Tumultuous Days

I must admit, I'm a little bit calmer than I was yesterday. I was in red alert, full klaxon freak-out. After being snuffed by yet another English bank, it was looking like I was gonna have to make 35 pounds stretch out over roughly 9 days. The situation was not very pretty. Fortunately the calvary showed up with some quick thinking on my parents part and the fact that I, fortunately, brought my ATM card with me to England. Whew! No more beans and toast. At least, not unless I feel like eating beans and toast.

I'm two days worth of classes in, yet I've only really had Chinese classes so far. If there's one thing I'm learning, it's that everyone knows more Mandarin than I do. I think I can catch up, but it's gonna be a Cinderella story. I've got a lot of vocabulary to learn and I need to effectively boost my comprehension and speaking level by effectively a year's worth of Mandarin Chinese. I know I can do this. It's just gonna be a bit taxing. But I didn't fly over here just for holiday.

I also realized that my Philosophy of Social Sciences (Read: Geography) class doesn't start 'till October 13th. Got lotsa time to prep for that one.

It's been a hellish couple of days, starting to adapt to this new scholastic environment, but there are a few things that play into my favor.

1. The resources here are outta this world. We are way beyond Mary Washington at this point. If I need to go to the library, I gotta decide which one. Need to use the cartography lab? Again, I gotta decide which one I wanna make maps in. There is way more literature at my fingertips and facilities are much nicer. For instance, the library that houses the Mandarin Chinese dictionary has no stairs. It's just a big Frackin' spiral!

This building here on the right is what I'm talking about. (You know, the big Frackin' spiral!)

This is it: The building in which I learn more of the Chinese language. It looks like something some kid built out of LEGO's, but the interior is actually pretty nice.

So I'm slowly adapting to this new lifestyle. It helps when there is a Subway right down the street though. A little taste of home, right in my own neighborhood. (Some of the English things you can put on your sub over here: Baked Beans, Chicken Tikka Masala and Corn) Also in my neighborhood are a few pubs, a hair salon, a couple of Chippies (I'll post some pictures of standard chippie fair eventually.) and an Indian restaurant. There's also a grocery story, a fresh produce outlet and a bakery, as well as a Pizza Hut. But who the heck goes to England to eat Pizza Hut?

Other than that, nothing too interesting has happened to me lately, due to lack of funds/lack of inclination to go do stupid things. Let us hope that the former subsides and the latter remains constant. I suppose it's for the best that my life only becomes so interesting, anyway. I don't want to show up on the Ten O' Clock news. At least, not yet.

So chip-chip-cheerio from fabulous Nottin'em.

- Jonathan "Half of My Uni' Looks Like an M.C. Escher Drawring" Trenary