Thanksgiving at Home... Away from Home

Blogging location: Flat, 3:14am

Being proud of my American identity, I wasn't going to let Thanksgiving sneak by without acknowledgment. Quite the opposite. I was going to impose it upon the unsuspecting country in which I now live in... Luckily, my flat mates were more than happy to accept this new form of imperialism-- then again, who wouldn't? Eating and cooking all day?

So last month, I made a list of all things Thanksgiving while chatting about Americanisms with my flat mates. This list included turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, mash(ed potatoes), green beans... the typical English Christmas dinner, really... but wait! Candied yams??? What are candied yams? WHAT ARE YAMS? Something had to be done.

Like the good procrastinator I am, I waited till the day before to actually shop for my designated assignments: candied yams and pumpkin pie. I seemed to have chosen the most difficult-- no, IMPOSSIBLE-- task. It wasn't a good sign when my flat mates said that they'd never seen pumpkin pie sold here and I probably couldn't get canned pumpkin in England. That's like calling Marty McFly "chicken". Determined to not be defeated, I set out on the search for canned pumpkin. Which reduced to a search for pumpkin-ANYTHING. I even got to a point where I looked for pumpkin soup and mashed pumpkin in the BABY FOOD aisle. I think I've officially become "crazy-pumpkin-girl" in West Yorkshire since I've asked so many supermarket employees whether they carried pumpkin in a tin. I literally spent an entire day-- with a break consisting of one lecture in between.

Rejection after rejection after rejection, I dragged my feet up and down the streets of Leeds, looking for any international food stores, considering settling on making a cheesecake or even... wait for it... STORE BOUGHT APPLE PIE (and not the Marie Calendars kind either! Tragedy!) The rain was relentless and the wind had picked up to a point where you had to nearly double over to walk.

Anyways, I'll cut to the chase: after buying some yams at the open market, I made a last ditch effort for pumpkin-anything at Sainsbury's. And there I found solace in awkward pear-shaped form... no, not the middle-aged manager at Sainsbury's... Butternut squash! The peachy-coloured cousin of the pumpkin. You have no idea how much I doubted it would be a formidable substitute, but they smell exactly the same and look the same on the inside, surprisingly. I might say butternut squash is a bit creamier, but I had a smaller portion of cream cheese anyways. Thanks to the amazing Paula Deen, I had myself a pumpkin pie recipe, but I stealthily swapped canned pumpkin for freshly made squash puree. The night before I prepared the squash/pumpkin puree and today it all came together! Yes, I would do it again because look how it turned out!:





Onwards!
For a while I thought Thanksgiving was going to consist of just the yams, pie and maybe mash, which is a bit sadder than my original plan, but I was prepared for the worst. Sometime around 2:00 in the afternoon, one of my flat mates rolls into the flat with a Turkey! Prospects are brightened. That goes in the oven around 3:30. Later, one of my flat mates comes in with the largest sack of potatoes I've ever seen and carries it into the flat the way the seven dwarves hi-ho'd their mining equipment up the mountain and two of them made two pots of mashed potatoes or "mash" while another dashed out to buy green beans, cranberry sauce, more pie supplies for the crusts, etc! In a flurry, I rang mum up for her candied yams recipe and Thanksgiving was in full throttle by 4:00!

Production:


^Pie filling











All in all, Thanksgiving actually proved to be more successful than I thought... and here's why:
1. Thanksgiving happened. My flat mates came together at the last minute and went out to haul back copious amounts of food. The turkey didn't actually roll in till about 2:00pm. o.o Imagine how nerve-wrecked I was.
2. We had everything (that I would eat for turkey day-- I purposefully left stuffing off the list because it's just one of those foods that looks rough)
3. My flat mates LOVED the candied yams, even though they had their doubts and/or never heard of yams before.
4. I was able to keep my sanity via butternut squash. And my flat mates really liked the pie. :)

To top off the night, I webcammed with my family while they made dinner, hung out with my dog a bit, watched some Youtube videos with my little brother and "sat" at the table with them for Thanksgiving grace. Doesn't beat actually being at home, but it was damn well close to it. :)

Grand Announcement

Hi friends!
This sounds very trivial to be published on its own, but I've achieved one of my goals: Bringing California to the UK... AKA getting my flat mates to say "Dude." Now I just need to make it a habit of theirs.
Wish me luck!

-Raechel

P.S. Also brought CA to Leeds within the first three weeks: the weather was stunningly nice... it only rained two days! Score! But alas, the inevitable has stricken: the chance of rain is now 50% every day. I've gone thru two umbrellas (guys here, and I mean guys my age, apparently don't use umbrellas because they think it makes them look like sissies...). Cheerio!

A Bit of Traveling... Manchester, Liverpool, & Dublin

Blogging location: the good ol' flat; it's sunny outside! AMAZING.

