Weekend Plans

So, I'm sick again. Not acclimating-to-the-climate sick, but byproduct-of-smokers sick. England has a lot of smokers. I think they're trying to make up for their lack of smog to damage my lungs. They say smoking is becoming less acceptable here, but there are still plenty of people (and plenty of young people) who smoke. Thankfully they can't smoke indoors anymore, but they huddle around entrances because it's so cold they want to be as near the heat as possible. So every time you enter or exit a building, you're pretty much walking through a haze of cigarette smoke. Then you have people smoking while walking to/from class. The worst is when you're walking behind someone who's smoking, so you have the smoke constantly as you walk. 

Anyway, I have determined I react very poorly to cigarette smoke. When I'm around someone who smokes, even if it's upwind or whatever, inevitably my throat gets sore and I get a nasty sore throat for the next week that mimics a cold. Nastiness. So, after three weeks of being in England, I've finally gotten my first smokers sickness. Great. Especially since I'm about to leave for London, Stonehenge and Salisbury this weekend. Oh well, I guess we can't have everything.

So for now I'm chugging OJ and trying not to sound like death when I cough.

Squee!!

I have the bestest parents and brother! I got a "hugs" card and Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Raspberry candy. Yumm.

Haha. I love little care packages. Even more so when they come from across the pond.

So you can get an idea of just how far my little package traveled (and just how far away I am!).

And before you say it Dad, yes, I am a geek and yes, I know that I'm a geek. :)

Pictures of Brighton/Royal Pavilion

I finally have pictures from that day in Brighton when we toured the Royal Pavilion! So you get a pictures post. :)

Oh, and disclaimer. These are all stolen from others. What can I say, sometimes other people take better pictures than I do.

Brighton Pavilion during the day. See, crazy Oriental architecture in the middle of Brighton. Crazy.

Pavilion at night. It looks really nice with all the lights on it.

These are more pictures from the political protest going on outside the Pavilion.

And the coastline east of Brighton.

Gorgeous, right?

Alright, as soon as other people post pictures from our London trip, I'll be telling about that.

This weekend is a trip to Oxford, and I'm pretty excited about that! It should be lots of fun.

Rottingdean

So I am way, waaaay behind in posting. Sorry guys! 

Last Thursday a bunch of us girls decided to venture into Rottingdean--a cute little town to the east of Brighton. We had ridden the bus through it when we did the bus tour that first weekend, so naturally we wanted more time to walk around in it and enjoy it.

More countryside. We had to pass through it to get to Rottingdean. Every time I see the rolling hills I want to be like Elizabeth Bennett and stroll along.

Houses in a little dip in the area. They're just ringing the area.

Quintessential and obligatory photo of a red phone booth!

Street in Rottingdean. It's just a small cute little town that sits on the water. And it has very old buildings.

So we just ended up walking around the small town, taking little side streets and meandering. Our main destination: a small tea shop that dates back to the 1500s. Quite chilled from our exploration, we settled in for a warm cup of tea. We all had tea, some of us had shepherd's pie, some had soup, and some had cream tea--the tea, scones, jam and clotted cream bit I keep mentioning. So you guys can get a picture of it all...

Kristin is preparing her scone and heaping a nice helping of cream on top. We all agreed cream tea is one of the Best. Things. Ever.

We spent a lot of time having our tea and by the time we emerged it was dark. We did some final exploration before catching our bus back to Brighton and Sussex.

Little gate. A lot of the houses and walls from back-in-the-day are made of flint because the material was in abundance in the area. The wall is an example of this.

Rudyard Kipling's home! Not open for tours, but I believe there's an attached museum somewhere.

Anyway, it was just a fun afternoon after classes in Rottingdean. We may be heading back at some point, if only for that delicious cream tea...

Inauguration!

Inauguration day!! From what I hear it's crazy in DC right now.

I'm so upset that I'm missing both the swearing-in and Obama's speech after. Class from 4-6 is not gelling with the US political schedule at the moment. While I'm sitting in class everyone else I know will be at a pub on campus watching the festivities and drinking in our new President. Oh well. I'm joining after.

