Week 5

On Tuesday morning (Nov 9), I had a translation test in my French class. I hadn't really prepared for it in any way since I figured there wasn't really any way I could prepare for it, and there were definitely some things that I didn't know how to translate, but I felt ok about it anyway. My afternoon was consumed with the class I have every week that I really don't enjoy. It's such a taxing class. The material is so boring that it takes all the effort I have to stay awake through the class, and I always feel completely exhausted by the time it's finished.

On Tuesday evening, I tried to get through the readings that I was supposed to do for my Wednesday morning seminar, but since it's the seminar for my least favourite class (and I was attempting to read in the living room), it was pretty much a fail. A bunch of my flatmates and I (plus some extras) watched The Lion King with the projector we have in our living room. It was really fun.

On Wednesday, I suffered through my seminar, then ran around a bit, setting up my UK bank account, and buying junk food (chips and cheese! chocolate!) and a giant poster (for my room), before heading home to start waiting for the groceries that I ordered online (that could come anywhere between 12 and 8). Stef and her friend headed off to London for a few days of sightseeing.

This poster takes up pretty much my whole wall. If you look closely, you can see a bulletin board sticking out from underneath there!

Since it was November 10, I decided that it would be a good time to start drawing a picture of my old dog because the anniversary of his death was coming up on the 15th. I did some work on it, but even 2 years since his death, I was still getting pretty emotional, so I had to break away from it a couple times.

The progress I made that day.

That afternoon, one of my housemates (Ash) came downstairs and suggested that we should use the projector more, so I suggested that we watch a movie right then and there. He brought down his laptop and speakers (that used to perpetually keep me awake with their massive bass beats filtering through my ceiling), and we set everything up in the living room, and figured out how to work the projector. Then we watched Inception. He had already seen it, but I quite enjoyed it, and the couple extra housemates that filtered in near the end were just very confused because they hadn't seen it before either.

I didn't get my groceries until about 6:30, and for the rest of that evening I didn't do much other than work on my sketch, which of course ended up making me really sad again. I woke up sad on Thursday because I had gone to sleep sad, so Thursday was just a hard day to get through. Luckily, my last class of the day was my French seminar, and my tutor for that happens to be a rather crazy old man. Someone had used a non-white board marker on the board, so he couldn't erase it, and when he started trying to use the spray to take it off, he just ended up making giant blue smears across the whole board. Then he sent a girl to the washroom to get some toilet paper to wipe the board down. The whole situation was just so ridiculous that everyone in the class was laughing and giggling like mad, and I had tears streaming down my face. It was just the kind of emotional release that I had been needing, so I felt a lot better afterward.

That evening, I watched the first episode of Arrested Development with a couple of my housemates, and then I was so tired that I ended up taking a nap. When I woke up from my nap, a couple of the guys had just started playing the movie Perfume, so I watched it with them. It was incredibly strange, and not particularly enjoyable, and the only one of us who really liked it was Alex because he had chosen it.

On Friday I had my usual classes, and then in the evening, I met up with my American friend who hadn't gone to London, and we went to this International event that was being put on in one of the college bars. There was supposed to be entertainment, but it was very sporadic, and difficult to get a good view of,so we mostly just spent our time in front of the chocolate fountain, eating pancakes and donuts and whatnot dripping with chocolate. The two performances that we did sort of see were a belly dance and a hip-hop dance. After the second dance, we got our last fill of chocolate and then decided to leave. We came back to my house to chat for a while before she went home and I went to bed in order to get up early for my trip to York the next day.

Halloween and Week 4

On Saturday (Oct 30), I didn't do much until the evening when I called my brother on Skype to wish him a Happy Birthday. I had a fairly good conversation with him and my dad, and then I started getting my costume ready to go out. I went with my American friends and one girl from my school, and we all headed to Sugarhouse. The queue was pretty long because everyone was at Sugar that night, but we stuck it out, and we got our tickets for free entry on Sunday as well.

My costume went over really well that night. I was dressed up as Katy Perry and tons of people were recognizing me and commenting on my outfit. I got lots of "KATY PERRY!? You look just like her!!" and I even got asked for a couple photos and autographs.

My costume. The same one I wore last year, but with a better wig this time.

On Sunday evening, Stef and I were wanting to go out again (we had tickets for free entry!), but the girls we had gone out with didn't want to come, so we headed out with one of our housemates (Alex) to his friends' flat because he had told us that they were having a pre-drinking party there. We got there and the only people there were the two guys who lived there (Jonny and Andy). Once they had their costumes sorted out, we all headed to Sugarhouse. The 3Stef, Alex and I all had free entry tickets, so we got to cut the queue and go in the back door, leaving behind the two guys that didn't have tickets (we found them again later). Stef and I stuck together for the night, sometimes sticking with the guys and sometimes going off on our own.