.:NHS:.
Before I get to the traveling part, I would like to announce that I've gotten my flu shot. Momentous, I know. But the difference between getting a flu shot here and getting one in the States, thanks to the National Health Service, is the paying for the thing. As far as I know, I just walked in, checked in and got my flu shot. It's weird not having to pull out the insurance card or the wallet. I really don't have any further comments because I'm not one for politics. Oh and I also qualified mystically to get the swine flu shot... A flat mate of mine can brag about surviving the swine flu, so I guess I can always live vicariously through him.

.:Traveling:.
Now, for traveling! A few weekends ago (boy, has time flown!) myself and more study abroad students from the EAP traveled via coach to Manchester on a Friday and Liverpool the following Saturday for kicks and giggles. And because I've always wanted to see those areas since 1) Manchester was originally my first choice for study abroad (but it was replaced by Leeds when I read up on Leeds' Communication dept) and 2) one word: BEATLES.

To prep for the trips, I maniacally utilized Google to it's full extent, searching for Top 10 Tourist attractions lists and then Google mapping places... I'm questioning whether I'm more neurotic than I think I am...

.:Manchester:.
Had to get up before the sun did to catch the coach! But considering that the sun doesn't really rise till like 8:00, this doesn't say much... Here's a video to summarize the trip!:




.:Liverpool:.
Ah, yes, Liverpool, home of the Scoucers and the Beatles! :) Yet another really early departure; unfortunately my battery in my camera was dying, so there's a lack of photos in this slideshow video, but hopefully, you get the idea. We visited some museums, both art and natural history museums and then hit the town for lunch (I had steak and ale pie for the first time!) and to look for Beatles landmarks, which we found! We hit the Cavern, where the Beatles played their first gigs (the original Cavern was torn down to construct the underground and the bricks were auctioned off-- but they rebuilt it anyways.) Next we sought out the Liverpool Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in the UK. Photos and videos cannot show how MASSIVE the building was. Though it wasn't very old, it still retained the style of an older cathedral. Next we went hunting for a Tesco's (basically one of cheapest supermarket chains in the UK) to buy munchies. To tie up the day, we went back to Mathews St. to the clubs and pubs and hit a couple of those places to peer about. Though their nightlife is not at all comparable to Leeds (this comparison is both good and bad), we still had a fab time and even caught a decent cover band playing in the Cavern. Here's all of that in audio visual format!:


.:Dublin, Ireland:.
Our decision to go to Dublin was partially based on Halloween having come from Ireland. While we were there, we hit loads of the tourist sites. I thought the city was pretty cool... till I was told it was the most expensive country in Europe. Boy, were they right... Dublin uses the Euro, but that aside, the prices for everything were nuts. For food we settled with buying cheap groceries at Tesco's. I personally went with 1 euro's worth of french bread and a hunk of brie cheese for a day, but I enjoyed every bit of it. :)
While Dublin was a cool place to see, there were probably more gift shops than there were actual attractions of interest, which is why I'm glad we went on the particular weekend we did. There were special events going on such as the Dublin Chocolate Festival and there were just tons of people around for Halloween weekend. Our trip also included a visit to the Guinness Storehouse. I admit that I don't actually care for Guinness and I would never use my own money to buy myself a pint, but it was just awesome to see the storehouse. Very impressive. And yes, it does taste noticeably different from the Guinness in Leeds (or anywhere else, I suppose).
Being in Dublin for the weekend, I decided to visit a church for Sunday service. I ended up going to Christ Church Cathedral, an Anglican church. It was a pretty traditional sung eucharist service, and the choir was more than amazing, not to mention the acoustics. Just being in there for the experience was truly awesome. Again, here's a video, because my writing isn't nearly good enough to be able to share my trip in just words:



.:Leeds:.
I don't have to travel far to get to Leeds, so I figured I'd go see a play my friend was in. :) The play was Grimm Tales and it was a fab production; the performances and the storytelling were very good and it was just a great time sitting on the stage (this play stresses a lack of a proscenium arch, breaking the bounds between audience and actors and basically, the actors are pretending to be wild crazies, so you can imagine the personal space boundaries they're breaking, haha). It really did make me want to do theatre (ha, look how I spelt 'theater').

As always, I'm taking questions from anyone about living in Leeds/England or suggestions of things to check out. Till next time...
<3 Raechel

HobNobs 'n' Broomsticks

Figure 1.0: These beauts have just surpassed HobNobs as my favorite cookie here. Amazing.

Blogging location: Flat > Bedroom > Desk
Current emotions: Sugar high (see Figure 1.0) and a little miffed that I can't get Sherwood's Qu CD from Amazon for the amazing $3 price because I'm in the UK. >.< And no, as much as I LOVE Sherwood, I can't afford to get it for £14.

So as some of you know, I took a very expensive train ride down to London to scope out the big city. A lot happened and I won't waste your precious time by rambling on. Here's a video for your visual enjoyment:

A Lesson in Culture Shock

Yes, it has started to rain, finally... so I bought my wellies (no one says 'rainboots' here, because that would just be "proper daft"!).

