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 

the dorm room life.

So its been.. about, around four? years since my last dorm room experience (Laplata 7 what what!?) and although this hall is both postgrads and undergrads and I have my own kitchen area and bathroom it still resembles an American dorm at times. There's a diner, with mediocre food, and noise from undergrads parting, all of which I'm fine with and expected. But this week, I had to deal with a little unexpected visitor in my room, who was never part of the plan.

On Tuesday night, before going to bed, I saw something run from next to my mini fridge to the other side of the stove, all I originally did was stare towards the kitchen area, as i didn't know what just ran by, just that something did, and so I stared.. stared for what seemed like forever, hoping,wishing,praying, that it wasn't my most dreaded fear inducing bug- Mr cockroach. But thank goodness it wasn't, because if it had been.. this would be an entirely different blog about how I ran around London like a crazy person after seeing one. but anyways, Mr mouse came back out and I pointed at him and said NOOOO. and he ran away.

 I got up from my bed, looked at everything food related I had left out and threw half of it out scared he had already been in it, and put the rest of what i thought he hadn't gotten too in the fridge. I then proceeded to clean everything possible, at 2am mind you. I had a mold & mildew spray for the bathroom that contains bleach.. and used that everywhere, because I googled that mice don't like the smell of bleach. I then had the courage to open every single drawer in my kitchen to see if i could scare Mr mouse away. I then heard him crawling underneath my sink, and that's the only second I squealed  like a girl and realised I would not be able to do anything if i found him while opening the cabinets besides scream and run away so I decided I was going to try and sleep. Between the mix of the smell of bleach and the irrational fear that Mr mouse was going to crawl into my bed, it was a hard night. I woke up the next morning and ran to reception to ask for help. I remained calm, knowing that if I yelled it would not help. The man at reception was really nice and helped me set up traps, and told me he would call pest control the next day. We never caught Mr mouse, but they did find a hole behind my fridge and fixed it. So for now, I won the battle against Mr mouse, and had to sadly remind myself that not only am I living with probably around 500 other people, but I'm also living in a major city, where rodents are common... never leaving food out ever again. Apparently mice don't like the smell of mint either?

A friend of mine reminded me of this mousehunt movie, and this is entirely how i felt on tuesday night.

More observations after being in London for about a month:

• Wildlife: London, has a lot of animals. Lots of birds, pigeons, geese, peacocks (just chilling at hollandpark) and the one I've just learned about; urban foxes, everywhere, according to this picture, even on the tube. 

• Fashion: Its bit obvious, but man do Londoners know how to dress (OK i guess it depends on who you look at). Both females and men, are wearing everything perfectly. Sweatpants are never seen, PJ's to classes are not an option. 
• Making out/Snogging: Is everywhere, its very public, and especially at night in pubs/bars/clubs. 
• Addresses: make absolutely no sense, the numbers do not go by evens and odds, and while your at number 105 take two steps and you'll be at 300. They have maps all over the places for the tourists (and the directionally slow like myself) but these maps are NOT facing north, their just a map of exactly how the streets are- a bit confusing. 
• Tea: although its always been a stereotype that the English love tea and drink tea every day at 5PM, while I been here I can say they do fancy their tea, but not in the carzyly exaggerated way seen in marry poppins. I always smile and haven't gotten used to guys asking each other "Ay mate, fancy some tea before we head to the next class!?". 
• THE Meltingpot: There seems to be very few people who live in London who are actually from London. London is more of a melting pot than New York. You step outside and can be submerged in endless chatter in 20 different languages, all NOT english. 
• Beer: Beer at pubs are not always served stereotypically at room temperature. A few that I've had, have been roomtemp, but most have been cold. Alsooo beer here that claim they re IPA's are nottt..Cider here is really good though :) 

brilliant, bollocks, knackered, chav, bog, quid.

I love the fact that I'm fluent in English (American i guess) and I've learned so many new words here. Ok, so most of them are slang, but still, its hilarious having a conversation with someone who's English and not understanding half of what their saying.  I always ask people to repeat stuff, but at time some people have had to ask ME to repeat stuff as well, so you know, i say tomato you say tomato. Loving the new words thrown at me, disliking the difference's in the spelling. Behavour, theatre, favourite, yoghurt= better set my spell check to English (United Kingdom).

in case you had no idea where that saying comes from :P 

I'm in love with London's architecture. Its a huge city, but it doesn't feel as intimidating as new york ( and although its mostly always gray, you can see the sky here!) Here you can see any style of building you want. Theres a few things from before the great fire, buildings from the late 17 century, or 18th or 19th or the new sky liners. It's awesome and I'm as in love with this city as I was when i first visited it when I was 17 (maybe so even more now). I wish I had more time to explore, I know after i finish this year, I'll travel and really take it all in. 

