A Tour of the Castle

For all of my readers in Salford, this may be a bit boring, and I apologise.  For my readers not in Salford,  Welcome to Castle Irwell!  Castle Irwell Student Village is Salford Uni's largest student accomodation community, hosting over 1,000 students.  It contains a mix of British and international students and undergraduate and graduate students.  It's only a mile away from the main uni campus and is conveniently located near a few convenience marts and other stores.

To familiarise yourself with the area, this is the path I walk back from uni everyday:

I walk down Seaford Road and at the end, I turn right...

...on to Cromwell Road.  That red brick building is reception, which I walk past to get into the neighbourhood...

...and I walk down this winding road...

...a bit further, then I veer off to the left.

I walk between these two houses towards the garden just beyond them...

...and when I turn right, my lovely, homey House 46 comes in to view.  It's on the right behind the little tree.

My perfect, wonderful, little bedroom in its natural state,
messy and very lived-in.

All the houses here are set up the same way.  They all have three floors with two showers, two toilets, a dirning room, and a kitchen.  And there are eleven bedrooms, each with a bed, wardrobe, desk, and washbasin.  With eleven people living in one house, keeping everything clean can be a challenge, but I happen to have really lovely housemates, and we all pitch in to keep things tidy.  When we have a party, we team up to tidy before the party starts and we gather to clean up together the next day.  It works out really, really well.

The kitchen in my house, looking fairly clean

The dining room in House 46

Castle Irwell is a great place for parties.  You can get to know your neighbors here really well, and all of my neighbors are erasmus or international students, meaning everyone I live near is always up for a good party.  There's a party every weekend, and we love to mix things up with fun themes for fancy dress and decorations.  We're always seeing the same faces at parties, and of course always having a good time.  I'm moving out on 22 May, and I am really going to miss it a lot.  House 46 is my home, room 44 is my own little space.  Two more days, two more nights in my bed.  And then I'm off to Europe!

Some firends with me at a party in the fantastic House 46

El Idioma de Inglaterra

Okay, yes, the title of this post is in Spanish.  It means ‘the language of England’, and I put it in Spanish because I really wish I could put my Spanish skills to use.  But alas, English is the native language of England and my homeland, too.  So no multilingualism for me.

To get to the point of this post, I am learning a ton about language over here.  Most of it comes from the fact that a lot of my friends are exchange students or international students, and English is their second language.  I am called upon to settle arguments, edit papers, help people tell stories, and teach vocabulary purely for fun.  It’s forcing me to learn a lot about English, about its grammar rules and why we use the words we use.  I mean, could you explain why we say “so many apples” but “so much fruit”?  These are my daily struggles.  

I also struggle with vocabulary at times.  People tried to teach me the tricky words before I left the US, like how a ‘jumper’ isn’t a type of dress or how the trunk of a car is called the ‘boot’.  But all of that wasn’t enough for the number of words I’ve learned since getting here, such as transgressive, chav, knackered, gutted, toastie, motorway, and many, many others.  Other familiar words have new meaning, such as proper, which over here means ‘truly’, and getting off, which means ‘making out’.  My other struggle with language is spelling, because the British have opted to use silly and unnecessarily fussy spellings and not to see the value in the way we Americans have streamlined (and improved*) their language.

I’m sure many of you are wondering, but no, I don’t have a proper Mancunian accent.  My accent has a sort English edge to it if I’m not thinking about it, but nothing so strong that I can’t instantly be identified as an American.  My friends tell me that of all the Americans they know in Salford, my accent is the most stereotypically American.  Sigh.  So I won’t be leaving here with a souvenir accent, but I will be taking British catchphrases with me.  Come July, Michiganders will hear me say things like ‘It’s a bit shit, really,’ or ‘We get on well nice, it’s absolutely fantastic’ and of course my favorite British phrase, ‘for fuck’s sake!’ 

I expected to learn a lot from studying abroad, but even I am surprised how much language I’m learning without learning a new language.  I guess it just takes getting out of your own dialect to realise how distinct it really is.  And even more, how much there is to appreciate in the old dialect and the new.  That’s love for Mancs and Michiganders, right there.

*Cases in point: cheque, programme, colour, centre, sympathise, etc. 

Traveling the UK: London

London.  Biggest city in the UK.  Biggest city in the European Union.  It’s a big deal.  So two friends and I decided to visit over the long Easter weekend.  It was a great trip, four full days in the city with beautiful weather, we saw just about everything.  Seriously.  This was largely because Prerna and I had Alessio as a tour guide, or our "guide-tour" as we called him throughout the trip.  But the problem I have is how we saw so much that trip was one huge whirlwind.  I find it difficult to explain the city with more than just a description of all that I saw and did.  So once more, this post is lacking in narration but incredibly rich in photos.

Some parts of London are very pretty.  And some are very posh, as well.

This is Harrods, the most upscale department store in the city.  Yes, we went in.  Yes, it was incredible.

Some childhood dreams were fulfilled this weekend...

Harry went through here and so did I.

We went to some markets...

Camden Town Market

...and many museums.

A collection of full and partial Greek (?) statues in the British Musuem

A piece of art displayed in the Tate Modern

We saw all the major landmarks in the city...

Me in front of the Tower Bridge

Me, Prerna, and Alessio in front of Buckingham Palace

...by day and by night.

We took the tube to get everywhere we needed to go...

Westminster Tube station, just beside Westminster Abbey

...we stayed in hostels located near the city center...

Prerna in our dorm-style hostel.  I slept in the top bunk next to her head.

...and most importantly, we had an awesome time!  It was a whirlwind of a trip, four intense days of highly efficient sightseeing, but still an absolutely fantastic four days.

Me, Prerna, and Alessio on our night out in Soho