I like your pants-I mean trousers-

So hope this entry doesn't get me in trouble. 
But everyone has been wanting me to write an entry about it- so here goes.

I've been living in London for the last six months, and have been fortunate- maybe unfortunate- to have gone on a number of dates, and I can now say I am noticing some differences between the dating world in the USA versus here.
Take note that all I say here is MY observation/experiences/thoughts about the differences in the British dating world, don't take it to heart, and don't expect if you go on dates here to have the same experience as mine, this is just my view on it.
Also not all guys fit into these observations- sometimes the differences is just personality and not where they are from. 

Soo some of the differences between dating here and in the US I've noticed:

• Guys in the USA are more likely to start a conversation with a girl at a bar/pub/club and offer a drink immediately and then ask them out. 
• I have a theory that it is because European men are more reserved
• Or that US men are very daring or more confident and used to it
• It also depends on how intoxicated the guy is or what setting your in as well- at student bars I've noticed its the same both here and there if you catch someone eye they'll go up to you and talk- but at nicer pubs/bars- guys here seem to stick with the group of friends they came with. 

• Guys in the US will ask for your number in the first five minutes of talking to you, here in the UK I've noticed it takes longer
• This does depend on the guy, again maybe they are more reserved, 
• I like the UK way better 

• At a bar/club guys in the UK are less likely to touch you (unless you want it :P) 
• also depends on what bar/club
• the custom of grinding isn't as big here- which is awesome-
• I like that so much more here then in the US where you would get immediately pushed towards  a guys crotch while dancing. 

• Guys in the US are expected to pay for a date, where as here, It's more OK to split the bill 
• I've talked to some of my UK girl friends about this and most of them say they're fine with paying half the bill/ if they do pay half the bill its not a sign that the guy isn't interested. In the US one of the first questions a friend asks you after a date is- so did he pay?- and thus if he didn't it kinda hints that something went wrong.
• Again i like the UK way better. 

• British men have and love a dry, witty sense of humour
• the uk humour is amazing, but confusing at first
• I love it

• British men have more manners
• most do compared to most guys from the US. 

• British people in general sign their text messages with an x (kisses) 
• I do not know if the more x means they're more interested or what. 
• I like it :) x

• Hookup culture is the same everywhere.
• get drunk, take someone home, have fun, see if you like them in the morning. 

• AND THE ACCENTS <3

maybe I'm biased and an Anglophile its true  

alive

I'M ALIVE I PROMISE.

Lets keep you all updated shall we?
At Uni the term is going by well, quite fast, reading/learning lots of cool stuff though.
Finally got my grades back for my first term essays! got distinction and merits in all of them  and what i believe is a distinction (roughly the same thing as an A) in my advanced quantitative class. So I am HAPPY  and the feedback for every essay helped understand more of what my lectures want, so i can do better this time around.

Dissertation wise, I have begun the first Chapter, and have been reading a billion and a half articles about the characteristics of adolescent psychosis- all really cool articles though :P

I also bought the DSM 5 and I've been nerding out with it when I have free time. So now I can diagnose all of you.

Recently, with my group of friends we have been spending a lot of time trying the local beers and ciders. So far I've been to one brewery and went to one craft beer festival, where we got to try a bunch of different craft beer- and they had a mix of a dogfish-head and a london beer!! I am so excited about that. I'm still in love with american IPA's and have found some british IPA's that i liked as well. Stouts here are of-course amazing, don't think ill ever get tired of having Guinness on tap :) at every pub I visit. Should be going to a couple more breweries soon-excited.

Last weekend I got to go on a day trip to Oxford! for serious, Oxford is beautiful, every building is amazing, we tried to go into some of the school buildings pretending we were students, but weren't very lucky. We did end up paying and visiting the Chirst Church and got to geek out for a bit about the harry potter scenes that where filmed there :).
We ate at a Tavern where lots of famous people have been, which was pretty cool, and we visited the natural history museum as well. Getting out of the city for the day was nice, got to enjoy some great green scenery on the train ride there, which was a nice change compared to loud London.

 

I've gone to a couple more outdoor markets, and two different festivals at Trafalgar square (chinese new year and russian maslenitsa festival) which where both very fun.

Food wise- I've perfected my cooking, even though making a lot of stuff is difficult when you have a micro-conventional-fake-oven-crap. Have been able to try some other restaurants as well, one night me and a friend had Ethiopian, nomm.  Still haven't found my proper sushi place yet though.

