Part 6: One Month Down

Hey, guys! Writing this blog post about 2 weeks later than I had originally intended to get it out due to quite a bit of stuff managing to occupy my time. It's been an absolute whirlwind of activity mirrored with some incredible laziness on my part.

Settling Down...
Where the first couple of weeks here at Uni (College actually refers to some other, earlier form of schooling here) were mostly filled with fun, bonding, parties and social activities, it's pretty clear to see that everyone's calming down as work builds up. Not to mention the monetary aspects to heading out to the pub/club more than once a week can get quite expensive, especially when combined with transportation costs, club cover charges and the inevitable late night snack purchases.

Uni is more oriented towards individual study rather than excessive lectures multiple times a week and rely heavily on essays/big tests rather than smaller assignments to make up your final grade. Though I do enjoy the "free time" this provides us with here, it also means a ridiculous amount of emphasis is placed on only a few big pieces of work and increases stress quite a bit. In any case, I used some of my free time to make sure and get a couple of early essays out of the way as well as delve into some "Additional Screenings" for a film class that painted such screenings as optional when they in fact... were not...

Gutter Trash on Ice...
After realizing that American Football's intense commitment and pace weren't for me, and having not been good enough to play on the equally serious UEA basketball society's team, it was all down to Ice Hockey as the final sports club I'd check out. Luckily, it's proved to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of my time here at Uni so far. The group of people involved (Captain, Vice Captains, team members etc) are all really great people and provide quite the atmosphere for learning and developing skating. I, accompanied by 1 or 2 flatmates and sometimes the majority of my floor, have been to the rink outside of scheduled practices in order to continue building on the preliminary skills taught to us. Both necessary and enjoyable, these trips help me cover areas where I need more work and let me focus entirely on the task at hand.


The Norsemen are the rec hockey team for the city on which a lot of the UEA club leaders play.

Not only is this good exercise (when I push myself, which I mostly do) but it also kind of clears my mind. When I'm out there practicing, a similar experience to doing some cardio or lifting weights, my mind rests on the task at hand and kind of assuages both the stresses of school and pangs of homesickness I experience every so often (more often some days, especially when I have more free time). It'll be a great day when we finally get scrimmaging and I can apply any development in my skating ability (which is just above dismal) to the game of hockey. Yeh!

Amsterdam bound...
The international student club here at Uni has a pretty great Amsterdam trip planned out for the 10th, including 2 nights in a hostel, travel to and from the country and some promo for nightclubs there. The entire cost is equivalent to 1 roundtrip ticket through KLM, so it was a no brainer to go with the club's travel package rather than shell out more dough for essentially the same thing. Sure, we'll be doing bus and ferry rather than flying, but I guess I can just get more reading done (probably not).

Now that there are a few of us going on the trip, it's time to start researching and getting excited for my first big excursion of the trip. Hell, I've spent a month lying around Norwich which has been nice and overall pretty fun, but there's only so much this city has to offer. It will surely be fun to get out and explore, perhaps inspiring me to get the travel bug and spend less on food/drink in order to travel more. Scotland's not far, for instance. I've never been to Ireland. In any case, I'm sure to snap quite a few photos on the trip since I don't have much for you this time. My camera died right as I was about to take some photos of the latest flat trip out to the ice rink and so you'll just have to sit tight for more soon. Sorry!

Writing...
The city of Norwich and the UEA aren't exactly adjacent in the way that it's roughly a 45 minute walk from the center of campus to the center of town. Though I've never done this walk, I've bused it quite a bit. Venturing into the center provides a much-needed break from the aesthetics and distractions of campus life. Not to say that my flatmates are merely distraction, just that I find I'm more creatively productive when I remove myself from the typical and everyday routine-based environments here on the UEA campus.

