Manchester? I hardly know 'er.

On Sunday, Ashleigh met me at Picadilly station in Manchester with her flat mate Joy and took me to...McDonalds. Very English right? Back at their flat I met Ashleigh's other flat mate {redacted}. As you can probably tell {redacted} is French. But that doesn't really do him justice. {Redacted}is very very French. Sarcastic, aloof and edgy. I was pretty exhausted after my four hours of sleep while traveling so we took it easy and watched Twilight before I passed out.

And now, I present my week in Manchester-the highlights.

Monday, I went to a choir practice at the Catholic church Ashleigh regularly sings at. Ashleigh had given me a crash course in reading gregorian chant, so I only got semi lost and confused. Before choir, I got to hear {redacted}'s very intelligent take on Glen Beck. He was much more eloquent than I could ever be in explaining why Beck is a manipulative psychopath. And Americans listen to him. *shiver*

Tuesday, Ashleigh took me shopping at a funky Picadilly mall in the hopes that I would find something to wear for our nighttime activities. We didn't succeed, but we did find the most delicious milkshakes ever created. Not to mention, the most unhealthy milkshakes ever.

Tuesday night I was introduced to the night life of Manchester by Ashleigh and several of her fencing group friends. Ashleigh and I left Canal Street earlier than everyone else, so we missed quite an event. The next morning Ashleigh found out through Facebook that two of the boys we were with had been mugged after we left. One boy was hit in the head and the other happily gave up his wallet in exchange for his safety. No one was seriously hurt, but I'm sure glad I missed that.

Wednesday was a lazy day with pancakes, watching the god awful, but entertaining due to its snark-worthiness, Twilight New Moon movie. At night Ashleigh let me tag along to her fencing team dinner at a curry restaurant. Finding a good deal wasn't hard seeing how the streets around Ashleigh's house hare literally lined with Indian restaurants. I sat near Ashleigh and her very tall swiss friend, Greg. From now on Ashleigh shall be referred to as Mango thanks to Mango's, Greg's and my love for the restaurant's mango sauce.

Thursday was my last full day in Manchester. In the morning I started to sense one of my greatest fears for the trip coming true. My throat started to feel a little sore. It was nothing serious, but it's important for the rest of my trip posting (ominous enough for you?) Mango took me shopping at Picadilly, but this time we went to Primark. Primark is a mammoth of a store that is much like Target, except they have even more stylish fashions and lots and lots of colors. Mango succeeded in diversifying my wardrobe considerably. Thanks Mom! The weather on Tuesday was crazy, starting out quite sunny and devolving into gusting winds and hard rain which Mango and I had to trudge through to go see her friend Griffin. Ah Griffin. Griffin is a character. He's from the American South and is kind of one of the heirs, or beneficiaries of {redacted} cigarettes i.e. he's rich. He's a lot of fun though and Mango had to bid him farewell Thursday night b/c he's taking time off from Manchester U. He's also a plane aficionado and was delighted to hear that I flew to London in a Boeing 777. Mango and I ended the night eating home cooked chicken, sipping red wine, and watching British television with Charles. It was a nice end to a good time in Manchester.

Friday, Mango took me to the wonderful milk shake place one more time, helped me pick out an awesome snake necklace (made of metal and ribbon, not snakes), and then took me to the train station. She bid me farewell and I climbed into my first class coach for the ride to London and the next phase of my trip.

Taking Flight and Missing the Train

It's the time I've been waiting for! My spring break trip to Jolly old England and my first abroad trip alone. The first destination was Manchester. Consequently, I had to take the tube from Heathrow to Euston train station in London and then the train to Manchester Picadilly. I don't think I have to even say that something went wrong...after all it was me traveling, but I'll write about my travels anyway. Also, it really wasn't that bad.

First, a random side note: I think I might be a vampire, or dead because within in the last couple weeks two people have accidentally touched my hand and remarked "Oh. Your hands are so cold". I'm pretty sure I could see the shiver running down their spine. Secondly, some background for my travels: on the Thursday before break it was about 60 degrees, the sun was shining and people were juggling or were passed out drunk (from St. Pat's day) on Mac Field in Grinnell. The next day, it was about 20 degrees, with blustering winds and heavy snow. Saturday morning the highways were pretty treacherous, but Sarah got me and Elyse safely to the Des Moines airport.

