Belslow

Chantel, AJ and I have decided that things in Belfast move too slowly for the word “fast” to be included in its name. Either AJ or Chantel came up with the more appropriate name “Belslow” – but I don’t know who – So props where props are due.

Anyway – Chantel and AJ came to visit me this weekend. They arrived Friday night and left Sunday afternoon. We had lots of fun from start to finish, with some drama and messes in between, which are maybe the best kinds of fun to have when you’re with people you really love. Anyway – On Friday night AJ and Chantel met my flatmates and I at a local pub called Lavery’s. We ended up staying and talking til close, which is like 1 am here. Then Saturday we woke up and went on one of the ‘famous’ Belfast Black Taxi Tours. An informed taxi driver drives you around to see the murals in the protestant and catholic areas, as well as the peace wall as he explains some of the history of The Troubles to you. It was very informative and you get to see places and things that you would never otherwise have the chance to see. It really enlightened us as to how recently The Troubles were, and how delicate the current “peace” is. 

So in the main street in the Catholic area is Falls Road, and there are some murals along the road as well as on the side of the Sinn Fein Party building wall. The main protestant area is beside Shankhill Road and there are murals along the ends of the houses. The murals in the Catholic area mostly depict similar struggles around the world, where a people are displaced and they continue to fight for their original land back. They have a mural about Spain, Israel, Cuba, etc. They are really trying to elucidate the fact that even though The Troubles  in Northern Ireland are quite famous and often viewed as extreme there are similar fights around the world. 

The murals in the Protestant area are about 50% memorials of fallen community leaders and 50% historical/motivational. They have one that I think is incredibly poignant in that its pointing out that Catholicism and Protestantism have been at odds since before there was ever trouble in Ireland. And “The Troubles” as they’re known today have only really been occurring in the last 30-ish years. However some of the memorial murals really drove home the violence used, and the severity of the troubles.

 This particular mural is really creepy. The barrel of the gun follows you no matter where you are standing. It is said to be protecting the Shankhill area, so that you know no matter what you do in this community there is someone guarding it. It apparently has the reputation of being Belfast's Mona Lisa.

Before all The Troubles the Protestant and Catholic areas backed against each other. However, when the troubles began they started blowing up the interior houses, not only to destroy each other’s property, but also to increase the gap of space between communities. Only recently have they started to try to redevelop this empty space, and regardless of filling the empty spaces they have left the wall up. 

The wall is called the peace wall, literally keeping the two communities away from each other. There are streets that go through the wall to allow traffic to flow, however, at night these gates close so that there are no night attacks. This is still happening today, and in fact Police used to come down and shut the gates themselves, but there were often paramilitaries there to kill the policemen so now it is automated. 

The city of Belfast has gotten graffiti artists from around the world to come and paint the peace wall with all sorts of bright designs and pictures to try to liven it up, and there is one stretch of the wall where people write messages on the wall. Chantel, AJ and I wrote messages on the wall, I don’t remember what I wrote. If you come visit me we’ll go look for it. 

The street that runs parallel to the peace wall is often the site of violence between the two sides. They call one street “no man’s land” because if you were caught on that street at night it was essentially asking to be a victim of some sort of crime. The driver even told us that a few weeks ago (since I’ve lived here) there was a fight on that street, and we could see the damage to a local painted Iron fence from a burning car. 

ANYWAY – I could honestly go on and on about the black taxi tour, but you’ll have to go on one yourself to really understand it.

After the tour we went back to my flat and I made Quesadilla’s for lunch for us all – Miam! That afternoon we went to see Easy A at the theatre, which was SOOO funny. Blake and James joined us for the movie, which was fun. It was genuinely the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. Stanley Tucci is a comic genius! The writing is impeccable, it never stops.  Then we all grabbed dinner together before heading back to my flat to hang out with my flatmates again. The drama ensued when like 7 of us were in our kitchen, and we all had a right to be there, and the security came to break up our “party”. We were like “We live here, we’re all over 21 – can we not talk in our own kitchen?!” but apparently we can’t. 

Sunday morning AJ and Chantel checked out of their hotel around noon and came up to my flat for Pancakes, Bacon and Sausage. Then they shipped out around 3:30. 

All in all a nice weekend. I love my Glas-Canadian friends and am SO grateful that they are close enough to visit me with such frequency. However, as I mentioned to James, they seem to make my friends here in Belslow pale in comparison. I have so much fun and feel so comfortable with my friends here, and I’m so lucky to have made so many nice friends, but when AJ and Chantel arrive, it’s on a whole other level.

