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!