adventures 1.0

New York City Super Fun Times

2008-01-29T13:28:00.001-08:00

New York was mega fun. Although I'd been before I really didn't remember much of it and most of the things I did have changed.

The trip was stupidly long (we had to get up at 4am, and arrived about 3pm US time, which includes a 5hour time difference =S). However, customs/immigration was a breeze.

Our first stop in NY (after food) was Times Square and the Toys 'R Us, which has a ferris wheel INSIDE it. Crazy. It was getting dark when we went in and when we came out it looked like daylight since they'd turned all the lights on. Crazy

The next day was crazy tourist day. We covered a lot of ground. Empire State Building. Macy's. Joe Strummer Memorial. Site of CBGBs. Brooklyn Bridge. World Trade Centre Site.

The trend continued the next day while waiting for the American Manchester kids as we hit Wall St (this guy has the friggin' largest gun ever) and took the Statten Island Ferry so we could go past the Statue of Liberty.
Then the true Shenanigans began. How can life be anything but nuts when Jon (upstate NY), Kevin (Boston) and Frenchy (South Dakota) hit NY? Firstly we all got Library Cards cos we could (out of control, I know). Well, Owen and I got them to get free internet while we waiting. I think the others were secretly (or not so secretly) jealous of us and demanded the same borrowing privileges that they would never actually use. We then hit some serious chocolate store, the M n Ms store and Hersey's store at Time Square and stayed too long at the virgin megastore which resulted in almost everyone buying stuff. *shakes fist at Richard Bransen*

For dinner I got the Thai that I had been craving for at least 2months.. mm... was ok.

Frenchy had decided to get us all Standup Comedy Tickets for that night. Sounded ok as they were only $5. The catch was you had to buy 2 drinks which were ridiculously priced (oh yeah, and many of the comedians seriously sucked) The most hilarious part of the night was on the Subway when a group of deaf peeps got on the train and were pole dancing. They wanted Jon to join in but he wouldn't cos he's a pansy =P
The next day ended up being a mega shopping day. One of my pairs of jeans has been seriously falling apart ever since I left so replacements were in order. And Marion (Jon's girl, who is pretty super cool and showed us around/looked after us all weekend. ta) took us to Canal st, which was insane. It was all these people trying to flog stuff at you as you walked down the street. All stolen no doubt. My favourite was all the little Asian ladies who would be all like "Lady, Lady. You want handbag?" "You want designer purse? Gucci? You want Gucci? Lady?" Haha... and all the giant black guys trying to flog watches and DVDs etc. We ALL bought shoes from an actual shop. I seriously didn't realise that clothes were so cheap over here. If I had luggage allowance over 200g then I probably would have bought more. That being said I got shoes, jeans, a beanie, 2CDs and a magazine. Whoops. That's a bit over 200g I'm guessing.

Since it was Australia Day we went to the Outback Steakhouse, which is an Australian themed restaurant. I'm told that compared to many this one was very tame decoration wise. Some can get pretty tacky. Which didn't stop the toilets being for Sheilas and Blokes etc. More tourism followed with the Rockerfeller Centre and the Apple store. We stumbled accross some disturbing art which confused us greatly. Had randoms in a hotel window dance at us. And eventually had to say goodbye to Frenchy who left early the next morning (Although, I'm told, not early enough. She missed her flight. Whoops.)

Next morning we waited for Kev, Jon and Marion to arrive so we could get Coldstone (like Coldrock) it was good, but they took ages to arrive. Then it was bye Kev (these goodbyes are starting to suck). Then the rest of us headed to the Museum of Modern Art. Lots of famous art there Van Gogh, Monet, Warhol, Picasso etc etc. Plus they have a Design section which is small but good. And some cool photography too, but by that stage I was boring everyone by still wanting to look at stuff so we went to get pizza instead. Then the goodbye continued as we farewelled Jon and Marion.

We had a day left to our own devices, which meant I want to check out some sweet design museums (sorry owen) on the way we wandered through Central Park where we saw frozen lakes and a pile of what looked like snow but was actually shavings from the ice-skating rink (it's all the same to us Australians though). Unfortunately we couldn't find the Centre of Photography, and the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum had just finished all their exhibitions so there was only one thing showing (on the upside it was free =) ) Oh well... we hit the MOMA shop cos Museum Shops are pretty much the best and indulged in some traditional NY food - Pretzels and the largest slice of cheesecake ever. awesome. To satisfy Owen's inner train geek we checked out Grand Central Station which was surprisingly grand. Some random guy also taking photographs started talking to us. I think only so he had the chance to give us his card (we checked him out later. he was average.. haha.)

The rest of the night was spent re-packing and trying to fit in all the new stuff that we'd bought. Crap. Oh well they let us on the plane to we should be right til next time.. Next stop is Salt Lake City, Utah. Where it will be snowing. Alot.

Return to the UK

2008-01-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

The rest of our time in London was spent doing random things that we kept forgetting to do, picking up things for people from various places and just chilling out etc.

It was Cam's birthday so we had dinners, beers, breakfasts and cakes to celebrate. Jess & Jimmy were still around so we hung out with them and were squished (albeit slightly less than before) into Rob & Cam's place. And all swapped stories about our adventures (they'd been to France and skiing in the Czech Republic)

We also got to head back to Manc which was sweet. I'd missed those kids and was awesome to hang out again. Miranda and I had our last bakedown, starring Dan with a record 4 eggs (well, 5 if you count the one that was smashed on the floor). I caught up with the uni peeps and managed to get all my uni work posted home at their expense (winnar=me)

We all hung out at Font that night. Steve was already drunk which provided an endless source of amusement. And we discovered that Matt seriously knows everybody ever. Thanks to everyone who came out. I'm already missing you all. (p.s. come to australia)

Kitchen BuddiesFeeling the love - Matt and OwenBev and ISteve and TormodLibby, Lucy and Brig

After leaving more London shenanigans involved sorting out how to post our crap back to Australia. We seriously have a lot. Getting to NY i was 0.2kg under weight limit & just then when we got on our flight to SLC Owen was 3lbs over and my bag wasn't properly on the scales but weight about that too. hmm...

Rotterdam

2008-01-20T04:18:00.002-08:00

We arrived in Rotterdam and decided to hire bikes. Now, I haven't ridden a bike since I was about 10. A few days ago I tried it at Monique's and could kind of go straight but panicked/fell off when I had to turn a corner or when there were cars. This was going to be quite an adventure. ps. It was only 6euro to hire the bikes for the arvo. awesome.
The first hour was tense. Firstly I couldn't even get the random bit of metal that you lean the bike on up, then I couldn't get on it cos the seat was too high. I scraped the gutter, panicked an jumped off when I had to turn the first corner. I tried to go down a 10cm drop into a bike lane and went straight across it into the sloping barrier, scraped the bike and fell off (well not fell off fell off, but came off) Lots of people saw me doing stupid things. Then after about an hour it was fine and I was some sort of a super sweet bike riding champion. haha! I am a bike conquerer! It was a stack of fun and we got to see lots of the city and the crazy architecture which is what the city is known for.
We also went on an adventure out to the Dutch equivalent of reverse garbage. And we finally had the early night we'd been trying to have for a week.