.:What???:.
I'm still settling in and adjusting to the cultural differences here. For example, I'm still putting on a puzzled face when someone asks me "Are you alright?" My initial reaction is "Yes, I'm fine; do I look worried? Am I bleeding?" I remembered later (despite the multiple times we were told at orientation) that this phrase simply means "How are you?"
In case you're wondering, yes, I am picking up some slang such as "chav", "proper", and "yob". And I fear that I'm already starting to absorb the word "brilliant!" into my vocabulary. What's worse, it seems that "awesome!", "oh, snap", "word" and "holla" are withering away. Don't think I'm not getting vengeance though... I caught one of my flat mates saying "dude" last week. Britain: 1, Raechel: 2

.:Jay-Walking is Legal Here... And it's the Preferred Form of Transportation:.
Crossing the street is still nerve wrecking at some moments for me, despite having lived here for 3 weeks already. You have tons of one way streets and also plenty of two way streets. I end up looking both ways regardless, for fear of some maniac coming out of nowhere. Also, they drive on the OTHER side here, so double caution when looking to cross the street. Bigger shock here: pedestrians do not have the right of way. I'm accustomed to lazily crossing the street at my leisure knowing that most people will slow down or stop for me, especially at cross walks. There are crossings, but here is no such thing as drivers letting you pass! If anything, they will speed up if they see you (or so I feel) and get as close to you as possible without touching more than 3 hairs on the back of your neck. I do believe this is going to be an official sport in the near future.
I cross this just about every day:


.:Getting Around... and Around, and Around:.
I've been blessed with something resembling a sense of direction, so I've managed to get my bearings around the Leeds university and city center/centre, but upon arrival, it was absolute madness. I've had a good friend of mine try to follow a street to get home... she was told later that she was going to be going in circles for a while... I imagine will happen to me soon. As explained to me by my flat mates, the roads are perfectly confusing because of the city's choice of preserving old buildings. Thus the roads are built around these landmarks that were originally erected with not the slightest consideration of a city grid. Leeds looks something like this:

If you actually care to know, it looks like this. Notice how the street names change every 2-3 blocks. Yeah, try asking for directions now.

.:Queue Up!:.
Apparently there have been studies of English people queueing up (lining up) for nothing. This makes me giggle... not that I don't sometimes get in a line hoping there's free stuff at the end... But anyways, the English are very anal about their queues (this isn't too much of a shock for me since we do have "lines" in the U.S... boy, don't we have lines... Disneyland is a prime example of paying about $90 to spend a day waiting). Fun fact: I have turned around in stores or on the street to see people lined up behind me waiting to get by (because I'm the American that is oblivious and in the way. Classic.).

That's going to be all for now! Feel free to leave any queries and curiosities in the comments section! I'll get to them ASAP! ;)

Cheerio/Toodle pip,
Raechel

Beautiful, Trashy Leeds

BLOGGING LOCATION: This sounds ridiculous, but I'm sun-tanning whilst blogging from my room. I told you it was ridiculous.

.:Trashy:.
The title is not meant to sound as harsh as it is, but it's true... because the bin men (trash collectors) are currently on strike here... I'm guessing it will take some disease or epidemic to break out before somebody does something about it. And that concludes the current events portion of my blog!


.:My Latest Experiences In a Nutshell:.
I've only been in Leeds for a week, in the UK for a bit less than a week and a half, and since then, I've gotten myself lost in an airport, misplaced some of my belongings, been emotionally prodded at by home-sickness, been in the presence of the Holy Spirit at the local church I found called Gateway, bought my own kitchen/living supplies, been bum-rushed by a hobo in an enclosed bus stop, karaoke'd to Backstreet Boys' "Everybody", bought a replacement computer and had rugby explained to me in a Birmingham accent. Truly a full week.



At Costa Coffee with my pal Kayla



Night out with the EAP group!

.:Why On Earth Are You Doing This To Yourself?:.
People ask me why I chose to study abroad. It is none of these reasons:
a. Bring a cute foreign boy home
b. Pick up a different language/accent
c. Party because the drinking age is lower
My honest-to-God answer is that I need to grow up! I've never really been really independent for a long period of time. So far, in Leeds, I've already been put to the test, but more trials to come... Anyways, onward!

.:My Flat:.
So, here apartments are called flats. I'm just a few plates, a knife and a cutting board short of being settled in (if you want to count it that way). I've met all my flatmates and luckily for me they're decent people. From now on, when I refer to my flatmates, I mean 1 girl from Spain, 3 UK guys, and a partridge in a pear tree. Just about all of us are suffering from Freshers (freshmen) Flu at the moment, as are a lot of the other UC EAP people I came over with. I think we're managing quite well though. THINK POSITIVE.

Thistle Do Nicely: Small Update About Updates

I apologize for the terrible lack of updates! I'm completely disappointed in myself. However there is a reason: with a big trip such as mine, there are bound to be big surprises that God just springs upon us, good or bad. One of mine is that I left my laptop on a train. I know it's happening for a reason, but I'm yet to find out what that reason is.
Will post more later. Off to a meeting with the Communications department! Can't be late. PUNCTUALITY.