One day at a time...

This afternoon and this evening were just a lot more difficult than I was expecting. Really, it's just been quite stressful planning the spring break trip than I thought it was going to be. As of now we have tickets to get us to Barcelona, but we're having a hard time connecting to the other places that we want to go. It's also a lot more expensive than I was hoping, but I guess if all else fails we will scrap some of the trip. I shouldn't let all of this stress me out. It seems that this is just the straw that's breaking my back in this case. Hopefully things will be looking better tomorrow afternoon. All of this stress just makes me really miss home, my family and my friends.

A little pick-me-up...me and Kylleen at the Boogie Lounge last night.

THE WAIT IS OVER!

Me in front of the statue in the town centre that is the namesake for the URL of this blog.

All productivity is created equal?

Yesterday may not have been productive in the academic sense, but I did accomplish quite a lot of things that needed to be done.

I went to see "Dan in Real Life" at the cinema near our house, and that was an interesting experience. First off, it's quite expensive over here to go to the movies. The food is even more ridiculously priced; the tickets are almost twice as expensive as what I'm used to in Fort Wayne; the children (I do mean children, the kids looked about 12 or so that were at the cinema by themselves) are easily a million times more annoying, and finally, the movies come out a good month or two after they are released in the States. Back to the part about the children; it was utterly ridiculous how badly behaved these kids were. First, they were at the movies without an adult chaperon, and this was a group of about seven twelve year-olds both boys and girls. Secondly, they came into the movie late and made a loud scene when they were finding their seats. I thought that alone was rude enough to constitute good behavior for the rest of the film, but I was horribly mistaken. They continued to talk to one another throughout the entire movie, and Tiff and I were so annoyed by it that we moved to different seats after about twenty minutes of shooting them dirty looks and asking them fairly politely if they could please keep it down. Once we moved we could hear the movie just fine, and it was a fairly good one.

After the movie Tiff and I went to FCH to get some books from the library, and they weren't really open long enough for either of us to accomplish a whole lot of anything. I did get a couple books for my English paper; I'm hoping that they will be legitimate and somehow relate to the topic I'm working on. After the library closed we went to the refectory (cafeteria-type thing) which wasn't open, but we just wanted to sit anyways, so it worked out alright. We sat on some comfy little chairs and planned out our spring break. We have planned some time in Spain, France, Italy, Prague and finally Ireland. If Tiff finds out from her friend in Italy that we can stay with her we will be staying with people we know for the entire trip. It will be incredibly nice to have people around to show us what to see and how to do everything, especially in places where English is not the language of choice. So now we really only have to book our transportation for the trip, and I need to check with some family outside of Paris to see if I can connect with them, and if they would be willing to host us and show us around Paris that would just be another added bonus. Tiff and I are also working on planning a weekend trip to Amsterdam, because she'd really like to go. I also would like to go back, because I'm sure that I didn't see everything in the short day that I was there. Also, I really just liked the city.

So I got a lot of things sorted out that I needed to figure out before too long. I'm hoping that my VISA cards will start working soon so that we can book flights and bus seats to London. My parents are going to be working on that this week, and it's nice to have a good relationship with my parents so that I don't have to worry about anything like this being a huge ordeal for them. I spoke to them on Skype yesterday, and it was really great to see them, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera set up at the time so they couldn't see me. Either way, it's always nice to see them and other pieces of home. I'm looking forward to receiving mail from them this week sometime.

Academic motivation, anyone?

I cannot motivate myself to be productive with my schoolwork. I really need to get something done with my English paper before too long. I've just gotten so good at wasting time, and I didn't get around to the library today, so I will really need to get to that. Tomorrow I'm going to the cinema with some friends and we are seeing "Dan in Real Life" so hopefully that'll be good. A friend of mine from MC that studying at Cheltenham last Spring has been here since last night, and she's been staying at the house with me since we have the convenient spare room in the basement. It's been so nice having her here, and I've gotten to meet some of the people that she was friends with last year. Oddly enough, I don't have too much to say today.

Sunshine Day!

