March 11-20
On Monday, as I had no classes I spent my day working on some of my readings and planning parts of my trip to Scotland. Also, I had an essay due on Tuesday that I failed to spend any time writing until the Monday. Luckily I chose to write on Macbeth, a play with plenty of online essay writing resources. We had to pick a quote from a list to do a close reading/analysis on and I chose the quote "Canst thou minister to a mind diseased" because 1. I know what's going on in this scene and 2. as a Psychology major I could pull in some novel (this being new/not discussed yet) ideas.
On Tuesday, I met up with the girls I'm going to Scotland with and ate lunch in the cafe connected to the Old Library building. Prior to meeting with them I met with my study group to create our presentation for our seminar later in the day. We had to pick a novel that has been adapted into a play and I chose The Sound of Music, and was surprised to find there was a German movie adaptation prior to the Julie Andrews movie that I'm going to try and see. I then quickly finished my essay and rushed over to the closest printer to get it printed, then rushed back to hand it in. The hand in process is so confusing. This essay was also weirdly formatted as we were not allowed to have our name anywhere on our essay, yet we're supposed to format it in MLA guidelines (MLA calls for putting your last name beside every page number). I also found out that there was a difference between the number on my student card and the number I use to login to my student accounts. I'd already submitted an essay with that number, but that one I was able to use proper MLA so my name was all over it. Also, for this essay I had to submit it online first, print a receipt and then hand that in with it all. Why have us submit a hardcopy when you're going to require an online too?
Anyway, after all that rushing I enjoyed a strange chicken carbonara from the cafe. Carbonara has egg in it, so it's a little ironic to have chicken added to it.
And as I am writing this I've realized I missed telling you one of the most "exciting" events I had the week prior. I told my Scottish trip mates and they had a good laugh about it.
Basically on Wednesday last week maintenance were scheduled to go around and check all the locks on our doors to make sure their master key works (the sent us an email prior). I wasn't feeling well that day and had stayed in. I heard the maintenance guy arrive in our hallway and he was going around really fast so I figured, why make it awkward by answering the door extending his stay, so I hopped into my bathroom and shut that door.
I heard him come to my door, he opened it with no difficulty, but then he kept making more noise, including a few curses. About 5-10 minutes pass, I can't be sure as I didn't have my phone on me at the time and I was too nervous to just pop out because I'd been hiding in my bathroom. Anyway, I heard him leave, so I popped out of my bathroom to take a look. That's when I noticed he hadn't locked my door. That annoyed me as had I really been out and about as I was pretending to have been, this guy had left my possessions freely accessible to all. I went to lock the door, but the lock was seized. The maintenance guy had broken my lock during his check. Lovely.
I suddenly heard him coming back, so I rushed back into the bathroom, this time grabbing my phone on my way in. Ten more minutes pass, while he removed my lock completely and does a bunch of stuff that maintenance people do to try and fix a lock. I heard one of my flat mates walk by and the maintenance guy be like "I fucked up the lock." Which is a lovely thought. Anyway, I heard him leave again. So I popped back out, but to my horror my lock was still broken. At this point I was worried that I might need to have to go through getting new keys and everything, so I decided to pretend I'd just arrived home. He took 20 minutes or so as he had to do the fire alarm check. Upon his return he apologized for breaking my lock and then got back to work.
During this time I worked on researching secondary sources for one of my essays. At one point he asked me the time, and then got up to leave again with the lock still not fixed. When he got back he continued to work on it, meanwhile I'd just finished scanning through a 200 page journal document. At least I was being forced to do some schoolwork. He asked to borrow my key at one point, but it still wouldn't turn the lock. As I'd now spoken a few more words to him he asked if I was American, I corrected, and then he asked why I would ever want to go to Newcastle. I told him it was the most Canadian city in the UK and that London was full of less friendly people, which he replied saying London was awful.
Finally three whole hours later my lock was fixed. All I have left of the whole mess is an allen ranch he'd left behind. Also, a well sourced essay.
Back March 12, after my meeting with my Scottish trip mates, I went to the Language Resource Library to read one of my English books. This is the coolest library on campus as it looks straight out of Harry Potter. Unfortunately is was packed with students working in essays and dissertations so I couldn't take a good picture, but here is my view from my reading nook.
Afterwords I headed to my seminar. There was a chance that it would be cancelled as our Professor had injured her back but she ended up toughening it out. I'd missed the play the week prior as we were forewarned about it: Trainspotting. I know I'll never watch the movie as it's not really my thing. I was going to go to the play until I was informed it was one of those experimental type plays that heavily involve the audience. That's when I went "nope."
