French Lessons

Sorry that it's been a while, but I've been a bit busy the past couple of days. Today is my day to relax and veg, so I shall now try to bring you all up to date.

Let's see, Friday morning I had a couple of classes - my two math ones to be exact. They both went fine. I had about an hour in between the two, and rather than walking all the way to Elm's village and back, I decided to go to the little coffee shop in the SU. I ordered some peppermint tea and worked on the problem for my Mathematical Investigations class. I didn't really make any progress after the hour was up, though. :( Thankfully, my friend Arne - who is in the class with me - and I stayed after in order to talk to the professor. We were both completely stuck. He worked through some of it with us, and got us past that initial barrier we couldn't surpass. That was so, so, so helpful!!

That afternoon, Jen and I had French lessons with Simon, one of the guys from France. It was really fun, but also very hard. The mechanics I can understand alright, but it's the pronunciation that gets me. Although, I did find out from Simon that actually, English/American accents in French are considered to be, as he put it, "sexy." Haha! He said it was cute. That blew me away because I had always been under the impression that not being able to speak their language perfectly would get you kicked out, so to speak. I'm learning that a lot of those things that I had formerly been led to believe are not actually true, which is very comforting. :)

The three of us pretty much just hung out the rest of the afternoon. We watched John Tucker Must Die, followed by one of Simon's favorite movies, and then some stuff online, mostly Flight of the Conchords, which I had not been previously acquainted with. It was a fun night!

The next morning we walked to the bus station downtown to take the 9:00 bus to Dublin. On the bus, I was ooh-ing and ah-ing over the scenery outside. It was a double-decker bus, and we were on the 2nd level, so we had a good view of the countryside. I kept trying to get some photos of sheep, but I was never quick enough. By the time I realized we were passing some, and got my camera out and on, we had driven past them already. I like the sheep, though! I slept for a bit of the ride.

Here are some images of my first double-decker busride:



The "Emerge Icy Exit" sign. I thought it was funny.



Pretty house



Pretty sky



Melissa and I on the bus.


Laurent and Iris were sitting in front of us.



Beautiful countryside
I had to take a picture of the sun shining, as it is such a rare occurrence in Northern Ireland. hehe



Once we arrived in Dublin, our group was so large that we realized we needed to split up into smaller ones. Several people, including myself, were very hungry, so we set off in search of some food. Even then, we split in two because some people wanted to go to a restaurant for fish and chips while others wanted Burger King. I went with the Burger King group. I know, I know, not very authentic, but we were in Euro-country now, so everything was even more expensive for me. I still spent a great deal of money throughout the whole day, but I tried cutting corners wherever I could, and at lunch, this came in the form of American fast food. It was cute, though, because Christelle and Valerie had never been to Burger King, and Matthieu loved it and wanted to go again. (All three of them are from Belgium, where they don't have Burger King).


This huge spire thing in downtown Dublin. It was so incredibly tall. I was walking next to Baptiste, one of the French guys, and he said he had a challenge for me. Apparently, I was supposed to climb to the top and hang a huge American flag there. I told I would, but that I had forgotten my gargantuan flag at home that day. Maybe later. Haha!

We noticed that the spire leaned quite a bit near the top. Baptiste said it must have been made by a French arhitect. Lol!!

Maeva, Julia, and I in Dublin. (They are the two French girls I have mentioned a few times. I like them a lot!)

We went to a money exchange place so that I could turn my American dollars into Euros. Then we headed off to a tourist information center so as to obtain a map of Dublin. I found a magnet there that I simply could not pass up. It says "Rush Hour in Ireland" and has a picture of a guy herding sheep down the road. I love it!

We met back up with some people at Trinity College Dublin, where we all took many, many photos. I took a video of a pigeon, too. I thought he was just too cute to not document a small part of his journey.

We passed several street performers throughout the day. It was so cool! In the park, I saw genuine swans for the first time in my life. I cannot believe how amazing they are!! The park itself was also quite wonderful. I just love how everything has such character and history over here. It's so great.

Oh, it was really cold, so I bought a hat. It's blueish green and very cute! :)

Here are some more photos:


Pretty statues


Pretty statue


Clarissa (Germany), Christelle (Belgium), Me, Jen (U.S.), Valerie (Belgium), and Matthieu (Belgium)


Me, Jen, Matthieu.


