Full Calendar

This play has kept me really busy this past week. Yes, it's exhausting, and it's pretty frustrating how it often interferes with plans to hang out with my other friends, but at the same time I couldn't be happier that I'm doing it. First of all, I've met so many awesome people that I wouldn't have met otherwise because we're not all on the same course and we live in different accommodation on campus. Also, all the hard work we've put in has clearly paid off, because the play's looking great and we don't open until tomorrow. If tonight were opening night I'd be confident that we could do it really well. Plus, it's just really really fun to be on stage and doing this silly play that another student wrote! It's just a cool atmosphere, a cool project, and I'm really happy to be involved.

And this happened in my Writing Prose Fiction class today, which I found funny.

Emily: But plenty of people have written masterpieces while they're unhappy and poor! Just look at J. K. Rowling.
Professor: Emily, I told you not to swear in my classroom.

Speaking of Language Differences...

Apparently in England the word "aviary" is pronounced "avery." So all this time my flatmates have thought my name is Aviary Finch. That is so embarrassing.

British as a Second Language

Everyone knows that English people talk funny. They have fancy accents and use nonsense words and go on and on about sports that most of us have never even heard of. So I was prepared to hear some language that isn't used in the US, but to which I've been exposed by watching British movies and reading Harry Potter; things like lift instead of elevator, football instead of soccer, favourite instead of favorite.

But when I finally arrived, I was really surprised at how little British English I actually knew. For example, did you know that a zucchini is called a courgette over here? And an eggplant is an aubergine. Also, aluminum is aluminium -- note the tricky second "i" (which makes for a fifth syllable).

There are also some really important distinctions that I wish I had known about before coming to the UK. I knew that English people use the word trousers far more frequently than we do, but I figured it was interchangeable with the word "pants." Oh, how wrong I was. Turns out pants actually means underwear; only underwear, never anything else. And everyone knows what it means to smoke a fag, but I didn't realize that the word also refers to a type of English sausage until I saw faggots and mash (mash is, of course, mashed potatoes) on a restaurant menu.

Slang, too, is really funny, but I'll save that for another time, because most of the slang I've learned is kind of...inappropriate.

Of course my British friends like to laugh at the weird stuff I say, too. (Actually they really like to hear me swear, but I think that's just because it's surprising.) They had never heard "sketchy" before, but they all got it immediately (dodgy). For some reason one of my flatmates took great pleasure in the fact that I said faucet instead of tap yesterday, but maybe she's just easily amused. Oh, and the other day I was making a quesadilla for dinner (which really impressed my flatmates, by the way!) and I asked the two guys who were in the kitchen at the time if they had a spatula I could borrow. When I was met with blank looks I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to call it," and I was starting to try to explain myself when one of them said, "No, we call it a spatula too; we're just trying to remember what that is."

Days Like This

I've got to say, I love love love busy days like the last few I've had. Saturday was, of course, the trip to Cambridge, and then yesterday was the most international day I've had in a while. Well first was play rehearsal for a few hours in the afternoon, which was mostly English. Then that evening my flatmate Adam took me to his Japanese friends' flat, where we all made and then ate some delicious sushi. It was, hands down, the best meal I've had since coming here. (Granted, I haven't yet tried bangers or faggots [wow to both of those...], so the best might actually be still to come! Or not.) After that we went to a salsa lesson hosted by the International Students Society, followed by the salsa dance party, where we tried -- and mostly failed awkwardly -- to put our new salsa skillz to the test. We were far from experts, but it was fun nonetheless.

Yup, and then today I did some reading for my film class during the day. After dinner I went to a film society meeting, and one of the members agreed to film our play next week. She even wants to do a kind of behind-the-scenes story about us, which they'll broadcast on the university station! It's a win-win situation really: we get the free publicity, and she gets clips to put on her video reel (she's studying film and television). Then was rehearsal, of course (we've got it every day now until the show goes up in less than two weeks), which was really fun as usual. And finally, it's JP's (one of the assistant directors) birthday today, so we hung out at the pub for a long while after rehearsal. And now I have to read a bit more and then rest up for class tomorrow! Ohhhhh uni, how I love thee. : )

Happy Punters

Yesterday we took a bus 90 minutes southwest to Cambridge, and we had such a fun day! First of all, for lunch I had a beef and potato pasty, which is so English and, surprisingly, so good. Probably less surprising is that our main destination while we were in town was the university. We visited quite a few of its separate colleges, including likely the most famous, Trinity College:

I think it's really nice the way the university buildings are spread out all across Cambridge. Enormous old residence halls and cathedrals and libraries are interspersed among the shops and restaurants and museums, which makes for a really busy and beautiful downtown area. Plus there's nature everywhere: loads of green fields and willow trees, and the River Cam, a branch of the Great Ouse (pronounced ooze!), runs throughout the city.