This is just across the road from the FCH campus. The sun was shining and I knew I wanted to capture just how lovely this was to me.


This is what I see everyday when I arrive at the FCH campus. I go to the left under the little opening in the building to get into the main part of the campus.


The Chapel and the Quad Tower at FCH


The "Teaching Centre" at FCH. It's just where classrooms and the computer lab are located.


On top of this being quite a lovely day, my friend (and former resident) Megan from Manchester is in Cheltenham this week. She was here with BCA last spring and is coming out for a visit to see her friends from over here. I am meeting her tonight for drinks and to meet her friends after choir (it's the first time for me, so I hope it goes well), and then I'll be having lunch with her and our BCA directors over here tomorrow. It will be really nice to have a familiar face around for a while, but the rest of the weekend I really should start to work on my paper for my English class. Tiff and I are getting together tomorrow afternoon to plan some things for our psychology papers, and then I think the rest of the weekend must be devoted to my English paper. I am needing some academic motivation for sure. I just don't know what to expect and what's expected of me.

Hollywood across the Pond

It's true, I am still affected by the Hollywood culture out here in England. I first heard about Heath Ledger's death via a friend's AIM away message, and I was in a bit of disbelief at first so I rushed to the MSN website to see if it could indeed be true. Alas, the tragic news was not a piece of fiction. The first article I read was almost certain that it was a suicide, but as I've been reading more today it seems that the tides have turned. It's difficult for me to know what to believe with the Hollywood culture, but I think I'd like to believe the most recent articles that state the findings are inconclusive and his death may have been a medical mistake with medicines that he was taking for various reasons. Whatever the truth may be, I cannot help but pity his family and most of all his two-year old daughter. I love my family so much, and I cannot imagine losing someone so close to me at such a young age. My heart goes out to his family and all of the families in this world that have had to experience the tragic death of a loved one.

Hands Down

Some AMAZING things that happened to me today (technically yesterday):

1. We did a counseling exercise in my English class. (see previous entry)
2. Mandy came to visit!
3. I found a duvet cover, a fitted sheet, a flat sheet (all in soothing colors) and a laundry hamper for a reasonable price at Primark.
4. We had Indian food for dinner, and it was wonderfully good.
5. I had great dinner guests.
6. I put my English flag up again, with hopes that it won't fall anytime soon.
7. I received an exciting and uplifting facebook message from a friend back at Manchester.
8. I shared my ridiculous levels of joy with my housemate, Erin.
   
9. It wasn't pooring rain, even though it did drizzle for a while.
10. I walked around town with my visitors and felt like I knew where I was going.

Hands down this is the best day I can say that I've had since I've been here, and it's really not because of any huge monumental occasion, but rather the accumulation of several really nice things that I really appreciate and hold dear. I love you all!

Counselling in England!

I returned from my English class titled "Language and Gender" not too long ago and today we talked about discourse, meaning different standards of speech and communication based on the situation. Well, we did an experiential exercise in none other than counseling psychology! We were given a handout about general rules for conversation for both the client and the counselor, with suggestions such as "use open-ended questions" and "nod or use other non-verbals to indicate you understand and are listening" and all sorts of other good things to use as a counselor when you are just learning the basics. We did the same kind of thing as I had experienced in my counseling class at Manchester last semester, but more specifically it was just one person clienting and one counseling, and then two of us were observing for about 10 minutes.

I told the girls I was with that we had done this in a class I had taken last semester, so I encouraged them to try it to see how it was, and after our mock session I think they all liked it pretty well. The two girls that participated were friends so it was easier for them to talk about some things, but both the client and counseling were amazing from what I expected. The client didn't hold much back and the counselor was a really great listener and asked some questions that were just dead on to helping the client sort out how she was expressing herself. I was just in awe at how they had picked it up so well, but there were other groups in our class that just didn't seem to get it. I'm glad that the group I was in was so open to the experience.