Now we leave mainland Europe and head back to the UK for a few days (London and Manchester) the off to New York =)

We're now on the Eurostar! To get on here we got the 3rd degree from the passport woman. Apparently I should have had a copy of my ticket which said I was leaving England. (Uhh... sorry?) Did you know I can refuse you entry because you don't have it? (well.. technically I don't even have a ticket that I can carry. it's an e-ticket. I just turn up to the airport with my passport) Who are you traveling with? Why is he over there? So, you were a student in England? Was he a student there too? What date did he arrive? Who's address is this? How long are you in London? Where are you going? When? Who are you flying with? What date do you arrive back in Aust? Are you transiting in New York? How much money do you have? (umm...about 100euro and £30) Is that ALL the money you have? (uhh.. no?) Is it your own money? How did you get it? What do you do for work? etc. etc. etc. blergh.

Den Haag

2008-01-20T04:18:00.001-08:00

We went to Den Haag, and Monique decided to come with us. Yay! We went to Madurodam, which is just miniature Holland. They have all the main buildings/landmarks etc at 1/25th the size. It was really cool! And really cold too, freakin' freezing day.

Real life...

Miniature...

After Monique left us we went down towards the beach and ate tasty pofferjes (sp???) and pancakes on the pier.That night we went to IMAX but it was a crazy IMAX with a curved room. We watched one about the Alps and some guy who wanted to climb some mountian cos his father had died climbing it when he was 8. All the music was by Queen. He was bungy jumping off a giant dam (to illustrate how hardcore he was. Clearly) and the music was 'Can't Stop Me Now'. Classic Cheese. It was an awesome combination of sweet mountain shots, tacky sentimental family moments, and cheesy music. Awesome.

We wandered back to our hostel in the rain via snack bar, internet and supermarket treats. A good day.

Wageningen/Manc Reunion I

2008-01-20T04:01:00.000-08:00

Next stop was Monique's place (one of my mates from Manchester). Also two other Manchester kiddies, Maarten and Linda, were going to come down too! Miranda sucked so wouldn't come =P We hung out and Monique showed us the sights (the main shopping strip and university). Owen asked her a million questions "What does that sign mean?" "Why is that like that?" "What does this do?" We also need to buy food so she hooked us up with some sweet dutch delicacies such as vla, hagelslag, some sort of cake/breakfast bread, crazy apple syrup spread stuff. They also told us we needed to get Snack bar foods, which we did later. Owen loved it (thanks Monique/Maarten)

We also went to a cool beer cafe which had a whole book of beers that you could pick from. I had some really awesome cheery beer and a nice dark beer...mmm Today we also discovered that ALL the American's from Manc (Kevin, Jon and Frenchy) are going to meet us in New York for the weekend over Australia day, which will be mega fun =) can't wait!!

Amsterdam

2008-01-20T03:20:00.000-08:00

When we arrived in Amsterdam it was a million times easier than Brussels already. We found a map and someone to tell us where our hostel was and the train and a ticket and it was all mega easy =)

We spent the rest of the day randomly wandering around looking at the city, all the houses are really skinny and there are lots of canals and A MILLION bikes everywhere. We almost died cos there were so many lanes to cross. There is the footpath, then bike lane, the car lane, the two tram lanes, the car lane the other way and then the bike lane for the other way, then FINALLY the footpath. Phew. That's not to mention that we're still looking the wrong way sometimes on account of everyone driving on the right. I almost walked out in front of a car and died. That would have been bad.

That night we found tasty cheap pasta and went wandering the city at night, we went through the infamous redlight district which was just bizzare. There are just woman standing in the windows trying to attract you attention. And large groups of young guys who are obviously with their mates who are horribly uncomfortable and trying to be all macho.

Then we found an Irish pub where we could drink cider (oh... tasted so good... mmm) and watch football. We deiced to come back the next night cos they had free internet.. haha. And our hostel was charging 5euro an hour.

The next day rain and was pretty miserable for doing stuff, which sucked cos it was our main time in Amsterdam. So in the end we didn't do much. Plus we were mega tired from doing stuff every single day. We went the the Van Gogh museum (mainly to get out of the rain) it was cool to see the hundreds of paintings by him but since I'm not a huge art person it wasn't amazing.

We had more pasta and then tried to find the pub. Got off the tram about where we thought it was. then saw a supermarket so went there. Then we walked in some random directions trying to find the place, we did fairly easily. hurrah! When we went to leave we discovered we were about 200m from where we got off the tram and we'd walked in some sort of mad circle to find the place.. haha... whoops. We're awesome at directions.

Belgium

2008-01-15T14:44:00.001-08:00

Dear Belgium,
To be fair, your food is good. But please get a better information design for your public transport and open things on Sunday. Only then will we consider coming back. Thanks.
Love
Esther & Owen.

Belgium, shall we say, was not our city. Essentially everything that could go wrong did, plus more. The only redeeming factor was the food (but then again Germany had mad food and it was also cheaper). We had decided that we were going to NOT stay in a hostel for one place, and that was Belgium. So it was nice not having to share a room with a million people or use lockers and shared bathrooms. The only problem was that it was a bit out of the city so traveling in was a bit of a hassle.

First day we went searching for a tourist info so we could get a map and find the comic book museum. It was just nuts, people tried to help us but we just walked around in circles. Now getting around in Germany was easy and we didn't speak that language, just the information design of the public transport was great. Belgium on the other hand where some of the signs are even in English was just terrible. Trying to work out where we were going just sucked. Bah...
We found a few cool things on our travels, some alright architecture, scouts, a couple people having a 'dread-off'The conversation went something like this..
Esther "haha... look at them! They're having a 'dread-off'"
Owen "haha... yeah, we should do that"
Esther "Ok. First one to get dreads loses!"
Owen "Ok.... GO!"
When we did find the comic book thing it was super cool! Lots of TinTin and a lot of sweet original comic drawings. Owen bought a snowy which he was happy about.
Then we ate pizza and drank beer and ate chocolate.. maybe Belgium won't be so bad after all, we thought.

The next day we got up and had breakfast and were ready for a day of doing things, we wanted to find some internets to print stuff for Holland and Eurostar, go pick up Eurostar tickets, go to the supermarket to get more beer and chocolate, see some super sweet fun stuff and generally be awed by Belgiums greatness.

We got into the city and it was deserted. Sunday. Bahh... Why do Europeans hate doing things/opening their shops on a Sunday? Ok, maybe we can still find an internet cafe. No. All shut. We walked in circles for a good hour. Found an English bookshop that was open. She told us somewhere. It was shut. Ok, well we can't get tickets. Let's go to this palace thing that we were told about yesterday. Went there. There was a park that we decided would be ok during summer, but it just looked deserted and dirty. Found palace. "The palace is open during the summer months for visitors". Bah. You'd think they'd have told us that at the information place.