My costume went over really well again, and I got another photo taken (but I think that both the girl and the guy who were in the photo with me had come up to me separately the night before to comment on my outfit). It seemed like that night there were a lot of very excited girls coming up to me squealing "OMG ARE YOU KATY PERRY?!?!?! OMG I LOVE KATY PERRY!!!!!" It was a pretty fun night.

Stef had forgotten her camera at J&A's flat, so we went back there and got there just in time to see Stef's camera being used to make a video of a pumpkin getting smashed. We stuck around for a while because the boys were feeding us (homemade flapjacks [like granola bars], Jaffa cakes, wagon wheels, and some type of crisp-like things)/my feet were really sore, and then we went home.

I spent Monday (Nov 1) not doing much other than recovering from lots of weekend partying and going to the LUPS meeting. It was a presentation about how to edit your images using the program GIMP, and it was pretty helpful (although very fast-paced) even though I knew most of it already.

Tuesday I almost didn't go to my morning class because I had not slept well the night before due to the cough that I still had. I managed to make it to class, but then I spent most of the rest of the day napping, only coming back to consciousness for my afternoon lecture.

I had Wednesday completely free, and Stef and I ended up taking the free bus into town again. We headed off to PC World, and I finally bought myself a printer, and then we bought a bunch of groceries. We ended up just missing one of the buses back, so we had to wait around for a good 45 minutes before the next one came. It meant that I got to read a little of one of the novels Stef has to read for class. It was very strange.

After we got home, I thought I would finally be productive that evening by printing out some of the things I needed for my courses. I went out and bought paper at one of the shops on campus, and tried to start setting up my printer. Then I realized I didn't have a printer cable.

I got going a little earlier than normal on Thursday in order to buy a printer cable before my first class. I tried to get something set up and had a hard time due to the fact that my tiny laptop doesn't have a disc drive, so I had to find the software on the Internet to download and install. I couldn't get it done before class, but I got it figured out in the break afterwards, so my things were printed for my class that afternoon.

Stef's friend flew in from New York on Thursday as well. Nothing too interesting happened on Thursday. On Friday, I had my usual classes, and spent a fair bit of time playing around editing photos. That night I went out with Stef and her friends to the Sugarhouse again. We ended up running into one of our flatmates (Mitch) with Jonny and Andy, and since none of us were incredibly enjoying ourselves, we all left fairly early. We made sure to stop for some chips and cheese before we got back home though.

The crew (minus Lucy who was taking the photo).

On Saturday (Nov 6), I stuck around the house for most of the day after I woke up quite late in the day. In the evening, I went to town with LUPS to watch and take photos of the fireworks that were being put on (a day late for "Remember, remember, the fifth of November"). We all went up to the Ashton memorial to view them, and it was hard to get good photos because there were so many people there that it would have been too hard to set up a tripod even if I had had one. Most of the other students didn't have great luck taking photos either.

The Ashton Memorial.

After the fireworks, we all headed to a pub fairly close by. There were a lot of guys there that I knew because they're all good friends with a couple of my housemates, so they come to our house a lot. A few people played pool, and then I let Jonny try out my camera. It pretty much made his life, he was so excited. He put his lens on it (and with the amazing depth of field), took a 9 minute long video of basically nothing. It got edited down a couple different times, and my favourite cut can be viewed right here on Youtube.

I got a ride back to campus with Andy and Jonny and one of their friends, and then we all proceeded to spend a few hours watching videos on Youtube at Andy and Jonny's flat. Stef and her friend went out, but I was too tired to put in any effort into going back into town, so watching stupid Internet videos seemed like as good a way to spend the evening as any.

I had to get up after I went to bed because Stef had lost her key, so she had no way to get in. Since Stef and I are pretty much the only ones that can ever hear the doorbell ring (just because of where our bedrooms are), I had to be the one to let her and her friend in.

Sunday was a pretty uneventful day, and I didn't do much on Monday until the evening when I went to the LUPS meeting. It wasn't very good that night The talk was about themes you could use to help you branch out and take different kinds of photos, but it was particularly interesting and the speaker was a little awkward.

After that, Stef, her friend and I went to our college's bar to hang out with all the guys, and listen to the people that were playing for open mic night. The guys played pool while we listened to the music, and then we all played some pub quiz game for a while before coming home and watching some more Youtube videos (including the wonderful video that was made with my camera).

At Grizedale bar.