That has been the highlight of my academic experience here so far, and it wasn't even in one of the psychology classes that I'm taking. The psychology classes that I am in seem to be very interesting, but they are all deeply rooted in social psychology so it is much different than any psych class I've taken at MC. I definitely miss the closeness of my counseling class and was thinking of them today as the teacher was introducing the activity. I shared with the girls in my group openly that the counseling class was the greatest class I have ever taken at university level, and that's quite true for me. I am so blessed to have had such a wonderful experience with the subject that I intend on being involved in for my career.

Sleepless Nights

I ended up staying home yesterday from the outing to Gloucester, because I haven't been feeling very well the past couple days. It's nothing serious, just a sore throat that has been causing me to lose my voice in the mornings. I also haven't been sleeping very well lately, and I know last night it was because I napped yesterday afternoon. I've been up all day today, and I've just been in the house reading and checking a few things out online. The past week has been kinda chill, but I've been working on sorting out things for classes and life in general. The internet in the house has been really frustrating lately, but we are able to access websites with no problem, so it's just the communication programs that refuse to work properly. Hopefully that will change, but if not feel free to e-mail me whenever you'd like. (klgauby@manchester.edu) It's always nice to hear from home.

Touchdown Turnaround

So I was feeling quite bummed last night after a series of events that just started to weigh down on me, and going to class today was quite the task because I was just feeling extremely tired. Luckily, Tiff invited me over for dinner and we went to the Student Union at Park Campus for drinks afterwards. I just got a pint of Guinness which started quite a few conversations about the strangeness of my drinking habits. Apparently it is strange for an American to like the Irish beer, but I think it was because I'm a girl since it was only guys that were talking to me about it. The SU (Student Union) was really nice over there, especially compared to the Pittville Campus, and people that I didn't know at all had no problem talking to me. I even talked to a guy who knew where Indiana was, and I got to know a couple guys that Tiff is friends with and they both have this great dry sense of humor.

After we left the SU we went to Regency Hall where the rest of the BCA students live, and we hung out with four of the girls that live there. It was so nice to finally just hang out with people from the program, because we tend to get excluded from things out at the house. We don't have keys or codes to get into the campus residences, so it's kind of difficult to get together with everyone else, and we didn't really get to know any of the rest of the group during orientation because we always stuck together. Tomorrow night there is a showing of "Bend it like Beckham" at the Francis Close Hall Campus, which is the one that is just down the road from our house.

Saturday we are taking the bus to Gloucester to see the cathedral where some of the Harry Potter movies have been filmed, so that should be interesting. There should be a fairly large group of us going so that will be good. I think the girls from the house want to go shopping while we there, and I'm almost always up for that even if I don't buy anything. It sounds like it should be a good weekend. I'm glad that my slump seems to be over for the time being.

Not from today, but from the other night at "thirteen"
My friend Tiff (from Elizabethtown College) and me

Picture time!

The Purple House


This is the lovely abode that I now call home. It is 9 St Pauls Road, and we are two doors down from a lovely bakery-type place which has been my landmark when trying to find my way back from town. Do not be fooled, although it is not purple on the outside the name we have given to this wonderful house is entirely appropriate. All of the walls are painted lilac, the furniture in our sitting room is also purple, and the curtains in our rooms are purple.




So this is me. I hope that was fairly clear to you all. This is the dress that I got while we went shopping this weekend, complete with the leggings I found to wear with them. I wore this out to the club "thirteen" tonight, and aside from lugging around my purse and coat all night it was a really good time.
(That is the English flag behind me on my wall...I'm hoping to get a Union Jack before I leave.)

Internet difficulties

Well, we have our own internet in the house now, but we're not sure how permanent it's going to be. We got errors popping up when we were installing the router, and my skype has been over-sensitive tonight. The plus side is that our internet does seem to be working, and I was able to talk to my parents for a little bit via skype. I even got to see them on the webcam they got, and it was really nice to see them. Hopefully things will be working better tomorrow.

Sundays are just chill

I haven't done too much today. Really, none of us in the house have done very much today. Kylleen decided to move upstairs, and Katie moved up into the room Kylleen left. So now our "guest room" is in the basement, but at least we still have an extra room to offer our visitors.

