Snowy Tuesday, and I have proof!

HoTD today is the WHOLE WORLD...or at least the greater part of Yorkshire. It's been snowing since 3am (I know this, as I was up till 4am working on my papers), and it's not just little snow either — it's serious, big flakes. This was my view out my flat window when I woke up this morning: 

And it's not supposed to let up for DAYS. It just fills my little Oregonian heart with joy. Though I didn't really have time, I took the long-term view of life (who will care about these papers in 2 years? NO ONE) and went for a walk in Weston Park. I took some pictures, because it was so pretty.

Firth Court in the background. 

Pretty bridge with Western Bank Library in the background, where I was headed. I told you it's kind of dilapidated. 

So cold the water's almost frozen! 

I went to the library after my walk, and discovered this hilarious book in a random display case:

It's dated from 1613, and is entitled "Declaration of Such Greivous Accidents as Commonly Follow the Biting of Mad Dogges, Together with the Cure Thereof." Super random, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't a cure for rabies back in Elizabethan England. They probably bled you and then pumped you full of mercury or lead, or some other poisonous metal. I'm sure it turned out well.  

The book was in this case, which has three other books dating to the 1600's. Pretty awesome. OSU certainly doesn't have stuff like this laying around! 

After studying at the library for way longer than I wanted to, I decided to reward myself by trying out a new cafe called "Vittles." Turns out it's the perfect kind of cafe for me: not crowded, friendly employees, soup that's not salty, warm inside, and just down the street from where I live. On my way home I decided to take a little video for you all, so you could see how pretty it is here and how much it's snowed. Also you get to see part of the way I walk home everyday. Here it is:

I sound like I've just run a marathon because it's so cold, I guess. That, and my camera awkwardly picked up on my breathing, for some reason. Just fyi. :)

I hope you all have good days!

Monday's HToD

Here it is: 

(Click on image for larger version)

Spotify! It's like iTunes mixed with Pandora. You can listen to almost anything, for free, and skip through as many songs as you like. There's annoying commercials every so often, but that's fine. It's like having the biggest iTunes library ever. But, at the moment it's only available in the UK and Europe. So sorry people in America, you'll have to make do with Pandora! :D 

The right socks can improve your life

HToD for Sunday is...... Christmas socks!

The snow hasn't melted here yet, as it hasn't gotten above freezing in the last couple of days, and today I needed to go to the library — couldn't stay holed up in my flat — so I decided to wear 3 pairs of socks to keep my toes from freezing. One of the pairs was these, and they made me happy.


I had a really fun time traipsing through the snow and then skidding downhill across the ice to get to the library (for serious). I really wanted to go to the park and walk around, but alas, I had no time. My time at the library was nice, though. I located most of the books I needed and found a quiet corner to look through them. Sheffield has 3 (or maybe more) libraries, and each department has most of their books in just one. (No one tells you this when you arrive, however — you just have to figure it out. My discovery of this is another story for another time.) The archaeology dept. uses Western Bank library, which is kind of old and decrepit, but I prefer it to the Information Commons — a huge, sterile, metal, overcrowded complex that's the main library. I stayed at Wester Bank until dark, and then walked carefully back up the hill. I managed to not fall on my face on the way home, which was nice. I went the The Edge for hot chocolate, and now I'm home. I think there's Finnish cheese sampling going on in the kitchen right now, so I'll end this here.

I still need to tell you all about Bath and Stonehenge, but I'm not sure when that's going to happen, since I'm so busy. Maybe on the 8th of December I'll write about it. All my essays are due the 6th, then I have a day-long field trip for my prehistoric Britain class on the 7th. So the 8th will be my first "free" day. Looking forward to it!!!

Bye!

Post-cheese update: Here's pictures from cheese tasting.

Ginger cookies, "bread" cheese, cloudberry jam. The cheese tastes kind of
like mozzarella.You eat it with the jam.   

Waffle cookie things. 