I've spent my fair share of walking around the city and seeing all the different little nooks and crannies of the center, trying to get a lay of the land and discover anything tucked away without just googling "best kept secrets" or something. I've discovered the Mm..Food vinyl in a record shop, for instance, and had to purchase it. Getting it home might be tough but whatever, it was a direct result of one of these walkabouts and I'm really glad I took the time to do it.


With these walks has come a kind of rudimentary knowledge of where things are and a sampling of the local cafes. Yes, as stereotypical as it might sound, I have spent quite a few hours writing (whether screenplay or novel) over coffee at a back table in a cafe in the center. Headphones in and instrumental music pulsing (trance, downtempo, mellow hip hop = best for me) let most of the outside world be blocked out and focus turns instead to the creative task at hand. On top of this, my new favorite cafe located in the same building as the library has some kind of wireless network that doesn't gel with my laptop's Airport and so I don't have the added distraction of the net which is one of the most seductive and time consuming things ever. EVER. Plus, I can pop over to the library and have a browse once I'm feeling brain-drained. We'll see if this results in good work or not, but for my sake, let's all just cross our fingers that it's some nice fiction.


The Forum building, home to the library and cafe.

Until next time, my friends, I'll try and do loads of exciting stuff to make sure every post is a better read. Always improving (except when I'm feeling lazy, like most days)!

Part 5: School...?

School...?
I suppose that, being part of a study abroad program, the time would come where I would actually... you know... study. Yet it seemed like I was still on vacation as I spent time in lecture halls listening to my instructors and screening films. Sure, I've been keeping up with the readings that are just as needlessly wordy as back in the states, and starting some outlining for the big essays I'll have due before I fly home in December, yet there's almost a subconscious refusal of a school year mentality when I'm so far away from the U of O.

All the same, I think it's high time I slow it all down and get some writing done. Going out most nights has been a blast, and a great way to bond with the flatmates, but I don't want to burn out on the fun or spend all my damn money so I better cool it. Just think of all the fun that I can studying Media Practices and writing thousands of words about it! Doesn't sound interesting? It.. isn't so far.

Birthdays...
These Freshers are young! One of the girls in my hall turned 20 on Thursday and so we all planned to head down to the Norwich city center to celebrate with an evening of yelling at one another to be heard over loud music followed by dancing. We settled on a club called Lola Lo's all tropical themed and dark. I couldn't decide if it the bamboo and tribal wallpaper was ultra tacky or awesome, but the lights were low and the music was good enough to have me on board. Imagine a restaurant at Disneyland by the Swiss Family Robinson mockup, entering a pair of glass doors and walking over a short wooden bridge into a nighttime jungle theme peppered with blacklight and a kind of sweet aroma emanating from the bar (also done in bamboo). It wasn't terribly busy at first, and we managed to get in without much of a wait (always a bonus) but soon filled up with various societies from the UEA having their social night out. We were shortly joined by the rest of our flat and some friends from Constable Terrace also arrived later in the evening to complete the set.

Nothing like hearing Get On The Good Foot to get me smiling and wiggling around at the table before hitting the dance floor. The DJ threw on a smattering of different genres, peppering a few big electronica anthems in between old school hip-hop, indie rock, Journey, Maroon 5 and more. It's obviously more fun when you know the words, and even better when no one can hear you belt them out thanks to the volume. Probably coming out of my shell a little bit and adjusting more to the club atmosphere after being severely deprived for years back home.

I think the most important part of the whole evening is that everyone seemed to have a good time, no one was too drunk or upset, and the taxi ride back provided enough cooldown time to return to the flat a little more subdued and ready to see if I couldn't skype with my girlfriend before heading off to dreamland.

Travel...
Finishing Week 2 marks the second time that I haven't done anything aside from kick back and relax on my weekends. Those of the Americans I've met who're here for an entire year have the right idea in taking it slow, working on school and saving their money for bigger trips. However, I don't have the luxury to bide my time and head off to Spain during winter break. Instead, I need to plan out all of my weekend trips so that I can achieve at least some of them before it's time to head back to Oregon. A rough idea would be:

Week 3 - Cambridge
Week 4 - The coast? The weather's rapidly getting worse but I can't just ignore how close the ocean is
Week 5 - Amsterdam ? Supposedly everyone studying abroad pays a visit to the Netherlands, I don't want to be left out!
Week 6 - Edinburgh? Will I run out of money after this?