I know most of you won't believe me, but I cleaned my room today! I knew that some of you wouldn't believe me, so I took pictures.

Shopping

Instead of going to the library this afternoon, we went shopping. I ended up getting a black dress with orange, yellow and white floral print, a black camisole to wear under it (the dress fabric is shear), gray leggings to wear underneath, an orange headband to match, and I also found some really cute rain boots. I will hopefully have pictures of the outfit (not with the rain boots) sometime whenever I decide to wear it, and that could possibly be as early as Monday night or so, but I don't really know.

The girls and the two male friends of Erin's that are visiting us for the weekend went to the Hog's Head Pub for dinner tonight. I had a burger and chips (fries) and it was soooo good! We watched the Manchester United vs. Newcastle United football (soccer) game, and it was a really good first half, but during the second half Newcastle just got blown out of the water. It was cool to experience a genuine English football game in a pub.

Rain, rain, go away...

Well Indiana, you've followed me! We have flooding here in Cheltenham. I was sitting in the library this afternoon trying to find books for my classes and one of the librarians suddenly announces, "We're closing at 4:30pm due to flooding in the area." I was kind of shocked, because I had been outside less than 5 minutes before she said this and the rain wasn't really pouring down. So I'm not sure if England just has horrible draining systems or what, but the campus was already starting to flood, and I guess some roads in Gloucester were flooded already as well. I have a feeling that the flooding won't get nearly as bad as what it's been like in North Manchester, but they closed the library three and a half hours early, so I'm thinking it might be kind of serious.

In other news, I am thoroughly sick. I'm not on my death bead or anything, but I have a pretty nasty sinus infection that has moved to my throat, and the weather surely isn't helping things at all.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: IT'S SNOWING NOW!!!!!

The Academic World

Just so you know, I've only been to my classes once so far and I have one class left to go to tomorrow, so these are my initial reactions to the English university system.

First off, classes only meet once a week. This is a good thing because I don't have to go to campus all the time, but if I'm sick and miss a class it will carry more weight on my course work than it would at Manchester. Strange enough, attendance is not a factor of your grade in classes, but you need to use information from lectures in papers or on exams, so it's just going to be a good idea for me to go to class. It won't be bad for me because....(drumrole please)....I don't have any of my classes before noon! HOORAY! It really wasn't too hard to schedule things that way.

Secondly, I only have one class a day. This is a really nice thing because I don't have to worry about getting from one class to another or rushing lunch or anything. I'm also hoping that this will keep me from procrastinating too much. This is all prone to change, but I'm really hoping that I can stay somewhat motivated.

Third, I am in three 200 level classes and one 100 level class. This doesn't translate appropriately at all. My 100 level class is social psychology, and two of my 200 levels are fairly closely related to social psychology. My final class is a 200 level class which I can best describe as a feminist English class. My 100 level class is the only one that I have not been to yet, so I can't tell you about the difficulty of that one yet. My 200 level classes are going to be quite a bit of work, and they are definitely at about 300 or 400 level back home, so don't worry, I'll be working my tail off even if it doesn't always seem that way.

Last of all, there are four campuses of the university in the area. It's not like IU with their campuses at Bloomington, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, South Bend, etc. The campuses are all connected by bus, so you can hop on a bus to class, but one of the campuses is a good 40 minute bus ride from the campus that is closest to our house. Luckily, I only have classes at the Francis Close Hall campus (lovingly called FCH) and that just happens to be the campus that is only four blocks from our house. So lucky for me I get to walk to class everyday and don't have to worry about catching the bus to get to class.

I am adjusting to the English system for the most part. I'm actually impressed at how well I've been doing here. It will take me a while to get used to everything, but so far I'm doing fairly well.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. But seriously, it's not London, either.

