Liverpool and Week 9

On Thursday (December 2), I had my typical busy day of classes. The strange thing that had happened that day was that I woke up with a sore arm. I must have slept on it funny, because if anything, it seemed to get worse throughout the day.  That evening was the Study Abroad Student Christmas Dinner. We had to sign up for it, but it was free and it was quite fun. We had a lovely turkey dinner and were treated to some nice Christmas Carols by a high school (I think) choir. I knew a lot of other people that went to the dinner, and some of them decided that they wanted to go out later that night (they had heard that one of the bars was going to be giving out free ice cream). I decided that I didn’t want to go anywhere, so all I ended up doing for the rest of the night was some laundry.

Stef and I at the Christmas Dinner.

The next morning when I woke up, my arm was still sore. I went to the only class I had that morning, and we were lucky enough to get out early. I went straight to buy some paracetamol in the hopes it would help my arm. I took some when I got home, and within an hour, I noticed that my arm felt a whole lot better, so I decided to take a nice long nap (I had had a hard time sleeping the night before because of how sore my arm was). After dinner that night, I added to the string of injuries I had been getting, by SLAMMING my finger in the bathroom door. I hit it so hard that I had even cut it, and the pain and blood managed to turn me into a bit of a pathetic mess. I was sure the nail was going to fall off at some point.

That evening, Stef and I decided that we wanted to stay in and have a relaxed night because we were going to have to get up early to go to Liverpool on Saturday. So we got Claudia, and the three of us used Kevin’s laptop to watch The Notebook. It was a totally girly evening and we all loved it (and Claudia hadn’t seen the movie before!).

On Saturday (December 4), we had to be at the bus stop bright and early at 8 am. Except apparently we didn’t because the bus was definitely not there until about quarter past, and then it took a little while longer before we actually left. I was on the day trip with a bunch of my American friends, so we decided to stick together to look around the city.

We got into Liverpool early enough that some things still weren’t open, so we found a coffee shop, and then headed down the main shopping street on our way to the Albert Docks. When we got to the docks, we went and found the Beatles Story (the museum), and went in. I really enjoyed the Beatles museum, we got headphones to wear that told all kinds of great anecdotes about their career. They even had a room where they had recreated the Cavern (the bar that the Beatles had made famous because of the massive number of times they had played there).

The recreation of The Cavern.

After the Beatles museum, we went shopping. The stores were absolutely packed with Christmas shoppers, and I didn’t feel like trying to wait in any lines, so I didn’t really attempt to buy anything. I just went and found some food while the other girls looked around. Two of them decided they needed more time than we had originally planned for, so the remaining two and I headed off to do something else.

We wanted to go see the Cavern, since we had heard about it, so we tried to find it. We found a big poster on the wall showing where the original entrance to the bar had been, and were a little disappointed because we thought that was it. Fortunately (although the original Cavern had been torn down), they had rebuilt the bar in nearly the same location, to nearly the same layout with a lot of the original bricks. So we headed down the stairs into the bar.

Inside the Cavern.

The writing's on the wall.

Outside the cavern.

There was a random musician there playing lots of different cover songs, and the walls were riddled with people’s signatures, which was pretty cool. The musician was pretty decent, and we all added our initials to the wall and sat and listened for a while before we saw the remainder of our party show up.

After our adventure into the Cavern, we did a little more shopping (it mostly ended up being for food) before we headed back to the bus. I had no interest in going out that night, so I just stayed in.

On our walk back to the bus.

Sunday was a totally lazy day. I ended up phoning home that night and trying to sort out all my arrangements for my flights home, and where I was going to stay in Manchester over night while I waited for my plane ride and whatnot.

Monday was another lazy day that involved a little more planning of various things, as well as the usualy PhotoSoc meeting. The meeting that night was about DIY filters and lighting effects. It was interesting because they used cellophane candy wrappers as filters, but I mostly just enjoyed it because it involved me eating candy in order to obtain the various different colours of cellophane.

Purple candy wrapper filter.

Tuesday was it’s regular self. I thought about having a nap after my first class, but I got distracted by my computer, so instead I sat in front of it. Stef and 2 friends headed off to Manchester that night to watch a football (soccer) game, and I was pretty tired, so I climbed into my pj’s around 8 or 9, and then just waited around until she came back so I could hear a bit about the game before I went to bed.

On Wednesday (December 8th), I went into town for some groceries and a little shopping. I found a lovely duvet cover and pillowcase for my bed, so I bought them in order to replace the hideous green set that I had bought from the university at the start of term. It turned out that the fitted sheet wasn’t long enough for my bed though. I spent the rest of that afternoon working on my blog, and cleaning and tidying my room. It ended up the cleanest that any dorm room I’ve ever lived in has been. That evening, Claudia and I headed to Pendle bar to watch Alex and the rest of his ukulele group perform at the open mic night. He later told us that it was the worst performance they had ever had, but I enjoyed it, and there were some other really good performers too.

On Thursday morning, I woke up and found out from Facebook that my cousin had finally had her baby the night before! I was super excited. Nothing else particularly notable happened that day (that I can remember), except that we had the fire alarm go off in the middle of my Marketing lecture. The most annoying part was that on my way out the door, I had thought to myself “I’ll be okay in this thin jacket because I won’t really have to spend any time outside,” and then we got stuck outside while the fire alarm went off. Needless to say, I was a little cold.

Next up - The end of the term!