2PM: This day sucks. Let's write it off. Let's go to the super huge supermarket that we were told about get chocolate and beer and some lunch then go back to the hotel room, eat that. The go have dinner at this place we found that was pretty good (Les P'tits Os... our english translation: Let's be tits O's). First stop supermarket. Hop on a train. Been on the train a while and haven't got there yet. Hm... 'Are you sure this is the right train? I didn't bother checking.' 'Yeah, it is' 'Are you sure? This is 1A, shouldn't we be on 1B?' 'CRAP'
We had to catch the train back about 5 stations and wait for the correct train this time. Correct station. Short Walk. We went there yesterday but it was shutting when we got there so we couldn't get much. It's technically outside of Brussels. We get there. SHUT!! Argh. It's a freakin' huge supermarket. Far out. Stupid Belgium's. FINE. We saw an open supermarket in the city. Back to there.

I'll give the Europeans something. Totally sweet food. Even their prepackaged food in the supermarket looks amazing. You could pick your own lobster from a tank in the supermarket. We bought all this.This is just our chocolate purchasing.

By the time that we were catching the Bus back to the hotel it was almost 6PM. Bah. Our whole day was wasted by nothing and annoying things. Still no internet. Fine we'll ask the hotel how much they charge. Owen asks. Free WiFi. BAH. Why didn't we ask earlier. Get the necessary codes. IT DOESN"T WORK. Owen spends a good hour on the phone to random people trying to get it to work. No success. Bollocks. Fine. Let's go to dinner. First stop 'Let's be tits O's'. Dinner is good. Go home. Drink beer. Watch topgear. eat chocolate. watch football highlights. pack. (it got a bit better towards the end)

Now we're on a train to Amsterdam. Not without another encounter with badluck Belgium style. We went to the ticket people and he told us to check the boards but trains usually go from platforms 18-20. Sweet. The board says 19. Go there. I went to get coffee. Owen starts talking to the train woman cos it doesn't look like the train goes to Amsterdam. She tells us that trains don't go from this station to Amsterdam and we'd have to go to the other side of town to the other main station. Bollocks. Oh well... we're on the train now. Still haven't found interwebs, so that's the first thing to do in Amsterdam so we know where on earth our hostel is. Fun times. Thanks Belgium.

Berlin

2008-01-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

I loved Germany. Apart from Manchester (which Owen assures me doesn't count) it is definitely my favourite place so far. The food was awesome, it was so much cheaper than Ireland and the UK (although that's probably not hard), and there were a million sweet things to see.

The first day we'd had to get up in Dublin at 3AM to get to our flight. This is one of the things that you don't think about when you're booking things. We were all like "awesome we'll be in Germany by 9.30 and leave at 6, which is early but doable" nevermind the 45min bus trip, the 2hours beforehand to check-in etc etc. On top of that I lost my boarding pass, which kept us occupied for a bit.

When we got there we were tired and just wandered until we could check in at 4PM. We went up the top of the Riechstag, saw the Brandenburg Gate and went to this sweet museum where you could touch/play with absolutely everything.. it was about life in Eastern Germany. Pretty cool.

We did a stack of fun stuff while we were in Germany. We walked along where the Berlin Wall use to go (not all of it since it was over 150km long, but we still thought we'd get more done). We found some stuff including the 'reconciliation chapel' which was the site of a church that was stuck in no mans land in between the two sides of the wall. And we went to check point Charlie, and perhaps more importantly Snack point Charlie We went to the 'East Side Gallery', which is were the largest chunk of the wall is and it was murals and stuff all over it.
We went to see a Martin Parr exhibition, which was cool. He's hilarious so good times were had. And we went up a super skinny but fun tall tower thing and saw an awesome view of BerlinOne of the things we did which was I was really glad we did but was pretty hardcore was going to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It was the closest Concentration camp to Berlin and was the one that the Nazi's showed off the most. It was seriously weird being there. It's hard to explain. It was really peaceful and quiet but disturbing, and haunting. I got a bit overwhelmed in the end. There was so much information there if you wanted to read it but in the end it was enough just being there. I don't know what else to say about it. Nuts.

Top of my list of things to do while there was the Bauhaus, which we didn't get to until the last day. I was so excited that I couldn't contain myself. Then we went up the TV Tower (essentially the Berlin version on Centrepoint). It seems that we saw alot of Berlin from high up.
Other hilarities included: Owen is top punk Me 'upping the punx' Owen smashing the state Everything saying Punkt Sweet sweet food. Bratwurst Cherry Beer, Cheese, Salami and Bread...mmm.. dinner I broke a bottle of beer on the floor of the hostel Plus the stop/go traffic light symbols in Berlin are clearly the most awesome ever

Dublin

2008-01-15T13:21:00.000-08:00

Dublin was pretty good. I formed a short list of stuff that I wanted to do and got it all done plus the essay that I still had to do for uni.

We went to the Guinness Museum, saw the Book of Kells, learnt alot about Irish History from the museum and on an awesome tour we did with a historian guy who walked us around the city and told us about all the history and all the buildings and stuff. We also went on a literary pub crawl where we walked around to different pubs and a guy sang us songs, and recited poetry and we had some beers. Ie. he was all cultured and we were not.

I had a lot of fun in Dublin, but most of the time I just felt guilty that I wasn't doing my essay, plus it was pretty expensive. It was also the last part of the trip done with Al and the parentals. Everyone was getting sick of each other in the end so it was kind of good to get off on our own. I'll see you guys back home before I/you know it.

quickly quickly

2008-01-14T08:22:00.000-08:00

Germany = very good.
Brussels = not so good.
Currently in Amsterdam.
updates/photos forthcoming when I can locate wifi.

The End.
Love Esther.

not quite final UK adventures

2008-01-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Well right now we have arrived in Ireland. So I've now left the UK after a stay of almost 4months.

The end of London was fun. Rob & Cam had some friends come over from Brisbane so we played with them the most. Went to the War Museum, redid a lot of other stuff with the other kids, parliament and whatnot. We went to Buckingham Palace when there were less people. I spent New Years Eve writing an essay, which I still haven't finished and then we were going to go down to the Thames, but in the end couldn't be bothered. Isn't that terrible. Oh well.. We did have dinner at a really nice Lebanese Restaurant. And sat around watching DVD and drinking cider.

On New Years Day we went to find the bookshop where the exterior shots of Blackbooks were filmed. We found it. Yay.This was, however, only a small part of the real adventure of the day, which was to see Arsenal v. West Ham. Needless to say Owen was very excited. We took all the appropriate photos.

Arsenal won 2-0. So Owen was bearable to travel home with =P

The next day we had to be up at 4.30 to catch a plane to Belfast. We got there. Picked up the car and promptly left again. We drove up towards the Giants Causeway. On the way we found a totally sweet castle/whatever ruin up the top of a hill. We decided to spontaneously climb it. Awesome idea, thanks Al. Hilarious photos followed And went on the the Causeway.We were going to hang around Belfast the next day but didn't. Instead we went to (London)Derry which was really interesting. We did a tour of the Bogside and visited the museum at Free Derry, right where the Bloody Sunday Massacre was (amoung other things). There were also a stack on interesting murals etc.