This week I’ve got a few things coming up… let’s see… Oh, I’ve got a Sociology reading group with my peers, which I’ve agreed to do just to keep me motivated and having something on my plate. I also plan on applying for jobs like CRAZY. I really need one. This weekend is Halloween and I have purchased a 1 pound false witch nose and 1 pound witches hat to be a witch if I decide to go out, but I don’t know that I will end up doing anything, so keep posted and I’ll let you know.

I can’t wait to come home (sort of) for Christmas. I wish I could see all of you, but I’m only going to see my parents and Jordan. However, I have to come home this summer for some weddings, so I’ll try to book time to see you all!

Miss you!

Ashleigh

Why I had an aneurism in class last night.

SO, I was sitting in my "Key Debates in Social Theory" lecture last night, when the lecturer flipped to his next powerpoint slide. I, being a good little student, was writing down what he was saying, and not really reading the slide because I have access to the slides on my computer, and therefore don't need to copy them verbatim. However, he took a break and was explaining something I pretty much understood, and with good reason. I looked up to read the slide and this is what I saw:

Being who I am, which is a vocal, not very subtle, person, I got visibly excited. To the point of my lecturer going "Are you alright?" To which I said "BILL RAMP IS MY FAVOURITE PROFESSOR!"

I wish I could say I was more cool about it than that, but it was in the top 3 most exciting moments of my life.  After class the Lecturer, Stephanie and I went out for a few drinks and he was like "Don't email your professor until you are sure its the right one, because that would be embarrassing for everyone" and I was like "No, its him. He's a theorist who writes a lot on Durkheim. That will be him." Then my prof here asked if "Professor Ramp" would even remember who I was, to which I replied "He better! He wrote you my reference letter, we're facebook friends, I call him "Bill"!

I hope there are people reading this who are as excited as I was.

Exciting things to be Thankful for!

Where to begin?

I last left you talking about my mild homesickness, Britain’s love of corn, and my first week of classes. 

I promised you pictures from the Market, so here are some.

Jeanette, my friend from Denmark, eating Potato Pancakes.

Kate, my friend from North Carolina, eating a crepe.

Since then I have had another week of classes, made friends with my flat mates, gone to Glasgow to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Canadians, and had a meltdown in an airport. That’s just what happened to me. This weekend was full of other exciting things around the globe!

I’ll start at the top. 

As many of you may know I was terrified of living in halls. I didn’t want to live with stupid teenagers and share a kitchen with kids who partied all the time. While there is some partying going on here, most of my fears were completely unfounded. I recently discovered that everyone in my building is a post-grad student, either Masters or PhD. And better yet, I like them all. There are 11 people on my floor, and we all share a common room/kitchen. My floor consists of Me, Helen (Chinese PhD student), Mariko (Japanese MA student), Maria (Irish MA student), Billy (Irish MSc Student), Dan (Irish MSc Student), Chris (Irish MA student), Andrew (English PhD student), Kasem (Turkish PhD student) and Scott (Chinese PhD student). For those of you who are counting, that is only 10 people. Apparently there is another guy named Adam, or … I don’t know. He’s either English or Irish and he is probably the polkaroo, because only 2 of us have ever seen him before. Myself not included. I hear he has longish hair. We all like to cook so we spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen, and last week we ended up sitting ‘round talking until 3 or 4 in the morning 3 days in a row. Mostly its cultural differences, asking questions about slight differences, etc, but sometimes we just talk about movies that are funny, and our favourite sports. We’ve gone out for a few pints, and we share laundry and dishes. It’s really casual and friendly, which is relieving. Other people who live in Halls have been in our kitchen and made comments like “your kitchen feels lived in, it’s nice. Ours is like a ghost town” and “I can’t believe you all hang out together!” which makes me feel like we magically got the best mix of people. I’ve not got any pictures of my flatmates, but they might follow. It’s weird to walk into a kitchen and be like “SMILE!” for no good reason, but I’ll try to get a few. 