Me, Jen, Matthieu, again. (There always seem to be multiple cameras to look at)


Christelle and Valerie at Burger King. They are so cute!


Some crazy rugby fans, dressed for the game.






Me, Matthieu, Valerie, Christelle at Trinity College Dublin



Jen, Matthieu, Valerie, Christelle at Trinity College Dublin





















That's the best one I could get of Dublin Castle. At least you can see the outline of it.







I thought this was cute.



Jen and me with our new hats





This is a close-up of the statue below we saw in the park. It came from the U.S.












Psht, yeah my camera didn't really work on this one, and I was too tired to try and adjust it. Just take my word for it, though, this building looked amazing at night!


This is a real guy. It was cool



lSmile, Matthieu!

We went to a pub to watch the Ireland vs. France rugby game. We had many, many French people in our group, plus a few Irish and the several Belgians who rooted for Ireland. I found that I enjoy rugby much, much better than American football. It seems to have all of the excitement of football (and then some) without all the annoying breaks. It takes FOREVER for anything to happen in football, but rugby is much more thrilling! :)
(P.S. Ireland won, much to the chagrine of the French. I am told it was a good game, though).

Some of us went to Pizza Hut after that. I had already had a cold, and after being outside and active all day, I think it was starting to catch up with me. I was fading more and more as time went on. Thankfully, a few others wanted to go home after that, too. There were busrides every hour; Melissa, Jen, a Korean girl named Jisun, and I took the 9:00 one. I am so glad they wanted to go home, too. If I had had to go out to a pub for a few more hours like everyone else wanted to do, I don't know if I would have made it. In fact, we took a cab back to Queen's from the bus station downtown, rather than walk the 30 minutes or so trip on foot. I came back and just crashed. Hopefully I can recouperate enough today to be able to go to classes tomorrow. I was planning on playing some volleyball, as there is what sounds like a league that just kind of plays for fun, but I'm too sick this week. Linda, one of the German girls, invited me to play. It would be really fun, I think. Oh, well. Maybe next week!

Chapi-Chapeau

Last night we had some people come over to our building, "we" being me, Matthieu, and Melissa, who all live in Holly Grove 1. We played this game called "chapi-chapeau" (which sounds likes "sha-pee sha-poe") which the Belgians told us translates into crazy hat in English. Anywho, it's kind of like taboo mixed with catchphrase mixed with charades. Everyone writes down a name of someone famous (that everyone, even internationally, will know, which was a bit hard) on a piece of paper and they are all put in a hat. You are separated into teams, where one person draws a name from the hat, trying to get their teammates to say the name. The point is to get through as many names as possible in the time limit.

During the first round, you are allowed to describe the person in any way you want, as long as you don't say the actual name, itself. We had people like Brad Pitt, Michael Jackson, Obama, Queen Elizabeth, and even Shreak, Winnie the Pooh, and Snoopy. We switch between the teams in round one until all the names are gone.

Round 2 forbids any speaking. You must only mime a way to describe the person. For example, earlier that night I was sitting on the counter and my slipper fell off my foot. Jen came and got down on one knee to put it back on for me - haha - and we talked about Cinderella for a few seconds. Then, during Jen's turn, when she had to mime, she pointed to her shoe, and I shouted out "Cinderella!" It was so funny, all the stuff she did. I think she went through the most names of the whole game during that one turn.

Round 3 came, and with it the most difficult rule: you can only use one word to describe the person. Thankfully, we were using the same people we had been all game, so people knew there were only a few options if a person said musician, and would go through the list of Beethoven, Mozart, Shakira, Beyonce, Michael Jackson, etc. It was so much fun!! My team won, of course! (Although, we were at a pretty huge advantage, having 3 native English-speakers on one team, where other teams had none. Oh well. Haha!)

So, hooray for chapi-chapeau!

Various Additions

Today nothing much happened, as I had class at 9:00 am and then came back and slept/laid in bed until about 6 or 6:30. However, I realize there have been a few things I've forgotten to mention that have happened earlier.

There's a French girl name Iris here. We've had several really great conversations, during one of which she told me how much she loves American accents. Crazy, huh! I guess I was always led to believe that Europeans in general do not like American accents, but she said she just loves them! I thought that was cool.