My flight to Chicago was relatively eventless. However, my flight out of Chicago was delayed for a little over an hour. First, they had to de-ice the plane, which wasn't too surprising. However, during the de-icing one passenger became gravely ill and had to be removed from the plane. But, that's not all. They also had to find his suitcase in the ginormous plane (a Boeing 777, which is a pretty impressive plane according to Griffin: Ashleigh's friend from Manchester) and take it out before we could take flight. On the bright side, the seats next to me were empty, so I got mucho leg room and didn't have to stand up for anyone to go to the bathroom. My favorite moment of the flight was listening to Cobra Starship's Snakes on a Plane song while flying on a plane. Now, I like snakes, but I must say I'm quite glad my plane ride was snake free.

I should mention that when I was booking my train ticket for London to Manchester it didn't occur to me that my flight might be delayed at all. After all, I had some sort of misguided faith in Iowa that it wouldn't be snowing in the middle of March! So, I ended up getting to Heathrow and through customs a little bit later than I was expecting. I do love the obvious things the customs area tells you though. For example, you're not allowed to bring endangered animals into the country. That rule was really inconvenient because I had to mail my white tiger cub back to the US before I could catch my train. Secondly, they "take extremely seriously any attempt to intimidate our staff either by threats or assault". Well I should hope so.

Moving on. There was also construction on the Tube, so I had to take a supplemental bus between tube stations. Riding on the tube, I knew there was no way I was going to make my scheduled train. It did not help that some big jerk (I'm using milder terms here than I thought in my head at the time) decided to block the tube doors from closing for five minutes with his hand instead of waiting two fricken minutes for the next train. Anyway I made it to London Euston after my originally planned train left the station. However, booking another train only cost 11 more pounds. In the end, I was rewarded for acting calmly and just going with the flow.

With the following posts I will detail my trip in Manchester and London, and in keeping with my blogs usual tradition I will also include noteworthy food. So, you can be jealous and judge me at the same time! Therefore, I should say that I had a-must be from heaven or hell-ham and cheese croissant from Delice de France at Euston train station.

What will I eat next? Did the rain drown me in Manchester? Do I still have my health? Will I get lost in London? Will I ever make it back to the States? Tune in to find out!

My Weekend of Champions!

Well, it’s been quite a long time since I last posted. The months have really flown by. Winter break was awesome since I got to hang out with my family and my hometown friends. I was going to post about all the magical things that happened like seeing Young Frankenstein the Musical at the Kennedy center with my family…and Cody, or doing Secret Santa with my HB friends and ruining the secret part because I lost my person’s list and had to ask her for it again, or eating at a Thai Temple with a DJ booth/religious altar etc etc etc. But all those wonderful memories are not quite so fresh in my mind because—well—it’s March.

And so now I’ve been in school for six weeks. I don’t think I’ve hit the same academic peak I reached last semester. I would blame Perri and all the time I spend with her, but it’s really my fault. For I cannot help but introduce addictive television shows to Perri, but hey! She had to see Dexter. My classes are going well though. Animal Behavior is interesting and last Friday I did a self designed experiment with Stickleback Fish where I basically spent the whole time terrorizing fish. Fun! Human Sexuality in the US covers a wide range of topics and now we are focusing on our nation’s wonderful, highly ineffectual, sex-ed programs. Theory is like a little built in heart attack, just because the teacher is sometimes really intense, but I think I’m learning a lot. I’m also continuing my voice lessons and community chorus. Finally, every week I’ve been attending my favorite activity: Baking Tuesday! Sarah bakes, and then we all eat and pretend to do homework.

Now that I’ve explained the basics, I’ll get into the last two weeks. The highlight of last week was driving to Des Moines with Perri and her friend Laura. And by Des Moines I mean a mall in Des Moines. Anywhere that isn’t Grinnell! What did we do at the mall?: ate and read. For an appetizer we went to the sinfully deadly Cold Stone while we waited for a table at the even more sinful and deadly and “oh God I can’t believe I ate there”…Cheesecake Factory. I’m sure any of you reading right now knows of the horrible gluttonous C.F. serving sizes, but for example the three of us shared an appetizer that the menu said was for two. It consisted of about five servings of chips and a large soup bowl of cheese and Spinach dip. For the rest of the day I read graphic novels at Barnes & Noble (“Heaven, I’m in heaven!”)

This week, however, was the really fun and eventful one. It started on Friday. After an afternoon of scaring fish I rode to Marshalltown with Jessica, Leah, Hannah and Elyse, to go see “She’s Out of My League”. Now I wouldn’t call it high-quality cinema, but I quite enjoyed the movie and it made me laugh. It was crude, but sweet and the characters were all likable. I ended the night with anime club, in which we are watching what has been described as the Japan warring states period on drugs.

