A Typical Day in Newcastle!

Today's a good day so I felt like writing a quick blog post.

After history class today (which I found slightly interesting?), I went to King's Gate (a new building dedicated to all sorts of student services) to pick up my sports membership paper so I can finally join the gym! On my way out, I got a free new Powerade energy drink and headed to the post office on Northumberland Street to mail some post cards. The street is always so so so busy at lunch time! It's on a bit of a slant so when you're at the beginning of the street looking down, it just looks like a huge mass of people! One thing to note.. there is no order with how people walk here. You'd think they might all walk on the left side of the street because that's how they drive, but nope. It's just random. So I dodged through the huge crowd of people and avoided about 10 people trying to hand me flyers about random things like saving tigers, getting a makeover, and tons and tons of night club promotions for the millions of clubs in Newcastle. There's also lots of people holding up huge posters and signs to advertise night clubs and stores (except the one about the fish pedicures!). 

So then I made my way towards the Charles Grey monument, and to my surprise there was festival/market going on! I REALLY REALLY wish I had my camera to show you all what was going on, but I'm going to have to tell you instead! There were a bunch of "booths" with people selling things such as fresh produce, pork roast, fudge, cider, clothes, hats and gloves, and lots of other stuff. There were also themed tents with people doing different things. There was man dressed up as a joker juggling, a lady dressed up in a colonial type outfit spinning wool into cloth, and a man dressed up spinning clay to make pots and other cool looking things. We went to Durham last weekend (which I still have to write about), and I think the same market I saw today was also set up in Durham when we went because I recognized a lot of the same "booths." It's really cool to be able to walk through Newcastle after class and see the excitement going on in the streets. 

After wandering through the festival/market thing, I went into Grainger Market, which is an inside market set up every morning and afternoon (except Sunday). It has a bunch of different shops in it. I bought some bananas and cheese there, and then headed to Tesco Express (small, cheaper grocery store outside of Grainger market) to buy some tomato sauce and juice. I love juice so I end up buying three liters of it at least twice a week. A good amount of my money is definitely going to be dedicated to buying juice here. Anyway, my hands were full by now so I started heading back to Marris House. I went through the festival again and the crowds of people and got to Newcastle's campus. And then I got another free Powerade energy drink as I walked past the Student Union. 

When I finally got back to my apartment, a package was waiting for me at my door! Thanks Mom, for the M&Ms and homemade cookies!!!!! You made my day! :) So I drank some orange juice, ate some carrots, and made a turkey and mozzarella toastie (what the Brits call toasted/melted sandwich). I am eating Mom, I promise! 

(Thanks, Mommy! I love you!)

Now I'm about to start doing some homework again. Since we don't have regular quizzes or assignments in my Biology classes, I have to do a lot of independent work so I don't die when finals come around. I'm also going to have a lot of essays to write soon. I went to the Walton Library (the medical library which is way closer to Marris House than the main Robinson library) yesterday to study, and I really liked it. Although, it doesn't compare to my home in the Newman study. 

My next five weekends are packed. 

The Hounds are going to the Lake District in Keswick this weekend. We're staying in a cabin sort of place (I think), and we're going canoeing & hiking and doing a high ropes course. It should be fun! 

I leave for EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND on October 21st! It's a Loyola-paid weekend trip, and I'm very excited because I hear the Edinburgh is absolutely beautiful. 

I'm going to a Katy Perry concert on Thursday, October 27th with my friend Julie. And I leave for CORK, IRELAND on October 28th (Halloween weekend) to visit my boyfriend TJ!

I'm going to PARIS, FRANCE on November 4th until November 6th. Even though I've already been to Paris, it is one of my most favorite cities so I'm very excited to go back! TJ is also coming along, so it will be a little more romantic this time (it will be our 5 month anniversary on the 5th) :)

And finally, I'm going to BARCELONA, SPAIN on November 11th until November 13th with all of my Loyola friends here in Newcastle! I'm really looking forward to seeing the coastal city and experiencing the culture.

