I'm Still Alive!

Hey everyone,
I know it's been a while since my last post, so I figured I'd give you guys a quick, or maybe not so quick, update. Right now, I'm doing a mixture of homework and actual work in Olive Cafe, which is about four doors down from my flat. I've been getting more hours there recently, which is great since it gives me spending money (very necessary). John's visiting in two weeks, but I have two 3000 word essays due the day after he leaves so I'm trying to get at least one of those completely out of the way before he gets here. In the UK, they calculate papers by words, not pages, so for those of you who don't get what 3000 words is, it's about 9-10 pages. It's really not too bad, but having two due right after John visits is a huge pain in the ass. I also have two presentations while he's here, which I'll be working on during our visit with my family in England. Fun fun. I've already had two presentations, which I found went really well, so I don't think it's as hard here as everyone makes you think. We'll see how I do on my essays, though.

Now on to the fun stuff. On the 5th, I went to Dundee with my friends, Katie and Monica, for the day. It was an £8 trip, which basically just paid for transportation up there. It was a pretty small city, but we had a good walk around and went to the free McManus art gallery/museum in Dundee. There were some interesting artefacts, such as merchandise that was made in Dundee, to ancient Pict ruins from near Dundee, to a hairdryer? I'm not sure why the hairdryer was there. It was kind of weird.

Old ship in Dundee. From my class, I've learned that Dundee used to be a big trading port. Fun fact.

McManus Gallery

Albert and Victoria. They're in every museum I've been to here

Katie pondering, "What is a museum?"

Pict skeleton

 The museum also had a lot of Scottish art. It seemed most of it depicted heroic Highlanders and very "Scottish" scenes. I think there was a big patriotic artist movement linked with the Jacobites, so that probably had something to do with it. Below is my favourite painting because I just love these cows. Soooo cute.

There was one thing that struck me about Dundee. There were multiple penguin statues around the city. I'm not 100% sure why there were penguins. We were all just so excited about the penguins, that the trip to Dundee was completely worth it.

Circle of Penguins

Penguin statues on a wall surrounding a church

Enough about Dundee. Last week wasn't very exciting, but it was Chiara's 22nd birthday on the 8th. Last Friday, we threw her a big birthday party, and all of her friends came over and stayed until about 2:30 am. It was a good party, but the clean up the next day was a pain. Luckily, Wendy and I had the forethought to clean up a bit that night. After getting some work done that day, I decided to go out with Katie and her friends from IFSA-Butler, the study abroad programme that she's on. A lot of universities at home don't have good study abroad programmes of their own, I guess, so they go through ones like Butler and Arcadia, which are through other universities. So all of Katie's friends are from different universities, not just University of Illinois-Chicago. So we all met up and went to the club on campus, Potterow, which has "the Big Cheese" every Saturday night. It plays music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s (aka "cheesy" music), though I was only told it played 90s music. I was a bit disappointed on how little 90s music they played. I wanted Britney, NSync, BSB, and Spice Girls all night. Instead I got, James Brown, A-Ha, and a bit of S Club 7. It could have been better. I'm going to go back to this club called the Hive to see what their "Big Cheese" is like. Hopefully more 90s music. Last night, Katie and I went to the Chocolate Society Chocolate House Building Competition. This meant you could make any structure out of the materials provided (square cookies, nutella, peach rings, gummy bears... that sort of thing). We opted for a bridge. It was pretty bad, but neither of us are architecturally savvy. The best part was basically eating it after the competition was done.
This week I'm trying to focus on writing my essays a bit. This weekend is Lara's flatmate, Felicity's birthday. That should be fun, and I'll try to give more updates on stuff, but it's been pretty uneventful around here. Keep on truckin, everyone!