Dubious Advice on Studying Abroad

Lesson learned: always, always, ALWAYS take your phone with you, even inside the flat, even when you’re just going to pee or grab something in the kitchen. You never know where you’re going to need pictures to prove an otherwise ludicrous story.

Like the story of how a squirrel broke into our kitchen and stole a loaf of bread.

Imagine that window was open, and there was a squirrel eating a slice of bread just outside on the windowsill. And by “just outside” I mean halfway in. That’s what stumbled upon the other day when I stepped in our flat’s kitchen. A squirrel, about 2 meters away from me, enjoying some bread. My first thought was “of course I don’t have my phone with me! Its so close, it would’ve made a great snapchat story!” I watched him for a little while, not daring to move. He watched me, still eating. Eventually i decided to reach for the snack I had came to the kitchen for.

That’s when I realized that one of the loaf of bread that was sitting on the counter was suspiciously missing. I looked at the squirrel. He was eating a slice of bread. I squinted. There was another slice of bread sitting on the couch just under the winow. I took a few steps and spotted the torn plastic wrapping of the bread on the floor, about exactly halfway between the counter and the window.

Feeling like Sherlock Holmes, I put together 2 and 2 and managed to get 4.

“You motherfucker” I whispered at the squirrel. He had come into the kitchen, took the bread from the counter, opened it, and plundered its content. Not only that, he was calmly eating it right outside the window, staring at me like a smug bastard.

So I’ve got a pretty good grip of English, yeah? But most of the English I’ve been exposed to, being from Montreal and all, is some variation of North American English. 

Unfortunately for me, I am not in North America, but in England. And although I’ve started to get used to the accent, there are moments. Either the environment is very noisy, or the other person mumbles a lot, of maybe they’ve got like a super strong regional accent or something (maybe they’re australian; I still can’t always tell them apart from english people with a very strong accent).

Whatever the reason, they are speaking to me and I only understand one sentence out of three.

Then comes the moments. It’s at a point in a conversation when I’ve already exhausted the allotted numbers of time I can ask them to repeat what they’ve just said without being offensive or annoying. So even when I don’t understand a sentence I just nod with a little vacant smile, go “mh-hm” and invest all my mental resources in trying to understand what the hell they are going on about.

There’s a silence. They are looking at me expectantly. I realize they’ve just ask me a question.

Shit.

Two choices: I ask them to repeat themselves once more, or I take a wild guess and try to provide some kind of answer that will hopefully match their question.

Hint: I make terrible decisions under pressure.

Panicked, I go for option no2. I hazard a wobbly “yeah....and you?” and pray very hard for the gods to teleport me 5 miles away from here.

More silence. I can see in their face that my answer did not match their question.

They were asking me to do something.

Bonfire night, also known as Guy Fawkes day, also known as just the 5th of November, is an annual celebration here in Great Britannia. Basically, a while ago (1605, or so Wikipedia tells me), a bunch of Catholics, in the spirit of the Good and Virtuous Christian Way of Life, decided the Protestant king James I had to die. And is there a better to kill a head of state than a fiery explosion?

According to the plotters, no, there isn’t. So they stuffed the basement of the Parliament with gunpowder (the legends says they dug a tunnel, but no proof has ever been found) and planned to detonate it when the King came over for a visit or whatever. Unfortunately for them -and fortunately for James I, they were discovered. More precisely, on the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes, who was in charge of the explosives, got discovered guarding said explosives -hence why his name was associated with the event more closely than his fellow would-be-murderers, who are more or less forgotten by anyone else than tour guides and history buffs across the land.

The conspirators who were captured alive were sentenced to being hanged, drawn and quartered. This lovely capital punishment that was whipped out exclusively in cases of high treason involves being dragged behind a horse, hanged until almost dead, disemboweled, emasculated, and, finally, chopped into quarters. In that precise order. The pieces of the body are then stuck on pikes and publicly displayed in a friendly, PG-13, family-friendly warning advice to whomever was maybe thinking of assassinating the King.

Side note: Guy Fawkes actually managed to escape some of the unpleasantness by jumping off the execution platform and snapping his neck in two. Good for you, Guy. Good for you.

What does this have to do with setting stuff on fire? Well, people were just so happy that James I survived that they lit up bonfires to celebrate his continued survival. Sounds pretty dodgy to me but eh, what do I know. Maybe he really was that great of a king. Or maybe he was just, just very...persuasive. Eventually, the custom became more and more popular and reached the nation-wide status it has today. People don’t really praise James I or Protestantism anymore (as far as I know anyway), but they do like to throw effigies of Guy Fawkes into the fire, and usually some fireworks are also in order.

And so last Thursday, on the 5th of November, I and seemingly all the other students of the University of Leeds, along with a couple of families, headed out to Hyde Park to see this:

You can’t tell because it’s dark, but it was packed. Because this was in a municipal park and not in somebody’s backyard, policemen were present and had set up barriers to keep people at a reasonable distance from the flames. Hundreds of people, mostly students, were pressing against the barriers to try and get the best view. The park was muddy and very slippery (it had been raining all day), littered with beer bottles, and pitch black. Trudging through the mud and elbowing a couple of people, we managed to get a decent spot and watched the bonfire for a little while.