I'm going to post a few pictures of Newcastle below that aren't from today, but they show places that I walked by today, and every day! I hope you enjoy!!!!

(King's Gate)

(between campus and Northumberland St.)

(one of the many entrances to the Eldon Square shopping center)

(Charles Grey monument area.. It was A LOT more crowded today with the festival!)

(one of the openings to Grainger Market)

(landmark building on campus.. I walk through those arches every day.)

So, I'm going to try and keep making blog posts. I still need to add one about my other weekend trips and about London. But I also have to keep up with my school work, which always comes first!

Talk to you soon! Cheerio! xxx

Day Trips in England! (Part 1)

So it's been raining for the past three days in Newcastle, and of course, I've lost my umbrella. At least I have my raincoat and my wellies, which by the way, no one wears here. My flatmate said to me this morning, "You look like you're going to go for a walk through a lake." haha I don't understand why no one wears rain boots because it rains all the time here. Oh well, I guess I'm not at Loyola.

Anyway, I want to dedicate this blog post to all of the weekend day trips I've gone on since I've been here. I've explored pretty English towns and have seen a lot of old stuff, such as monasteries, abbeys, cathedrals, and castles. I did some internet research about each place I've visited to add a little info. in my descriptions, and I put a links to each place if you want to see/read more about it. Hopefully, this will be somewhat interesting!

Tynemouth: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/tynemouth-priory-and-castle/

Tynemouth is a cute coastal town, that's situated on the mouth of the River Tyne, which opens to the North Sea. After walking through town a bit, we went to the Tynemouth Castle and Priory. It has a 2000 year old history. It began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement, an Anglican monastery, a royal castle, artillery fort, and a coastal defense. There is also a large graveyard there. According to Wikipedia, there are three kings buried there. But the graveyard was huge, so I'm not sure who else is buried there or if they have some importance. After wandering through the ruins of the priory and the castle, we went to the cliffs on the coast of the North Sea. The view was so fascinating; it looked as if I was staring at a postcard or a beautiful painting. The pictures I have don't do the amazing scene justice. There are two piers that extend from the coast out to the sea, and they have two beautiful lighthouses on the end of them, which protect the northern and southern flanks of the Tyne River mouth. After exploring the Castle and Priory, we went to get some classic fish and chips at a place called "Marshall's" in town. Although I'm not a fan of fried food, I felt that since I'm in England I had to get fish and chips at least once. I can't say I will be getting it again, but it wasn't too bad. After walking around Tynemouth a bit more, we headed back to Newcastle on the train.

(cobble stone streets in town)

(an old church, but currently a market)

(part of the Priory and the Castle in the background)

(view on our way up to the Priory and Castle)

(ruins of the old Priory)

(ruins of the old Castle)

(view of the North Sea)

(me in front of the lighthouses)

(graveyard with the Priory and Castle in the background)

(Marshall's, where we ate fish and chips)

Chatsworth House: http://www.chatsworth.org/

We visited Chatsworth House (located in North Derbyshire) on our way to London. Originally, this stately home was the Duke of Devonshire's residence. Since 1549, the Duke's family, the Cavendish family, has lived at the house. I discovered this when I entered the house and saw a sign that said, "Welcome to our home," with a picture of an older man and woman. At first, I had no idea that people still lived in the house! Apparently, they have parts of the house strictly for tourism, but the rest of the house is connected in a way that the residents don't have to pass through the public in their own house. I went into all of the open rooms in the house, including a sculpture room, a library, a dining room, a bed room and many other rooms with huge, beautiful paintings, chandeliers, and other decorations. The entire house is very lavish, both inside and outside. The architecture of the house itself is really cool. Before going inside the house, we explored its never-ending surrounding property, gardens, and fountains for about two hours. The first thing we saw was a "water works" show that was pretty old-fashioned, but still cool. There is a huge fountain that begins at some sort of old building set on top of a hill. The water flows from the base of the building and then flows down a series of about 100 stairs until it collects in a pool at the bottom. Well, we saw a bunch of people on the stairs moving out of the way all of the sudden because the fountain was starting! So we stood on the stairs until the water reached us! It probably wasn't that cool, but I thought it was. So after that, we also walked around the paths outside, saw some sculptures, and climbed some rocks. I'm glad that we stopped at the Chatsworth House.