More of Lancaster

On Wednesday (Oct 20), I went to my class in the morning and then came home for a bit. My flatmate Stef and I went to Lancaster that afternoon on the free bus that takes students to the grocery store. We didn't go grocery shopping though. We went to one store and tried a ton of shoes on (but didn't buy anything), and looked in a bunch of other stores. I bought a wig for my Halloween costume, and some tissues from one of the market vendors. We also walked up to the castle and although we didn't go in, we got a few nice photos.

We met up with some other girls and all went to see the movie "The Social Network". I bought a huge popcorn, nachos and drink because I was really hungry by that point, and I shared most of the popcorn (which was sweet instead of salty and buttery). I quite enjoyed the movie.

After the movie, we stopped to get some food and groceries before we came home. A bunch of my housemates and their friends were going to the infamous Carleton that night (which had rave as the dress-up theme), but we decided to forgo that option and drink some tea instead.

Thursday was jam-packed with lots of class time (well, lots in terms of my schedule here), but I managed to sneak in a trip to the knitting club between 2 classes. It was just my friend and 2 other girls sitting in the Management school cafeteria knitting. It was fun though, but since it meant I had my knitting with me, I ended up knitting a bit in my next lecture as well.

Friday and the rest of the weekend was pretty boring because I didn't even try to go anywhere because I still wasn't feeling particularly great. The best I could manage was going to the grocery stores on campus to stock up on food and cough drops.

Since I don't have any classes on Monday (Oct 25), I decided to sleep in, and had the lovely experience of being woken up by the fire alarm going off (they test it every Monday). That evening I went to another meeting for LUPS (Lancaster University Photographic Society), and it was a presentation given by one of my flatmates' friends about all kinds of ways to take better photos. It covered really basic things (for the beginners), as well as some more advanced things, and a bit about how cameras and lenses actually work. It was easy to understand, and pretty interesting, so I quite enjoyed it.

Tuesday I had my regular classes again, and Wednesday I had a seminar bright and early at 9 am. The tutor talked and talked and talked, and kept us late, so I was freaking out that I was going to be really late for my class that was starting across campus right now. I rushed over there and found out that that lecture was only for the first 2 weeks of class, and now we will have workshops that meet on Fridays for the rest of the term.

After I came home, I sat around in the living room, knitting and waiting for my groceries to arrive (I had ordered them online). I got them, and everything turned out well, so I'll probably order them online again just because it's so convenient! Since I finally had cleaning products, and Stef had gone off to Edinburgh for a couple days, I managed to get motivated enough to clean our bathroom so it was nice and sparkly. That evening I kept knitting and knitting until all my projects were finished, mostly because I didn't want to do my homework.

On Thursday, I decided to wear a dress that I had made, and people (housemates) kept commenting on how dressed up I looked. I didn't go anywhere though. I still had a cough, so I was only going to class. There was a show at (smelly) Sugarhouse that night that a lot of people were going to, but it was just as well that I decided against buying tickets because I had an assignment due the next day that I hadn't started, so I stayed up that night to finish it.

On Friday, I spent a while running around trying to figure out whether I had everything that I needed to hand my assignment in, and then I printed it out from the library (I had been meaning to go get a printer but I hadn't gotten around to it) and handed it in. That evening, I may have gone out if I had found someone to go with, but I ended up just going two houses over to hang out with my friend and watch TV on her couch with some of her housemates. She was busy making herself a tutu to wear for her Halloween costume, and it turned out really well. We watched a few random shows, and then most of Saw IV, which was really gory, and a little hard to follow right at the end (I think we had missed some key bit of the plot at the beginning).

Next - Halloween and week 4.

Seeing England and more from School

On Sunday (Oct 10), I took a tour of the Lake District. We got onto 4 buses, and headed off. I ended up sitting next to a girl from Michigan, so I had a pretty good conversation with her.

We went to Bowness first. It was home to the World of Beatrix Potter attraction, but I didn't end up getting there as I ended up taking a boat tour of part of the lake, and then shopped a bit and looked for food with the American girls I was with. We did stop by a store that sold Beatrix Potter themed things, and I bought myself some little stickers with my name on them (it's funny to have a name that's common here, because my name really isn't very common in Canada!).

Photos from the Boat tour:

Hello, duck! (Just kidding, I know it's not a duck.)

After Bowness, we headed off to Ambleside. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there, and there wasn't a ton to do, so I spent most of my time trying to get some food. I ended up getting some fish and chips, which were decent, but definitely could have been better.

Park in Grasmere.

After Ambleside, we went to Grasmere, and we got to see William Wordsworth's grave. It was a neat little town, and the scenery around it was absolutely beautiful! There were lots of sheep, and everything felt very British.

I thought this sheep's butt looked like a panda bear, and I like panda bears, so I had to get a photo.

See? Panda butt.

Wordsworth family graves.