Thursday I left to visit AJ and Chantel for thanksgiving weekend. Here is where the airport meltdown ensued. I got on the bus that is supposed to take 45 minutes, from city center to the Belfast International Airport with PLENTY of time to check-in and board my flight. However, the Bus, which never left the slow lane, and never reached the speed limit, AND left 10 minutes late, got me there half an hour later than usual. Uh oh. Then, I walk up to the easy-jet desks. There are 2 lines, 1 line for the express check-in baggage drop people, and 1 line for the regular schmucks. Guess which line I was in. Problem arises when I realize there is only 1 person serving these 2 lines, and they aren’t alternating, serving 1 person from each line, or anything that even resembled fair, they are just serving all the express people first. So it takes me another half hour to get through the check-in line. Double uh oh. When I FINALLY get to the front of the line, 20 minutes until my flight is supposed to leave, the clerk goes “I can’t check you in for this flight, Its already done boarding.” To which I respond “You can’t even check me in and let me TRY to catch it?” and she says “No. I can’t. You have to go over to that desk to talk to that guy.” So I traipse across to the second desk, feeling the emotions beginning to well. In an uncomfortable, I’m in public, sort of way. The second, useless man at the second useless desk tells me the same, no way can I even try to catch my flight. They won’t check me in. Would I like to go home or pay 40 pounds to catch the flight that leaves 4 hours from now? Ummmmm…………….. Nice options jerk. So I say “I’ll pay it, but I’m never flying Easy Jet again. I know this isn’t your fault, but I’ve had nothing but problems with Easy Jet, and everytime I fly with you it ends up costing me more at the airport” to which he replies “we are the only airline that flies to Scotland from Belfast” knowing full well that I’m stuck with them. Ass.  So I said “Great, I’ll take up swimming then.” That’ll show him! To be fair, he seemed nice for a useless person, and when I made my swimming comment he laughed. But if I can’t blame him then who shall I blame? Scapegoat it is. So I walk sullenly over to a bench far from any people, I call AJ and promptly burst into tears. It was the only option at that point. I was sad I had to wait 4 hours in an airport. I didn’t want to buy dinner or anything to entertain me because I already felt super guilty about the extra cost of the flight. And I was exhausted from my week of staying up until 4 am talking to Chris, Andrew, Kasem, and Maria. To top it all off, when I finally checked into my later flight (with LOTS of time to spare) the clerk goes “were you supposed to be on an earlier flight?” – “Yes” – “Did you miss it?” – “Yes” – “That’s not good.” At that point, I wanted to be like “NO $#!T SHERLOCK!” but I didn’t. I just glared. 

When I finally got to Glasgow at 10pm AJ and Chantel were waiting for me at the airport, which was so relieving. To have Canadian friends to help alleviate my homesickness and who loved me and who hugged the meltdown out of me was exactly what I needed. We went back to Chantel’s flat and ate pizza and had a major PJs and catch-up session. Friday AJ had class and Julie had work so Chantel and I went to town together shopping. We went to all the cheapest places, like H&M, Primark, New Look, etc, trying to find something suitable for Chantel & Christy’s Halloween costumes, and some long leggings for me. We ended up getting some great deals, and we discovered a store called Evans which is my new favourite. In the market there was a band of traditional Scottish music with bagpipes and everything. 

Then we went home and shared fish and chips for dinner. After dinner Julie, Chantel and I joined AJ at his friend’s birthday party. It was “Cheezy pop” night at a bar on campus, which just means 80’s and 90’s pop, which is fun for old people like me, especially with all the retro 80’s and 90’s fashion. It was like reliving my childhood. Saturday Chantel, AJ and I bought some more groceries for our Thanksgiving feast and I roasted the pumpkin to be used in our pumpkin pie.

A sidenote about the pumpkin pie. They don’t eat pumpkin pie here.  At all. If they’ve heard of it, they’ve not tasted it. You can’t buy pumpkin here in a can the way you can at home. It was frustrating. Not because I didn’t want to do the extra work, but because Chantel’s kitchen was not equipped with a food processor, blender, or even a beater to make the pumpkin smooth. We had to mash it with her really crappy potato masher. So when you see pictures of our pumpkin pie later, don’t judge us.

Saturday night we all went out to this place called “Ketchup” for dinner. It’s an American Burger bar. Most of their burgers are regular beef or chicken, but you can also get Ostrich, Venison, Alligator, Fish, Kobe, … I forget. Lots of gross adventurous ones. I just had a regular cheeseburger. It was delicious. The atmosphere was weird, it was really dark, but also really red, to keep with the ketchup theme. The Menus, table clothes, lights, everything was red. It was weird.

 

Sunday we slept in, and then got up and made our thanksgiving feast. Chantel and I made stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, Salad, Buns, Roast Chicken, and Pumpkin pie. Chantel’s salad was amazing. My gravy was too salty, but I didn’t add any salt. The Chicken stock used was REALLY salty. And the Chicken was moist. We couldn’t have asked for much more. Except poor Julie, she was really sick. 

The pumpkin pie turned out…. OK. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t pumpkin pie. I said it best when I said “If I were blindfolded and made to eat this I wouldn’t complain, but I also wouldn’t guess that it was pumpkin pie.” Oh well, nothing a TONNE of whipped cream can’t fix. DELICIOUS!  

 Then Sunday night Chantel and I planned our trip to Auschwitz this winter. We have decided to travel mostly by rail, and we are planning on visiting Berlin, Krakow (This is where Auschwitz is) and Prague on our way. EXCITING!