There's also a Norwich City premier league game on the 29th that I'd absolutely love to go to and get my support on with loads of dedicated fans. The team supposedly has one of the most loyal crowds this side of London that have supported the club rain or shine. A friendly taxi driver described the atmosphere to me on the ride back from grocery shopping with the flatmates and it sounds pretty ideal.

In the meantime, I think it's time for some movie watching, novel writing, schoolwork completing (lower on the list? Don't tell!), and fun in the rain here in Norwich. Next post I'll discuss the quiet night in that ended in nudity (not me, of course) and how I learned to ice skate! See you sooner rather than later.

Part 3: London - Ending

[This will be edited with photos tomorrow at some point, just want to throw the text up and finish it with this spare time.]

Changing hostels to one in Willesden Green, a short walk from the tube station along the Jubilee line that has had technical problems 2 out of 2 days I’ve been here, seemed to coincide with a slight switch in mood.

Where there was once a kind of jubilant excitement preceding each day, these feelings seemed to have lost their foothold and been replaced by more of a passive indifference and pangs of homesickness. I imagine this is the natural step which someone studying abroad goes through, but I can’t help feeling a bit like I’ve failed to fully embrace the experience.

To counteract these unwanted feelings, the daily planning for my London trip also has taken a turn. Instead of trekking around the city at high speeds, exhaustingly cramming all I possible can into each day, things are going slower now. I attended the Imperial War Museum, for instance, and stayed not a minute longer than necessary. I absolutely love that all of London’s museums have quite a bit of free content to peruse, and so I felt guilt free taking off after inspecting the marvelous “Secret War” exhibit featuring real-world MI5 and MI6 information, passports, weapons, and gadgets from WWI/WWII/Cold War and the Gulf War. It was fascinating.

The Jubilee line being down meant no Abbey Road today, and so I settled on searching out Gosh! Comics, a store I hadn’t visited since living in London in Middle School. They’d relocated, and a quick google search told me they were now in Soho. Soho in the daytime seemed like a crosswalk between the Picadilly/Leicester Square area and Oxford Circus, but upon walking through tonight it was alive with people at the pubs and shops. Here in London, it is totally ok to stand outside of a bar in mass groups and chat with a pint/drink, no one seems to fuss about alcohol in ‘public’ at all. Brilliant.

The first introduction to Soho I received after locating the street Gosh! was on were not 1 but 4 different sex shops; videos, toys, lingerie, emporium. The street was narrow, pedestrian, and each shop seemed to come with its very own odd-looking fellow standing on the stoop and looking at the passers-by. Fine, I thought, I didn’t have any intention of pushing past these gentlemen to browse the wares anyway.

Gosh!’s window had a giant knitted squid, part of some London art-everywhere style event that, according to the photos, included loads of different knitted items sprawled over, attached to, or hung on common monuments around the city. I don’t remember the shop being nearly so trendy, but it was bursting with people of all sorts. Of course there were your typical comic readers, but also the more smartly dressed examining the plethora of graphic novels, art mags, and zines that make up the first floor. The basement is still reserved for new comics and back issues, but wasn’t nearly as populated. I grabbed a Punisher MAX and the latest issue of Scalped (Both really good, you must go and buy them right now) before heading out. I desperately wanted to chat about the store with one of the guys, but I was checked out by someone new and so didn’t bother asking about the move to the new location.

Forbidden...