On the way home it SNOWED!! I got mega excited on account of never having seen snow. When we got back to the hostel it started hardcore snowing. Later when we were walking back after dinner we had snowball fights with each other and then a stack of others from the hostel who were just standing outside throwing snowballs at randoms who walked past. One girl got really annoyed and started shouting about how she was going to rip one of the guys bollocks off.. haha. We also built a snowman (well.. snowkoala as it turned out) We called it titface. Some other girl wanted to tackle titface and Owen had to defend it, he then threw a snowball and hit her square in the forehead. Good times.Today we have driven from Belfast to Dublin. It's been snowing which has looked pretty cool. I now have Euros and everything in Ireland appears to be closed cos of the bad weather. Boo.

The End.
Love Esther.

The Adventures cont.

2007-12-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

Dear people of my blog,
Let there be updates.
Love Esther.

We left the Land of Middlesbrough in the wee hours of the morning (we had to be up at 5.30am.. eep!)

And Alexander is normally a morning personI never will be

All of this was because Arsenal were playing Tottenham at 1pm so we had to be somewhere, ideally Bristol, to watch it by then. Ie. it was all Owen's fault. We drove and drove and drove and drove. We stopped for Breakfast. And then drove some more.

We were about 1/2 hour out of Bristol when Geoffie was all like "Ah, I might go to Cardiff if you're all sitting around in a pub, on account of it being really close".
And then we were all like "Ah, but we want to go to Cardiff too, so maybe you could drop us there and we'll find a pub in Wales" (cos that just sounds cool).
So then we were all like "Ok, let's do that then".
So we ring up Steve (who's house we were staying at) and we were all like "Get out of bed ya lazy twat. We'll be there in half an hour and we're taking you to Wales to watch the football"
And he was all like "I like it. I like it. I'll go put on some pants."
So that's what we did. After the football, which Arsenal won, we walked around, as in the perimeter of, Cardiff Castle. Got back in the car and went back to Steve's where they fed us good food and we sat around. We also watched the final of Strictly Come Dancing on account of Steve's mum being addicted. Haha...Good times.

The next day was Bath and Stonehenge which all had to be condensed so that we could get to London. The other kids decided they wanted to go to the Baths the most so we pretty much arrived, they went to see the Baths, and we left again. I didn't go cos I already had, so I just wandered around did some Christmas shopping and drank coffee. We drove to Stonehenge, which I'd also already been too, so I sat in the car (I didn't want to pay entry and second time) and watched a DVD on Holly (what we've named our GPS system..) Then we drove to London to Robby and Cam's!

The next day was Christmas Eve but didn't feel like it at all. And I'd done hardly any Christmas shopping which meant Owen and I had to venture into the centre of London to do Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, which just sounded like the stupidest thing we've ever done, but it wasn't too bad. We strolled, bought some stuff, got lost, came back and helped Al and Cam carry copious abouts of grog back to their place for the next days frivolities. Mum and Robby had been cooking up a storm all day. We drank mulled wine and then went to Midnight Mass. We just picked a random church and it turns out it was a High Church of England so it was a pretty cool service what with all the chanting and incense that made you cough and die and sneeze throughout the service. We all agreed that the best part what when the minister was all like "The Mass is over" and the congregation were all like "Thanks be to God". We came back had more mulled wine, mince pies and shortbread and then rang Australian peeps, whos Christmas had already be going a while.

CHRISTMAS! or so I'm told. We all slept in cos we were up too late. Then sat around ALL day. The food was amazing. A mega giant turkey and the best stuffing I've ever had.
Awesome. We ate so much that it's now the day after boxing day and we still haven't eaten the Christmas Pudding cos we keep eating too much turkey. We sat and drank and ate and sat and slept and watched top gear.. haha. pretty alright.

On Boxing Day Owen and I played tourist and did all the tourist things that do'nt require somewhere being open ie. museums. We did Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace, BigBen, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Downing st, some sort of awesome Horses changing somewhere, Trafalgar Square, London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

Buckingham Palace, we couldn't see much, but I thought watching the tourist was more fun anywayWe played hardcore ninja shenanigans at Tower Bridge, for more see facebook

Then we came home, exhausted ate turkey and ham. Then went to the pub to watch Arsenal in a boring nil all draw. Luckily we didn't get killed, since apparently where Rob and Cam live the pubs often have smashed windows, there are signs that say 'No Opposition Supporteds on Game Day' and 'No team colours' and they're often surrounded by police. When we went the pub was just full of old guys...

There are more photos of various days adventures on the right.

The End.
Love Esther.

Scotland... part 1ish

2007-12-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

I'm in a hotel/thing in Middlesburgh. We've been to Glasgow, Loch Lomond, a Whiskey Distillery, Edinburgh (including Castle and general wandering), driven through original Turnbull country, seen lots of frost and been generally cold. Photos are on facebook. Links are on the right to all the albums.

here is random stuff that I wrote on the first night in Edinburgh when I had no interwebs. More to come later when I don't need to get up at mega-early o'clock tomorrow to go to Bristol (to say hi to steve)...

---------------------------

I'm now in Edinburgh! Hurrah! I haven't seen much yet though and I have high expectations (which could be a bad thing) I hope that it's as good as people have said.

We left Manc which, to be fair, totally sucked. I already miss everyone there. It could have been worse though. Dan left on the saturday and I pretty much did all my being sad then, for everyone, then when it came time for everyone else to leave I was pretty much prepared.

Me & DanPacking of the roomMiranda and I are tiredMatching Jumper Frenchy & I are clearly the coolestLinda & IMiranda & I again.. awwDa Boyz - Jon, Simon, Maarten and IKevin squashing meI didn't have anything for people to write and others did so I picked up this terribly sentimental copy of MMYOUThe whole gang (or those of us who were left)
In the end it was just kind of surreal and the excitement of going on a new adventure kicked in.

I must have been totally exhausted though, because we didn't sleep the last night and then I got on the train to Glasgow and slept the whole time. At some stage I walked down to the food bit and told Owen I wanted a muffin and hot chocolate. I went back to sleep. He came with said goodies. I ate the muffin. I thought it was so entirely hilarious that I had to take a photo of it.

Finn McCool. I think I was just delusional from lack of sleep.

Went back to sleep. Woke up. Realised that I had a hot chocolate, it was still warm. Drank it and went back to sleep. When we got to Glasgow I pretty much told my parents to write off the whole day. I slept most of the day getting up at 6pm, we sat around for a bit and then went to have dinner. I slept periodically that evening, waking up to watch some tv and drifting off again. I was asleep by 11pm and didn't wake til after 8am. So I pretty much slept over 18hours that day.

