Pubs and Church and New Friends

(Is it a camera? A Perspective shot of many washing machines? A beheaded robot? What law am I suppose to abide!?)

(This was above the sidewalk, instructing pedestrians to walk on the left side. At the bottom is a Flying Spaghetti Monster sticker, which is a pretty fitting statement about the spirituality of Europe...)

(notice the tights as pants, not the use of LiLo...)

January 10^th

As of tomorrow morning, I will have successfully survived one week on this island! One week of classes, of a new country, of a new school, and a whole ton more self reliance.

So I have that going for me.

Everything’s going great, I’ve settled into a routine more or less and so I don’t have a ton to observe. It’s just like Jan. term at Whitworth, one class a day, working out, going out with (new J) friends and a lot of sleep. Which is more than I can say for last semester.

Today I just sort of recovered from a reaaallly late night last night (I finally crashed at about 6am). It was a lovely day. I did some homework, hung out with the new roomie, and went with Melissa to the pub I have adopted, George and Dragon.

The pub was fun, today there was a football game at 5 between Manchester United and Birmingham. The pub was PACKED. I’m getting the impression that Man Utd. is sort of like the Yankees. You either would die for the red and white, or you’d give every measure of your worth to root for anyone BUT Man Utd. Well, my pub fell into both of those categories. In the end it was a tie, 1-1, but both of those (single and pain stakingly long to happen) goals were well cheered, booed, and yelled at for by the fans. Or I guess supporters are what they call them here. Afterwards, Melissa and I were confronted by a gentleman who wanted to say hello and talk about the game, but mostly see where our personal politics lay. We talked about this very sort of meetings in orientation before I left, about how many people are confrontational in other countries about the US’s politics, and that we shouldn’t be offended when it seems like they are personally attacking us. Even so, it was still hard to respond to this guy after he, very colorfully, told us how stupid all Americans are, and then educated us about why we vote the way we do. I was appreciative he knew so much about my country’s voting tendencies and intelligence because he knew nothing about his own country’s last five years in politics or any UN decisions in the last ten years or basically global news period. But at he could tell me about all of our communist-hating-capitalist-worshipping-*&^%*-idiots who vote against truth, goodness, and health care. I was lucky I had him.

Anyway, I need to work on getting less offended from stereotypes, everyone has them, and even that guy was nice after his rant and welcomed us to Chester and said he hoped we had a nice study here.

I went out with a bunch of my neighbors last night to the bar/club thing at our student union. A guy from a TV show who was quite famous and good-looking was the DJ, and everyone was excited. It was really fun to hang out and dance. They’re really nice kids, and they remind me other various friends either from high school or college, which also made me feel all happy on the inside.

And! to continue on the chain of meeting kids here, tomorrow I’m going out to lunch with a bunch of kids Tammy hung out with last year. I’m really lucky to have Tammy as a friend, for a bunch of reasons but in this instance, because she has given me so much advice and help for school here and life abroad. I like her lots J

But first tomorrow, a couple of us are trying a local church. It’s been kind of hard not having either my family/friends from home or my Whitworth community up here, and it’s been really strange to be in such a secular, well actually full out atheistic environment for the first time in three years. I sort of forgot what it was like to not have church and school and a million Christians be a part of my daily routine. In some ways I can breathe a little more, but mostly I miss it and I appreciate what kind of community and common belief keeps me going normally. I tend to keep my faith more personal, but being here and alone makes me want to share the spiritual side of life more openly. I’m definitely going to grow/struggle with independence in that sense while I’m here. I think this will end up as a blessing though.

Well, to wrap things up tonight, I thought I’d post some random funny things from the last few days.

1. Women wear leggings AND tights as pants here. Frequently. I don’t think I need to explain why this is humorous.

2. Road signs here are foreign to me and therefore funny.

That’s all folks! Good night Chester.