Super tasty German Christmas cookies

holt den schlitten raus! es hat geschneit! ("Get the sleds out! It snowed!") )

First of all, it snowed here today:

                                      

Not really enough to get excited about, but still, kind of fun. Also, last night I made my Thanksgiving dinner that I had planned for thursday but never got the chance to make. I had a presentation due on friday that I ended up staying up till 4am to finish, so I had exactly zero time to be concocting feasts. I still had the stuff for it though, so I figured better late than never. I made stuffing from a mix I found at the Eurospar and added some Yorkshire sausage. It turned out pretty well. Not nearly as good as home, but it worked, especially since I had no recipe and had only watched mom make it before. I also made mashed potatoes with peas and gravy. Instead of turkey I had a chicken breast roasted in the oven with onions. I didn't feel like bothering with recipes, so I just sort of guessed how to make stuff. But it all turned out well in the end! For dessert I had mince pie and apple cider. Here's how it looked: 

Clockwise from the peas: peas (soon to be added to mashed potatoes), mince pie, chicken 'n' gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes 'n' gravy

mmmm mulled cider

To make this I heated Strongbow's (cider of choice here), butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and apples together in a saucepan

I was fuuullll after that, but that's kind of what happens on Thanksgiving. It was fun to make, too. Hope you're all having a nice day, or I guess sleeping soundly. 

Merrrryyy Christmas!!!!

Here's my happy thing of the day (henceforth known as HTOD). It's more of a thing that I think is cool about being here, and is not exactly a happy thing, per se: Beautiful churches on about every other block. This church is actually owned by the University and has been converted into a lecture theatre and flats for students. Yes, students live here:

Broken-up grave

See? I'm telling the truth. "Lecture theatre" "Flats 1&2"

Someone escaped.... 

Haunted much?

Also currently improving my life is this amazing contraption: 

Classy zebra-print hot water bottle

I got this yesterday at Primark (one step up from the dollar store) for £4. I was worried it would spring a leak at night, but it didn't and instead kept me the perfect temperature ALL night long! (or at least from 4am till 8am, which is all the sleep I got thanks to AWESOME group projects.) BTW, it was zebra print or hot pink, so I went with this. It would not have been my first choice. I don't care though. It's soft and warm and awesome.

Tonight I'm going to try to make a mini Thanksgiving dinner, as I didn't have time yesterday. So I may post pics of that if I get around to it. 

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to everyone!! Here's a crackling fireplace to warm you up:

Happy thing #2

I found something today, first-thing, to appreciate. Here it is:

Sheffield sunrise

Though I wasn't happy to be awake enough to see the sun rise, I was happy to see the sunrise. It looks like this most clear mornings, and on overcast mornings it's just as beautiful, filtering through the mist on the moors. Our flat is on the third floor, and the kitchen's huge windows face the east, so sunlight fills it in the morning. It's nice. 

And now that I've been positive, I'll tell you my annoyed story. So, most the university buildings here require that students swipe their card to get in. The archaeology building, West Court, where I have 2 of my 3 classes, is one of these high-security structures (haha). Yesterday I forgot my card, and had to knock on the glass and ring the bell for the receptionist to push the release to let me in. When I walked in, I looked up to thank her, and she slid her little window open in an annoyed manner and demanded whether or not I have an ID card. Previously, I would like to add, she was just sitting at her desk, literally doing nothing — staring off into space — so it wasn't like I was interrupting her. Unless she was drafting sonnets in her head. Then my apologies. Anyway, I said, yes, sorry, I do have one — left it at home by accident. She replied to this in parental tones that, "Well could you please bring it with you in the future??" I assured her that I will bring my card next time. EXCEPT for the fact that it's not like I intended to leave it at home that day. Do people leave their ID cards —which they need for access to 90% of uni buildings— at home for kicks? Is this really a problem? Did she think I enjoyed rapping on the glass of every building I needed to get into all day? Annoying... 

But whatever, I have my card securely in my wallet now, so everyone's happy. 

PS: I hope you all like my new layout. Enough owls for you??

Happy thing(s) number one

As this is the inaugural I-will-be-more-positive-if-it's-the-last-thing-I-do post, I'm going to give you TWO good things. The first one is.......mince pie with butter-rum frosting! Seen here:

I tried to channel Liz's incredible food photography skills. Not sure how that worked out. 

This little pie (about the size of your palm. Well, maybe not your palm, Dad. Like half of yours.) is from a bakery just down the street from my flat. Three jovial, rotund women work there and call me "love" as I purchase my pastries and baguettes. The pie was so rich and spicy that this was the perfect size. Any bigger, and it would've been too much; any smaller, and I would have been sad it was gone. 

The SECOND happy thing is...... my new creepy monkey microwaveable heat pack! Here we are, in all our creepy glory: 

so waaaarrrmmm

It's super soft, didn't cost a fortune, holds heat for an insanely long time, and smells like lavender. And it's a nonhuman primate, which makes the Jane Goodall side of my nerdiness smile. It's also about the size and softness of Angel, my special little diva-cat, and so, at 3am after reading for hours on end, I can trick my brain into thinking I've got a cat on my lap. 

