Another Day, Another Blog

Hey all! Sorry its been so long since I’ve blogged it up; I don’t exactly have any good excuses, but I think I might have a good story or two to tell you all. Shoot, its been like a whole week, hasn’t it? Ok, well my dad informed me that no matter how busy I was I still needed to blog once a week, so dad, this one’s for YOU!

Ok, moving on. Where to start… right, THURSDAY. So the good news is that all my clothes successfully dried, despite (or perhaps because of) being strewn all about my room and bed and doors and windows and everywhere, really! They continued to stay spread about until I needed to wear them, and even then I didn’t have much of an incentive to put them away. Why? You may ask… I’m not really sure. Anyway, every morning I move the big pile of tshirts off my desk chair to the bed, and then I reverse the dumb process every night when I try to go to sleep. Its like a dummy proof system. And it worked until last night when I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore and HAD to fold my clothes before we watched a movie. (That’s for you, mom!) But, I get ahead of myself.

THURSDAY. Right, so Thursday night we went on an excursion into Norwich again, this time to find a pub. We’ve been here for an entire month and we still haven’t found a cozy little pub that we could go to just to hang out, shoot some pool, and have a drink. So we went out looking for one, and we stopped at this pub called The Compleat Angler, (and no, I did not spell “compleat” wrong).

Anyway, they charged us an arm and a leg and our first born for those drinks but I found a new favorite beer: Kronenberg Blanc. Its straight up amazing. So we hung out there, and then me and Lucy and Leigh caught the bus back while Emma and Heather stayed in town for a little while longer. The walk back home was slightly entertaining. Unfortunately we’re going to have to keep looking for a pub because all of us straight up refuse to pay that much for drinks again. Anyway, moving on.

FRIDAY: Fridays are good days. I sleep in. I make coffee. I watch the Office. And that’s just about it. Its fantastic not having school on Fridays. So I did all those things, minus the Office because the episode was taking forever to load on my computer, so instead Leigh and I had to watch it later that night. Friday we had fun hanging out, we went into town and bummed around. They have this great catalogue store in town called Argos where its just a room w/ about 15 Argos Catalogues set up on desks that you can just flip through. Then they have this little machine where you can check whether or not they have the thing you want in stock, and then if they do, you order it right then and there, you pay for it at the counter, and then they go get it from the big warehouse. Its awesome! So Heather and I decided we needed a coffee maker (I tried to use tea as a substitute, I really did, but its just not the same!). So, needless to say we got a coffee maker from Argos. It was great. And we only paid 6 pounds for it. I wonder how long it's going to last...

We then made our way to Morrison’s to do some grocery shopping, but we dropped Heather and Lucy off at the Train Station to buy our tickets for the next day (more on that to follow). We also got to meet the infamous Harry: Anna’s boyfriend who she has talked about nonstop since we all got here. He was in town for the weekend, so we were finally able to put a face to the guy we’d heard so… no, dare I say, WAY too much about. (We love you, Anna!)

Right, so Friday night, after we finally made it out of Morrison’s and Lucy and Heather had finally made it through the que at the train station to get the tickets, we made it back to the flat and Anna made dinner for all of us. We had fun shoving about 13 of us around the kitchen table that only comfortably seats 8, and eating a good, hot meal. We then proceeded to hang out for the rest of the night and eventually we all made it to bed.

SATURDAY. (This is the fun part) So a couple days before, all of us girls decided that we wanted to go somewhere over the weekend, somewhere not too far and not too expensive, but still fun. So we decided on going to the coast of England, to a town called Great Yarmouth. Imagine Atlantic City or Vegas except infinitely cheaper and more white trash-ish. So Heather, Lucy, Leigh, Emma, and I all took the train to Great Yarmouth at 1130 in the morning. It was quite an exciting experience for me and Heather as we had never ridden on a train before. So we get to Great Yarmouth and start walking around and we went straight to the beach, but it was only about 65 degrees outside but that didn’t stop is from putting our feet in the water, besides, it was an absolutely *gorgeous* day. We then proceeded to take about a bazillion and a half pictures of us doing all sorts of random and stupid things! The timer on my camera came in quite handy. Here's a few of the pictures, but you can check the rest of them out HERE.

Besides taking way too many pictures though, we also ate way too much junkfood. Apparently, a good, true English day-at-the-beach isn’t complete without “candy floss” (cotton candy), fish & chips, and “rock” (think thick, straight candy cane). So we got ALL OF IT. And yes, you all should be thoroughly proud of me, Joanna the passionate fish hater, ate an entire plate of fish and chips!!! I even have pictures to prove it!

So yeah, after all that we all felt slightly sick from all the fried food (we got doughnuts too!) so we started walking back to the train. We got on the train, took the bus back to the university, and walked back to our flat, making it back to our sweet little Elm House at about 7:15ish. Just in time to make some dinner. Mmmm…. dinner.

SUNDAY: So, on top of all this fun stuff, I started to get sick. (bleh!) I went to bed Friday night not feeling so hot, and woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat and a headache. Sunday, I still felt like poop, but I got over it, woke up, and Lucy and I went to church. We found a teeny tiny Calvary Chapel that’s only a 10 minute walk from our flat, so we went there, and it was actually a really good service. And the congregation was so small that as new people, we stuck out like a sore thumb. But everyone was pretty cool and a lot of people came and introduced themselves to us and talked to us. I think we’re going to try one or two more churches, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be going back to Calvary Chapel Norwich.

Sunday afternoon was pretty chill, and then Sunday night all of us girls crowded into one dorm room to watch Pretty Woman. Unfortunately we got sidetracked at the beginning and started ripping out random things out of this catalogue we had to pin on the boys’ bulletin boards. We got kinda carried away… haha, but it was fun.

MONDAY: Anyway, Monday was good. I woke up again feeling quite miserable, but I decided I really shouldn’t skip class so instead I was 5 minutes late. It was a good thing I went too, because he handed out the essay question topics, so I better get a move on that. After class I went into town to go to Morrison’s because I had decided that I was going to make beef & bean burritos and calabacitas for everyone that night for dinner. It was highly entertaining. I found tortillas and pinto beans (in a can) and instead of chile we were forced to use Cholula sauce (haha, I’m going through one bottle every 10 days!). It all turned out really good, and all the girls helped me make everything (cooking for 9 people is difficult!) and then we made the boys do the dishes. It was a bonding experience.

TUESDAY: So today, I slept in and was woken up by the, yup, you guessed it, fire alarm. That darn thing. I think they check it every Tuesday just to make sure it works. Its upsetting. I then made breakfast (my fried potatoes taste better every time!) and made some coffee w/ my new coffeemaker. Its great. I also made some coffee for the cleaning lady and we got to chat for a few minutes. I think we’re buddies now.

Ok, sorry this one was so long. But I think that’s everything. I’ll try to write blogs every few days instead of once a week because there really is just way too much to say. The weather continues quite poorly, its all nasty and rainy and cloudy today, but I think I’m going to stay in and do homework anyway. OH, and I got mail! If any of you feel the great urge to write to me this is my address:

Joanna Michnovicz
University Village – Elm House
University of East Anglia
Norwich
Norfolk
NR4 7TJ
England

So I hope to hear from each and every one of you, ok? Ok.

Or, you can skype me. Skype has been the best. Its basically being able to call people for free! Brie and I, and my parents, and Jimmy have all been using it and its freaking great. Check it out at www.skype.com.

Right, so hopefully you’ll hear from me again in a few days. Miss you all!