The ride back home, I spent trying to stay awake. I was exhausted, but the scenery was so beautiful that I was trying my hardest to see it. The sun was starting to set at that point, and we were driving through actual hills (with lots of sheep), and everything was just incredibly picturesque.

After we got home (after stopping to get food at the grocery store), I got fed some chili by one of my flatmates (he had made some for him and his friends), and after that, I ended up watching The Hangover with a bunch of the guys. It was a funny movie!

On Monday, it was the first day of school, but I didn't have any Monday classes, so I got to chill at home. I was happy about that though, since it was Canadian Thanksgiving, so I felt like it was supposed to be a holiday anyway. I really didn't do anything, I didn't even scrounge up any kind of remotely Thanksgivingish food to eat.

On Tuesday, I had my first 2 classes. They went fine, but I could barely stay awake through the second one (I resorted to doodling just so that I wouldn't fall asleep). Tuesday evening, I went to a meeting for the Photography Society which I decided to join (a couple of my flatmates have been pretty involved with them for the past few years). They're a pretty intense group. I feel like I don't have nearly enough experience to be wielding the kind of insane camera I have. That was part of why I thought I should join, so that I can learn to take better photos! I also got to see the dark room that the Photography Society has, which was pretty cool (too bad I don't have a film camera so that I could actually learn to use it!).

On Wednesday, I had some more classes, one of which was a seminar that our tutor decided would have to be switched to another time because she had a conflict with it and something else (yes, they really are that disorganized here!). That evening, two of the American girls and I decided that we needed to try going to The Carleton. What a mess!! It took us forever to figure out where to catch the free bus that actually goes to the bar, and then we had to stand in a HUGE queue waiting to get in! Plus, The Carleton is known for being absolutely terrible (you're only supposed to go there if you're COMPLETELY wasted), so it pretty much was. The music was bad, the floor was slippery, there were bottles everywhere, and (as expected) everyone was WASTED. We left relatively early.

After we got back home, my American flatmate and I ended up talking to one of our other flatmates until very late. I ended up going to bed incredibly late, and even though I didn't have to get up before noon, for some reason couldn't sleep after 9 am.

I went to the 3 hours of class I had on Thursday afternoon, and was surprisingly not tired. Then I went almost straight to the first meeting of the belly dancing society with two of my friends. It was free to try for the first session, so we got a belly dancing lesson, which was pretty fun. We decided not to sign up for it though because it was more pricey than what we wanted to pay.

After that, I went to a social for the Photography Society. That was when I really started to crash. I met a few people, but then the fire alarm went off in the bar, and I just decided to head home and go to bed early.

I slept for a good 11 hours or so, but when I woke up on Friday, I could tell that I had caught some kind of bug because my nose was running. I went to my first lecture, and then came home and went back to sleep, except I had to get up for a fire alarm. I slept until I had to get ready for my next class, and then headed out. I got to the room and there were only 5 other kids there. We waited for a couple minutes and then realized that our workshop doesn't start until week 3, so we didn't need to be there.

The rest of the day, I spent chilling out and resting. I would have liked to go out with my flatmates when they went out that night, but I knew that I needed rest, so I sent the on their way, and went to bed.

I slept for a good 12 hours, but still didn't feel well on Saturday. I made my way to town so that I could find some lotion-filled tissues, and get some groceries. I started a knitting project that evening, and a few people ended up staying in to drink, so I just spent the evening hanging out with them in the kitchen until far too late.

I tried to get up at noon on Sunday (Oct 17), but ended up crawling back into bed for about 2 more hours. Didn't manage to do much other than knit and eat, and try to feel healthy again.

On Monday, I woke up really late again, and finally managed to get out of the house to grab some groceries (lots of juice and some tea!). That was pretty much all I managed to do though.

On Tuesday, I went to my usual classes, and in the evening went to another meeting of the Photography Society, but this time with one of my American friends (who happens to be a Photography major back at home). The theme of the meeting was light trails and long exposures, so we got to try out some interesting techniques that I hadn't tried before. It was pretty fun.

Crazy light trail.

Next - The rest of week 2, and onto week 3.

More school prep

I'm going to try and keep this compact, because I don't have much in the way of photos. I slept in on Wednesday morning, and tried to write some things for the blog before I got going. Honestly, I didn't do much on Wednesday, so I'll skip ahead to the activities of the evening.

There was a sort of reception for the international students that evening that I went to with some of the international girls that I know. There was free food (some drinks and English pot pies), and it was pretty tasty. After a bit of a welcome, some of the clubs started doing performances. There was a cheerleading team (they looked pretty sad in comparison to Western's team), a parkour society (not hugely impressive), and a dance society (tons of small performances, skill level all over the map and went for waaaay too long). It was supposed to go until about 11:30 pm, but we decided to leave at about 9:00 because it wasn't super interesting.