Saturday was nothing less than awesome (you can tell how much I enjoyed myself this weekend from my upbeat vocabulary!) In the afternoon, I went to an orchestra concert with Jessica and Elyse because Sarah was playing violin. In the middle of the concert I saw the woman sitting in front of us take a picture of Sarah. Elyse and I shared a concerned look because Sarah had said no one she knew was coming to the concert. Later, Elyse, Jessica and I watched as the woman took another picture of Sarah. We were a little weirded out. During intermission we lured Sarah out and asked her if she had any stalkers she knew of. It turned out to be a woman Sarah works with, but what are the chances we would sit behind the one other person who was there to see Sarah.

At night, nine of my closest friends and I went to the wonderful town of Newton. We started the night with dinner at Panda Garden, a heavenly Chinese buffet restaurant. Sarah could tell I was really excited to go to Panda Garden because I apparently darted out of the car as soon as we arrived. The food was just as fatty and delicious as I remembered. The best fortune cookie of the night was: “Make things as simple as possible…but not simpler” Sure, that makes sense. Also, Sarah taught me what the Chinese word for bus actually translates to: made for the public, car machine.

After dinner we moved to a bowling alley/karaoke bar. All I will say about my bowling performance is that I got a strike…the rest is not important. After a game of bowling and digesting my food baby, we moved on to the karaoke bar section. It was surprisingly lively, mostly because of a large group of very drunk people celebrating a very classy woman’s birthday. The party group sang a lot of slow country music, which I might not have minded too much…if all the songs didn’t sound exactly the same! Our group decided to add some much needed musical diversity. Sarah started out singing Lucky in the style of Brittney Spears (in the words of the karaoke machine). I sang a wonderful rendition of Play that Funky Music White boy. Hannah and Stephanie did a truly terrible performance of TATU’s All The Things She Said. It wasn’t all their fault, the machine didn’t know how the words matched with the music of the song. My favorite song experience of the night, however, was singing What Would You Do? with Ben. I don’t think the rest of the bar had heard much r&b/rap music before because they went wild with dance and semi-mockery. Apparently, the karaoke machine hadn’t heard much rap either because it left out large chunks of the song. Thank God Ben and I knew all the words, or else it would have been really embarassing!

On Sunday, it was absolutely gorgeous outside! I drove Steph and Perri to the barn and sat in the sun and blustery warmish breeze while I read my Animal Behavior textbook. It was perfect, and the most academically productive I had been all weekend. Hey, no one can do it all.

Finally, today was another gorgeous day, so I accompanied Perri on a walk to pick up her car, which was recently repaired, except not really. Although the car had turned on many times for the mechanics, the moment Perri tried to drive it away it stopped working again. So, we had a nice walk back to campus too. Also, recently people have been coming up to me and complimenting me on my last sequence comic. It makes me quite happy; being appreciated just feels good…much like this weekend did.

The next two weeks will consist of my spring break, Manchester and London! Expect blogging…

Homework? I don't know what you're talking about

Wow, it sure has been a long time since I posted. Sorry, but I won't rectify that now. Instead, while you wait for my next post of substance, I thought I would provide you with my newest comic for the sequence. There, are you happy Perri?

Travel Watch

Well folks, it’s time for another winter break for Gigantor the Unfortunate. It’s also time for another unfortunate travel story. Why world? Why? Liz has called me a bad travel omen.

It all started with a snowstorm in the Washington DC area. What’s that you say? ‘That’s preposterous? DC hasn’t had a good snow storm in years!’ Well you’re wrong. Snow returned to DC…on the day I needed to fly home.

What’s that sound? That vengeful, vengeful sound. That would be irony. I couldn’t fly home on Saturday, not because it was snowing or foggy (stupid fog) in Iowa. I couldn’t come home because DC was getting two feet of snow.

I’m going to try to make this story as brief and winy-less as possible. Ha, good luck! By some miracle on Saturday morning my flight hadn’t been cancelled yet. I knew that it would be soon, but I took the shuttle to Des Moines Airport anyway. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. When I got to the airport my flight from O’Hare still wasn’t cancelled for some ridiculous reason. But because I erred on the side of caution and rebooked my flight for the next day. The person who helped at the counter went into a little song and dance about how I should have left yesterday to avoid the snow. Ya think?

