One month later...

Say hello to the Secretary of the King's Manor graduate students club. We don't have a specific name yet, but we're working on it. We just started it up this week officially. It is now a formal university club and we are eligible to use the minibuses and get funding for trips and everything. It's pretty exciting. There's really not much more to say about that at this point because it's just started. but i will continue to update on what's going on with that.
We are about halfway through second term, just handed in our first set of papers. Next week we hand in a formal dissertation proposal. That's pretty scary and awesome at the same time. I'm really excited to start working on that. I think I will like working on my dissertation because it will be all I'm working on so can devote all my time to it, and it's something I chose and not what they told me I have to write about. That brings me to what I'm hopefully going to write about. I want to write about the cultural heritage of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I hope to talk about the issue of Israeli occupation and see how the cultural heritage is affected by it all. I will also cover the claims of ownership of the heritage since Christians, Jews and Muslims have religious interests in the area. So yeah. It's a work in progress, but that's the starting point.
We just had quite a lot of snow today. It's only about the third time we've had snow this winter, but it was alot (for here).
My classes have been going well so far though. Not much to report about them though. They are keeping me busy.
I'm doing a placement this term at the Quilt Museum. It just opened this past summer and the Quilter's Guild of the British Isles is running it. They have some amazing quilts there. One of them is from 1750. Crazy. It's in really good condition as well. I do alot of marketing/publicity stuff which is ok. The other day though, I went with a staff member from the museum to a fair for students. Basically we had a stand where kids could come up and sew something and we would teach them how to sew and they made little pin cushions. It was fun.
In less exciting news, for you, my shower head was replaced :) The one I had before was horrible. It basically sprayed mostly outwards and not down. They replaced everyones in Wentworth though. It is much better now. No more outward spray.
The people in my program are finally starting to hang out with each other. It's great. We complain about the work load and talk about our papers and stuff. It's good bonding time. :)
Ok, well I've been told I need to talk about some of the things that are different between here and back home. Well, the English eat potatoes with EVERYTHING. You basically can't order a meal in a restaurant without there being some sort of potato. Coffee. They do not have good coffee here. Even Starbucks is not the same. The tea here is amazing, but the coffee sucks. Homes are very different. They are much more compact and the neighborhoods are much more compact as well. Houses are generally set in rows more like the way duplexes are organized. They are generally 2 floors because each floor is quite small. That's the way most buildings are here actually. They are not spread out but rather go upwards. Even bathroom stalls are long and skinny. You don't have grid systems for streets. You can't do the parallel road thing. This means that I have to actually know where I'm going and not guess. It's a little frustrating, but it means that I'm forced to learn my way around, :). Cadbury chocolate here is actually good. I didn't think that the same brand of something could be different in different countries but it is. It's much better over here and you get a better selection. Also, Coca Cola is different. They don't use corn syrup here, they use real sugar. So Coke tastes different than American Coke. It's weird. They do not have the capabilities to deal with snow at all. The best they can do is put down some salt or sand. And not very much of it. People don't have snow shovels here, they have brooms. Last week London shut down for a whole day. No taxis were running or buses because of the snow. It was ridiculous. There was only about 2 inches of snow and the world stopped. A street is called a gate, and a gate is called a bar, a bar is called a pub. Fries are called chips and chips are called crisps. Pants are called trousers and underwear is called pants or knickers. Be careful what you're saying. If you say I just got my pants all wet, they might think you peed yourself.
Ok, well I'll try to do this on each post. But I think this was significantly long enough to make up for some of my slacking. :)
Love you and miss you all
Lauren