I have gotten the impression that most of my lovely friends from the States have this strange feeling that I am going to school very near London. Relatively speaking, yes, yes I am. Realistically though, no, no I'm not. I'm living in Cheltenham, and we are within walking distance of the town centre. I can catch a bus to the Cheltenham Spa train station to get a train to London, but the ride is over two and a half hours each way. So no, I don't see the Queen everyday, and no, I haven't been to London yet besides the short trip from the airport in which I saw about none of the city. I'll let you know as soon as I do visit London, because I'm sure I will have tons of pictures with which I won't know what to do. Sorry, my English seems to be getting a bit more proper over here. I think the accent makes me think that I can't use plain American English without looking or sounding silly. I haven't tried the accent much, because oddly enough, it's been just fine being one of the American girls over here.

Classes have been pretty relaxed so far, but it's the very first week so it's difficult to gauge how hard they're really gonna be. I'm taking three psychology classes and an English class, so hopefully none of them will be too bad. I really like the way classes are set up here, because I only have one class a day and all of my classes meet in the afternoon. Classes only meet once a week for two hours, and I'm really liking that so far. I do have class tomorrow, and it is getting fairly late here, so I'm going to get to bed here pretty soon.

I'm loving England so far, but I'm often reminded that there's no place like home. I love you all!

Class and Neighbors

This is Uni Gloucestershire Oxtalls Campus. I don't actually have any classes at this campus, but we took the bus around so I figured I'd take a picture of it while we waited for the bus.


Class was a lot less intimidating than what I was expecting. I was really expecting to be completely overwhelmed, but it really wasn't bad at all. Our newest housemate is actually in my class, so it was really comforting to see her there. I met a girl whose Dad is American and she lived in Colorado when she was in fourth and fifth grade. Her name was Anna and she was fairly nice. The class started out by talking about feminism, which I had a decent grasp on from my SOC classes and our Gender Cafe discussion about "The F Word" both from last semester. I think it should be a good class. It's strange because my classes only meet one day a week for two hours, and I only have four classes. I have a class a day starting Monday, so I have Fridays off! I also only have afternoon classes, so that's a Godsend for me.

After class the first three girls of the house and I went to campus to catch the Unibus and we rode it to the different campuses and then back into town. It was nice to kind of get our bearings on the bus, and this nice girl, Laura, was extremely helpful in explaining how the whole thing worked.


Kylleen, Erin and Josie waiting for the bus.

We picked up a few things at the grocery store before we came home, and on our way in we noticed that our neighbors were home. We dropped our stuff off at the house and introduced ourselves before we had dinner. There are four or five guys living next door, and they all go to the University at the Pittville campus I believe. They are all extremely nice, and they insisted on taking us out to the SU (Student Union, the campus bars) so we went with them after we had dinner. They walked us out there, and Josie and I came back with one of them and a friend of his instead of going on to a bar off campus. I figured I had enough to drink, and I would have plenty of time to check out the local bars on days when I didn't have class the next day.

One of the guys from next door, Luke, bought us a drink when we got there, and we all got "Kermit"s. :) It was green and really good but wasn't too strong. Jack was the housemate that walked Josie and I home, and he talked to me for the most part on the way back. He seems like a really nice guy, and really the whole house has been extremely nice and pretty cool to us. I won't have any classes with them, but I'm hoping to meet more people as the semester progresses in my classes and such. So far we haven't really met anyone from here that has been mean or that we haven't liked, so that's been really great! I miss you all but am feeling better about getting settled into a routine around here.

A Day of Rest

I am not made for non-stop action. It's good to keep me busy to a certain point, but if there's too much going on my body just shuts down. That's what I got to recover from today. Luckily I know when my body is reaching it's stopping point, so I was able to slow down and not completely shut down.

One of the girls in the house has a brother that lives in Fort Wayne. She was talking to him on her webcam today, and he showed me the work that's happening at Frieman Square from a window out of the the Downtown library. That's when I almost cried. I've been pretty homesick today. Sundays are my favorite days whether it be at home or at the Chet, and not really knowing what to do has definitely made me miss the regularity of Sundays back home. I'm still doing really well, and our final housemate moved in today and seems really nice. For now I'm going to get ready for bed so that I can be up and functioning tomorrow for my first class.

My housemate Kylleen (the one with the brother in Fort Wayne) and me at the Indian Restaurant last night.

