Cypriots and Yoga Mats

Yesterday was a fun-filled and adventurous day.  I got word that my loan check had been processed and I could pick it up, so I went and received the first of three installments for my accommodation fees and living expenses, totally 3800 pounds.  Frugality, here we go.  And because it was Friday, I was able to activate my bank account and directly deposit the check, although the funds won't be available until a week from Monday due to processing times.  But at least I do have a working, functional bank account and my debit card should be arriving soon. 

After the fun excursion to the bank, I embarked on an adventure to finally find the city center/the enormous mall that Fauzan and Carlos have told me about but so far I've been unable to find.  I was largely in pursuit of a yoga mat and figured there must be one somewhere in a mall that big.  So I gathered up my maps and struck out along the route to get me to the library and then take it from there.  Multiple wrong turns and close to an hour and a half later, I finally made it, although at first I didn't realize I had gotten there because I went into an Aldi's unaware that it actually opened up into the mall.  But the guys were right - it's HUGE.  It looks to be almost on par with that one in NJ we went to once, although I couldn't swear to it.  But it's really big.  I looked high and low and finally did find yoga mats at Adidas - for 35 pounds.  I'm willing to invest 35 pounds in one, but not until I'm able to access my bank funds and am not solely dependent on the cash I have on me now.  I'm glad I found the place, though, because not only have I located a mat, but the Aldi's food prices were really cheap, much cheaper than the smaller stores down Curry Mile.  Granted, this means a longer walk for groceries, but it's probably worth it.  Going the right way it's only about 20-25 minutes away. 

Last night was also the Erasmus Latin Crash, a party mainly geared toward Erasmus (one year exchange) students but open to everyone.  Kola had asked if I wanted to go with him, Carlos, and their group and I said yes, so we had all made plans to meet at 10 pm last night for it.  Carlos told me that beforehand we were also invited to a house party closer to the city center, so we set out down that way.  Our company consisted of Carlos, Kola, Ronny the Norwegian, Valerie and Michelle (both Chinese girls with Anglicized names for pronunciation), Karolina from Lithuania (at whose friend's house the party was), and myself.  We made a happy and enthusiastic band heading downtown where we met the guy who took us up to his apartment.  His student housing was really much nicer than ours, and he was paying less for it (probably because he had to share a bathroom, but only with one other person).  There were multiple people there already, and I think they were mostly Eastern European/Mediterranean.  The guy who was hosting chatted me up a bit and when I asked where he was from he said "Cyprus, but you probably don't know where that is."  I told him that indeed I did, and then I asked him if he was a Greek Cypriot or a Turkish Cypriot.  His eyes got wide and he said, "Wow . . . okay you really do know something."  Breaking the American stereotype one foreigner at a time . . . anyway, he then proceeded to imitate Clay Aiken and was thrilled when I said I was from NY.  I've almost given up clarifying that I'm not from the city because nobody really cares about the rest of the state - they just love the city and ask me questions about it.

After hanging out there for a bit we walked over to the place where the real party was.  It was jam-packed and incredibly loud - not exactly my cup of tea, but it was kind of fun all the same.  At one point they played the "New York" song and the Cypriot (whose name I never really got but it could have been Nikolai) came over to me and started cheering.  It was long though - it went from 11pm to 4 am, but by a little after 3 I had had more than enough and Carlos suggested we leave.  He really is the consummate gentleman - always making sure everyone is accounted for, watching your coat, ensuring that everyone has a way to get home, taking your arm as you cross the street.  Indeed, even as we left he was texting the others still inside, making sure everyone knew we were leaving and making sure the guys got the other girls home.  Take heart - gentlemen still do exist!

And Mother, for any of my former colleagues at Grand Union who ask about the differences between British supermarkets and American ones, you can tell them that in the supermarkets over here the cashiers have cushioned swivel chairs and are allowed beverages at their stations.  And no, I'm not just saying that - I've seen it with my own eyes.  Looks like we still have things to learn from our friends across the pond . . .

Update

Things are continuing to go well, and I'm now immersed in the struggle to get my classes in order - as always, harder than it looks.  I was all set to take Polish, which made me extremely happy, but there ended up being a time conflict (no class times are listed in the handbooks; you have to write to the professors after you register and pray that everything works out properly.  In theory it always should but obviously, everything works in theory) so I'm going to try to take Hebrew instead, just for one term to get the proper number of credits.  I was already told by one person that I couldn't do that, but I cleared it with the program director and we're both trying to get in touch with some other guy about the situation . . . basically now I'm letting nature take its course.  But classes finally start on Monday, and I think I'll be thanking Dr. Imai for making write so many hypothesis testing papers for him, as my first class is Research Methods which basically takes us through how to write academically.  I also have The Holocaust in History, which should be good, along with the Hebrew. 