(part of the Chatsworth House)

(landscape around the Chatsworth House)

(another part of the Chatsworth House)

(the "water works" fountain show)

(the beginning of the fountain)

("modern art" in front of the fountain)

(Chatsworth gardens)

(on top of some piled rocks we found)

(sculpture room)

(inside the house!)

(Most of the rooms looked like this.)

(on the grounds of the House)

Stratford on Avon: http://www.stratford-upon-avon.co.uk/

On our way back to Newcastle from our trip to London, we stopped at Stratford upon Avon, William Shakespeare's birthplace. Stratford is a cute, small town, situated on the banks of the Avon River. First, we went on a tour of Shakespeare's house. Before we went into his actual home, we went through a series of themed rooms, each showing a video about Shakespeare's life. If I remember correctly, about 13 people, including Shakespeare's parents, his wife, his daughter, and some maids, would have resided in the house at the time. It is a pretty large house, but I can't picture that many people living in it. There were a few artifacts on display, such as personal belongings, kitchen tools, and random things from the house. I saw the bed/bed area where Shakespeare was supposedly born. The weird thing about the tour was how the videos/guide always said "probably." Like.. This is probably his house, and this is probably the bed he was born in, and this is probably his first book. I'm hoping I saw his actual house? haha Well, what stuck out the most to me was the black sparkly staircase between the two floors. Anywayyyy, after taking a tour of the inside of his house, we went around the back and the side of the house to see the pretty flower gardens. Then, we wandered around the city and got some "lunch" (I had a banana chocolate crape. haha) at a place called "The Food of Love," and I also got some raisin and rum ice cream at an ice cream shop down the street. We also took a walk down to the Avon River. It was really small, but it had a lot of cool boats on it that were like little stores and sold paintings or ice cream. Stratford was a really nice, cute English town to visit on a lovely afternoon.

(yup!)

(Shakespeare's house)

(back of Shakespeare's house)

(my banana chocolate crape)

(Avon River)

(My friends and I standing over the river)

(a popular street in Stratford)

I'm going to split up my weekend day trips into two parts since these three trips have already taken up a lot of space with the pictures I added. The next post should be up very soon, I promise! 

Well, I hope I'm not boring any of you to death. Thanks for reading, everyone! :) 

Spark notes on my time in Newcastle so far!

I apologize to all of you who have been checking my blog and waiting for another post. I have been so busy these past three weeks! I've had so many places to go, e-mails to write, and things to do, I just kept putting my blog off! This is the first bit of free time I've had to sit down and actually write since I've been here. Since I have so much to say about everything I've done and everywhere I've been, I'm going to have to give you all the spark notes version instead of the full story. 

After arriving at the Newcastle airport, we moved into our apartments at Newcastle University. And then we went to a welcome dinner in Quayside near the river. I'm living in Marris House, which is a Newcastle University owned apartment sort of in the boondocks on campus. It's a twenty minute walk to the nearest convenience store, grocery store, and the market. And my room is the size of a jail cell, but it'll do. It's also annoying that all of my new friends live in Windsor, which is closer to the stores and on the opposite side of campus (15 to 20 minute walk). I regret not living in Windsor, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I just put up new curtains in my room yesterday, and they block out the sun a whole lot better, so hopefully I'll at least be able to sleep some more now! I have 5 other flat mates, Julie, my friend from Loyola, and then 4 freshman British students who all moved in a week ago. Their names are Sophie, Rachel, Emily, and Steph. 

(part of the "quad" on Newcastle University's campus)

Newcastle is a pretty big city! It's a lot of walking everywhere, but there's so much to see. All of the buildings are pretty old-looking, and there's a few old castles on the walk through the city that I've wandered through. We had a scavenger hunt last week so I got to see basically all four corners of the city. My favorite part of the city is the Quayside, which is near the Tyne River. There's about five bridges over the river, including the Tyne Bridge and the Millennium Bridge, which are both pretty cool. The Millennium Bridge lights up a bunch of different colors every night, and it rises at noon every day, but I still have yet to see it rise.