So there you go. I know I feel happier about life, don't you?? PS: unless I find something tomorrow, this counts for Wednesday. What? It's past midnight here. Stop silently judging.... It counts, okay??? 

Happy almost Thanksgiving!

A lot has happened since my last post! It's been... like a couple of weeks. Most of you have heard about my trips and things, so I'm not going to go into much intense detail about them (as is my norm). I haven't posted lately for lots of reasons, but mostly because I've been too busy with life and especially with school. My three 3,000-word essays have been looming over my head relentlessly, and even though I'm being responsible and working on them, I don't feel like I'm making any progress. So...bleh.

But, on a happy note, I've gotten to do LOTS of fun things since I last posted. I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon, celebrated my 23rd birthday, (It's super weird that I'm that "old." I have to think before answering when people ask me my age.), and visited Bath and Stonehenge. I've had an eventful month.

I went to Stratford, Shakespeare's birthplace, on MY birthday, the sixth, so I had pretty much the perfect birthday trip. My flatmates remembered and wished me happy birthday first thing in the morning, which I thought was super nice. I think Tanja had a lot to do with that; I'm really so lucky that we ended up friends. She puts up with my weird historical trivia and spontaneous archaeological speeches, doesn't get annoyed when I'm anti-social, and just laughs quietly at my complete lack of a sense of direction. I really appreciate her. And it's a good thing she's okay with me spouting facts, because I was on a rollll in Stratford. I couldn't really help it, since it was like Shakespeare central, and I really, really know a lot of random things about him (or at least his work; very little is actually known about the man himself). We went to all the must-see places: Nash's House & New Place, where Shakespeare lived; Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway's cottage; his birthplace/home he grew up in; and lastly his grave. These places are dispersed throughout Stratford, with Anne Hathaway's cottage the farthest away. For some reason I ended up as the navigator on the way to the Cottage — I have no idea how. Or maybe I have a little bit of an idea how. I may have claimed to have figured out, using my map, how to get there. It turned out that I had not, in fact, figured it out, (surprise, surprise) and we ended up weaving through some very picturesque neighborhoods before finally finding the right road. Needless to say, we took a taxi back to the city centre.

My favorite place, by far, was Holy Trinity church, where the poet is buried. I didn't like it as much as I did because of that, though. This may be hard to believe, but, though I love the plays, I'm not all that interested in the almost-worshipful revering of the actual person of Shakespeare. So I didn't spend too much time paying homage to the genius at his grave. I loved the church because it's the prettiest one I've seen, as yet (and I've seen a looot of them). There's pictures of it on my facebook profile, so you can sort of see how beautiful it is. The inside is incredibly historic, with ancestral parishioners buried in the floor and the walls. The local nobility's burial chapel features fantastic stone effigies of Lord and Lady Clopton laid out in death, dating from around 1590. The best thing about the church, however, was the little old British gentleman taking our 50 pence payment for access to the gravesite. He chatted with each person who came by, smiled, and asked where they were from. He had huge stacks of guides to the church in every language — printed, it appeared, using the church's 10-year old printer; apparently church bulletin design is the same, world-round. He excitedly offered my German companions guides in their language, but they declined in favor of English ones, and he looked kind of disappointed. If they had had an Americanese one I would have taken it, no doubt. :) Before leaving the church, I bought a red poppy (sold in a nation-wide initiative to support veterans in commemoration of Remembrance Day) in honour of Grandma Morrison, since she was, after all a WWII veteran.

Besides being the birthplace of Shakespeare, Stratford also has tons of incredibly awesome-looking pubs and fun tiny shops, which would have been cool to look in, but we ran out of time. We only just had time to visit all the essential sites and grab a snack for the ride back. Once we got home, we were all pretty tired, but my flatmates had planned a sort-of surprise birthday for me in the kitchen. They accosted me with cake and presents when I came in to make tea. I can't believe how nice it was. So thoughtful, and it made having a birthday far from home much more bearable. As did the cake mom sent me. :)

More on Bath and other events later.

Enjoying my cake from Mom

British club music

For those of you who wonder, here's the music that gets played in the club over and over and over. It's catchy!! Again, the video is overlapping with the side bar. Anyone who knows how to fix this, please let me know.

Odds and Ends of the Week

Above the City

It's a new blog post, and it hasn't even been over a week! Craziness. I have some pictures to post, so I thought I'd tell you all a little about what they're of. Logical, yes?