Today O's and I walked around Glasgow for a few hours. I think that it would have been really good if we'd done something. We saw some amazing stuff driving out of it, some mad cathedrals and nice places to just walk around, but we just didn't have the time in the end. Apparently they have quite a few Modern Art Museum style things, which would have been good to see and a whole architecture and design complex which didn't open in time. Oh well... They'll be other times?? (hopefully)

Then we drove to Edinburgh via the scenic route. First stop was Loch Lomond (as in “I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road..” etc) It was a lake. We took amusing photos. Common catch-phrases included “I'll Loch your Lomond” and “I'll super your macro”.

I was the Lady of the Loch.

Disturbingly enough so was Owen...

The trend, of stupid photos, continued at the next stop.

We drove on to a Whisky Distillery. The excitement overwhelmed me.Went to the Bathroom. Best ever. If I had the name Thomas Crapper there would be no other area to go into..

Now, to be fair, I don't really like whiskey. The rest of my family love it hardcore. We had some sort of 10yr old testing thing, it was better than other whiskey I had tasted but still not my thing. The tour was pretty cool though. At the end we got to taste some 17yr old stuff. OH. MY. GOODNESS. BEST. WHISKEY. EVER. I seriously never like whiskey until now. It was amazing. Oh my. The End.

We drove on to Edinburgh. We got here and watched the Arsenal v Blackburn match. Arsenal won that means happy Owen. Also Tottenham won again Man City so there could be two Arsenal v Tottenham (Arch rivals... Owen v Dan... haha) matches in a really short space of time.

Tomorrow we have plans to go see Edinburgh Castle and some other random walking around bits too. Should be fun times.

2007-12-19T10:42:00.001-08:00

I'm rocking out a netcafe in Edinburgh. So far so good. Today we spent the entire daylight either eating or looking in the castle. Good but cold.

I slept through Glasgow, we've been to Loch Lomond and to a Whiskey Distillery. Photos + more to come tomorrow-ish when I can find me some Wi-Fi...

p.s. Leaving Manchester sucked. I miss people already =(

2007-12-15T18:28:00.000-08:00

Saying goodbye to people that you've come to care about sucks. I didn't really realise how hard it would hit me til today. I didn't think that I'd get so attached in such a short space of time...not to mention the fact that most of the people who I've said goodbye to I'll see in a month when I'm back in Manc for one night. One more sleep til I have to leave (that's on the assumption that I'm not sleeping tomorrow night)...

2007-12-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

Owen and my family are here... YAY!Owen has a blog that he actually updates.
We went to the wrong terminal to pick my parents up. We sat in terminal 2. They sat in terminal 1. We eventually found them 1.5hours later. Found the rental car. Geoffie accidentally turned on the back windscreen wipers. It took him 15mins to work out how to turn them off.

I'm in my last week of uni doing too many assignments, yet i'm not nearly as worried as I should be.
I don't want to leave Manchester yet. It sucks not knowing if i'll see people ever again.
I leave on Monday morning at 6am. First stop Glasgow and Edinburgh, then Newcastle, Bath/Bristol, Brighton, maybe Dover and then London for Christmas with Rob and Cam. After New Year to Ireland, flying to Belfast driving around eventually to Dublin. Ditching Parentals. O's and I to Berlin, plane to Brussels, train around Belgium and Netherlands (hopefully see Dutch kids). Train back to London. Back to Manc for a night (Monday 21st Jan, see everybody ever). Back to London, fly to New York (hopefully see the Americans), Salt Lake City, San Fran. Then finally home. phew.

Updates!

2007-11-29T17:08:00.000-08:00

Lots has been going on and I have no been telling you about it so let's go..

Firstly Owen gets here in 4 sleeps and my parentals/little bro get here a week after him. This is considered largely awesome for me. In other news since we last spoke Al has finished school, turned 18 and been on TV (Hack on JTV if you haven't seen it watch it here..) So that's pretty cool. When he gets here I get to take him to the pub which will be totally sweet.

I've been on a plenitude of trips and been not doing that much uni work, which has kind of sucked really cos designing stuff is fun! I'll write about trips in sections but some events of late include standing outside in pyjamas in the cold at 9am yesterday morning cos the power was cut off to most of the campus which consequently set off the alarm system and it took them over 2 hours to reset it. so that was fun.

And who could forget the awesomness that was the Australian Federal Election which means no more Johnny! I postal voted, which was a pain in the arse. You have to get witnesses and I got the papers on Thursday night, filled them in Friday and they were suppose to be in London by 5am Saturday morning (I think not) Oh well.. I posted them to Australia. I think that was the right thing to do in the end. They don't make it easy I can tell you.

This is how you celebrate an election on the otherside of the world.

1 Get up mega early on a Saturday morning and stream the ABCs coverage. Awesome.2 Decorate your door in a way that nobody understands...

In other news Manchester has awesome German Christmas Markets!

Bratwurst (For Owen/Collins'/Hall's)CheeseStrudel! (for Johanna)And best of all mulled wine! My favourite is Spiced Apple and Apricot Brandy! So much tasty...
I got a £2 haircut

And I've been to some really awesome gigs/concerts/talks. I went to see Hot Hot Heat who were amazingly fun. Saw Bill Bailey which was a bit of a disappointment cos I had really high expectations. It wasn't that he was bad, he just wasn't as awesome and I wanted him to be. I went to see the Hives last Saturday who were also awesome and put on an amazing show. I've been to some design talks too I went to see Peter Saville and.....bugger mental blank... the guy who did the interior of the hacienda....And then last night I went to see Martin Parr a photography dude who was awesome and really funny. That was cool cos I had no idea who he was, got a free ticket and then only remembered it was on about an hour before it started.

Plus autumn as an actual season is freakin' sweet!And finally here is R2 in his lab coat (please note the vertical warfare on the cupboard in the background)

D&AD London

2007-11-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

I went to London with uni. I was going to go down on the Tuesday night and stay with Rob and Cam, but I stuffed up real good and missed my train by two hours. Wait... let me explain. For some reason the confirmation email they sent me had the return journey listed first and the trip there second and since that makes NO LOGICAL SENSE! I didn't realise til I turned up to the train station and there were no more trains going. Then I had to rush home and work out how on earth I was going to get to London the next morning. I got a bus which took 5hours, twice as long as the train.

Looking unimpressed on the bus

This pretty much screwed the whole trip up. I had organised to go early since I'd never been to London and it would have given me the whole day to explore and work out where on earth I was and how the city worked. Instead I was rushed and had to go straight to the hotel, straight to the first exhibition. Plus the tube line we needed was down so we had to pay for a taxi. Plus the exhibitions weren't awesome. There was a Lee Miller (photography) one that was good, and the Zaha Hadid (architecture) one had some pretty cool exhibition design but I'm not huge on architecture. The other two were fashion which I'm not big on the Matthew Williamson one was horridly ugly and the Couture one was cool, but I just know nothing about it.

To make up for it the hotel had tea and coffee making facilities

It other news I had the most amazing pizza at a hideously expensive restaurant. It was caramelised onion, goats cheese and spinach. So so good. I met up with Rob and Cam after the Design Museum the next day and got to catch up a bit and we went to Tate Modern, which pretty much confirmed that I'm totally in love with museum/gallery shops! But again we were in a rush cos we had to get back and cook dinner so that they could pick up Cam's sister and drop me off at the station.