(a place of worship across from Newcastle's campus, near Northumberland St.)

(The Millennium Bridge lit up green at night)

(the Tyne Bridge)

Northumberland Street is about a 10 - 15 minute walk from my apartment, and that's where all of the shopping starts. It's a very wide street filled with shops on both sides, and only pedestrians can use it. Eldon Square is another popular shopping center that has department stores and tons of other shops in it.  Tesco, a smaller sort of grocery store, and Grainger Market, where we go to get fresh food, is a bit of a walk past Northumberland Street. The hardest part about shopping/food shopping is carrying the bags back to our apartment. My knee has still been hurting me a lot, and the hike doesn't help at all. Our arms and shoulders get so sore and our hands get all marked up from carrying juices, milk, shampoos, hair dryers and a bunch of other things.. so Julie and I have decided that instead of purposefully not buying things because we can't carry them, we're going to wheel a suitcase through town. We'll see how that goes haha..

(Julie and I on Northumberland St. on one of our first days in Newcastle)

(one of our day's worth of shopping)

Speaking of Northumberland Street, if you continue straight after the street ends and make a left onto Worwick Street, there's a Catholic Church called St. Andrew's. I went to mass there last Sunday when TJ visited, and I liked it a lot. The priest immediately introduced himself when we walked in the door and started asking questions about us and our studies. He also announced our names and welcomed us to the whole parish community before mass started so I thought that was pretty cool. I went to mass at the Catholic chaplaincy on campus tonight, but I think I'll be attending mass at St. Andrew's every weekend. It's a bit more traditional, plus I enjoy going to mass in an actual church. 

I've gone to a few very good restaurants in Newcastle so far. I went to Zizzi, a decently priced Italian restaurant in the middle of the city, with my boyfriend TJ, who came to visit for four days last week! I would recommend the pollo limon and the chocolate cake for dessert! It was very good. As part of a "grub crawl" hosted by the University as part of "Fresher's Week" (more to come later), I have had appetizers at Bubushko, an Italian dinner at Prima, and a wonderful brownie dessert at Pitcher and Piano right on the river. All of the food was wonderful! There is also a pretty good breakfast/lunch chain in Newcastle called Pret a Manger, which I have gone to a few times for a croissant or a sandwich. I have also discovered a nice sandwich shop (10 minute walk from my apartment) called Health Fayre. You can make your own sandwich, and the bread is really fresh. As for traditional English food, I've had fish and chips in the coastal town of Tynemouth, and I had a mushroom and chicken pie yesterday in Whitby. (more to come of those two places soon) Some of my friends have had bangers and mash, but I just can't bring myself to eat the sausage.

(the brownie cake and the restaurant, Zizzi!)

(my flat mates and I outside of Bubushko)

(Prima!)

(The view from Piano and Pitcher)

According to Wikipedia, Great Britain's #1 tourist attraction is Newcastle's nightlife, which I find a little bizarre.. what happened to everything in London? Anyway, Newcastle does live up to its name for being the 7th biggest nightlife city in the WORLD. There are countless clubs everywhere, on every street. The drinking culture is really excessive in my opinion. There is a lot of people crowding/stumbling the streets outside of clubs every night. The amount of smoking here is also horrible. I find myself avoiding people smoking everywhere. But we've been having a lot of fun so far at night! The biggest/nicest clubs we've been to were Florita's, Perdu, Tiger Tiger, the Gate, and Digital. We've been to a lot of other smaller ones too. My favorites are Tiger Tiger and Digital (the #1 club in Great Britain).. the lighting is amazing and the music is so good at both places! 

(one of the rooms inside of Tiger Tiger!)