The first group of pictures can be found here. They're of my Halloween adventure, which actually took place on Friday, not Sunday. On the actual night of Halloween I did my laundry and didn't go anywhere. This is because on the real Halloween, all the Freshers here go even crazier than they usually do, and anyone who values their sanity and wants to avoid getting smacked in the head by a flailing drunk 17-year-old dressed as a sexy mouse stays home. This is a widely accepted, though tacit fact, and as a result all non-fresher parties are organized for the two days leading up to Halloween. 

The party Tanya, Astrid, Britta, and I all went to was called "Viva La Fiesta SUPER HALLOWEEEEEEN intERASMUS PARTY." I kid you not. How I ended up at such a grammatically-challenged event is something I'm still working on. In all honesty, however, it was a super fun party. We got invited to a pre-party party at another flat, so we walked over there a bit early. It was all Germans and me, but they spoke in English the whole time so it was fine. We watched "The X Factor," which as far as I can tell is a British "American Idol." The actual party was at this hilariously stereotypical club called, rather over-dramatically, "Embrace." The music was insanely loud, the dance floor was crowded, and it was craziness. Apparently for Europeans, Halloween calls for dressing up in black, purple, and red; donning fake spiders; and painting oneself with fake blood and zombie makeup. There were some legitimately scary-looking people. I had a really good time, which was great, because usually I just stand around awkwardly at parties and strategize about how I can leave early. We didn't get home until like 3 am, so I slept in quite a bit on Saturday. 

Saturday I wanted to go to city centre to get a new camera, after having been convinced by Dad that, yes, I should probably have a working camera while I'm on study abroad. Astrid and Tanya came with me, as they had shopping to do, too. We decided to walk instead of taking the bus, since the weather was absolutely perfect. It was just like it had been for our trip to Bakewell: clear, cold, and sunny. When we got downtown, we did our shopping and decided to go get pasties for lunch (kind of like stew in a folded-over pie crust). We found a bakery and got our pasties, and, after we  finished them, Astrid asked if we wanted to go ride on Sheffield's "big wheel." (The big wheel is like a massive ferris wheel in the center of the shopping square downtown) Tanya and I weren't too keen on it, but Astrid really, really, really wanted to go. I thought it was super expensive, but it turned out that it was only 5£, and it was the last day before they close it for winter. So we paid our fare and were given a capsule all to ourselves. It turned out to be a super fun ride, as we could see the whole city. Looking at the roofs of all the old buildings reminded me of the chimney sweep dance from Mary Poppins. :) I took lots of pictures with my brand new camera, which you can see here.   

After our ride on the wheel, we walked back home, and I got ready to go to see The Lord of The Dance with Tanya and our flatmate, Tatjana (pronounced Tatiana). Tatjana's pretty remarkable, as she speaks English, Finnish, Latin, French, Russian, Swedish, and German. And I think maybe Spanish. She's also a master kantele player, which is a traditional Finnish folk stringed instrument. She's intense. She and Tanja are super into Lord of the Dance. I, on the other hand, love Irish and Scottish folk music, but kind of see Lord of the Dance as a hilarious spectacle. I was imagining a small, low key thing, but the show ended up being kind of a huge deal. It was in Sheffield arena, which is this huge stadium thing, similar to the Rose Garden. Everyone there was super into it, and the show was actually really cool! During the intermission I talked for a long time with this older man sitting next to me. We had an interesting discussion about politics and the younger generation in Britain. I took a couple of pictures before the show started, which you can see here. 

On Monday from 8:30 to 1:30 I worked at New Roots again. It was not quite as eventful as my last shift, as this week is a reading week for a lot of students. They don't have to go to class, so they're not walking by and stopping in to get pastries and things for breakfast. I spent most of the time in the back bagging cakes and cleaning things. I got a lot better at using the cash register, but I'm still horrible at calculating change. I get all flustered and hurried and my brain just won't work. When I think about it later, it's easy, but in the moment it's completely impossible. Like 20 minus 1.70. Not that hard. But eventually I'll get it, I guess. I took a couple of pictures of the store, which I'll just include at the end of this post. 

I got my first midterm essay back yesterday — I had to meet one-on-one with the professor to get his feedback; everyone does — and I did very well. I was really worried about it, so I'm really glad I didn't do badly! I had no idea what I was doing, as I have zero background in British prehistoric archaeology, so it was kind of a shot in the dark. 

I hope you're all doing well! Let me know if there's something you'd like from merry old England! 

~Anna 

The pastry case and front counter

The rest of the store -- it's really small! 

Front of the store with the plants and things.