I am also now in the committee of Birkbeck's international students society- woo memories of running the international club in Honduras- which has been a bit time consuming but I love being able to get involved/ being part of the committee. I keep meeting people form all over the place, which I love.

One of the best parts of living in a university of london hall (besides having Mr mouse as a pet) and uol area is that I have been able to make various groups of friends!
Besides my main birkbeck international friends, and the group of friends I see everyday in classes, and the group I see at the same bars :),
 I've been able to hangout with many UCL, LSE and Kings students- who live at my hall and who all have really great stories about their lives and why there in london.
Met lots of people from all over latin america - so I've been able to speak spanish- and love getting the wow your accent in both languages are awesome comments- :)
 I also have a couple friends who go to SOAS (very activist/socialist loving-cop-hating school) who I love to drink and have debates with.
The diversity of London is one of my favourite parts.

Epic blog fail

BLOG. HI.
i apologize for NOT writing in forever.
I'm alive! and have finished turning in all my first term essays and assignments, so I know have some more time to update all of you on what I've been up to.

So since my last blog post, before I left for France, I met up with some friends and had tea time! in this very british tea time cafe and we dressed up, it was marvellous

I visited my aunt and uncle in France! and  my parents came as well. France was amazing, got to eat a lot of great food, take day trips to Germany, shop, sleep, laugh, dance, drink wine, eat more, amazing.

Christmas eve was spent in Metz (a city in the northeast of France) with my aunt, uncle, mom, dad and my uncles family. Celebrated the French style (as we ALL should) and ate an AMAZING 5+ course meal and then exchanged gifts.

On Christmas day we flew to ROME. Rome is by far one of the most amazing cities I've ever been too (I think it comes second after londontown) The history, the architecture, the sculptures, the ruins, the food, the men, the language, basically everything is awesome.
 Here some cool things we did in our 4 days in Rome

•  Ate some great great meals 
• threw coins into the trevi fountain (one to return to Rome, later threw two "to fall in love" a girl can dream right :) haha)
• visited the Vatican 
• saw Michaelangelo sistine chapel masterpiece
•  visited the Colosseum 
• shopped, shopped, shopped- omg shoes. 
• practiced my italian. 
• Ate some more

We returned to Metz after four fascinating days and then just relaxed/hung out at home for a couple days, went to down-town Metz a bit too, and I worked on my essays.

New years again was great fun, with my uncles family, and more delicious food- cooked by my aunt and uncle this time :) 

We celebrated the new year a couple more times by going out to dinner at amazing restaurants and I spent quality needed time with my family :) 

pretty awesome way to say goodbye to an epic year for me and welcome another year that I am sure will bring much more adventures and exciting things :)

I came back to London on January 6th, and was happy to be back in the city. 

This first few weeks back where tough as I had to finish editing and submitting all my assignments, but finally they are turned in and all I have now is a crap tone of reading again!

I'll be updating soon about more adventures I've been up to while I've been back here in london-promise. 

lists

Last couple weeks have been good. Busy with class work, but have been able to enjoy myself a bit.
lots of christmas lights everywhere, and trees, the brits really love christmas :D

its weird not seeing a menorah around though.
heres a list of a few things I miss form the good'ol USA aka Maryland where I have lived. (not in any specific order)

• My friends
• My brother
• Target
• Having a living room
• Chipotle that taste like real chipotle 
• Hinode (my sushi restaurant) 
• Maryland basketball- i have to find various ways of watching it here 
• The Metro JUST for the fact that it rans until 3am on the weekends (the tube closes at 12am here, but next year they are planning for it to be 24 hours so when that happens, Fyou metro)
• IPA BEER
• The prices of a lot of stuff
• Bagels made by jewish people
• Food trucks
• YOGIBERRY
• crabs.crabs.crabs.crabs and crabs. 
• poptarts
• having an oven. 

Things I've noticed are the same in both UK and USA:

• Everyone end up at Mcdonalds after a night out
• Hipster are everywhere
• students are poor and love free meals/free alcohol 
• everyone hates the police

What I like more here then there

• Dancing! its more respectable here, no one just jumps on you/dry humps you (and if they do you know they're tourists)
• the taste of the fruit and veggies
• The indian food
• I love peoples dry sarcastic jokes here
• underground music-epic
• the taxi cabs and the buses
• People I meet know where Ecuador is on the map!
• I get less comments about being hispanic
• Its more rare that I'm from Latin America 
• The police don't have guns. 
• No one has guns
• Protests and demonstrations happen ALL the time
• I don't have to pay to see a doctor
• I can walk everywhere
• Football is watched, respected, talked about and most importantly called by its real name!
• No need to drive. 
• No 495 traffic.