(the outside of The Gate)

(my friends and I outside of The Gate area during Fresher's week, more of that to come now)

So before I came to Newcastle, I had heard a lot of hype about international students participating in "Fresher's Week." Basically, we paid 57 pounds for a wristband which allowed us to participate in a lot of activities for 4 full days. There were TONS of daytime activities to take part in... too many to list. We didn't have time for all of the activities, but I did do the ropes course/ziplining adventure called "Go Ape," cocktail training, the tour of St. James Park, quad biking and mud buggy racing, and the "grub crawl." "Go Ape" was quite an adventure/work out. When I've ziplined in the past, the staff always attached me to everything, but we had to constantly attach ourselves to the cables to climb, swing, and balance on things pretty far off the ground. There were a few ziplines, but they weren't too too fast, thank goodness because we had to land ourselves on our feet, avoiding hitting our heads on the cable! The cocktail training was a lot of fun.. we learned how to make a bunch of drinks and got to try them too. The tour of St. James Park was fabulous! It's the home to the soccer team, Newcastle United. We got to go in the back rooms, dressing rooms, the VIP seating section, and the dugout (or whatever you call it). Apparently they haven't won in fifty-some years, but it's still very popular in Newcastle to go to the games. The quad biking and mud buggy racing took a good 4 or 5 hours total and it was in the middle of nowhere on a farm, but it was something that I had never done before so it was a good time with my friends. The "grub crawl" was so good! Even though we left at 6:45 and got back at 10:45, it was totally worth it! We went around to the three restaurants I talked about earlier. All of my food was absolutely delicious, especially the warm brownie and ice cream. 

(cocktail training)

(St. James Park)

(quad biking) 

(mud buggy racing)

(Tarzan swing on the "Go Ape" adventure)

So all of these activities totaled almost 200 pounds I think so the wristband was definitely worth it. In addition to free entry into these things, there were themed party (or as the Brits say, "fancy dress") events every night of the week. They just opened a BRAND NEW $13 million student union building that hosts study rooms, a subway, a convenience store (quite expensive), a bank, a computer lab, and a bar, and a huge dance club. So some of the night the themed parties were in the club at the student union building, but other nights there were "bar crawls" to go on around the city of Newcastle with free cover entry at every place. It was a lot of fun! I don't agree with how much the University endorses drinking here though. In fact, two freshmen in Newcastle died last week due to alcohol poisoning. Scary stuff.
On a brighter note, here's the beautiful new NUSU building..

(The Student Union Building)

(Jungle themed night)

So you're probably wondering where the "study" part comes into "study abroad." Well, I'm actually starting classes tomorrow. It's been almost five months since I've studied so hopefully I'll have no problem getting right back into it. The education system is totally different here in England. Students only go to a university for three years, and medical school starts with their first year of undergrad and is only 5 years total of schooling. Since the different subject schools within the University don't communicate with each other on class times, scheduling classes was a horrible horrible horrible nightmare. I had to switch courses because my lectures clashed with each other so many times. I'm taking Biochemistry, Animal Behavior, Philosophy of Theology, and The Two Irelands (a history class). I only have three clashes now, which is still annoying because if you know me I hate the thought of having to miss class. Sometimes, I don't have class on Tuesday and Wednesday (I think.) My class schedule here changes every week so it's really confusing. I'm hoping everything works out! 

Another thing to mention.. I am going to do yoga and pilates while I'm here, and I'm thinking about joining the gym so I can do some work outs when my knee isn't bothering me and so I can lift from time to time. However, the fee to join is really expensive. I'm also joining the biomedical science society and the Catholic society here. And I hope to get involved in the program Student Community Action Newcastle (SCAN). I plan on serving the community here at Newcastle, and hopefully I'll meet some new people along the way. 

Well, as I'm writing this, I'm pretty sick. I'm praying that I get better soon because I have no time/energy to be sick! I know that I probably left out a bunch of things that I wanted to say about Newcastle, but I'm sure that they will come to mind, and I will write about them in another blog entry when I have time! I'm also going to try and write a blog about London and the other trips I've gone on while in England in the near future. I have so much to say, so I'm sorry if it takes me awhile again! 

I miss all of my family and friends!!!! I'll talk to you again soon. xoxo