In other news, Sundance is happening right now! Started last week/weekend, but yeah. I had a lot of fun at Sundance last year and it sounds like friends are having a good time there right now. I'll have to get the lowdown on all the good films when they get back. In honor of the festival...

Picture taken last year outside the Egyptian Theater. I saw...three films at that venue.

Pub Crawl

Tuesday night involved an organized "pub crawl" in which Sussex students shows the international students a few pubs. We went to four total, spending between 30 mins-1 hr in each. It was pretty nice to see a few pubs since most of us have no idea where to start looking for some. The first one was pretty chill, but I didn't like the second or third very much. 

The fourth, however, was amazing. The King and Queen. Andrew, we're going when you're here. Tuesday night is karaoke night at The King and Queen and it's pretty amazing. You write your name on a list and you're called up...and people actually volunteer for this! I shall never sing karaoke, but it was one of the most entertaining things, watching others sing. And they go all out with dance lights and everything. Only a few singers were bad and some were really good. We got treated to quite a selection, from Kings of Leon to N'Sync to a most beloved favorite, "My Girl." Sorry Dad, they were slightly better at it than you. :)

But yeah. All the people I went with absolutely loved that pub, especially karaoke night, so I suspect we'll be returning many a Tuesday night.

Worthless Post

Another seagull is eyeing me from the hill outside my window...

Update later on pub crawling!

Daily Tidbits

Today I fully understand the definition of English weather. It's rained, it hasn't, it was sunny, it was gloomy. As of the moment it's sunny and dry, but while I sat in class it went through every cycle imaginable.

While I was walking to class a seagull was stalking me. Creepy stalking seagull. First it came from behind me and almost hit my head as it swooped over. Then it landed to the right and just stared at me. I continued walking and, sure enough, seagull made Attempt #2 to get me. I figured he might be after my pita, so I through him a chunk...far, far away. He proceeded to devour said pita and then come for more! One more hop later he looked at me again, but I think he lost interest because he started looking at the ground as if he'd find more food.

OH, and in my psychology class, which is taught by a US professor, he made a Doctor Who reference!! I guess it's not as amazing because I'm in England and it is a rather well-known phenomenon here, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. "If only we could hop on the Tardis with Doctor Who and fly back to the beginning of the universe..." Haha.

What I'm not enjoying is the UK keyboards. The left shift key is tiny, the return key isn't long enough and they put their symbols on different keys. Which makes it a bit more difficult to type than normal. I frequently make mistakes and often find that instead of a capital letter I end up with a "\" next to the first letter, since the "\" key is right next to the shift key and where I would normally hit the shift key. Oh well. I'll be using my own computer most of the time anyway.

Classes: Day 1

Classes started today. Monday morning class at 9 am is going to be difficult. Very difficult. On the upside, it's the only morning I start earlier than 11 am. Yay!

Official Schedule:

Britain in the 20th Century

Europe in the 20th Century (I'm hoping for some overlap!!)

Contemporary Issues in Psychology

Analyzing Television (BBC! hopefully)

And no classes on Friday, so I have a 3-day weekend for traveling and the like.

Oh, and today is my first day of rain. It's wet and cold. But so far it's just drizzling, so I can bear it. :)

Brighton

Some people are apparently miffed that they wake up and don't have a blog post from me. *cough* Mother *cough* But fear not. Just because you don't have a post every day or a post more than once a week doesn't mean I don't love you! I just don't have much to tell. Which I can imagine will increase now that classes start tomorrow.

Anyway, this weekend has been all about exploring Brighton, the town closest to us. Sussex is a campus that's pretty much surrounded by countryside...except four miles away is the town of Brighton & Hove. Originally they were two towns very close together but then joined together and received a royal charter officially making them one city. So the correct name is Brighton & Hove, but most everyone just calls it Brighton. It's a cute little town with 2-lane traffic, lots of crazy pedestrians who must want to get hit by a bus and many, many shops, restaurants and pubs. Apparently it's always busy and bustling but still retains a small town feel--a stark contrast to LA, and a pleasant change.

Oh, and this post you get pictures! Yay! I apologize for some blurry pictures. Picture-taking while on a bus is an art I have not perfected.