I pretty much decided to go back soon cos I didn't get to see the city at all. It was just to rushed and stressful.

The End.
Love Esther.

P.S This is Alexander's Harry Potter Style bedroom at Rob&Cam's.

Bath/Stonehenge

2007-11-29T16:40:00.000-08:00

We went to Bath which was really awesome apart from having to get there and back. On they way there the bus broke down and we were stranded in a servo just outside of Birmingham for just under 2hours. By the time we got there it was 4pm. The city is really beautiful though and totally worth it.We went to the Jane Austen museum which was pretty cool. Although Bath seem to love her yet they told us that she didn't live there very long and pretty much hated it. Oh well... Then we had dinner, wandered around then went back to the hostel to drink dirty cheap wine and watch football replays.
The next morning we hopped on a bus to drive to Stonehenge. I thought about not going because to be honest it's just some stones in a field and we already didn't have long in Bath and the trip to see it was going to take 3hours all up and when we left Bath there was a really heavy fog. In the end I'm really glad that I went. It was pretty cool. Although I still maintain that the best of the trip was watching the tourists not the rocks. Everyone was walking around with a camera in one hand and the audio guide in the other. It was hilarious. We had an hour there and there wasn't much more to do than take a million photos, which was alright cos we're pretty good at stuffing around and the weather cleared up really nicely.When we got back to Bath Miranda and I walked around for a bit and the we had planned to go on a free tour but we couldn't find it. Then we thought we'd found it but it seemed to be a group of American students on some sort of field trip. But we followed them around anyway.Then we went to the Roman Baths, which were pretty good, again another audio guide which got boring after a while. Took a million more photos.Had some dinner and got back on the bus. There was some sort of mega traffic on the way back and also the fog was back so it took us over 5hours to get back. This sucked. We got back mega late and mega tired, but atleast Bath was pretty.

The End.
Love Esther.

Cakes of England VII

2007-11-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

Documentation of Miranda and Linda's baking adventures

Cake No. 7 – Banana Cream Pie (Thanksgiving Edition)

We had thanksgiving and everyone was suppose to bring something. Given the fact that I had been given a free box of Krispy Kremes earlier in the day I was just going to take them (in the end I forgot them... whoops) So I didn't have much to do with this baking adventure. Instead I spent my time pealing 2kgs of potatoes which is clearly just as fun. But I'm counting it as a cake of England. It was mainly Linda and Miranda who cooked this and it was pretty darn awesome.

I do now know how it was made but look at it in all its glory.

Cakes of England VI

2007-11-28T17:52:00.000-08:00

Documentation of Esther and Miranda's baking adventures

Cake No. 6 – Brownies

Seriously tasty. Seriously chocolatey. Seriously awesome. Best and most complex baking adventure to date. There were 1 ½ blocks of dark chocolate and 1 block of white chocolate and a crapload of sugar and butter and walnuts, that's about it... well some flour.

It involved melting things and mixing them with other things and chopping nuts and whatnot. We're seriously some baking queens by now. And I think that our randomly estimating quantities of ingredients is getting better too. The oven here still sucks and so the inside didn't bake quickly enough and the outside got a bit burnt-ish. Not really just cooked a bit too much.

The worst thing about the brownies was that after we cooked them we had to wait for them to cool and set for 3hours! Boo. So we kidnapped a cupboard and locked it with a woodenspoon wedging the door open so it didn't get all yuk. Anyway, best thing was it totally stank out the kitchen with chocolately goodness but nobody could get to it..*insert evil laugh*

Here is the brownie with added sunset.

Cakes of England V

2007-11-28T17:45:00.000-08:00

Documentation of Esther and Miranda's baking adventures

Cake No. 5 – Two Berry Muffins

All my cakes are starting to blend together, but i'm pretty sure that we had to postpone this cooking adventure cos someone stole our flour. The night before we had wanted to bake but our flour was gone! Then we went around asking to borrow flour from people but they only had self-raising and we needed plain. Sad times for the baking team. The next day we bought both self-rasing and plain. We'll be prepared, boyscout styles, for next time.

This adventure came about because we had left over berries and because by this time Miranda and I were quite addicted to baking. We decided to make the muffins again but get them less soggy. We're cultivating domestic skills by the minute. The main change was that we only used blueberries and this other small berry that was red and a bit more tangy. This was Miranda's idea and it turned out to be a good one.

Our plan was to not mix the berries in so much and also to use our cake tin to try to keep the muffins from spilling out like last time. All good plans which worked pretty well. Muffins were awesome. Go team.

Interesting facts about Cakes of England: At some point (that I can't remember when) it became a thing were whenever we bake r2 runs around just yelling out 'cake!' this was possibly when we cooked the banana cake. I can't remember.

Cakes of England IV

2007-11-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

Documentation of Esther's baking adventures

Cake No. 4 – Assorted Berry Muffins

Miranda wanted to make blueberry muffins apparently they don't have them in Holland. I may have made that up I can't remember. We went to the supermarket but real blueberries were mega expensive and we could only get frozen mixed berries. So we made some assorted berry muffins. huzzah.

Super Cook: Yeah, we are!the set up

They went ok. Sadly there isn't some sort of mega crazy story. R2 helped (and by helped I mean volunteered to crack the egg so that he could claim he also cooked them and therefore had a right to eat 1/3). They didn't really cook the first time, well they kind of did but were still a bit soggy, but we think that was just because some of the berries were mega big. Also they went a big mong and spilled out of their cases. But they tasted ok. And we had left over berries which leads to the next baking adventure.

All the people you see in photos..

2007-11-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

Before I left Alix said that one of the things people like about her Canada blog was her entry that introduced her friends. Now, i'm nowhere near as eloquent as Alix nor can I be arsed writing as much as she did but here a some of the kids who keep popping up in photos and stories.

Miranda

Miranda is Dutch and we share a kitchen on the sixth floor. Her and Linda were the first people I met when I arrived in the halls. Miranda is awesome and looks after everyone. She has an awesome red bike and is doing a Masters in Tourism. I'm led to believe that she has done absolutely no uni work since she's been here as she is always procrastinating in the kitchen making tea!

Frenchy

French (Sarah) is actually American. French is her last name. We also share a kitchen. She's a crazy Catholic with a habit of getting me into trouble. Sarah only has 2 days of class a week and yet she hasn't made it to a full week yet. She spends most of her time in the library but not because she's studious. She's only there to hijack the computer as she doesn't have one of her own. The other guy in the photo is her boyfriend Justin. He came to visit and is cool.

R2/Dan

Dan is the last of the kitchen mates. He somehow got the nickname R2 because I said he had a monotonous accent, don't think about the connection too long as it makes no logical sense. Dan is English and is borderline obsessive about his hometown Stoke-on-Trent. He's good for late night random kitchen chats and stealing DVD's off. His hero is Alan Partridge. He studies 'consumer marketing'.