We also now have a fifth flatmate - Irene from Uganda.  We're turning into a very diverse group.  She's very nice and incredibly smart; she already has another MA from a university in Sweden.  It's definitely nice that we're all getting along so nicely; it makes things much easier.  Irene and I went out for dinner the second night she was here, after we met her (we met briefly during a fire alarm incident in our kitchen - no, I had nothing to do with it and there were no pancakes involved - but didn't realize who she was at first; I thought she was Fauzan's friend), and ended up finding a hole-in-the-wall cafe down Curry Mile that was really good.  They had amazing fresh-squeezed orange juice, and pretty cheap food.  I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go back and try the lamb.  And in all the halal markets, I've been finding lamburgers instead of hamburgers - this I find highly entertaining and I fully plan on eating at least one lamburger before I leave here.  

Last night we had the welcome party for George Kenyon and Opal Halls (read: free food) and we got to socialize with people from the opposite dorms for a while.  It ended up being pretty nice, and several of us didn't end up leaving until they started kicking us out.  Afterward, Carlos and I went over to the Student Union with a couple of his friends (Kola from Nigeria and Valerie from China) to hang out and listen to some music.  The guy playing when we got there was, for lack of a better word, unique.  And interesting.  Very interesting.  I'd be hard pressed to describe what kind of music he was playing, and then he did an a capella song about electricity which I can only liken to Kipp's "I Love Technology" song.  Valerie and I especially were not impressed, but I give him credit for going up there and actually singing a song about electricity and the miracles of power plants, especially when you could his choreographed marching steps.  However, after him there was a girl who sang and she was great.  All she needs is to be discovered, because her voice was amazing - very rich and full.  As far as females go, she had oomph.  During this time (well, not so much her, but the guy and the DJ interlude), Kola and I embarked on a highly enjoyable discussion including but not limited to religion, China's economic rise, the US in the international arena, the history of Israel, motivational literature, whether or not it's an zero-sum world (Dr. Imai, I did not disappoint you), and Scrabble.  For much of it we disagreed but in such a nice, polite, and enjoyable way that it was in no way an argument, but a discussion.  We think a Scrabble club might be in order.

I've come to realize since being here that I'm really kind of ashamed at how little most Americans know of the world beyond North America.  All of these people from all over the world know tons of stuff about us, but we don't know much at all about them.  Even if they have misconceptions of the US, at least they have a conception of it.  Intellectually I already sort of knew that this was how it usually works, and I had some experience with it in undergrad, but it's becoming more and more pronounced now.  I'm really glad that I was an IR major in undergrad because I can usually manage to talk somewhat intelligently about issues affecting other places (and explain to someone the other how how Al-Qaeda feeds off internal civil unrest), and because if you aren't somewhat informed here and you try to talk to anyone, you look like an idiot. 

And speaking of internationalism - the "Canadian, Please" video is hilarious :D  Excellent recommendation, Putzel.

Friends!

I finally have some friends!  For the past three and a half days, I've been living in this apartment (I guess I should be calling it a flat) essentially completely on my own.  When I first got here, I met a girl and her friends in the kitchen and I assumed that they lived here, but then I never saw them again.  Tonight, after being frustrated with my lack of knowing people, I wrote out 5 little notecards introducing myself and inviting the recipients to come and knock on my door anytime.  I decided on cutesy notecards because I thought this was an all-girl flat.  I then slipped these notecards under the five other doors in the complex, and about an hour later there was a knock at my door.  When I answered it, there was a guy standing there holding one of the notecards.  It turns out that this is not a single-sex flat, lol.  The guy who knocked was Avinash from India and then another guy walked out of the room at the end of the hall, closest to the kitchen.  His name was Juan-Carlos, and he's from Mexico.  It turns out that he had been there since Thursday and another guy down the hall had been here since Tuesday and neither of them realized I was there, nor did I realize they were there.  So the three of us went into the kitchen/lounge and had a bonding session over Raman noodles . . . some things really are cross-cultural.  It was really nice; they're both really nice guys.  We had a really good ice-breaker convo, lots of laughs and miscommunications (although they both speak English quite well, especially Juan-Carlos, but he lived in Detroit for 2 years).  A weird coincidence - all three of us speak rudimentary German.

So the three of us talked for about three hours, actually, and then when we decided to go to sleep and stepped out into the hall, the other guy showed up.  His name is Fauzen, he's from Indonesia, and he's really nice too, so we ended up talking in the hall for another half-hour or so.  And Avinash took our very first hall picture.  We're all going to try to go to the barbeque tomorrow night and hang out.  There are still two people left to arrive and fill rooms so we're all waiting but since it's late in the game we might not be getting anyone.  The whole thing ended up being really funny because we all thought it was a single-sex flat, and the guys were all considerably excited to find out that it wasn't and are very eagerly awaiting the anticipation of the last two occupants.

