Scottish accent dressed in black and carrying a torch (flashlight).”

Now that you have gotten a taste of Jori’s witty blogs, you will bored of my style but because you all love me I will continue to write and hopefully you will continue to read. 
We ate dinner that night at Wannaburger, where we had burgers!! Expensive burgers, but burgers!!!! We then chilled for a bit at the hostel and a group of girls and I ran off to a pub where a hostel worker told us had great traditional music playing. The ground floor (America’s first floor) was full so we went below to a smaller room with a bar. It was empty save for the barman, Grant, Jack who had a guitar, and Ewen who played the violin. Also, Charlie an old man who was apparently a regular was there. They all sang, and they were wonderful! Grant has played in Kentucky!! He played guitar and sang some awesome songs before the pub got busy. He played at Woodsongs in Lexington, which my old boss at the library volunteers for on Mondays. Amazing! He sang a really fun but awful lullaby about a cranky and bad child who wouldn’t sleep and wrecked his dad’s car, but who had a child himself and sang the same song too. My personal favorite was one that Jack sang and played, about a girl telling a boy that as long as there was no price on love she would stay…I recorded it on my camera! Once again, pictures or recordings don’t do it justice! We made everyone introduce themselves and by the end of the night lots of people knew other people’s names. Amazing! Later, more people came who knew Jack, Grant, Charlie and Ewen and were regulars. And some not so regulars, some kids from Sweden who played the recorder and the accordian, true story!! We were there for a good 3, maybe 4 hours and it felt like no time had passed at all. One of the best nights I’ve had over here!

Ok, so I am now on to 5 pages in Microsoft Word…Wow. I still have to tell you about the next day in Scotland, and about Liverpool. The day trip I took with beautiful Aubrey, and the surprise party for Vincent from France! I have to tell you about the trip we are planning to Amsterdam, and for holiday. (Spring break or vacation to us, holiday here). I am also starting to plan another trip to Ireland, I can’t wait!!!

Unfortunately, I have class in 20 minutes and I could not possibly cover those topics quickly, as you obviously you know by now. I will let you process what you have read, there will be a quiz later…I kid I kid!

I miss you all, and love you more!!!

Love,
~Your Little World Traveler~

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Photos

friends
they made the trip go so fast!

rubbish alley
an example of what I meant when I said you see trash I mean rubbish everywhere

stairs galore!
Yes, I walked up those!

bright red door!
So, I know that's a church...but it still reminded me of my home in Ohio with it's bright red door. It made me happy!

view from the castle...
I told you it was pretty!

#2
I can see why they would build it there...I dare you to climb that!

Comments

[Nick Blair]

Jealous
I'm so totally jealous your over there having a blast and I'm chilling in Ky with no power at my house. Glad to hear your having fun though. Your gonna have to knit me something like a sweater or hat with your new skillz. Later, Nick