At home, some of my flatmates showed me videos about cheese rolling (absolutely hilarious), and then we watched a couple episodes of British television (Peep Show and The Inbetweeners). Both were really funny.


On Thursday, I realized that there were some things that I needed to sort out with my courses, so I spent a lot of time trying to get that worked out, and I had to switch one of my classes because they changed the schedule at the last minute so that it conflicted with another one of my courses. I also wanted to go to the Freshers' Fair that was all about the different clubs and societies on campus, but the queue was huge! I went back later, but it was still so hot and crowded that I didn't feel like staying long enough to sign up for anything.

That evening I went out with a few flatmates and friends. 3 of the guys were sort of dressed up as Where's Waldo (ie, they wore white shirts that they had painted with red stripes [that had to be dried in the oven so that they would be wearable]). We went around campus a bit, and then headed out to the same club I had been to on Monday night. It was all fun times.

This is a crappy photo, but I love it because we all look like we're having such a great time!

On Friday, I spent a good deal more time trying to sort out my courses (for some reason, I still couldn't get enrolled in any seminars or workshops), and eventually found a lecturer that told me I should wait until after the weekend to see if it would sort itself out.

I went with the American girls to the second Freshers' Fair. It was all about different businesses around Lancaster, and they handed out a lot of free things (mostly pamphlets, but also bibles, bottle openers beer and pizza). Then we actually went into town in hopes of getting phones. We couldn't get a very good deal at the first two places we went to, so then we went into this homewares/department store, and spent a while there. We didn't realize that everything in town closes at 5:30 on Fridays, so after we were done in that store, we couldn't get phones because the shops were closed. We ended up going to the grocery store instead.

Freshers' fair loot. Including a bible, bottle openers, and candy. Not pictured - the beer.

That evening, we wanted to go out somewhere, and the guys told us that we could come with them, but they ended up leaving pretty early and were not seen or heard from again, so we were on our own. There were 5 of us, and we stayed in my flat for a while before we decided to see if anything was happening at the bars on campus. We ended up going to a foam party at the college that 2 of the girls were from, but I didn't enjoy all the foam much, so I left early and met up with them as they were coming home.

On Saturday, the girls and I decided that we were going to go to the market in town (and try to get some phones!). First we stopped at a store on campus to buy some tickets to the bar that it sounded like everyone was going to that night (one of the guys who had been sleeping on the couch in my flat [yeah, there were 2 guys there] had said that a bunch of them were going to the Sugarhouse, so we decided we would too).

We went into town and saw the market (it was cute!), and finally got phones! We shopped around until everything was closing up (5:30! Why so early?), and then went home. That night the girls and I went to a party with a couple of my flatmates, and then headed to the bar. We had fun (even though the place smells), but we packed it up pretty early since we were going on a tour of the Lake District on Sunday. We did make sure to stop for some greasy food before we went home.

Next - Tour of the Lake District!

Freshers' Week Orientations

**This is where my posts start to have very few photos because I just wasn't taking any!**


So I woke up pretty early, and my bathroom-mate and I decided to see if we could find a way to access the Internet (they make it very difficult at Lancaster). We headed off to the Library where registration was supposed to be happening that day, but they said we needed to go to University House. Went there, and they sent us off again. No one wanted to give us a temporary username and password, so we just gave up and hoped that that would be one of the things that they would be taking care of during the orientation session that day.

We headed to the session once we figured out where it was (turned out it was right beside our college), and they started talking to us. Most of it wasn't super helpful, it was just an introduction to the Study Abroad Programme officer and and the Students' Union before we took a break. I got to meet some of my flatmates friends that she had been backpacking with, and one of them was flatmates with a girl from my school. After the break, it was more general information about the colleges and international student support, but we also got to hear a neat little presentation from a historian about some of the interesting things in Lancaster (the town).

At my lunch break, I headed off on my own, and mostly just wandered around the campus, seeing what was there. I got a little bag that had a mug and a mouse pad in it from the university travel agent, and hung around in my kitchen for a while in the hopes of meeting some more flatmates.

View from my bedroom window.

After lunch, they finally started telling us helpful things about course registration, and coursework in general before we finished to have some refreshments in the foyer.

After that, the group of girls I was with decided to head off to get Internet access and try to choose their courses, so I went with them. We got study plans from the International office, and temporary log on information from the ISS desk, then headed to the library to use their computers. I felt like I had already figured out my courses, so I just checked email, and Facebook, and then waited around for the rest of them for a while.