My friend Jessica, from Grinnell, picked me up from the Des Moines airport b/c she had an appointment with a genius…for her Mac…in the DM area anyway. We got lost on our way to Jordan Creek Mall, partly because of my awful direction asking. While her computer got examined I looked for Christmas presents and ended up only buying a belt and ear muffs…for myself. I was really glad to spend more time with Jessica. She’s really cool and I only loosely got to know her during the semester. Plus she told me the dirt from the group’s early history.

At the DM airport, my mom had contacted Mama Sholten (the bro’s GF’s mom) to see if I could stay with their family until Sunday. Jessica and I got semi-lost on our way there too, but we made it and I spent the rest of the day with the Sholten parents. They were so nice and accommodating, especially to someone they had only vaguely heard about previously through the bro. I mos def got to work on my small talk skills (they ain’t that great yet). At one point, I watched TV with them for a little bit and I got to see a news story about people who were stranded because they couldn’t fly into DC. Ha!

Earlier that morning the shuttle had waited for a train to pass in Grinnell. As I frosted cookies with the parents that night in Des Moines I watched a train go by outside of their condo. Sometimes it’s unexpected where life will take you.

The next day all my flights were on time and I got home in a matter of hours. Just kidding. My flight from Des Moines was delayed by 10 minutes. It was terrible! She said sarcastically. I got to O’Hare on time and leisurely walked to my gate. Waiting for my flight, I ran into Harry, a classmate from HB who was on the same flight. I boarded and settled into my plane seat, so happy that everything was on time and I would be home soon. I think you see where this is going. Then, on the loud speaker, the pilot said “There’s a big backlog of flights into Reagan trying to find a gate, so we have two choices. We can go to the airport and sit in the plane for four hours, or stay in O’Hare for four hours. I’ve chosen the latter.” Just to clarify: my flight got pushed from 6pm to 10pm. Harry and I went to a bar recommended to him by a friend, then ate dinner and went to board our plane. As we sat in the waiting area I worked on this blog and heard a women complaining on her phone that her flight had been pushed to 11pm. I looked at the screen and what do you know? She was talking about my flight.

Then a crazy old man came and bombarded me with questions about my computer. Then he saw a poster of Tiger Woods and said he couldn’t be called Tiger anymore. He would have to be called Cheetah. Like a cheater. Get it? Yes crazy old man, I got it.

Then my flight was pushed to 11:58pm. Then it was pushed to 12:30am. Meanwhile crazy old man harassed/terrorized various people in the waiting area. Then it got interesting. Another flight into Las Vegas was also having trouble…and had been having trouble all day. Let’s just say that the natives were getting restless. The airline people started making angry announcements telling people to back the frak off. I wasn’t entirely certain a fight wouldn’t break out. I hate angry travelers. Cause getting angry with people trying to do their jobs really helps make things go faster. My favorite part of the night was watching a show about sharks because one of the people in the show was…Anderson Cooper. Naturally he would be swimming with sharks. Wait till the girls at Grinnell hear about this. Oh how they’ll swoon.

I boarded my flight at 12:15am with cautious optimism and…thank god it took off. The baggage claim at Reagan was crazy. Apparently my luggage got there before I did. There were just hundreds of bags in lines. Harry and I shared a cab to Arlington. A sketchy dude tried to take us to Arlington for 40$...yeah he was not a taxi.

As I was driven home I looked at the snow that had put a wrench in my travel plans. It looked a lot the snow in Grinnell. Except the snow in Arlington is fresher and in Iowa they actually know how to plow their roads.

I fell asleep in my bed at 4:30am. Maybe I should rename

Hell Week

Why do they call the week before finals hell week? Finals week is hell week.

Ok, last week was a little hellish. I had a presentation, which always goes oh so well. Seriously it was pretty bad, but then it was over. Following, I had to rewrite the paper that I presented on. I only mention it because it inspired a miracle. While finishing my paper I...I didn't....I didn't procrastinate! The paper was like a pit in my stomach that tortured my soul and I wanted it gone as soon as possible. Unfortunately, as soon as possible meant like 10 hours later. I don't think I've ever put so much effort into a paper ever.

I did have an academic feel-good moment during “hell week”. As anyone who reads my Facebook statuses knows—I hate methods with a deep fiery passion. So, I was really not looking forward to rewriting my methods proposal (I had already rewritten the stupid thing once). Fortunately, I didn't have to! I went into his office and basically he said ‘you already made all the changes I suggested, this is an A paper, I’m willing to let you not rewrite it’. !!! I said I was willing not to rewrite it. What followed was more amazing. I had a completely nonawkward conversation with him afterwards for like 10 minutes. Guess who's going to be one of my recommendations when I try to get an internship this summer.