Eventually we drifted away from the crowd to watch the fireworks display from the other, less crowded side of the park. Afterwards, seeing that the rush for the pub was absolutely insane, we grabbed a beer and ended the night back at my flat, chatting and drinking until, sadly, a very reasonable hour, as we either had class or work the following morning.

All in all? 10/10 would do it again. I mean, anytime people want to set shit on fire I’m happy to watch it burn, let alone a huge, municipally-sponsored bonfire.

I’m not dead! I swear. Even though it’s been looking that way, I can guarantee you I have not been killed by either the harsh northern English climate, the dangerous wildlife, or the incredibly aggressive local population,.

I just got my ass majorly kicked by:

1)mid-semester essays and

2)an incredibly untimely bout of flu

Soooo.... I took a little day trip to the Lake District last week.

The bad news: it was very, very underwhelming. Rather disappointing. Yep. Sorry bout that.

The good news: I’m sure it’s possible to have a great trip to the Lake District! (probably) You just have to…not go to that particular spot, Bowness-on-Windermere,

The trip was organized by the international student society, and it wasn’t really an “organized trip” –which is great! Because I don’t like those! The only “organized” part of the deal consisted in the transport there and back. The 6 hours in between getting and there and the rendezvous point was completely up to us. Awesome! That means you can do whatever you want, right? Wrong.

Basically because there really ain’t much to do once you get there. The bus drops you (and the other few dozens of international students, who are already in groups, speak little English, and who are generally just not very interested in befriending you or being befriended) in a coach parking lot, next to an ugly, overpriced café and gift shop intended for tourists use only. A very friendly man greets your group and tells you how great the cruises on the lake are.

At this point you think “well okay, but I’m kinda broke so if I can avoid spending more money on a little tourist-y cruise….I’ll just walk around. There must be some great hiking trails around here, some really nice sight-seeing or something!”

That’s the first mistake: thinking you can escape the tourist trap that is Lake Windermere.

You walk around for a little while, hoping to find some brochures or maps or indications to walking trails or something. After way too long (like, 45 min), you realize that the only decent walking trail is on the other side of the lake! And so you have to take a boat to get there. No other choice. You just have to buy a ticket. What’s more, the trail is possibly too long for what little time you have here, and you would risk missing your bus. The only thing that you can access by foot from the bus parking lot is the adjacent town. It’s cute, perched on a steep hill, very tourist-oriented, and also very small. The interesting (i.e. not residential) part can be covered in about 30 min. If you take your time.

Slightly disgruntled, you reluctantly buy a cruise ticket to see what the man at the counter assures you is the best side of the lake. Time to go to the docks!

The docks are frightfully ugly. Grey, commercial, and bearing every indication of a generic tourist trap. A successful one, judging by the number of people. Also, big chunks of it are covered in bird poop.

The cruise is…alright I guess. The sight are pretty, ones you get away from the overcrowded docks. The guide’s voice in the loudspeaker keeps repeating that “this is the largest lake in England!” Now, English people, errm, don’t take this the wrong way but….Windermere might be the biggest lake in England, but as lake goes, it’s pretty tiny. I don’t mean it in a “Oooh my lake’s bigger than yours!!” kind of way. It’s just that sheer scale is not the strong point of England’s natural landscape.

Once you get to Ambleside (the north point of the lake), you walk around a little, take a look at some fields, take a few pictures…. And that’s pretty much it all there is to it. Is the landscape nice? Yes! Is there enough of it that you can look at it for 4 more hours? Nope! So after walking to the end of the little path and back, you shuffle around and waste as much time as you can until taking the cruise back to the parking lot. You pet some dogs (lots of people come here to walk their dogs apparently). You stare at some Roman runes (aka old-looking foundations corded off from the rest of the field). Fiddle with your camera setting, using the opportunity to brush up on your photography skills. And you get on the boat again, and the guy on the loudspeaker says pretty much the same thing.

You walk back to the parking lot and get on the bus with the feeling of having wasted 40$ and an otherwise perfectly fine Saturday.

Cups of tea drunk today: 3

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Here’s a random assortments of things I’ve noticed are different. Or different than what I expected.

In no particular order:

“doing the dishes” is not a thing in the UK. You don’t do the dishes, you “wash up”. Hence, “dish soap” is called “washing-up soap”. Which sounds hilariously British to me.

In the same area, “pulp” doesn’t seem to be a word. You know, as in orange juice with or without pulp? Instead, you take your orange juice “with bits” or “without bits”. I probably laughed way too long when I noticed it for the first time in the grocery store. A few people looked offended.

Milk taste different. Not worse or better, just...different.

Water smells different. Not when you drink it, but when you turn the shower on, it smells. What? Don’t look at me like that. I’m sure I’m not the only one that noticed...right?

No pumpkins. That’s right, it’s October, and there are no pumpkins to be found. NO. PUMPKINS. Not to eat, not to carve, not to decorate; nothing. Just...no. Unacceptable. Someones needs to start working on that ASAP.

Some British people don’t give a shit about about rain. Every time there’s a sudden rainy bit during the day (and it tends to happen quite a lot), most people will get their umbrella out, or their raincoat, or run for cover. But every time, there’s a couple of them who will just....ignore the rain. They will keep walking, getting soaked to the bone, and pretend it’s not raining. Like “maybe if I ignore it long enough it will just....go away on its own.” Which, fair enough, it does eventually.

And here are things that are the same:

Sirens. Their ambulances sound exactly the same.