Blogs from Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 17

Well it's official....our building has set off the fire alarm 4 of the 5 times that it has gone off. It's really annoying....so learn to either shut your kitchen door or to cook-- you choose! Anyways, besides the irritation of having to stand outside because the fire alarm went off again today (someone sets it off about once per week), I'm heading to frisbee practice in a kinda sunny afternoon. It's not too cold out yet which is really nice. ps-this time one of the girls ended up outside in just a towel from her shower. isn't that nice?? and we've been warned that the next fire drill will be in December so we'd better wear jackets and shoes. Hopefully no one is caught in the shower again! This morning I went and got lots of ... read more

The day was going to start off fine, however.....fire alarms are hateful!!! The lovely screeching sound of the fire alarm went off at 7 o'clock this morning, waking everyone up and making perfect grouches of us. Some didn't have anything to do today but sleep or didn't have class until later in the day. I was planning on getting up at 8am anyways, so this 1 hour early wake-up call was incredibly unpleasant, particularly because it was a test. So I went back to bed after it and ended up shutting my alarm off and waking up randomly 40 minutes after I had planned to. Oh well. I wasn't late for class so that was good, but I could have been. I blame the fire alarms. My seminar today on Contemporary World since 1945 was interesting, ... read more

Once again I sat through another hour of US history and foreign policy in the world. Today's topic: The Vietnam War and why on earth the US was involved. It was a really good lecture and actually taught me many new things. However, it did have a rather negative view of the US--the first that I've come across that made me somewhat cringe. Yet it was really good to hear someone else's opinion much less actually covering the topic in such a survey course. It's frustrating when taking classes in US history that certain topics are skipped over because they are "too complicated" to explain, when rather they are either huge mistakes or defeats that nobody wants to re-live or even own up to. I had no understanding of the Vietnam War, in particular, but today ... read more

Today has been a glorious day. Sunny and about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Once again a fairly normal day....thus if nothing exciting happens then you may not find a post about it. I went to class and learned more about US foreign policy during the Cold War. You have to love the US and their intervention in EVERYTHING. It was quite entertaining though when the lecturer accidentally stated that FDR was assasinated. Oh goodness. After class I headed over to the library where I subsequently spent several hours searching for books pertaining to the class reading agenda. Funtimes! At 1pm there were tons of people in the library....I've never seen so many people in the library! Maybe that's because I don't frequent McHenry that often at home. I ended up checking out 6 books. I then headed ... read more

A very happy birthday to Leslie from UBC! She and I headed to Sains' this morning for some grub, a must. We picked up some cheesecake and had a mini celebration for her 20th birthday. The rest of the afternoon was spent talking and swapping stories with Leslie and one of her flatmates, Aylin. It was interesting to get different perspectives. Aylin is British but she basically grew up in Michigan and a bit in South Africa, so she has a fairly broad world view. After leaving to make myself some dinner, I got roped into going out to a house party. I was really reluctant to go but in the end I had a great time. However, meeting up with everyone was a bit of a challenge. I walked to Cavendish but no one was ... read more