I left before they had all finished and walked around a bit before I headed home. I didn't do too much other than meet some flatmates and chat with them for most of the rest of the evening, but then a few extra people came over, and we all piled into a cab and headed off to a bar in Lancaster. I'm pretty sure I actually broke the door handle in the cab because I'm just that strong.

I was with 3 flatmates (all guys), and 3 of their friends (2 girls and 1 guy). The club was loud, and it got really hot in there. There were mirrors on the walls that were just completely fogged up because it was so sweaty. It was fun, but it was pretty intense. My ears were ringing for a long time afterwards.

Even thought I had gone to bed late, I woke up with the sunshine bright and early at 8 am. I headed off to course registration, and it went pretty smoothly, so I was done quickly, and decided to go shopping for some household supplies before I came back home. I went to the second hand shop and bought some hangers, pots, cutlery, plates and bowl, and took them all home before I went to sign up for a final course. After I came home from that, I took a big long nap until it was time to go register for the Internet and get my library card. Then I came home and chatted with some flatmates before finally going to buy some groceries. While I was out, 2 of my flatmates cleaned up a bunch in the kitchen (it was already getting pretty gross). The night before, someone had smashed a plate full of spaghetti onto the floor by knocking it off a shelf, but it wasn't the guy who owned the spaghetti, so no one knows who it was.

I set up my Internet connection, and chatted with some flatmates. The German guy was going out to the pub golf event for freshers (it's where you bar hop and have to drink a certain drink in a certain number of gulps at each bar), so I went with him. We met up with another flatmate at one of the bars, and I saw one of the girls I had met on my first day. We made it all the way back to our college's bar, and I chatted with some people before I decided to pack it in for the evening.

Finally!

I got up really early, and hopped on the metro to get to the train station. I got my luggage out of the locker, and got my ticket for the express train. I waited. Then I waited some more. Then they said that the train would be about 20 minutes late. And since the trains run every 20 minutes, that just meant that the early one I had been hoping to take was essentially cancelled, and I would go on the later one. Luckily, there was a really cute baby on the train that I basically played games with the whole way (she would shake her head, so would I, etc.).

So I finally got to the airport, and got checked in. Then I took my bags over to get them checked in, and the woman didn't know the baggage regulations very well, so she was ready to charge me 250 NOK per kilogram that I was over the limit (since I was only supposed to have 1 bag/23 kg). Luckily, her coworker knew that the fee was just 250 NOK for 1 extra bag. After that, I zipped through security, and headed towards my gate.

The Oslo Airport.

I had to get my passport stamped to get through to my gate, and I sat down to wait. Found another cute baby that I played peek-a-boo with for a while. Then (joy), my flight got delayed from 10:55 to 12:05 and switched to another gate nearby. Woohoo! An extra hour worth of waiting! The funniest part was that once I boarded the plane, I saw something that said SAS was the world's most punctual airline, and that last year 92% of their flights were on time. So I got to be in part of that lucky 8%!

Once we were in the air, everything was incredibly normal. I slept for a big chunk of the flight, and then watched out the window (when I checked in I got to choose which seat I wanted, so I chose a window one!).

This is what my view was like for most of the flight.

One of my first glimpses of Manchester.

Once in Manchester there was THE MOST MASSIVE LINE UP I HAVE EVER SEEN waiting to go through customs. The stupid part was that they had quite a few officers working, but half of them were for non-EU residents, and the other half were for EU residents. The EU residents I guess were fewer in number at that point, so they zipped through, and then the officers still didn't really take any non-EU people. I stood in the line for about 1-1.5 hours, but once I got to the desk, they didn't even have to scan my fingerprints more than once.

My bags were waiting for me, so I found them right away, and started making my way out to find the shuttle to Lancaster. I got to the booth they had, and they gave me a nice little welcome package. I didn't have to wait too long to get on the bus, but then we had to wait a while on the bus before everything was ready to leave.

The bus ride took about an hour and was extremely uneventful. It was nice to see some of the English countryside, but I didn't see any of Lancaster since the university is a ways out of town. There were people to help us find our college (residence) when we got there, but I had to drag all my luggage half-way across campus.

On the bus ride to Lancaster.

Houses in Bailrigg (I think), the town right by the uni. Pretty typical.

I got my stuff into my room, and spent a while hanging out with the JCR (don't know what that stands for, but they are some sort of helpers) that had helped me find my room, and her friend. I met a couple other people, and then I went back to my flat in hopes of meeting some flatmates, and met 2 of the people on my floor. The girl I share a bathroom with (she's on a 1 term exchange from the US), and a guy from Germany who is here for his program. The three of us decided to go around and explore a bit so I could find some food to eat because I hadn't really eaten all day.