Linda

Linda lives in Cavendish but she's on the fifth floor. She's a crazy dutch woman and life is never dull with her around. Linda's kitchen is easily the dirtiest in our Halls and she shares it with a bunch of nutcases. Hanging around her and Miranda makes me feel short. I'm pretty sure she studies the same thing as Sarah, this mystery course is potentially at the Business School. She doesn't seem to like quirky British humour, she says 'it's weird'.

Monique

Moving slowly down the floors, this is Monique. She lives on the fourth floor. Monique is Dutch but a lot shorter than Miranda and Linda. For some reason it took me weeks to work out that Monique has classes in the same building as me. She studies Landscape Architecture. Monique defied all the barriers of time and space by having a 19th Birthday Party for her 24th birthday. (I think that's 19E Jen!)

Maarten

This is Maarten. Guess where he is from? That's right another Dutchman (I swear they are taking over the world). He lives in Cambridge Halls just across the road. Maarten's kitchen is the party kitchen, nobody knows why it just is. The floor is always sticky and they don't seem to own any teatowels. One of Maarten's pastimes seems to be ranking his friends in order of preference and then telling me about it when he's drunk. Good times.

Jon & Dan

Dan (right) lives with Maarten and is English. He appears to be some sort of skinny indie kid. He has a large CD and DVD collection and lots of concert tickets on his wall.

Jon (left) is an American. He's from New York State, not New York City. He lives somewhere in Cambridge but I've never been to his house. Jon easily gets bored and resorts to making prank calls. One time he made me go clothes shopping and I actually bought clothes. Jon often pretends to be scared of me and there was an altercation the time he threw my shoe out the window. Jon plays lacrosse.

Steve

This is Steve, he lives in Maarten's flat. He is English, I believe from Bristol. Steve was one of the only English people I could find to watch the Rugby World Cup with me. He claims he was 'a gentleman' when Australia lost. I feel this claim to be incorrect. When England lost the final he didn't reply to my text message offering a patronising hug. Steve has been a cripple for more than half the time I've known him. 3 weeks ago while drunk he decided that jumping off the first floor balcony was a good idea. It clearly wasn't as he broke his ankle.

Tormod

Tormod is from Norway. He doesn't live in halls. He has a house. Their landlord is anal but it is fully furnished including a brand new double bed. A few weeks after arriving in Manchester he randomly decided to go to India for a week, nobody really knows why. He is doing his masters in something. He is coming to see Bill Bailey with me so he must be alright.

Kevin

Kevin is fun. He's American, from Boston specifically. He's the youngest of the international students at 19. He is studying history. Kevin lives in Cambridge and has good taste in movies. Kevin and I worked in a costume shop in the lead up to halloween and then spent all of halloween pointing out how much people had spent on their outfits. Kevin pulls awesome faces for photographs and loves dancing like an idiot.

Wiebke

Last but not least is Wiebke. Wiebke has a hard name to say (almost as bad as Tormod). She is from Germany but apparently even German people think her name is weird. I am lead to believe that she lives in Cambridge but I have never been to her house. Wiebke and Linda enjoy going swimming together. On Wiebke's birthday we made her a cake in a saucepan and cupcakes with her name spelt out on the tops. She wouldn't let us sing her happy birthday before her birthday, but we did anyway because we wanted to go out.

Other notables include...
Simon - I have no idea who he lives with but he seems to be around a lot. He's from Shefeild.
The 4 J's - Josh, John, Jim and Joe from the kitchen next to ours.
Emily - From Maarten's flat. She always answers the door bell.
Adam - Also from Maarten's flat. Seems to only come alive with alcohol.

That'll do for now
The End.
Love Esther.

Updates are go!

2007-11-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me I have not updated this lately. Uni arrived and I had work. I thought about updating but quickly realised this was only a means of procrastination and I convinced myself that I could procrastinate in other ways.

For starters on the right I've linked to a stack of facebook albums of stuff that I've been doing since I've been here and you can see them without being on facebook now.

Uni has been busy but awesome. We had our first assignment due last week which was a presentation. I've handed in the booklet that I made to go with it so I can't photograph it but it was pretty fun. As well as that I've had workshop week, where the highlight has definitely been the magazine workshop where we just basically did magazine spreads out of whatever we could gather in a 10min walk around our uni building and whatever images we could make with letterpress. Seriously the best.A few weeks ago I also did inductions for letterpress, bookbinding and screenprinting which was mad fun.
Last night was Halloween which is apparently a bit thing here especially among students. We went out all dressed up which was fun and the opportune mime made it's triumphant return!
Everyone has had visitors coming over which kind of sucks cos mine don't get here until December, but mine are staying longer so I can't complain. One of the visitors we've had is French's dad, he's the world's fastest clapper. I was going to post the youtube video but can't work out how, just search for "world's fastest clapper".

In other news I'm off to Bath for the weekend and then mid next week I'm going to London with Uni where I will get to stay at Rob & Cam's house (they moved in today!) So I'm looking forward to that. I haven't been on a trip since Liverpool so I'm itching to get out and about.

Other things that you should know about my life in Manchester...

I'm not dying of malnutrition, as proven by this photo of my dinner last nightThis is how Tuesday night always seems to end up - Karaoke at the Footage (I do not sing)Colours are fun! (Ok, that has nothing to do with being in Manchester.. It's just a fact!)The End.
Love Esther.

Cakes of England III

2007-11-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

Documentation of Esther's baking adventures

Cake No. 3 – What to do with overripe bananas?

Given the last two baking adventures my decision to cook a banana cake from scratch seemed ambitious. Luckily I dragged Miranda into it too. Adventures ensued. Found a recipe on the internet. Bought ingredients. Bought a cake tin. Things are getting serious! We don't have any measuring cups/scales. We guess quantities. We add a bit more flour. We cross our fingers and bake. 1 hour later...CAKE! Awesome. Seriously the best one so far. Probably needed more sugar.

Cakes of England II

2007-11-01T10:51:00.001-07:00

Documentation of Esther's baking adventures

Cake No. 2 – Esther and Mel's sponge cake

Randomly went to Mel's to hang out. The guys played football on consoles for (no joke) 8 hours straight. Mel and I were bored. We baked a cake!

Mel had a packet sponge cake, sounded easy. There wasn't much mixture. We added extra baking powder to make it rise. We poured it into the pan. In the pan it was about 3mm thick. Crap. We need more cake mix. We don't have a sponge recipe. Mel has a random cooking magazine. We search it for something we can substitute. We locate some sort of banana muffin recipe. Good enough. We guess the ingredients to put in and add it to the other mix. We add red food colouring. Mel gets it all over her. It looks like blood. Cake in the oven. Cake looking promising at 20min mark. A short time later there is a burning smell. Cake had risen and is touching the element on the top of the stove. Starting to regret that extra baking powder. After careful removal cake is back on track minus the large chunk out of the top. Cake is cooked and decorated. A fine recovery! Also the cake is tasty. Awesome.The End.
Love Esther.

