Umbrellas Are Weird

That’s right, weird. I bought an umbrella just before I left the states and I have used it more times this week than I had in all the months of being in England prior to this week. Ok, that may or may not be true, but it sounded good and it sure is close to the truth. Anyway, I bought it (or rather my awesomeness of a mother did) from Wal*mart (which I miss more than I miss Dion’s Pizza… and that’s saying something!) and its been holding up, today especially, in some nasty wind. That thing is flimsy. The other night Anna and I switched umbrellas just for the fun of it, and I realized just a how cheap my umbrella truly was. BUT, the good news is that it is still going strong, and the rain drizzles day after day.

Anyway, here’s another week gone by. School started, and the rain came, and the sun doesn’t bother to shine, and my bed’s just as uncomfortable as I left it, and my room still gets every bit as stuffy if I don’t leave the window open; all things I miss. Sorta. Hehe, anyway, no I am very glad to be back. It felt a lot more normal flying out here this time. I settled right back in, and was really happy to see my roommates, and we still all get along just fine. In fact we spent a few of the first nights, before classes and homework, hanging out in the kitchen playing poker and stuff. It was quite fun. I lost both times. Oh well. Hehe. Its funny, because I think we were just happy to see each other so we made an effort to hang out. All of us girls went and saw a movie (first time since I’ve been here that we’ve been to the pictures, as they call it, or the cinema rather). We saw PS I Love You which was a cute tear-jerker, and by the end of the film I was the only one in our little group, and the entire theatre probably, who wasn’t bawling. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie and even thought it was sad, I guess I just don’t cry in movies. They all thought I was heartless!

Anyway, other than that and school not a whole lot else has been going on. We’ve watched a handful of movies, and poker, and went into town a couple times, even made it over to the Waffle House. But, school is going to be interesting this semester. First, we are in school for 8 (or is it 9?) weeks and then we get a month off for Easter Break. Then we go back to school for 3 (or 4?) weeks before we have our month long assessment period (finals month). So we’re here for a total of 5 1/2 months, but we only have 12 weeks of classes!

So I went to my first class last week and it wasn’t there. Yeah, so Carey and I (another girl from UNM, she’s in my class) spent the next half hour trying to find the class which we later learned (a week later… today) was cancelled, which is why we couldn’t find the darn thing. So we made breakfast instead and then went into town to look for an accordion because Carey wanted an accordion. Hehe, we even found a kid’s one! So the day wasn’t a waste. So Tuesday rolls around and I go to my Theatre and Social Change class. After going to class and reading the first article for it, I decided that I wasn’t going to make it an entire semester in that class, so I decided I’d drop it. The problem is that as an exchange student I have to be taking only 3 classes, so to drop that class I needed to find another one, but the pickings for classes out here are even slimmer than the ones back at UNM! Well Wednesday rolls around and I went to my Drama Projects meeting. Apparently that class just consists of each of the 25 of us writing, producing, directing, everything-ing our own individual 15 minute show! We don’t have weekly classes, we just have to check up with our teachers to make sure that we’re actually working, and go to them if we get stuck or need technical help or something. So that class sounds like a whole ton of fun and a whole ton of work too! So Thursday and Friday I bummed around and didn’t do much, but on Friday I had to go try to change my class and had a bit of a time doing it, because the poetry class I wanted to get into was full, and then the Jane Austen/Bronte class I wanted filled up over the weekend. Anyway, long boring story short, I got into a different creative writing class that’s on Tuesday nights. So we’ll see how that goes.

Saturday was a lazy day. Sunday, Lucy and I went to Calvary Chapel again, which is where I think we’ll be going to church from now on. Everyone is very sweet there; its just such a tiny church that being new is to be VERY conspicuous. And to top it all of there aren’t many (or any?) students, so we’re the only people not under 10 and over 35. But the guy who was preaching that week was from California so we talked to him and his wife after.

OH, I forgot the best part about this week! Thursday night I attempted (with a lot of help from my girls) to make Stuffed Sopapillas and Spanish Rice. Unfortunately I was having issues measuring American measurements with British measuring devices (or no measuring devices at all!) and somehow I screwed the dough up and the Sopapillas didn’t puff when we put them in the oil. To top it all off, the rice wouldn’t cook fully, and the potatoes we’d put in with the beef and beans hadn’t cooked fully either. So after a whole lot of improvisation and frustration, we had flat Sopapillas with stuff all ON TOP of them instead of inside them, we got the potatoes to cook eventually, and the rice ended up being about half cooked. Hehe, but everything still *tasted* right, even if it didn’t look quite right. Almost everyone in the flat partook of the meal and we all had fun sitting down to eat improvised Mexican food a la Joanna (courtesy of Mamma Michnovicz). Having never had Sopapillas before, they all were quite taken with them. I think they felt about them the same way I feel about their amazing British pancakes!

To top all the cooking endeavors off, we had a fun time using this muffin mix that my mother had sent me. We used these weird little tins we had saved from Emma’s Yorkshire Puddings to bake the muffins in the microwave, hehe. And Lucy and Emma were quite amused to see that on the back of the packet with the directions there were additional directions for “high altitude”. They got a big kick out of it.

So anyway, that’s the run down of the week. Its been good, and its been dreary. BUT, I can’t let it get me down, right? Right! Well shoot me an email or leave a comment and let me know how you all are doing. Hope all is well, and I miss you all!