Last night there was a pancake party at a local church where many of the international students went. We were told that we would be making and eating our own pancakes. I think quite a few of us were expecting for this to be our dinner, but many only had one tiny pancake each. I wasn't too hungry, though, so it was alright. :)

Toward the end, Julia, Maeva, and I were discussing how we wanted to do something. Yes, I did have an early morning class the next day, but I knew it was my only one, and I really didn't want to just go home and go to bed, yet. We asked Laurent - one of the Belgian guys - if he had any plans or had heard of any, and he invited us along with him and most of the other guys and gals. The plan was to go out to a pub, I believe, but we ended up just hanging out at one of the student houses on Mt. Charles (one of the roads with student accomodation). That was fun! I got to know a few people a little better. I was getting really tired, though, after a few hours, and since Iris lives in Elm's Village, too, she said she'd go home when I was ready. It turns out several people were waiting for the first people to go home because it turned into a bit of a group.

On the walk home, I was chatting with a French guy named, and I think this is the right spelling, Romain. (Remember the guy I said whose name sounded like "Roman" except with a French accent? That's him). We were talking about the differences between cultures. He was saying how in most of Europe, between friends you kiss on each cheek to say hello/goodbye. When I told him we usually shake hands, unless you're pretty close with the person, in which case it's usually a hug, he just couldn't believe it. He found it kind of cold. It was funny how flabbergasted he was. Simone was part of the conversation for a bit, and he said that they would help me get used to these new customs. So, when half of our group stopped at Grant House - another student accomodation that is before Elm's Village - they both gave me a traditional European goodbye. It was not as weird or awkward as I thought it would be at all. It was actually kind of cool! Christelle, one of the Belgian girls, had greeted me in this manner once before. It's much more friendly, I feel. I like it! :)

Oh, one story I forgot about was during the Superbowl. This German guy, Benny, was sitting on the couch between two girls with another few on the outskirts of the couch, me being one of them. It was funny. He said he's got a cold beer in his hand, he's surrounded by 5 women, and he's watching football. I told him it was the American dream. Haha! Later on, his drink was between his feet on the ground, and he was playing with his phone. (I'm sure you can see where this is going). All of the sudden I hear, "Oh, no!" and a bit of a splash. He holds up his glass of beer and there his cell phone is glowing through the liquid. Hahaha! He quickly pulled the phone out and was trying to dry it off, but then he was like, "Aw, man! My good beer!" lol! After he'd tried it, making sure it was still good, then he was free to worry a little about his sopping cell phone. Bwa ha ha! It was so funny!

Oh, I did find some creamy peanut butter at the conveniant store at the gas station. It's alright, and it'll do, but it's still not as good as Kroger's creamy. Sigh. ;)

This weekend a huge group is planning a trip to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. I think people are wanting to tour the Guinness brewery and then go to a pub to watch a highly-anticipated game of rugby between some Irish team and France. As a great deal of our group will be French, in an Irish pub, it should be fun! And next weekend there's a trip to Carrickfergus castle. It costs 8 pounds, but I'm not passing it up. It should be fun! I'm excited to see it, and I'll try to take photos to post up here.

To Whom it May Concern: My Address

HOL01 G06 Elm's Village
Queen's University Belfast
78 Malone Road
Belfast, BT9 5BW
Northern Ireland

Queen's University Belfast Classes - Day Two

Today was my second day of classes. I would normally have a tutorial for my Number Theory class this morning at 9:00, but tutorials don't start until next week, so I didn't have class until 11:00. Actually, I had two classes at 11:00 - Mathematical Investigations and Accounting II. These are the two that clash, obviously, and I'm supposed to be trying it out for a week to see if I'm okay with missing one or the other, or if I need to drop one entirely. As today was the first class of Mathematical Investigations, and I'd already been to Accounting yesterday, I figured I should go to the math class.

I walked in, and to my very happy surprise, saw a familiar face! Arne - an international student from Germany - was also in this class - hooray! I've never really had a friend in my math class before, ever, so this was very exciting for me. As the professor began describing the course, I grew more and more excited. It is not a typical math class in that we do not have any exams. Instead we have three problems that we work on at various points in the semester, and at the end we give an oral presentation. It sounded kinda gross when I read about it online, but the professor passed out the first problem today for us to start working on, and it turned out to be a lot of fun! I'm such a nerd, but what can I say? Also, the professor said that attendance is not compulsory (they use that word a great deal here), and from what I can tell it will be just fine for me to go to Accounting for both days and then miss Math Investigations on Tuesdays, but be there for Thursdays and Fridays. From what I can tell, I may not even need to go at all... ever. However, I'm sure it won't hurt to go. Plus Arne is in my class, so that's cool. He promised that if there was ever something I missed on Tuesday, he'd fill me in on it. I'm so excited!! :D

