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