I had hoped to ride the wave of nonprocrastination from my seminar papers into finals week, but it's faded a little.

Sunday was quite busy. I went straight from bed to the dining hall to the library to the dining hall to watching Battlestar Galactica with friends to a pancake study break. At the study break, held in the infamous Harris Center, I discovered a game straight from the devil, pictured above, and accurately named Hot Hoops. I must say, if you judge by this game, my basketball skills have greatly improved since middle school. I swear I could play Hot Hoops all day...it's so weirdly addictive. It kind of goes like this: Oh no! I didn't make a basket! I have to try again! Oh yay! I made a basket! I have to try again! etc etc etc

Monday=Meh. It was very productive, if you consider digging your car out of the snow productive.

The rest of finals week wasn't deadly exciting or noteworthy. I turned in my 18 page seminar paper, my flawless methods proposal, a sit down resource and environmental econ test (don't ask me how I did cause I don't know), and wrote two 5 page essays for Politics of Russia. And then when I was done with everything on Friday—yay!—I was rewarded by dinner at the new Grinnell Mexican restaurant with friends, saw Avatar (A movie which lead me to ask: why the heck would a robot have a switch blade?) and my friend who also lives in the DC area told me that all flights into DC were cancelled the next day. The day I needed to travel. Merde! Turns out he wasn’t completely right, but right enough. But, you’ll have to wait for the next post to hear about that. Duh Duh Duhnnnn!

My First Waltz

Hey there. It's been a while. Mostly, I have been in school. However, a week ago I got to go home for Thanksgiving break. As I don't feel like explaining my whole break (you can blame Perri for that one-I only write about things once...unless I'm in Methods and I have to write something three &**@*$# times), so I'll give you the cliff notes version.

I flew home, ate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, read about Putin, witnessed a 21 year old British guy down a whole pot of coffee and 5+ classes of red wine, picked up Liz at Dulles with mom, got caught up on How I Met Your Mother, ate at Five Guys, had 'coffee' with Liz and Harry from my high school days (oh so long ago), rediscovered how bad I am at bowling, read about Putin some more, got introduced to Dead Like Me, made Liz watch episodes of Cowboy BeBop, woke up really early, started flying back to Grinnell, got to O'Hare thirty minutes early, sat on plane for 50 minutes waiting for the lighting to let up, ran to my connecting flight and just made it, got to Des Moines, discovered my luggage wasn't so lucky, drove back to Grinnell, prepared for my Politics of Russia debate, went to work, walked to security to get my bag that the airport drove to campus, found out United people broke my bag handle, lugged heavy luggage across campus, went to bed.

And now I'm back at school. Twwwooooooo Moooooooooorrrrreee Weeeeeeks!!!!!!!!

Tonight I went to waltz with the gang. We all had dinner at the Depot (old train station, now restaurant). Our waiter was very nice, but a terrrrible waiter. It took him 30 minutes just to take our orders and it was an hour before we got our food. He told us it was because he had two tables tonight and had never done that before (really?). The food was good when it arrived, despite my steak being mostly fat. I almost would have been able to forgive our waiter, but another couple came in about an hour after we got there and he waited on them too. They had their appetizers in 10 minutes and got there entrees about the same time we did. But enough complaining...for now. Ominous right?

After dinner, we hit up the Gates pre-waltz party where I drank punch and ate chocolate. Then, we went to the JRC pre-waltz party that had a buffet line of about 20 different kinds of desserts (no, I did not try all twenty). Then was the waltz itself. Harris looked so much nicer than I've ever seen it before, it helped that we got there a little early b/c no one was really drunk yet. I had never been to a Grinnell Waltz before so I had no idea what to expect. There was a live band for half the time. They played mostly jazz, swing, quiet jazz, an orchestral version of a Fiddler on the Roof song (naturally) and Hava Nagila (a surprisingly dangerous song-people feel down, I got kicked in the back of the leg-fun!). By the end of the night I was feeling pretty tired because they kept playing really slow and quiet jazz lullabies. I mostly danced with my friends, however I did dance with one boy who seemed to enjoy making me twirl into other people. Most of us got really tired and then I left.

Wow, that story was kind of dull wasn't it? Sorry, I'm tired. Not doing any of the homework you should be doing and dancing is very exhausting. Anyway this blog is only to keep you updated on what I'm doing...not for your amusement or to entertain you. Ok that's kind of a lie. Oh well. Good night y'all.