I stopped at a Café called Costa (read my thoughts on this particular one below) and worked on my novel over some coffee before heading out again in search of a big store. I’m looking for a very particular (being cryptic for reasons) item that I haven’t been able to find yet, despite quite a lot of searching. It’s harder still when Google Maps indicates a location that doesn’t actually exist. For such a cool service, they sure do mess with me sometimes. No worries, I ended up walking most of the way to Forbidden Planet, perhaps the single greatest nerdy store in the existence of Earth. They’ve got vinyl toys, action figures, exclusive busts and comics from comic and film conventions, not to mention a bookstore and comic shop all crammed into 2 floors of pure glee (not the show. I’m sure singing isn’t allowed).

If you’re looking for used books, Smith Family style, then get yourself to Charing Cross Rd just past Leicester Sq. I made a couple purchase, one of which I had heard about (Dean Koontz always seems to do good stuff), and another I picked up merely on impulse. The pound-to-dollar conversion still makes these books more than they’d be in second hand shops back home, but the 2.50 pricetags were not even close to the 12 or 15 I’d be spending at a place like Waterstones.

Another kind of London...

Camden Town station puts you right in the middle of the main shopping district of Camden. Gone are the designer stores, the Marks & Spencers et all, giving way to a different manner of business. Saturday, despite the rain, Camden was incredibly busy and all the shops seemed to be full. There are stores as well as a plethora of stalls forming a kind of labyrinthine network of London/England-tourist clothing, novelty tees like you might find at Hot Topic, or more independent handmade/screen-printed fare. I even stumbled upon a couple art shops with some really fantastic original work.

Camden is also the spot if you want to get some cheaper eats, especially if (and I was) you’re craving Mexican or Thai food. There’s even bar seating made out of old scooters repainted (and missing the handlebars/front). The whole atmosphere is a lot of fun, and getting lost among the goods can eat up at the very least a couple hours (and a decent chunk of cash too, if you’re not careful). The visit almost made up for Arsenal getting thrashed earlier. Even took care of some gift shopping!

Brick Lane is also a similar style to Camden, though there was a fair bit more vintage clothing and graffiti around this district. As such, I walked around only half looking at the stalls and instead turning my attention to the walls, overhangs, and doorways for any kind of street art to photograph. I snapped a few, and discovered a couple of interesting galleries; StolenSpace Gallery and the Print Club London which sold some really awesome prints for about 40 pounds each unframed. Had I lived in London, I certainly would have gone to the print club to decorate my flat with some interesting work but it was a bit high for something that might get trashed in transit back to the states so I skipped out just barely avoiding dropping some serious cash.

Perhaps the most interesting stall I found while in Brick Lane was one selling vintage toys, clothing, and a wide array of old gas masks from all over Europe. I guess you have to buy them somewhere, though I certainly wouldn’t want to drop 20-30 pounds on something that no longer serves its intended function. Although…

There was also a music festival going on Sunday, and I was attracted by the bass heavy reggae only to learn it (of course) cost money to get in and so I skipped out and finished my day with a good long skype session. Now off to Norwich, here are just a couple tips to share;

Few tips...

Cravings: If you need some coffee and want to pop open your laptop for a little bit of internet while you get your fix, I have to recommend Café Nero. Similar-styled Pret a Manger and Costa offer roughly the same thing, but Costa’s wifi is not free, and Pret’s is quite fussy. I never had an issue at Nero.

Beware: The Jubilee line, on which Willesden Green and my hostel were located, is perhaps the worst line in the history of the London Tube. Out of the 4 nights I stayed there, 5/5 days saw the Jubliee having technical difficulties and partial closing. When booking a spot to sleep, try not to do it on this temperamental transport.

Sleepy: Both the Astor Hyde Park and the Palmer’s Lodge are both good hostels that offer two different experiences. If you’re looking for something young, loud, and close to everything then Hyde Park is your thing. However, if you want to get more sleep in a darker room with less people, you’ll have to sacrifice a bit of distance and convenience for the nice facilities and on-site bar of Palmer’s. I think at this point I’d rather stay at Astor thanks to the ease of navigation.