So these pictures were taken today on our bus tour of Brighton and the area.

The countryside is gorgeous. It's just green rolling hills as far as you can see.

Small town nestled in the countryside. And look Chelsea, SHEEP!!

More rolling hills.

Back to yesterday...

Yesterday was an expedition into town. We went to Argos which may just be the strangest clashing of past and present shopping habits. You go into the store and look through a huge catalogue (anyone old enough to remember the good ol' Sears Roebuck days?) and punch the numbers into this mini computer near the catalogue, which will allow you to see if the item is in stock. In order to conserve space, Argos is just a small storefront and the stock is actually in a huge warehouse in back. So if your item is in stock, then you write down the number on a sheet of paper and the quantity you want. Then you pay for the item and wait for the employees to collect all your items (around 7ish minutes for me) and then go to the counter to get them. Personally I'd rather browse through shelves, but I guess this does facilitate faster shopping (not having to go through the aisles, not having to ring up each item individually, etc.) and eliminates the inconvenience of maneuvering with a shopping cart. At the very least it's quite an experience.

Next was a trip to get everyone a mobile who didn't already have one. Thanks to Chelsea (!), I got to avoid the hassle of trying to figure out which phone to get, which plan was best, etc. Kids were quite confused, but I was fortunate enough not to share in their confusion. Plus, no one seems to know about Skype. Everyone was concerned about calling rates to the US. You don't need to worry about all that! I don't even know who would be, say, in Brighton and think all of a sudden they want to have a 20-minute conversation with their parents. You're not going to call your parents unless you're in your room anyway, so don't worry about it! 

After that I just kind of meandered around by myself. Shopping is very big in Brighton since it has such a variety and multitude of shops. When I got sick of walking on the main street with all the people, I just turned on a street and headed uphill into the residential area. The houses are the quintessential houses squashed together. One street even had the houses painted various shades of pastel colors! But up there was much quieter than down on the street, and it was nice to meander through the area. But I finally ventured back down to catch my bus back to campus.

That night we went back into town and looked for dinner places. My group decided on Chinese...which turned out to be just ok. Apparently what we call orange chicken is sweet and sour chicken over there...but it still doesn't taste as good. I wasn't too impressed, but with all the restaurants around the area, I'm bound to find something I like.

Afterwards we all gathered at a pub. The bartenders found out we were American (not that hard, what with the accent and all) and then proceeded to play American songs. At least, we assume (and hope) that's the reason behind playing such songs as "Born in the USA." The group of girls I sat with played a question game, in which you ask a question and then go around the table with everyone answering. I'm proud to say my Mexico traveling horror story won for the "Worst Travel Experience" question. Then came the interesting part of the evening. One of the girls was to meet up with some girl for her birthday at another pub, which she had the address for but didn't have any directions. So she asked one of the bartenders. Let it be known British people cannot give directions. When I give directions, I say left on so-and-so street, etc. Oh no. Their directions are, "You'll come out of the bar and go left, then right. Then you'll go this way (make an arch curving left with your hand) for awhile, then you'll hit a church, then you'll want to go left, and it's on the other side of that." Yeah. Quite accurate, yes? Well, we got lost along the way, so then we stopped and asked someone else for directions. Same. Directions. Curving motion and everything. I don't know how difficult it is to give directions, but they're not very good at it. It might also have something to do with the streets not being clearly labeled (some have signs posted on the buildings, but most have no signs at all), but that's the only excuse I can think of. After awhile we gave up and just went back to campus. Interesting night.

This morning was a sleep-in-until-12:30 morning. Quite pleasant. The afternoon was the bus tour through Brighton. Pictures and explanations below...

This is a little coffee shop in Rottingdean, a small township-type place. The building dates back to the 1600s.

Roedean is one of the top all-girls schools in the country. It's a boarding school and it's huge. I don't think I got it all in the frame. Oh, and yeah. The only thing separating it from the sea is the lawn area in the picture and the road we're driving on. It sits on a cliff overlooking the sea!

Choppy waves.

