Chapter 3: Elms and the City of Belfast

To all of my readers, I apologize for the extreme delay in updates. I promise I didn't fall into a hole somewhere, or get kidnapped by a leprechaun. I did, however, manage to catch a pretty nasty illness and get to experience the U.K. healthcare system. Enough random babbling and onto the interesting stuff:

So here in the Village of Elms, we have what is known as the Treehouse (Sadly, it looks nothing like a treehouse). It's basically a smaller version of the SMC... and it has a pub. We don't really venture here often, unless we're meeting up to walk to class. 

Here's an outside view of some of the buildings. Even though we're all in different buidlings, they aren't that far apart.

It's surprisingly easy to get from Elms to the school. It's basically just a straight stretch the entire way, you just have to watch out for cars leaving driveways, and be sure that nothing's coming or that you have permission to cross before crossing streets.

Belfast Tip #3

Drivers are crazy; They will hit you

It's true. I've heard stories of bicyclers being hit by cars. They don't even stop at crosswalks here, unless the sign forces them to stop so you can walk. We walk everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere! It's a rare occurrence when we actually take a cab somewhere. So much for being lazy Americans :)

If you recall from my previous update, I never took a picture of Elmwood Hall (where the Celili was held). Well, here it is.



 Honestly, I thought it was a church at first, at least based on the outside anyway. From what I know, I think the Hall is used for musical acts and such. 

Yes, this castle-looking place is indeed my school. Sadly, I don't have any classes in this building. I just get to walk through it to get to the building that houses all of my classes, except for one. And it's not nearly as awesome-looking. 

Belfast is pretty simple to navigate. Well, at least the area we live in is anyway. If you head straight down from the school, you'll pass quite a few pubs and other eateries on your way into city center. It is about a 20 minute walk, but it's not too difficult.

One of my favorite things about Belfast is this place:

I know what you're thinking: of course it would be a cupcake shop! :)
They sell some of the most amazing cupcakes I have ever eaten! My baked goods are simply sub-par compared to this place. I'll talk about it more when I get to the food blog, but my favorite so far was their Rose Cream cupcake. The icing literally tasted like roses! It wasn't a strong flavor, but had just the right amount so it wasn't too strange or overpowering. 

 


Enough about cupcakes. This is city hall.

I can't tell you much about it, other than it looks pretty and is where riots occur. Riots still occur from time to time due to a vote in December, limiting the number of days that the Union flag flies over city hall. Don't panic, the worst of the rioting occurred in January, and we still have yet to run into or see any of the riots.

During our bus tour of the city, we were taken to see the Parliament buildings. Sadly, this is the only good picture I could get:

Continuing on the trend of important buildings, the next photo I have is of the Crumlin Road Courthouse. It hasn't been in use for years. It was purchased a few years back with the goal of renovating it into a hotel, but it unfortunately became damaged in a fire. The smaller picture on the right is of the prison directly across the street from the courthouse. It too was closed down, but is now used for tours. At night, you can take a ghost tour of the prison, which we're hoping to do sometime. 

So that's what I have on the city of Belfast, or at least the area of the city near us, for the moment. I'm splitting Belfast into a few different sections since I have so many pictures. I'm also going to start getting caught up on my blogs, since I have many more that need written! The good news is that I'll have 3 whole weeks to do nothing soon, so I'll have plenty of time for updates :)


 

Chapter 2: Fun Times and Dark Skies

 Here's a fun fact about Belfast that most of you probably already know: it rains... a lot!

Belfast Tip#2

Always carry an umbrella

Honestly, Belfast reminds me of Millersville a little bit. It rains most days in Millersville, and it rains everyday here. One day, I learned that I should just carry around my umbrella in my bag. Makes sense since it rains so often in Millersville, right? You think I would do the same here, yet I always seem to not bring my umbrella when we venture outdoors. And then I pay for it.

 So this is what I get to look forward to everyday: rain and puddles of water everywhere! Speaking of my lack of rain preparation, guess what I decided to leave at home. I figured I'd save some room by leaving my rain boots behind. I figured, eh, it can't be too bad over there. I survived my first year at Millersville without them. I wish I had them a few days ago. By the time I made it back to my room, my pants and converse were soaked!

During our second day here, Zac and I decided that we never really left Millersville. Everyone just suddenly developed an accent, the school transformed to look like a castle, and the 8 hour plane ride really went to nowhere, all because the weather is so similar.

 Now on to a more fun topic.

Last Friday night, the school put on a traditional Irish meal for the international students, known as a ceili (pronounced "key-lee"). 
 

I don't remember what this was called, but I can tell you it was some sort of Irish chicken dish, and it was delicious! They also had different types of bread, salad, potatoes (of course), as well as a different type of lasagne. 

On a side note, the hall we were in was beautiful. For some reason, I only took a picture of the ceiling and not the building itself.