Speaking of the River Cam, one of my flatmates told me that a trip to Cambridge isn't complete if you don't take a ride on the river, so naturally we did it. We rented a punt (basically a gondola with square ends) and pushed around on the water for an hour. It was absolutely hilarious. For comparison:

Here are some legitimate punters...

...and here's us.

Boat skillz.

Yay! Anyway, it was an awesome trip; can't wait for the next one. And as usual I've put some more pictures here.

Another Pleasant Surprise!

This is completely unrelated to my being in England, but I just have to share this because a friend told me about it and it's super exciting: Connecticut has legalized same-sex marriage. Wow! I wasn't really following the case but I know my friend was involved in campaigning for support to end the ban on gay marriage in Connecticut, so a big congratulations to her and everyone who worked so hard to get it passed. : )

Fish and Chips on the Pier

Yesterday a bunch of my friends and I spent the day in Cromer, a little city in northern Norfolk, on the coast of the North Sea. It was a really easy trip, just a 15-minute bus to the Norwich train station and 40 minutes by train to the Cromer city center.


View Larger Map

Obviously it was freezing -- it's an English beach town in October -- but we had a great time regardless. We saw surfers (!), played frisbee on the beach, walked around the city center with ice cream cones (dumb idea but delicious), and, to top it all off, ate fish and chips on the pier. It was a really fun day.


I also put some more pictures from the trip here, plus some miscellaneous ones from recent fun nights here at UEA.

Uni Life

Mom wrote me in an email, and I quote, "I love your blog! BUT -- you need more pictures of you and less of old buildings! Pleez?" (Yes, she is a lolcat.) So these are for you, Mom.

The first night of international students' orientation, in the Union Pub. Clockwise from the guy in the tan jacket: Assaf (Israel/Switzerland), Philip (China/England), Christina (Jamaica), Alison (CA), Jaimie (NY), Yan (NY), me, Tom (CA), Surya (Mauritius), Arturo (Venezuela), Claire (Italy), Shannon (India/England), Tri (PA), Pierre (France).

On the bus back from a club in Norwich. Clockwise from left: me, Lena (Germany), Tom, Surya, Philip.

The winning International Quiz team. Clockwise from bottom left: Lena, Sonja (Finland), me, Shannon, Claire, Arturo, Ryan (US), Surya, Joanna (US), Tri, Assaf, Pierre.

Some of my flatmates learn that you can't beat English weather with one umbrella. From left: Surya, Rich, Ollie, Mark.

Aaaaand this is how you dry your clothes when the US dollar is weak.

More to come. : )

A Pleasant Surprise

So...wow! Guess what! Over the course of the past two nights I auditioned (kind of on a whim, but encouraged/dragged along by two of my flatmates who were also auditioning) for a play that the Drama Society is putting on at the end of October. It's called "Freshers," and it's an original comedy (by a creative writing student) about Freshers' Week, the first-years' first week of university. I had always kind of wanted to try out for something, so I figured, What have I got to lose? At the very least I'll have fun playing improv games at the group audition, and if I make it through the individual audition alive I'll have proved to myself that I can do it. Plus, they told us that there were a bunch of roles to be given out -- 10 main protagonists and 14 or 15 supporting parts -- and it looked like there were only about 35 people auditioning, so my odds weren't terrible.

Anyway, at 11:30 last night, three hours after what felt to me like an awkward and extremely nerve-racking individual audition, I got a text message saying I got a part! And not just any part, one of the 10 main ones! I really could not believe it. The guy told me I got the part of Heidi, who actually, now that I think about it, is basically me: hyper. So I'm extremely excited, I think it'll be really fun. We have our first read-through tomorrow, Thursday, so I'll share the details of that later. Yay! :)

Oh, and P.S. Rabbit rabbit.