This is the Brighton Marina (part of it). Brighton built land on the sea to accommodate shopping and hotels, as well as providing shielded docks for over 1,000 boats. We're coming from the east of Brighton, so this shows the cliff the east portion sits on (the cliff face is tan). We're still a bit above the base of the marina, so you might not be able to tell, but the cliff is quite large. And it's slightly eroding, so the town is doing its best to slow it down because the road you're driving on is already dangerously close to the edge and can't be pushed back much more. The store in the picture: ASDA. Owned by Wal-Mart. Enough said.

Posh houses facing the ocean.

More posh houses. These actually all face a garden (obscured by bushes) in a half-circle that opens up to the ocean. These buildings are on the left side of that half-circle.

Again, more houses. 

Brighton Pier! Think Santa Monica. I have yet to go, but it has shops, restaurants, performers and rides! It's crazy big too, bigger than Santa Monica. 

Queens Hotel is apparently where Charles Dickens stayed and wrote Oliver Twist. At least, if I'm remembering the tour correctly. :)

The Grand Hotel. Apparently the place to stay if you're in Brighton. Margaret Thatcher was almost assassinated here when the IRA placed a bomb there while she was staying at the hotel.

OK, more of the posh houses. Again, facing the ocean. Key thing to note: Notice the interesting yellow color of the buildings? Not the setting sun. The buildings are actually painted that color and have to be repainted every 5 years in that exact shade. Some city law about preserving the Victorian-era houses.

OK, so here you can see the houses ringing a courtyard. Before, only the rich would be allowed in the gardens. Now, however, we're a bit more progressive and the courtyards are open to the public. 

Looking at the houses going the opposite direction on a parallel street. Ocean on the far right. So the houses line a corridor going down to the ocean, then line the street that runs parallel to the ocean. And again, lovely green space and little garden areas.

Green space in the middle of Brighton! Everyone's out with their bikes and animals and families. It must be because the weather warmed up a bit to in the 40s!

Protest going on outside of the Royal Pavilion. The protesters are waving flags from the Gaza Strip and the banner those people are standing in front of says "Arms Dealers out of Brighton." Apparently similar protests have been going on throughout the country in response to the recent activity in the Gaza Strip.

The last bit of the afternoon was spent at the Royal Pavilion. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the outside (because it was cold and we had to hurry inside) nor the inside (because they don't allow photography. Pictures will be forthcoming of the outside at some point in time.

Anyway, the Royal Pavilion. Prince George (future King George IV) fell in love with Brighton and built his own home there...the Royal Pavilion. Apparently he was quite eccentric and very fascinated with the Orient and its style. So you have this massive Oriental-inspired building in the middle of Brighton. It's quite interesting. The inside is gorgeously over the top and gaudily Oriental in its decor and design. He was clearly a lavish monarch. Inside they had a little tea room where we stopped and got cream tea. Yumm! Cream tea is normal tea served with a scone and jam and clotted cream. Break a piece of the scone off, spread jam and clotted cream on it. Quite delicious. 

Anyway, that's all I have. Tomorrow classes start! Monday class at 9 am. Who thinks of these cruel schedules?!

Side note: The informational booklet Sussex gave us has an amazing student on the front. I love his shirt.

Transformers!

Brrrr...

Today consisted of a full day of informational and introductory meetings...starting at 9:45 this morning. Waaaaay too early to be up. So yeah. Meetings, 30 minute nap, then dinner. OH, and it's 25 degrees outside right now. Today was a beautiful, sunny, very cold day. Coldest it's ever been in January in the last 10 years. So England waited 10 years until I got here to get very, very cold. Thanks England. Although next week it's supposed to warm up a bit. And rain. I guess you can't have it all.

Also, everyone keeps calling me SAH-rah. I quite like it. Yay for British accents. :)

First Post from England!!

So I am officially in England and getting settled at Sussex. Recap of my busy day.