Luckily, our building is really close to a tiny little convenience store/grocery shop on campus, so I bought a little food there, and then we kept walking. We went all over campus looking at a bunch of the different bars (there is one for each college, so a total of 9 I think?), and stopped at the Graduate College bar. One of our flatmates was there, so we met him and a few of his friends. One of them had even been to Montreal before and was quite excited to tell the story of how he got there in the winter during a massive snowstorm, and (the part that may have been created due to drunkenness) how everyone went down the streets on skis.

I decided I was pretty tired, so the American and I went back home, and I went to bed pretty quickly. Since we were supposed to go to an exchange student meeting the next morning, and neither of us had an alarm, we decided to hope that the sun would be a sufficient alarm clock if we left our curtains open.

I bought a bedding pack from the university, and although it does have a duvet, and pillow, the sheets and pillow case are made of a terrible, cheap fabric that is rather scratchy.

Next - First day at Lancaster University.

Heading back to Oslo

**2nd half is heavy on the writing, sorry I have no photos for it.**


I got on my 8:30 train, and got a seat no problem. The train took us to Karlstad, where we had to get off and switch to buses due to construction of some sort.

I got on the bus that was headed to Charlottenberg, and it took about another hour to get there. When I got there, I walked around a bit, down what I think was the main street, and over by the library. I found an absolutely MASSIVE candy store on the main street. Half of the store was essentially bulk bins with candy, while the other half was mostly pop, but a bunch more candy as well. It made my teeth hurt just being there.

Massive candy store.

Random statue.

I was really tired, and carrying around my big backpack was hard, so I decided that I had explored as much as I wanted to (it was a small place, and the only reason I wanted to go there was because it had my name), so I just headed back to the train station. There was a pancake house right beside the station, so I went in there and had a "banana surprise" pancake which was essentially a crepe filled with whipped cream, some chunks of banana, and chocolate sprinkles(!), and drizzled with chocolate syrup.

I stayed in the restaurant for quite a while, relaxing and looking at the couple big (and a little outdated) maps they had on the wall. Then I basically just waited in and around the train station until the train came.

I got back to Oslo, and back to the apartment without any problems, and had a relaxing evening, mostly just surfing the web. When L got back home, I told her about what my plans were for the next day, and we worked out that it would be best if she drove me to the train station and I could take the express train to the airport from there. I stayed up late just for the sake of it, and made sure everything was ready to travel.

I got up early the next morning with everything packed and ready to go and had my last breakfast with L. She was kind enough to cook me some eggs and a sausage, and it was delicious! We headed out a few minutes later than planned, but I got my ticket and hopped on the train without any troubles.

I got to the airport, and headed into line to get my boarding pass. I got all the way through the long line and then the woman at the ticket counter looked at my paper and said, "You're at the wrong airport. That one is about 2 hours away from here." Since there was less than 1.5 hours until my flight left, I knew I couldn't do it, so I headed over to the ticket line to buy a ticket to Manchester.

The next available option they had was a business class ticket and I would have gotten into Manchester at 10 pm which was long after the shuttle to the university stopped running, and since it was so expensive, it wasn't really an option. I got a ticket that would leave at 11 am the next day, and the only good part was that it was a direct flight (my original one transferred in Copenhagen). I phoned L to let her know what happened, and she said she could pick me up at the train station, so I got another ticket for the express train and hopped on.

Because of some kind of construction that was happening, the train was about 15 minutes late getting to the station. L found me, and we decided to leave my bags there in a luggage locker overnight because I was probably going to have to get myself to the train station the next day.

We hurried back to her car because she didn't have much time left, and when we got there, there was a man who was writing her a ticket, even though she was only about a minute late. He had only started writing it, but he said that he couldn't undo it, and she got a huge fine even though she was standing right there! It was equivalent to about $120 CAD, and I felt really bad that it had happened because of me, so I told her that I would pay for it.

We got home, and I sent some emails to let my university know that I would be coming late, and then I went and had a four hour nap because I had gotten so little sleep the night before. After I woke up, L came home and helped me with some food for dinner, and then went out again.

I wanted to find some way to get the money to pay her fine, but there were no bank machines nearby, so I started freaking out a bit and decided I needed to phone home. Unfortunately I didn't have a phone, so I just went on Facebook and waited until I could get a hold of one of Keith's friends to text him to go on Skype. Then I decided that texting probably wasn't fast enough, so I made the guy phone my house and tell my parents to go on Skype. Haha, I owe him. I think he took pity on me when I said "I'm accidentally in Norway." Lucky thing my brother has nice friends.

After a fairly long chat with my family (the first time I had talked to them!), I went almost straight to bed, so I could get up really early the next morning.

Next - leaving Oslo.