Anyway the last couple weeks have been busy with classwork as i try to finish my assignment before heading off to france. 

I've been sick as-well :( lost my voice for four days and it came back right in time for a presentation I had to give.

 

I leave for France in a week to stay with my aunt and uncle for holiday :) and my parents are meeting us there as well.

I'll update as to how awesome France is and how much you should envy what I'm eating. 

dos meses

two months.
It's crazy its been two months since I moved here. I feel like I have read an entire encyclopaedia worth of research articles. I was reading back on my blog, and saw that I never really explained WHAT I'm studying here. So for all of you who have been hiding under a rock and don't know, I'm working on my masters in developmental psychology, and I hope to use it to eventually become a school psychologist- I would love to work with adolescence with behavioral and emotional difficulties.

SO psychology wise I have learned so much in the last two months and I love it! I'm taking an "advanced quantitative" class, which is basically a lot of advanced statistics, and how to report them all in APA format. I dread that class, but id be lying if I said I didn't understand why its important for us to know it, and I've been able to do all of the assignments -hopefully-well.

One of my classes is entirely dedicated to my dissertation, and how to organise it, what's expected and how to start. I have narrowed down my supervisor, and my topic is about the environmental causes of psychosis in adolescents. Most of you are reading that and are thinking, why on earth would I pick that? But I am so excited to be learning about it-nerd status.

In my genetics of development class I have an awesome professor. He understands that we all basically don't really love biology and are forced to understand it, so his really good at continually referring to why everything we are learning is important in the psych field, makes the structural genetics crap much more interesting. We have had guest lectures in the last couple classes, and they've talked about what the genetic causes of autism and other developmental disorders- cool stuff.

My family studies class is all about different family and marriage problems and the therapy technique used for these problems- pretty cool- learning a lot about UK laws in various aspects of family.

And qualitative methods- class all about qualitative research. Why I only learned a limited amount about qualitative research in undergraduate I do not know, but I'm kind of really liking this class. Its very philosophical based, and last class we spent a bunch of time talking about consciousness and all these epistemological ideas- very interesting.

Besides reading and working on assignments for all those classes, I've was able to go out/relax at least once a week in the last month. On my birthday I celebrated at a psychiatric themed club! there was 6 different rooms, each had a different theme. Here are some pictures:

I've been to a couple of the outdoor markets, visited a couple of the Christmas lights shows (Christmas lights came on here in early November!), tried a couple more indian restaurants and thai places. Nothing to much more exciting, and I know the next few weeks will revolve around me in my room or the library working on my essays, but I hope to have something to write about.

Rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine 

I am convinced that the weather in the UK is 100%  unpredictable. Looking up the weather does not serve any purpose as it will most likely say there is a 50% chance of rain. The other day I was sitting at a bench near my uni, and in the span of 30 minutes it went from clear blue sky's to rain, to clear blue sky's again! On Wednesday  I visited a university alumni at the department of education, it was poring rain while I was on my way there, and as I was looking for the building the rain completely stopped and the sun came out, unpredictable. I've always loved rain- weird I know- so I'm not saying I'm hating the weather, I just have learned not to depend on the weather forecast as much as I used to, to wear layers, as its either cold outside, hot inside, or cold outside and even colder inside- and my purse will always have an umbrella in it.   

 

halloween, guy fawkes et all

Some of you know, that Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. Ever since I can remember, I would get very excited about thinking of a costume to wear, and spend days looking for cheap places to buy the different parts for my outfits (I refused to pay $50+ for those pre made costumes). In the last five years, I've dressed up as the border patrol, Mario, Gene Simmons form KISS,  Baby spice in the spice girls, snooki, Dora the explorer, and R2D2. This year, I didn't have any time to make a new costume :( so I opted to wearing my R2D2 dress from last year. And as I am in London, I was wondering if their Halloween celebrations are as big as in MD.  London did not disappoint! On Halloween, I went with a couple friends to see a sing along of Rocky Horror Picture Show, so fun, we dresses up and sang along to the strange strange movie that is RHPS. On Friday, after getting ready, we headed off to the Birkbeck bar, where one of my friends won the costume contest! On Saturday we went to a pub crawl in central London, and I dressed up like beetle-juice! Halloween weekend, was one of a kind.