Here is a picture of how i spent my week:

This weekend was a nice relaxing one- spent most of it reading- but i did get to go to a vintage thrift shop, which was selling everything for  ₤1! Sara and I, took a bus at around 10am, to east London where this place was at. Upon arriving we were greeted by 500 people, like actually, 500 people. Long story short, when they started letting people in, it was like a stampede of animals. It was a very interesting experience. The racks were full of all these crazy cool boho vintage clothes. I bought purple leather pants! and a goofy shirt! so cheap, so fun.

the end.

Limited culture shock

While I've been in London for the past few weeks, I've been surprised at the lack of culture shock I've had. Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but so far, my frustrations have been limited. Besides having to always carry a converter for the three huge electricity plugs they use here, and slowly getting used to the love for coins, I think I've actually mastered crossing the street/ and looking the opposite way (I've even biked "on the wrong side of the road" already).

wall sockets here in case you didn't know 

 I've gotten used to changing how I say certain words because I get strange looks. And surprisingly, so far, the weather has been pretty nice. It rain's but its that overcast-drizzle-stop-the start again- rain. Which for now I prefer more than crazy downpours. I'm expecting it to get grosser/colder out though. English food, is not the best, they have good fries chips and their into healthy and organic stuff, so I love that there are fresh outside fruit and veggie markets. 

But MAN does London have AMAZING restaurants. Seriously, I think this city might beat Paris on the quality of international/gourmet restaurants. I haven't been able to try many, have been to a couple this last few days when my parents where here, but everywhere you walk there are restaurants, and I always stop to admire the menus and die with envy at the business men eating there. If i have any money after I graduate, I'm going to properly celebrate finishing my masters and eat at one of those 5 start restaurants around here. So needless to say I haven't had trouble with the food, besides I'm cooking for myself a lot as well.

 And I've also, so far have had a pretty good time meeting people and making friends. Originally that was one of my main concerns. How do you make new friends when you move to a new country. I think it's definitely helping that I'm in an academic setting, living in a undergrad and grad school hall and I'm literally in the middle of 4 or 5 other college campuses. The first weekend was a bit lonely, but I knew id meet people soon. The international orientation helped a lot, and I've gotten a good group of international friends, who are all so nice, interesting and all going through similar experiences so I'm hoping we stay friends so I can continue asking them questions/sharing my frustrations (such as why in a major city like London the tube closes at 12am!?) Plus we've already been planning to go to the harry potter studios when we have time, and already planned having some sort of a thanksgiving and seeing each other on Halloween. I saw most of them this weekend as well. In my course (aka major) there are 14 girls. Of course my developmental psychology (child/adolescent psychology for those who don't know) course is all females, who would expect differently :). All of the girls are really nice, and were all so excited yet so terrified of the year to come. I see all of them in all my classes so its nice to have a small group. I've also made some friends here at the hall, which is nice when they say Hi when they see you coming in and out, because its nice to know like at least someone knows your name. The undergrads are in the whole OMG-everyone is my friend-lets get drunk and not go to classes together- phase, but us post grads are in the HOLYSHIT i have to read all this crap this whole term-wait did the Internet just go out-I'm about to murder someone-phase, and having someone say HI makes you feel a bit normal. 

Woo I've been writing alot. So I'm getting used to the amount of reading we have to do in grad school. It's alot more than under gad, but what I find most frustrating right now, is the lack of guidance on WHAT to read. I guess I'm used to professors in undergrad being like look this is the book we will use, and you need to read this chapter for this class. In grad school- at least here- they give you a "reading list" for the week that includes literally entire textbook and are like yea so this is the recommended reading list. OK recommended, so does that mean I should read all of it, or only the ones i want to or what!? I've been reading mostly parts of everything, that are relevant to the next lecture and hoping that how people are doing it. I signed up for a bunch of academic writing workshops, which will help me, because all my classes are graded with only ONE final essay. My entire grade in the class depends on ONE essay, and if i fuck up I'm screwed. So needless to say my dyslexic self is going to write 523945849320 essays before I turn the final ones in. 