Arne lives in Elm's Village, too, so we walked back together after class. We ran into Melissa, who was just getting in. She has left on Sunday to fly back to Germany to sit a final exam. Apparently in Germany, they do not really have fall and spring semesters but rather winter and summer ones. (Arne lucked out because even though he was technically missing a week of classes in Germany by being here now, he had no final exams that he had to take. Instead he had presentations, and he'd gotten all of them done before he left to come here.) Melissa was supposed to get back in last night, but her flight had been delayed because there was "snow" at Heathrow. I'm not sure what the quotes were for, but that's how she put it.

I needed to go grocery shopping, and she did, too, so that's where we set off for. I managed fairly well, shopping for groceries in a foreign country for the first time. The only real problem I ran into was that they don't have peanut butter, or at least not the kind I like. I could only find 2 types there, and they were both crazy healthy with tons of nuts and oats or something in them - not at all like my faithful Kroger-brand creamy peanut butter from back home. Sigh. Maybe some certain parents of mine will feel like sending me a care package with a hefty jar of peanut inside?? (hint, hint)

On the walk home I learned a very important fact: when one does not own a car and has to walk a bit of a distance to get home from the grocery store, one should not buy everything all at once. It would behoove this person much more to simply buy a few things now, make the trip home to drop them off, and then come back again for more, repeating the said pattern until all necessary shopping is completed. As I said, though, I did not learn this until after I'd purchased the contents of my four, quite weighty grocery bags. I'm already a slow walker compared to everyone else here, and I had to walk even slower with the bags. Poor Melissa. She claims she did not mind, though. What a nice girl.

Speaking of how nice she is, she brought be back some presents from Germany - can you believe it?! We've had numerous discussions over the past several days, two of which included pretzels and chocolate. Apparently, the pretzels here are much too sweet. Germans pretzels are better because they are salty. German chocolate is also better, although I can't remember her reason why at the moment. Suffice it to say, she wanted to prove it to may, and thus brought back a German pretzel and a bar of German chocolate for me. How thoughtful is she! I have yet to try them, though. She's so cute!

Oh, by the way, there is a street right next to Tesco - the grocery store here - called Chadwick. I have a friend at CCU named Chad, and we sometimes call him Chadwick, so I had to take a picture. I uploaded it on facebook and tagged Chad in it. It was just too good to pass up. Hehe! :)

Alright, well, so long for now!

The Superbowl... in Northern Ireland?

Yesterday I met up with Jen for "breakfast," which actually turned out to be lunch as I slept in too late for breakfast. We went to this cute little place out by where she lives. They had breakfast food all day, so we both ordered pancakes and talked with each other. It was nice, since we hadn't seen one another in a little while. During our meal, the sun peeked through the clouds outside for about 5 or 10 minutes. We both freaked out and got really excited. It went back into hiding before we were finished, though. Sigh.

We met up with a bunch of other people who wanted to go to Starbuck's. A few of them had never been. Valerie - one of the Belgian girls - was especially excited to go to Starbuck's for the first time. It was really cute! I only got to take one photo because then a worker came up and informed me photos weren't allowed in the store. Here is Valerie, eager with her coffee:

Isn't she cute? :)

Later that night I went to the Superbowl party. It was funny: neither Jen nor I even knew who was playing until we got there and saw. She decided to pick one team and I picked the other, each teasing the other any time "our" team played well. I left after the half-time show, though, because the game didn't start until after 10:30 and I had a 9:00 class this morning. I'm glad I saw that amazing play by the Steelers, though (who happened to be the team I picked - hooray!) That was so intense! I heard one of the commentators say it was the longest run or something in Superbowl history. Crazy cool!

This morning I had my Number Theory class. It seems like it's going to be fine. In fact, it might be a little too easy, but perhaps I shouldn't speak so soon. All I know is that it was kind of boring, and I was already tired, so I sort of half-slept through the class. I'm sure that's just a great way to start out the class - haha! Oh well!

I think some of us are planning a trip to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland this weekend. I'm looking forward to that!

Until next time, cheers! :)