Cakes of England I

2007-11-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Documentation of Esther's baking adventures.

Cake No. 1 – Wiebke's birthday cake

It was Wiebke's birthday. We went to ASDA to buy cake related paraphernalia. All the cakes looked like bollocks. We decided to make our own. Bought a packet cake mix. ASDA were out of cake tins. We decided to improvise.

Making the batter was uneventful and appeared to go well. The cake-tin-substitute issue was more complex. We decided to use a pot. We were going to take off the handle. We forgot. It bubbled and deformed a little, but no big drama. We tried to remove the cake from the pot. We failed. We put the cake back in the pot and poured the icing over the top. Ta-da! Everybody ate the cake with spoons out of the pot.The End
Love Esther

2007-09-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've been sick for the last week or so which has sucked. It's fun being in another country when you can run around like and idiot having fun but when you're sick and there's noone to give you sympathy or look after you and everyone else is still out having fun then it kind of sucks. But I'm slowly on the mend.

Uni started this week which has been of fun. There are 5 of us who are joining the course in 2nd year which makes it a bit easier to fit in and the tutors don't really know the 2nd years either so it was a bit of a get to know you week. We had to make a name badge and poster which answered 20 questions that they gave us (nothing interesting.. fav colour, music, food, designer etc) for my badge I made a shirt that said “Hello! My name is Esther. I am the exchange student. Please talk to me. I have no friends” which amused me greatly if nothing else.

The course looks a lot more integrated over here which will hopefully be a welcome change. One of the subjects which is a bit more theory-based we have to write an article and then design the spreads for the article as if it were in a magazine, which just makes the whole thing a lot more fun. (also good cos last time we did magazine design I really wasn't happy with what I came up with. so i get to do it all again) (also also good because you could edit the essay to make the paragraph spacing better.. haha.. ok back to things that you might be interested in...)

We have a whole other subject which is about 'Futures' I can't decide what to think of the lecturer given that he spend a large chunk of time talking about how old alliances in Europe could lead to an unlikely war between England and France where Scotland would be on the French side and Portugal would be on the English side. I don't doubt that's he's right that it's possible I just don't get what it really had to do with anything..

Over the weekend a group of us decided to go on an overnight trip to York. I had no idea what to expect I'd been told that there were castles and it has an historical town and that there was a train museum (that I wasn't allowed to go to or Owen would kill me) but I didn't know a lot else. It was a really fun trip. It kind of turned into the York Pub tour (I think we went to 5 or 6 pubs in 2 days) but we had a lot of fun wandering through old streets and looking at the huge Minster (which I didn't want to pay £4.50 to see the inside of). We went on a Ghost Tour which where some guy walked us around telling us old stories, he was quite entertaining. We went on a brewery tour and explored the food and drink festival. Too many photos are all on facebook.

I really liked York (although I don't know if I could have stayed much longer) there is just so much history in Europe that we're totally missing in Australia (or failing to recognise). It's crazy going into a 300year old pub for a beer, then walking down the road to go to a 450year old pub for dinner (the second pub was clearly better because it was older) It's amazing to me that when we're on the ghost tour they can point out houses that date back to the plague and that the York Minster was built over 8 generations in the 13th Century.

It was weird coming back to Manchester after York. Our train arrived back around 10.30 on a Saturday Night so to go from the quaint quiet streets of York to Oxford Rd (the main student strip that all the unis and a millions pubs/clubs/restaurants/fastfood places come off) was quite a contrast but we agreed that there was a strange sense of being 'home' even after a few weeks.

The End.
Love Esther.

orientated

2007-09-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of over this whole blog things already.. but we'll see what we can do.

I think that I'm just tired from the last week. The last 3 days have been orientation, which to be honest I wasn't expecting much from. As a general rule I suck at people (meeting them, talking to them, generally maintaining conversation, interest etc) Plus these things are on the whole boring events. Sit in a lecture theatre and have people talk at you.

But I've actually had a really great time and met a stack of cool people (none English =P) I've met what seems like a million Dutch people (well 4), a stack of Americans, some Swedes, Poles, Germans, a Canadian and I'm sure that there are others that I can't remember at the moment. There was still a lot of sitting around in lecture theatres but we also went to Alton Towers (theme park) which also didn't suck as much as I would have thought. Largely because it was all greenery not concrete.

So today is my lazy Sunday before I start have enrollment and 'freshers' starts (what I can only assume is the most ridiculous name for o'week ever) should be fun. And I'll finally get to find out what it is I'm doing here course-wise. Although I have it on good authority that the faculty has a screenprinting studio, letterpress and bookbinding stuff (how awesome is that!!) so it can't be that bad.

Ok that'll have to do because i've lost interest and have some shopping I have to do..

The End.
Love Esther.

2007-09-11T00:19:00.001-07:00

wrote this last night and couldn't post it cos the internet was bollocks... today i'm more awake and about to go on adventures into the city to take some photos and explore....

So it seems as though I have had the longest day in the world thus far. I my family in Sydney just after 2pm on Sunday and it's now Monday night in Manchester (about 5am Sydney time) and apart from a few uncomfortable hours on the plane and an hour on Mel's couch this arvo, I haven't slept.

First impressions of Manchester are.. Red Bricks. They are everywhere! It seems like everything is made out of them and they have a thing for red brick and then all the window sills etc are in white. It looks bad. Anyway tomorrow I'm going to run around taking some photos of the place. So I can show you all then.

Apart from sleep depravation the whole thing has just been weird. It doesn't really feel like i'm in another country. (Maybe cos I've hung out with an Australian all day and have been eating vegimite on toast) I think I accidently annoyed Owen by not being really sad that I was leaving, mainly because it didn't feel like I was leaving. And the enormity of it all is just starting to hit me. And by just starting I mean I'm still too tired to realise.

It was bizzare arriving at the airport at Manchester because it was really small and I was feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed. Oh also...Incase anyone was on the end of one of my visa rants a few months back. IMMIGRATION IS NON EXISTENT! I stuffed around making sure I had a million copies of a million documents and they just asked me 3 questions and stamped my passport. ridiculous. ARGH..

The flight was ok. I had a window seat the whole way which was cool. And there were some pretty alright movies too. it was totally sweet flying across the Middle East. There were no clouds and you could just see all the lights. It was amazing. Another cool thing was that the sun started to rise when we were somewhere over Russia and because we were moving at the same rate as the sun it stayed in this twilight sunrise state for hours. It makes you realise how small you are in the world. Very cool.

I'm uploading some photos on to facebook now which is taking a million billion years but there are some of my farewell and some of the flight.

Anyway, I'm bumming around Manchester tomorrow and then moving in to my accommodation on Wednesday, Orientation starts Thursday and uni starts Monday. So it'll all get a bit crazy from now onwards. Get Skype and then i'll be able to talk at you once I'm all settled in.

The End.
Love Esther.

2007-08-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

testing testing... 1...2...
this is a test

the end.
love esther