I got to see my parents this week, i loved it, and they loved London. Mom help me organize my entire room today, before they left, and it's looking so much homier. They brought me tapestries from Uganda and I've put up a bunch of pictures :). Saw my cousin on my dad's side this weekend too, she lives here with her family-adorable 2 year old daughter. I'm excited to get to know her better, as we haven't lived in the same country in forever. Ok now I'm hungry, so I'm off to make dinner and continue reading the one fun recommended read in my genetics of development class. 

First week

It's been a while since I've blogged. But I guess its any easy way for people to catch up on what I'm doing, and how I am while I'm here in London. So I've been in London over a week know, and so far, I've loved every second of it. Not saying its all been easy, but I'm loving the adventure that's coming along with the move. 

During my last two weeks in Maryland, I probably seemed insane to anyone who saw me, I literally was running around like a chicken without a head. From visa applying, trying to gain accommodation here in the UK, finalizing everything at my job so I did not leave everything a mess, quiting my job, selling two cars, organizing the storage and movers, organizing cleaning ladies for the empty apartment, numerous transactions at my bank, going to endless doctors appointment, filling medications for the next year, to seeing friends before I left, I barley slept, and kept feeling very frustrated, alone and questioning what the hell i was about to do with my life. But anyways, I finished the impossible and hopped on a plane to the most deserving vacation I've ever taken; a month in Ecuador. 

Ecuador was AMAZING. It was that vacation everyone always dreams of. I got to sleep in, I got to eat everything I wanted and more, I got to see my family and go out at night with my cousins as well. I also got Lasik eye surgery, which has made my life so much better already. 

Anyways fast forward a month, and I got on another couple planes, with more worried thoughts about what the heck I was doing. First night interesting.  After spending what felt like foreverr on airplanes or in airports, I was so happy to be on the ground, outside. I arrived at my accommodation in bloomsburg and was given a key and told which room I had. Long story short, I was given a double room instead of a single I was first told I had.  Heck yea, I'll take a full bed any day. But the problem was, I only had bedsheets for a twin. I stretched the fitted sheet, and surprisingly it fit, a little awkward on the bottom but oh well. 

The first weekend I spent running around near by stores buying things for my studio, and getting used to the area. While wondering around my neighborhood I of course got lost, and ended up in a cool town, which apparently is very popular. It's a colorful, hippie-punky town called Camden. 

I ran around Camden. went to their street Market and found a bunch of 99cent and other cheap stores where I bought more stuff for my new place. Sunday I spent the day doing touristy things, walked to Piccadilly circus from my hall, then to Buckingham palace. Kept thinking how awesome it was that I was here for a whole year, and that the tourist next to me where probably going home soon. 

The next week was followed by international orientation at my school, Birkbeck.

I met alot of people there from all over the world, the US, Russia, Japan, Brasil, Chile, Poland, China, everywhere. I went to some seminars on the difference in studying at post graduate level vs undergrad, and the difference between studying in the America vs UK. Basically I learned, that I'm going to need to read and write twice as much in the beginning until I get used to the system. I also went on a couple tours of the library and the neighborhood of my school. At night they had all sorts of social events as well. Went to most of those, and learned that there is a bar at the top of the main building of our college, and that its a frequent hangout for everyone, including professors. Alcohol in the UK seems to be a part of everything- they had welcome drinks at my hall, welcome drinks at the beginning of our orientation and school sponsored pub crawls. I went on the pub crawl to the student bars around my school. Thank god those student bars included student prices because the rest of London is twice as expensive at back home. Friday a group of the internationals also met up and went to the university of london's (birkbeck my school is one of the 8 colleges that belongs to University of London) first Friday party. Learned that the Brits part time hobby is waiting in line (the queue here) there was a queue for EVERYTHING. Met a couple of awesome guys from Birkbeck at this place, and spent the night drinking wine and dancing.

 Yesterdays we were planning on going to some speakeasy secret bar, but "the mayor did not want to see us", so we ended up going to brick lane, a street filled with Indian curry places, and got persuaded into eating Indian food, which i LOVED and was pretty cheap and we got free drinks.  

Today I spent the morning reading lectures for my classes that start on Tuesday and later met up with my friends and went to the British museum. 

My parents are coming to visit strating tomorrow until Friday, I'm excited since I haven't seen them in months. 

Haven't been home sick much. I've Only had trouble with getting used to all the coins the Brits use, and already almost burnt my hair straightener because of the voltage conversion. I finally got a phone number and can access the Internet outside like a normal person. :D

So yea I hope people read this, and enjoy my updates. Not sure how often ill write as I'm going to be busy throughout the school year, but check back every so often.