It was a good day as well - after doing Orientation stuff in the morning I went out to explore again and walked the length of the Indian/Mideast district (called Curry Mile) - it's such a cool place.  Everything's written in Arabic or Hindi and so many of the women walk around in traditional dress.  There are also multiple cafes and hookah bars, as well as halal grocery stores.  I went into a few just to look around and try to figure out what stuff was . . . I'm not sure what you'd do with teeny teeny tiny dried unshelled shrip, and I'm not quite sure how you'd go about cooking a sheep's head, but whatever.  At any rate, it was a really neat walk and I really like the area.  I took some pictures which I will post soon, and I met a girl from Toronto who's here for a year doing a study abroad.  So it turned out to be a very good day, and it's nice to know that I now have some excellent flatmates (although we've realized that none of us know how to cook, so that should be interesting).

Thoughts about the British

Over the past day and a half or so things have been getting a little more straightened out.  I've completed registration and have my student ID, and I opened my bank account today, although it won't be ready until a week from today and I won't get a debt card for another week after that.  Ian would probably say it's due to the British having perfected what he called a culture of obstruction.  In retrospect I should have brought more cash than I did, but everything should be fine.  And housekeeping came by earlier to give me a beautiful present - a shower curtain that might actually be long enough for the shower.  When I asked about the shower curtain and then found out there wasn't one in my bathroom, I was a little irked, but it turns out they were just waiting to give them out, apparently.  The problem with Shower Curtain #1 is that it's too short - these shower hooks are abnormally high so a normal shower curtain hangs about a foot off the floor.  I was resigned to deal with this annoyance for the rest of the year and just mop up the entire bathroom floor every day but now it looks as if I won't have to.  Maybe they'll show up with some toilet paper tomorrow - who knows?  Now, if I could get the shower water to run hot, I would be truly happy.  The most it will do is tepid, no matter how far you turn the handle or how long you let it run.  This is also true of the tap water and sink faucets.

Apart from the culture of obstruction, I have found everyone to be very friendly (although granted, almost everybody I've seen so far is connected to the university).  There have been a few culture shocks, probably the most noticeable the whole "driving on the other side of the road" thing.  I keep looking the wrong way when I cross the street, and as I was on the bus coming in I looked out the window and almost had a heart attack when I saw a baby in what should have been the driver's seat.  Speaking of the ride in, one of my very first impressions of this country could have gone straight to Headlines with Leno if I'd had my camera on me at the time - we were passing through the outskirts of the city, stopped at a red light, and off to the left was a garage with the sign, "You've Tried All The Rest - Now Try The BEST! $5 Hand Jobs!"  No other explanation, but I'm assuming that's the British way of saying a lube job.  It was glorious, and probably the most Jay Leno worthy sign I've ever seen.  Oh, and I now know what a bacon butty is - it's essentially a sandwich made of bacon with maple or some other brown sauce poured over it.  Butty is apparently another term for sandwich.   

Apart from the driving differences, the other main thing I was unprepared for is the prevalence of men wearing very tight pants.  These pants generally come with pointy shoes or boots, and more often than not are worn halfway down or entirely below the butt.  Although so far all the men wearing these pants have seemed very pleasant, I hope this is not a fashion trend that makes its way across the Atlantic.  Everybody seems to be dressing very preppily; it's as if they all walked out of an Urban Outfitters catalog.  Coming from a college where the primary uniform was sweatpants, it's quite a change.  I don't know if everybody is dressing this way because this is a city or because this is England, but I stick out like sore thumb; it's beyond evident that I'm not from here.  I've only met one other American, also a postgrad, and we ran into each other at the financial office this morning (apparently American loans are so complicated that they require a specialist who does nothing but deal with them . . . the same one who wouldn't answer my emails for a month because he took a 4 week vacation this summer and there was nobody else willing to talk about them).  I asked her if she thought that university communication had been a bit . . . fragmented, for lack of a better word, and she said, "Oh my God, yes; I thought I was the only one!  At several points I was ready to throttle someone."  At least it wasn't just me.

It's only rained twice since I've gotten here but it's colder than I thought, and it seems to be always, always windy.  I don't know how much colder it'll get, but the students from warmer climates are freezing to death already; I chatted with an Israeli undergrad freshman this morning for a minute and she said she was about ready to keel over and die.  One other thing that we all seem to have in common (besides being cold) is frustration with the hours of operation for places on campus.  Most offices, etc. that we need this week or will need in the future are only open from 10 to 4, which I can sense might be inconvenient in the future.  And we were told that all the cafes on campus close at 6 pm, which makes students really angry.  Apart from sleeping and drinking, the thing college students like to do most is eat, and if everything closes at 6, late-night food runs will be challenging.  I don't personally plan on making many, but it's the principle of the thing.

Arrival

And so begins the British adventure . . . getting here and settled went off without much trouble, and I'm happy to say that it rained yesterday.  I think I would have felt cheated if it hadn't rained on my first day.  The city looks gorgeous and I plan to spend part of today looking around.  Down the road from the main college buildings is what's called Curry Mile, apparently due to the large number of Southeast Asian restaurants - Joyce says it's a fun area that never seems to sleep.  At any rate, things seem to be progressing nicely and I hope they continue to do so.