My last night in Brentwood I was, of course, doing mad packing. I tend to procrastinate to the extreme, so I had the beginning of some piles but nothing was actually in a suitcase until later in the evening. What I've found about packing for England however is it's much easier than packing for LA. All you have to worry about is clothes, shoes, adapters, toiletries, and cords for everything. Those are the main items. Plus any information your college has sent you, passport, visa, some currency, etc. Anyway, Nicole came to keep me company as I packed, which made it go by quicker. I finally reached the point where you just can't pack any more because you still need the stuff for the next day, so we chilled (aka Nicole shows me the pilot of Point Pleasant and I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of it) and then she left me around 1ish, and I fell asleep around 1:30 am.

Wednesday, my last day, was going to be full of packing and errands--which I knew ahead of time, so I woke up at 7:30 to accomplish everything. A very bleary-eyed me stumbled downstairs and dragged her mother for a last cup of Brentwood Starbucks, then resumed packing. After packing was done came cleaning. Part of my Sussex wardrobe includes fuzzy sweaters which shed. A ton. So, needless to say, the carpet needed to be vacuumed. And if that was going to be vacuumed, why not the bathroom floor too? And then the clean bathroom floor didn't gel with the not-so-clean counter top and mirror, so those had to get cleaned too. Then came organizing all my Sussex documentation, finalizing packing, running errands to REI and the bank, then back home to leave for the airport.

Me and all my luggage at the airport!

It's not really that much for 6 months...

Flight 1 departed at 3:20 pm for Baltimore. Which meant we left the house around 1:50. The parentals (side note: met someone today who also calls them "parental units!") were kind enough to let Andrew skip the end of school, so the whole family saw me off at the airport! Security was uneventful, waiting for the plane was uneventful, boarding the full plane was uneventful. What was eventful, you might ask? The descent to Baltimore. I don't know what kind of weather patterns the Baltimore area was having Wednesday night, but it was the worst flying conditions. We had turbulence. Major turbulence. If you've ever been in this kind of turbulence, you would never ever call those small bumps on a flight "turbulence." Or maybe this just went so far beyond turbulence. In one word: a rollercoaster. It felt like being on a rollercoaster. More specifically, the Mulholland Drive rollercoaster at Disneyland. For anyone who hasn't been on it, it's sudden turns, sharp rises and drops...basically a nightmare. So imagine that without a track, so you can't anticipate when the plane with jar left, jar right, suddenly dip up or down. My head got slammed into the window, my butt left the seat, many hands were gripping the headrests in front of them. My favorite, however, was the black church meeting going on in the back rows. The whole episode sounded like a revivalist meeting. One black woman is screaming and shrieking the whole time, yelling, "Oh please Lord Jesus, help us Lord Jesus!" and other such things. Then a black man chimes in, exclaiming, "Everyone on this plane knows who Jesus is. Save 'em Lord, save 'em!" So. Wonderful. That plus the plane feeling like a rollercoaster sufficiently distracted me from concentrating too much on the fact that we were pitching around in an airplane 35,000 feet up in the air. Not good.

But we finally landed in Baltimore relatively unscathed. Peoples' nerves were rather shot I'm sure. Our flight concluded with the aforementioned black man saying, "Jesus did a pretty good job of landing the plane," which was followed by applause from some passengers. 6 pm I depart the plane.

Next is claiming baggage because I have to transfer my luggage to British Airways. Baltimore airport has a similar setup to LAX in that they have many separate terminals...and of course Southwest is at the opposite end from international flights. So here I go, trudging through the airport with my large backpack and two large suitcases. Quite a sight. 

The international terminal is relatively empty. Mostly military personnel departing overseas and people on my flight. Passports and flight tickets are checked. And checked. And checked again. And again. Good luck to anyone who tries to smuggle themselves onto a flight to England through British Airways.

Anyway, got myself settled on the plane. Not too bad. I've had better seats, but these were serviceable. We got into the air and I fell asleep, forcing myself to get some sleep during the flight. Unfortunately that was not to be. I woke up an hour later to the sound of two children screaming. One was a toddler and clearly knew better, then he got a small girl child screaming because he was screaming. Oh the cacophony. Then they started serving dinner, so I decided to eat instead of try to get back to sleep with these screaming kids all around. After being fed and watered, I finally fell back asleep, although it took quite awhile. I then slept until about an hour before we landed, so all in all I ended up with almost 5ish hours of sleep. Not too bad!