Monday Chantel and I went into town to finish her Halloween costume shopping before I caught my afternoon flight home. It was a great trip, and I am so glad to have such great friends so near.

NOW. The other stuff. Like I mentioned at the top of my blog, a lot of exciting stuff happened this weekend to people who are not me.

Many of you may already know this, but on Saturday a Mr. Al Moffett proposed to my sister Jordan. They started dating in February and she is SO excited.  Her ring is Emerald in the centre, surrounded by 12 diamonds. It’s not a traditional engagement ring, but if you know Jordan you know she is not a traditional gal. It’s perfect for her and I’m excited for her! Congrats Jordan and Al!

 

However, her eminent marriage leaves a gap for a very important job. Ashleigh’s keeper. So, now when I move home next year I will be homeless. You guys can start fighting over that honour now. I love you all.

In other news around the UK, a bomb in Londonderry/Derry last week encouraged a stronger British Military presence in Belfast this weekend, and a Race Riot in Leicester encouraged a lot of pundits to talk about racism while a Middle-Eastern hate crime spills onto campus, right in front of me. 2 men, around 40 years old, one accusing the other of having a knife and trying to kill him in the ally (for being Jewish), which sounded insane until the accused hit the accuser in the head with a metallic sharp object. I had to go to class so I don’t know what happened. Also, on a less exciting note, Chris (one of my flatmates) fell down and broke his arm.

Miss you and love you all!!! 

Ashleigh

First week of classes!

So I had my first week of classes and it went really well. I met the professor who will ultimately be my MA supervisor and he seems really nice. Hes from Nottingham, which is apparently a pretty rough part of England, and he studied and taught in London before he came here 4 years ago. I'm excited because he remembers me from emails I sent him almost a whole year ago before I even applied here. He introduced himself and I was like "I'm Ashleigh" and he was like "Right! The Canadian! You're interested in notions of self in modernity and Foucault!" and I was like "Yeah!" - It was a nerdy exciting moment for me.
I only have 2 classes this semester (Sept - Jan) and 2 more next semester (Feb - Jun) but I also have to be writing my Dissertation while I do this. I think I am going to need to get really focused to be that self motivated. This semester my classes are Tuesday and Wednesday nights which is good if I want to go to Glasgow or Cannock for a long weekend. The problem is that doesn't actually add a lot of structure to my life. Matt (My Supervisor, Dr. Matthew Wood) was talking about a Sociology reading group and stuff like that. I might just join to give my life some purpose. Of course a job would also REALLY help in this arena, but, alas, there are none to be found.
When I applied it said "30 places available" so I was expecting there to be 30 of us, but there are only 5 people in my program. Its nice because you can get more attention. Maybe. But its not great because with a bigger cohort you can rely on each other more as a group. Either way the people all seem really nice and I think I'm the only international student in the Sociology MA.
What else? I've been staying in more lately to save money and to save my life. I'm too old to be staying out late every night. Sad. Sorry about the lack of photos in this issue. The longer I stay here the less I have to take pictures of.
Tomorrow I am going back to the Market. I'm going to pick up more vegetables. I also need to go to a pound shop (Dollar store) to pick up a dish rack and some other necessities to keep our kitchen clean. I might also bake. We'll see.
Next weekend I am going to Glasgow to celebrate Thanksgiving with Chantel, AJ and Julie. We invited Christy but she can't come up that weekend. Anyway - we're going to buy a small turkey, or something, and make stuffing, and pumpkin pie, and have a good ol' fashion thanksgiving feast. I plan on "Arts and Craft"ing us a cornucopia to use as a center piece. I'll take lots of pictures of that so that you can see how much we had to improv.
I miss you all a lot, but to be honest I miss Canadian food the most. We have no idea how good we have it. Our food is relatively healthy, low in fat, and actually flavourful. Food here is bland, all the same texture, and made entirely out of fat and carbs. Even the Spaghetti sauce is bland and kind of oily. They think "Sweetcorn" is a vegetable, and they put it on their pizza. Blegh. SO if you really love me, you should send me care packages with delicious food. I keep having to improvise flavour and texture into my food. I bought a pepperoni pizza and put Jalapenos on it, which was delicious, and I put pepper on EVERYTHING.

It was actually funny, I made pasta twice, EVER, in my flat, and this Irish guy was like "you sure like pasta don't you?" and this chinese girl was like "Is this a traditional Canadian dish?" - It was whole wheat rotini with spaghetti sauce with Zucchini, Peppers and onions in it. I was like "Um, no, there are no traditional Canadian dishes...maybe KD and Perogies... or Ginger Beef"

Anyway, that's it for now.
Miss you all! Love you all!