                     

My brother and I on halloween one year                                         beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice!

This week was reading week for the department of psychology. In some universities in the UK, students are given one week of a term break, in which you are supposed to catch up on all the readings, and get ahead on future assignments. Some people chose to go on small trips during this week, or if they're form different parts of Britain, go home for a bit. I used my time wisely, and made myself get up around 9:00 am, and spent the day reading away for my essays that are due in January. I also worked on my second statistics assignment. Got the grade for the first one today, and I did well, got what is considered an A, or distinction here :).

On November 5th I got to go see fireworks in celebration of bonfire night. Its a day to remember and celebrate Guy Fawkes failed attempt at blowing up parliament in the 1600's. Since bone fire night, I've been hearing fireworks, go off all week!

I've also been out to eat at a couple new restaurants. I found an Ecuadorian restaurant on Holloway road, that had every main dish from Ecuador, even jugo de naranjilla!! Had fun translating the menu away to my friends, and offering them suggestions on what to get. We all got different starters, including ceviche, empanadas and langostinos! for the main dish as suggested most of us got Fritada. It was delicious, and was so happy to eat a little home cooked meal.

I also tried a local sushi restaurant. Its an entire rotary bar style restaurant. It was ok, but man did it make me miss Matuba and Hinode! The dishes each were priced around 2 to 6 pounds!! They had lots of salmon dishes, but not much tuna. After talking to my friends from the UK, we concluded that tuna here is very expensive, and so in order to get good tuna at sushi restaurants, you have to go to a good sushi restaurant. YOSUSHI, is ok, but not amazing like my local sushi places back in MD. Have to continue searching for my new sushi place.

So now I'm starting a new week, planning on getting more reading done and at least one outline done for my essays. I have that statistics assignment due tomorrow, which is done, and I'm going to double check to make sure its perfect, I want another A!

The juggling act

Lately I've been thinking about how at times life is a juggling act. 
It's a circus clown on stilts, throwing around four or at times five fire lit torches.  He, not only has the pressure to be able to stand on stilts with giant clown shoes,  he also has the whole audience watching intensely to see if he drops a torch or even worse catches on fire. The audience gets more excited as he struggles or when he lights more torches. This my friends is a very extended metaphor for the life we all live in. 

We have the pressure to balance all these responsibilities on top of not embarrassing ourselves (too much) and all these aspects of life keep "lighting up" and we have to continue juggling everything.  On top of that we have what at times feels like the rest of the world looking at us,  whispering and wondering when we'll fall.  Pressure and responsibilities don't discriminate,  every man, women, tall, short, black, white, orange, Asian, American or British have them.  I've been noticing it more, especially now that I'm living in a big city, how much people juggle in their lives. The business people on the tube carrying their brief cases full of work they didn't finish, while on the phone with their child who's so excited to have them come home, the look on their face of exhaustion leads me to think they're juggling much more..or the people in my classes that tell me they are studying part time, working full time and are mothers of four! And all these responsibilities makes it hard to have free time, to spend with family, friends and to simply enjoy things life has to offer. 
So it's important that this clown gets at least one day off a week to step away from the show,  but in real life that might not be possible and it can lead to a very stressed out clown, which can leading further down to depression (my psych way of thinking is beginning to show) and a can lead to a sad, very sad clown. It's important to try and find some time for a break from it all. 

We're all running our own circus show. In my juggling act, I now have the pressure of  being new to a country and trying to not embarrass myself too much. One torch is lit with the pressure of studying again after two years off,  another with the pressure of getting used to the British uni system, and all these endless readings. On top of that I have to make sure I'm setting some time aside to make good friendships here and keep in touch with those far. So in my circus I'm a short clown, whose shoes are too big and is still getting used to her stilts, and juggling three or four fire torches. As expected, there are days I have stressful freak outs.. but for the most part I'm able to sustain myself on the stilts and keep on preforming.  Either way though I'm loving most of it for now.  Happy clown. 

The point is, even though we have so much to do in life, it's important, to try and find time to enjoy the little things (yes zombieland is an awesome movie, also if you were thinking yolo, please exit my blog now). 

The end to my philosophical mumbo jumbo :D