Settling down

Josie and me at the BCA dinner

We have been incredibly busy since we got here on Wednesday. I seriously can't believe that I've been in Europe since Christmas Eve and it's already the January 6 over here. We have been going over tons of stuff for BCA (Brethren Colleges Abroad, which is mostly kids from Messiah College, oddly enough not a Brethren College), and we walk almost everywhere. We've taken the bus twice and a coach twice. There is a difference there to the British, because the bus is local trips while the coach takes long distance trips like the trip we took to Bath today and the ride from the airport. I am fairly exhausted from all of this running around business. I decided to stay in tonight to get some rest, and I'm thinking we will all be sleeping in at the house tomorrow morning. Luckily we have all day Sunday to do what we want. I'll try to give a better update sometime tomorrow when I'm not feeling so drained.

Bath

We're going to Bath tomorrow. It's the ruins of the ancient Roman Baths that people used to vacation to for social and medical reasons. I'll know more about it when we get back, and I should have pictures and such as well. I promise a better update then. Today was boring academic things, but I am getting to know more of the group now.


Josie and Me at the Roman Baths

Housemates and Such

These are two of my amazing housemates.

Kylleen is on the left and Erin is on the right. I love them both already. They're sophomores at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and they're both just so much fun. The four of us that are living in the house right now get along extremely well, so I'm hoping that our fifth housemate will like us. Today we went on a walk through town, and it doesn't seem like it's too extremely huge. All of my classes are on the campus within walking distance from our house, and the town centre isn't very far from the house either. I found the statue of the minotaur and the hare, so I'll be taking a picture by that sometime before too long. Classes start Monday and we're doing academic advising tomorrow, so I'm hoping that I can drop at least one of my six scheduled classes. I'm so relieved to know that all I have to do is pass my classes. My friend and housemate Josie goes to La Verne, a CoB college in California, and her letter grades are transferring, but I don't think I would really like dealing with that much stress, especially since I'm adjusting to living such a different life than the one I'm used to in the States. Well, I think that is all for the night. We found free wireless in our house, so I'll update more often now that it's functioning.

I'M IN ENGLAND FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

I made it safely to the airport and even beat the group from DC to the meeting point.I am living in a house with a friend of mine from the University of La Verne in California and two girls from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. The girls that I didn't know are both very nice, and another BCA student will be joining us once classes start. I am living upstairs next door to Josie (my friend from La Verne), and my room is nice and quaint. I will be uplaoding pictures, but our house isn't getting internet until next Tuesday so it will be a while. Once we get internet in the house I will use Skype as much as I can, and of course I will be on MSN, AIM and I'll use my blog as well. I am pretty much settled in my room, but I do have a few things left to put in their place. I hope you are all having a very glorious day!

Looking in at the left side of my room.


And the right side.


My mailing address:
Kacie Gauby
9 St. Pauls Road
Cheltenham
Glos
GL50 4EP
UK

A New Year

The party last night was much like a party I might experience at Manchester...minus the numerous things that would occur at MC maybe never.

The differences are as follows:
I vaguely knew about ten of the 40 plus people that were there.
People were smoking in the kitchen. (This one is the only one that I could see happening at all.)
We melted medal trinkets over a candle and dropped the liquid in cold water to tell our fortunes.
The host had glasses out the wazoo that people kept dropping and breaking.
A guy I didn't know (and Fran didn't know) gave me his phone number via his business card.
There were fireworks. For the new year. For 30 minutes.
A European made me dance with him.
We took the train home and Mama and Papa picked us up at the train station.

I also experienced the most dense fog I have ever seen, and I'm extremely glad that I didn't have to drive in it. My coat came in quite handy as we waited outside in the cold at four in the morning for the train to arrive. We didn't get home until after 5:00am, and I was soon asleep after my head hit the pillow. I hope the New Year was good for all of you back in the States. I miss you all!


Not the best picture of Fran, but it's the only one on my camera from the evening. I'm hoping to get Fran's pictures on my computer before I leave.