Immigration was a breeze, got a bus for Brighton and started off! I found out the guy sitting behind me was also going to Sussex, so we struck up a conversation. The bus dropped us off near the pier in Brighton (I saw the ocean!) and I met up with these other two students who were also attending Sussex and we split a taxi to the school. Which made it only £5/person! Very excellent.

Brighton is a cute town from what I saw of it when we took the bus through. It has some very quaint old cottages and street houses, as well as lovely parks at the city's center. And many little shops for clothes, antiques, odds-n-ends, etc. The campus leaves something to be desired, but I knew that coming over here. It was built in the 70s with the architecture of the period (re: ugly). But the area is gorgeous. Lots of greeeeeen. A very nice change of pace from LA. 

So I got to my room, which is a single study bedroom on a floor with a layout similar to dorms. Each person has their own bedroom with bed/desk/chair/sink/wardrobe/etc. and 12 of us share a kitchen and 4 bathrooms and showers. I hope it all works out okay. At the very least I'll relish living without a roommate for the first time since high school. Anyway, I got settled in and immediately set up the computer and internet to Skype the parentals. Then came getting information packets and just meander around campus. At 3:30 we had a supermarket tour in which a Sussex student took us from campus to a nearby supermarket, showing us which bus to take, how to navigate everything, and then how to return to campus. It also allowed for us all to do some preliminary shopping, since we have no meal plan and are required to provide our own food.

Speaking of food, I still hadn't eaten all day. Since the dinner on the plane, all I'd had were OJ and coffee on the plane the next morning. I just wasn't feeling hungry all day and also didn't have the opportunity to eat. Which may have been why I was so desperate for dinner and agreed to eat fish-n-chips. Or maybe I felt I needed to eat authentic fish-n-chips while in England. Either way, we had--you guessed it--fish-n-chips for dinner. And it was actually quite good! Fish wasn't too...fishy, which is usually my problem with it. Or maybe I was just so hungry I would have eaten almost anything.

People dispersed about an hour after dinner to go to their respective rooms...and, I'm assuming, to sleep. Oddly enough, I have not one inkling of jetlag, and I accredit it to the following plan:

Sara's Guide to No Jetlag

1. Book a flight that leaves the United States at 9 pm or later. The flight should get into London or any other European city some time after 8:30 am the following day.

2. The day before you depart, stay up late. You can stay up late packing, talking, wasting time...doesn't matter. Just stay up late. 1:30 am should suffice.

3. Wake up the next morning really early. 7 or 7:30 am is an ideal time.

4. Set your watch to the time zone you will be in later. This is imperative! It will get you thinking like you're on the time zone already. Jetlag is all mental, so if you start playing mind games with yourself early, you can avoid the nastiness of jetlag. To help you remember, you might want to set the watch the night before. Wear the watch the whole day. Look at it and note the time. Do not automatically subtract hours to figure out your current time. Just look at the time and accept it.

5. Spend your day finishing packing, cleaning, running errands, exercising, whatever. Do something to get you up and going...and most importantly, tired for later.

6. Get yourself to the airport! Don't miss that first flight. And don't sleep through it either. No napping!

7. Chill at the airport during your layover. Keep looking at that watch. Remember, you're not leaving at 9 pm, you're leaving at 2 am...or so your watch tells you. This way, you can get in the mindset of it being 2 am, you're ready for sleep, and you will sleep on the plane. If you think it's 9 pm, you won't be tired and thus won't sleep. Bad idea. Don't do it.

8. Board your flight to leave the country. Immediately when you get on the plane, get comfortable, close your eyes, and try to sleep as much as you can.

9. Wake up before you land. If you're lucky, you've gotten about 7 hours of sleep! Which, if you followed my directions, is more than you got the previous night!

10. Eat meals according to your new time zone. Drink plenty of water. Stay up until you normally would...12 am or so.

And presto! No jetlag! Which allows me to write this extremely long post. I don't think this will be a regular occurrence, posts of this length, but I needed at least one.

More soon! And, hopefully, with pictures!