Stockholm Part II

**I know it has been forever since I posted anything! This is actually the story of what I did on Sept 30. I wrote it quite a while back, but never added the photos until now!**


So I got off the ferry and into Stockholm at about 6 in the morning. My Swiss roommate and I walked to the metro and bought tickets. We got on the same train, and parted ways at the Central Station.

I bought myself some breakfast at a convenience store (traditional Swedish cinnamon bun - better than the cardamom bun), and then basically chilled on a bench in a mall waiting for my hostel to open.

I got to my hostel pretty much right at 8, and checked in and stored my luggage before taking some time to use their wireless Internet. I had already decided that I wanted to go to the Vasa museum that day, but it didn't open until 10, so even though it would be a pretty long walk there, I still had time to kill. I got to hear some pretty funny things while I was in the Internet lounge though, like how a bunch of people had gone out the night before and got the bike tour tour guide really drunk so that the bike tour was cancelled that day "due to illness".

I headed out to the Vasa museum, and stopped at the tourist centre on the way, contemplating whether or not to buy a Stockholm card. I decided against it because I was fairly tired that day, so I thought it might be good to just see where the day took me rather than feel like I needed to go to a lot of museums just because I had bought the pass.

I got to the Vasa museum and looked around a bit. The Vasa was a ship that had sunk in 1628, and was dug up from the bottom of the harbour in the 1960's. The ship itself was massive, and really neat. there was even a tour given that was part of the admission price, so I went on that. I hadn't been expecting much from the museum itself because I thought that it couldn't be much more than the big old ship itself, but there were tons of little exhibits explaining what life on the ship and life in Sweden would have been like at the time, as well as lots of other things like why exactly the ship sank.

The Vasa itself.

I had expected to only spend about 1 or 2 hours there, but when I started going through all the exhibits, it took a lot of time. I really enjoyed learning about how brightly painted the ship would have been when it set sail (now all the wood and the carvings are just dark brown), and I enjoyed seeing the display about some of the skeletons they had found aboard the ship and what those people may have been like when they were alive.

Skeleton found aboard the Vasa when the ship was recovered.

Model of the Vasa and how it may have been painted.

I was there for a total of about 4 hours before I headed out in hopes of going to the City Hall and getting a tour. I took a fair number of photos on the walk back, so I got to City Hall at about 4 pm. The tours had already ended for the day, so I just bought a couple postcards at the gift shop and walked around a little.

While walking around.

City Hall.

I felt like I really hadn't seen or accomplished much in Stockholm, so I went back to the tourist office on my way back to the hostel to see if I could find out about anything that would be running later that I could still do.I couldn't really find anything, so I just went to my hostel.

I got my sheets back (they had been put into holding when I went to Finland so that I wouldn't have to pay to rent them twice), and got into my new room. It was a funny little room. It was in the basement, and was sort of split into two rooms with 6 beds each. One side had just filled up with Italian girls, so I got one of the last beds. My side had 2 Australian guys, a Dutch girl, a guy from the US, and a German guy. What was the strange part about the room is that there was really only 1 light that wasn't particularly effective, so it kind of felt like a dungeon.

I hung out in my room, and chatted a bit with the other people in it. My side of the room decided that they were all going to go out, so I felt like I needed to go out too just to do something else in Stockholm. The German guy had this connection so he knew about some club that was letting students from some Business school in for free that night, so we went there first to see what was happening. German guy swindled his way into getting us in for free byconvincing them that we were from the business school but hadn't gotten our ID's yet, but since not much was happening there, we decided that we would come back later (after making sure that the bouncers would remember us).

We tried going to the Ice bar, but even though it was only 11, we had missed the last sitting (which was at 10:15), so we couldn't go in. We decided to go back to the student bar, and we spent the rest of the evening there. It was pretty fun!

At the bar!

After we left the bar, we stopped at a pizza place to get some food. I got a chicken curry pizza, and when I couldn't finish it all, they bagged it up for me and gave me a free can of Coke with it. While we were there, the Australian guy looked around and commented about how funny it was that we were all from different places (we had already lost Australian #2). I thought it was pretty cool, especially since between the 5 of us, we also represented 3 different continents.

We went back to the hostel, and I showered and packed up my things since I was going to be leaving in a couple hours. I seriously considered not sleeping since I didn't have an alarm and I didn't know how I was going to wake up to catch my 8:30 train, but I was so tired that I decided to just sleep and if I slept late, I would be able to take the train that left at 10:30 instead since a bunch of my roommates were checking out, so they would wake me up when they were packing up.

Luckily, I would up at about 10 to 8, which gave me just enough time to get everything in order, and get my butt to the train station to catch the train.

Next - getting back to Oslo.