I was thankful I did not attend as from the stories of a live action potty scene, hand-jobs and loads of vulgar scenes and interactions (including "poo" being throne at audience, a condom slapping someone in the face, and even an actor asking an underage audience member for a handy - all in character "of course"). In one of the night's productions an audience member had fainted, so I was smart not to attend as I knew I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I should also mention that there really was not easy option to leave midst-play as the audience was a part of the stage. It would be just as uncomfortable leaving during a comedy show. You'd be called out for sure.
On Wednesday I went to class as per usual. This day I got an ad on Facebook from Tim Hortons. I was a bit annoyed as it made me crave it a bit, but then as I was looking at it I got this strange feeling, that's when I saw the advertised price of the alleged deal was in pounds. Man, ad targeting is good. A Canadian in the UK? Let's send them Timmies ads. The first thing I'll be doing upon arrival in Glasgow is having a photo-op in front of the Tim Hortons there, as well as buying a pack of timbits to share with my non-Canadian friends. I wonder what odd pastries they sell in Scotland?
Then, for a total of 5 hours or so I experienced a loss of many social media applications. Mainly I couldn't post and had issues with messaging people. This was inconvenient as i was trying to book flights home and couldn't send screenshots to my mom about what i was seeing because Facebook was down. It was mostly annoying because no one else back home was affected so I was alone. I did not use this time to refresh in a world without social media as I use it for important things and don't derive all my joy from a like/comment (note the all, as it is nice to get likes and comments, but I don't let it be the only thing to make me happy nor let it have the opposing affect should I not get as many likes). I was able to watch Netflix without having to pause too many times to respond to friends, so there was that.
Thursday I had class and a study group right after and then I headed to the mall to pick up a wooden spoon in order to be able to make more dishes in my rice cooker without scraping the non-stick surface with my metal utensils. After I decided to head into McDonald's and try their mozzarella sticks. I chose to do table service and plotted myself down in an area and began to read my English book.
The mozzarella sticks were very good, they came with a salsa sauce and not marinara sauce for a dip, but it was actually better with the spicy sauce than what I typically pair with my mozza sticks back home. During my time I read about 100 pages in a noisy and very busy McDonalds. About 5 or 6 groups of people had ended up sitting in the seats either side of me during this length of time. I out-sat many. I was planning to wait until it was time to go to see this weeks show, when I suddenly realized I'd forgotten my ticket. Thankfully I'd realized with enough time to walk back to my flat and walk back. Great exercise to work off that McDonald's I suppose.
The show was the last of the course. Instead of a play we got to see the Northern Slam, which is a slam poetry competition. I shared the live stream on my Facebook so I can reference it later for coursework, but you should go ahead and watch it, there were some really great poems. Hardly any were like that 22 Jump Street scene FYI, they were really good and quite a few times funny poems. The presented reminded me a lot of Grandpa (lmk if you agree so I don't feel like I'm being crazy thinking so).
One cool thing about this competition was that it was solely based on audience votes. I'd always wanted to participate in something like that, so I was excited to be able to participate.
It got really difficult at times trying to decide who to vote for. My friend and I always panicked during the 30 seconds we got to make a decision as there was a lot to like.
It was quite late when I walked home afterwards, I ended up having to quickly avoid a rowdy group of boys on a club crawl (thankfully they didn't notice me). I also got to see what Newcastle is famous for - girls walking around with their dresses/skirts ridden way up. That's one for the tourist books.
On Friday, March 15th I believe I skipped class because I was tired from the night before. I at least had done the seminar work.
March 16-17 were St Patricks Day weekend, which means people party two days straight and pretend they all have Irish heritage. I'd had plans to attend one of the cheaper events on campus, but ended up having to bail due to a bad cold or something brought on by dehydration. I keep forgetting to drink water. The only times I remember to drink water is while eating, but I only eat like 2-3 times a day, so I hadn't been drinking enough for the amount I was moving about. Thankfully I had some of the weekend to try and improve. My flatmates were crazy loud and ear plugs only work to a certain extent. By the time I got to Tuesday and Wednesday I ended up having to bail out of classes. I was too embarrassed to email saying I'd gone and gotten myself sick from dehydration, so I lied and said I'd gotten pink eye. My eye was really itchy, so it wasn't a total lie.
I then ended my evening by getting a strange group chat made by my mom with my brother as the only other member. Easily I went to - is this an Emily birthday thing - but then the creator of the group didn't respond for a long time. Finally, Tim and I just get a photo of some random guy and a car that had been in a crash. Honestly, Mom, you really have to stop watching shows with lots of cliffhangers because getting the story about how you witnessed a car crash and nearly were involved was really drawn out.
I hope this blog post was more "entertaining" for you.
Comments