 
After we ate, we had the opportunity to learn some Irish dancing. We stayed for about 4 different dances. We all had a lot of fun, and I managed to get a few pictures of Lindsay during the times I sat out.

 It was good craic, as the Irish would say.While on the topic of good craic, I'm sure you're all interested to hear about the nightlife here in the U.K. The only two places I've been thus far are known by the locals as "Egg" and "The Bot".

Here's a random little tidbit: my favorite part about the pubs here is that they show WWE! I'm guessing it has to be fairly popular over here if they show it in the pubs. I'm sure you can all imagine how excited I was when I first walked into the pub and saw Monday Night RAW on tv (by the way, this happened on a Thursday night) :D

So that's all for this installment. Hope you enjoyed it, and by sure to check out our video blog! (See Lindsay's facebook for the link, I'll include it next time)

Chapter 1: Settling In

Hello everyone!

I finally found the time to sit down and start my blog. The past few days have been filled with orientation activities and meeting lots of new people from all of the world, though mostly from America and other European countries.

So after the long 8 hour plane ride to London, and then another hour trip, we finally arrived in Belfast.We then sat and waited for our bus to arrive, and after a twenty minute drive or so, we checked in with accommodation.

 So here's my room. It actually seems pretty big. I also enjoy the fact that it's yellow :) I love my "duvet cover" - instead of comforters like we use, Europeans like to use duvets. Lindsay likes to use her duvet cover as a sleeping bag, since there's an opening on one end and it's really cold here.

I took a close up of my messy desk. This was just after I got in; trust me, my room is extremely neat now :) As proof, there's also a picture of my neatly, organized desk:

  

Of course since I'm going to be gone for 5 months, I had to pack as many clothes as I could:

It took me a few tries to get everything to fit in the suitcases. It also took me 4 days to put everything away in my "closet". I also just put up the pictures I brought with me. I really wish I has printed out more before I left. I don't like looking at bare walls, even if they are yellow...

I've decided I'm going to include some tips for Belfast, or studying abroad, as I come across them. 

Belfast Tip#1:

Bring a blanket... or 5

Do you really need 5 blankets? Probably not. But it gets really cold here, especially at night. I've only been here for 5 days, but I learned right away that the United Kingdom (because that's where I technically am) is very conservative, meaning that they conserve resources whenever possible. This includes heat. We've taken to referring to ourselves as "spoiled Americans" because we're used to having heat whenever we want it. Here, because it's winter, we get heat from around 7 to 9 in the morning, and then again from 3:30 to around 10 or 11 at night. After February, that will get cut back to 5 to 10 at night. 

We froze the first night here. I slept in sweat pants, a sweatshirt, socks, and gloves and was still cold. Luckily, we ran to IKEA yesterday and got some fun blankets. I found the WWE one along the way, and it will definitely be coming back to the States :)

 

 

  So I mentioned how we only have heat for certain times. The other reason I refer to us as "spoiled Americans" is because the heat we do get isn't very hot. By this, I mean you can still put your hand on the heater, even when its on "high". We still aren't used to it.

Living in a strange country, I wanted to have my own bathroom. Why? Because it's just nice to have your own bathroom, even though I had to pay more for it. One thing I learned 'quickly is that European bathroom's are tiny. Really tiny.

I mean, there's basically just enough room for you to stand in the shower. I manage to hit my arm off the wall every time. They also have strange toilets. 

Here's another little tidbit: we only have hot water from around 7am, I believe, to around 11pm. That's it. If you come back from a night out and decide, "I want to take a shower and get cleaned up" at 1 in the morning, you can't do that here, at least not a warm shower anyway.





Another fun thing about living in Belfast is that my iPhone is virtually useless. It's now just a fancy/more expensive ipod. For the first few days we relied on skype to communicate with one another, but now we all have phones.

Here's my snazzy new phone; I think I downgraded a little :) It doesn't even have a keyboard.  

As if that wasn't enough new things to get used to, they also use different money here, pounds and pence.

Here are 2 twenty pound notes. The top one is made by the bank of England, and the bottom is made by one of the Belfast banks. 


And then we have the change. I'm still trying to get used to it because they have so many different ones:

At the top are two, one pound coins (Yes, instead of a one pound bill, like our dollar bill, they made it in the form of a coin). There's also a fancy, two pound coin. Then there's 5 pence (which we originally assumed would be worth 10, since it's around the size of our dime), 10 pence, 20 pence, and 50 pence. On the bottom are 1 pence and 2 pence. I also realized today that the one pence actually says "one penny", which I thought was neat. 

I think that's enough to get this started. Don't worry, I'll be updating again soon since I have so many pictures. Next time I'll tell you about the weather here, and the traditional dinner we went to.


Hope you all enjoy the blog! Leave me some comments if you like, and I'll try to respond when I get a free second. Also, be on the lookout for mine and Lindsay's video blog! I'll post a link to it in my next update.