Expat Amy

It has actually been nearly two years since I’ve updated this blog, but recent events have now given me very good cause to revive it.  A good friend of mine asked me on a date when I was in England for my graduation from Lancaster University last December.  Carl and I have spent the last several months dating long distance, with him making a trip to visit me in Indiana in May, and myself visiting him in England and meeting his parents in France in September.

Carl and I had been planning to go hiking in the Lake District on the last day of my visit.  After flipping through a few books, we settled on a trail off of Haweswater Resevoir.  We stopped to eat our lunch at the first summit (heading towards Swindale, maybe?  I’ll have to check the map again), and then Carl surprised me by proposing!  Some people might argue with my use of the word ‘surprised’, since I felt there was a good possibility he might propose, but in the moment I really couldn’t believe it!  Of course, I said yes, and we are really excited to be getting married in May.

I’m also looking forward to moving back to Lancaster in the New Year.  I have a visa that enables me to work in the UK, so I hope to find employment soon after I move.  I’ll be using this blog to share updates on life, as well as information about planning an international wedding and marriage-it feels a little overwhelming to think of all of the documents, forms, and visas we’ll need to manage, and hopefully posting what we find out about the process here will help some other person googling for help in the future.  I’m pretty excited to be blogging again, and I hope you’ll stay in touch!

 

What I’ve Been Up To

Well, the name of my blog is a bit of a misnomer now since I am no longer abroad. I’ve been stateside for about six and a half weeks now, after surprising my parents by arriving home over a week earlier than they expected! It’s been a very fast six and a half weeks, though. I was expecting a long time to settle in, launch a full-scale job search, and spend a lot of time working on my dissertation, but those plans were cut short when I was offered a chance to work at Purdue(at least through Christmas) coordinating a new internship program. I’ve been working hard creating application forms, training presentations, and am starting to plan an orientation conference for the interns. You can actually learn about the program at www.extension.purdue.edu/military, where we have all the application materials up. And hey, if you know any students who would be interested, pass on the information, because this isn’t just for Purdue students!

In between work, I’ve managed to make a bit of headway on my dissertation by collecting all the documents I’ll analyze. I have also been to a few football games and spent lots of time with my family! It has been super rainy hear this week, though, with hardly any sunshine, which is making me a bit nostalgic for Lancaster. Hopefully I’ll have some visitors sometime!

 

If you live in Lancaster…

A few weeks ago, a friend began an announcement in church with the statement, “If you live in Lancaster, there are three things you need to do”.  Those three things were to tour the Lancaster Castle, attend the walk-about play in Williamson Park, and climb Clougha Pike.  I am very excited to announce that as of Sunday, I have completed all of these items!  I visited the castle in March when my grandparents came to visit, but I went to see Jason and the Argonauts a few weeks ago.  I had a lot of fun walking through Williamson Park and participating in the play (it was very interactive!). 

 Part of the set.

We were very excited to help carry the flag as the play progressed through its odyssey.

Clougha Pike was very enjoyable and afforded some very nice views.  You can even see the university campus, although it is very small.  It was fun to go walking in a place that’s so close to where I live.

The best part is, however, that on top of The Three Things you need to do if you live in Lancaster, I have also completed the special bonus item of going on a cross-bay walk.  I had several people tell me that I needed to make sure to do this while I’m here so I took the opportunity to tag along with my friend Carl and some of his friends.  We started in Hest Bank and took about four hours to cross to the other side of Morecambe Bay.  I had fun, and it was a really enjoyable time, although we definitely got a rain sandwich on sunshine bread.  It absolutely poured in the middle of our walk.  My raincoat soaked all the way through it was raining so hard! 

I am trying my very best to make the most of my time left in England.  I have one paper to wrap up as well as reports due into Rotary.  I’m really fortunate that I’ve been afforded enough time to see so many places around the district. 

I have a lot more photos, with commentary, posted to facebook.  If you’d like to see them they are here:  walk-about play, Clougha Pike, cross-bay walk.

 

RNIB, International Conference, and Grange-Over-Sands

I have been a very busy bee over the past few weeks.  The most over-arching item has been a self-directed study (read: 5,000 word essay) that I handed in last Tuesday, just in time to start my next one!  I’ve also been hanging out a bit with the Rotaract Club based at Manchester University.  Thanks to my links from the Link Conference last September, I’ve been able to attend one of their activities and hop down to Birmingham with them for some of the international conference.  Their event was very fun-we were raising funds for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (I would link to their site but it seems to be down).  We met at a bowling alley with a representative from the group, divided into teams, and took to our lanes.  The alley put the bumpers up because there happened to be a catch:  you were blindfolded when it was your turn to bowl.  One of your team mates had to guide you to get the ball, help you line up your shot, and then get out of the way in case you were off a bit.  It was hard.  I’m not a good bowler to start out with, although I did manage a couple strikes.  I’m pretty sure they were flukes.  The best part was making the trip to Manchester with my friend Ai who was in Rotaract in Taiwan and when she was at university in Scotland. 

The weekend after that I met up with the club again in Birmingham where the Rotary International Conference has been taking place.  While our time there was limited, we did have a lot of fun at the social event which was also my first fancy dress event.  Fancy dress doesn’t mean that you actually dress fancy…more like you dress silly.  The theme was 1960s and I think I managed to do a pretty good job with my outfit.  Here I am with Chris from University of Manchester and fellow Ambassadorial Scholar:

Fast forward one week and I had another grand adventure.  I was invited by some of my friends from the International Cafe to do a bit of hiking, so we caught a train to Grange-Over-Sands with the goal to climb to the top of Hampsfield Fell.  Before I go any further, I want to give a disclaimer that I had a lot of fun.  Things definitely didn’t go to plan, though.  First of all, there were some issues in following the map.  We did finally make our way to the top and had a great view of Morecambe Bay and the Lake District.

That was lovely and we had a great rest at the top in the sunshine, with no one willing to pay attention to the rather ominous clouds approaching us.  But before rain became an issue, we had a bigger one at hand.  While the map had us bearing left in a large circle to bring us back into Grange-Over-Sands, we some how managed to bear a hard right on our way down the fell.  Hence a 2 hour walk became something more like 4 or so.  It really wasn’t bad and we all were enjoying the nice scenery…then it dripped a few drops of rain…I put on my rain coat…it dripped a bit harder…I zipped it up…and it poured.  Buckets.  Of rain.  There might have been some cats and dogs in there as well. 

Any way, we’re trucking along having positive attitudes besides the torrential downpour, except we are definitely not on the path that we ought to be.  So we eventually turn back to the left and bear that direction until we come to a road.  Basically, we ended up in Cartmel, which is the name of one of the dorms here on campus, and had to climb back over the fell in order to get back to Grange-Over-Sands!  Needless to say, I got my workout for the day.  And really, really wet.  I finally made it back to my room just before 8pm, managed a hot shower, some dinner, and one episode of Grand Designs before I turned in for the night at 9:30.  All in all, it was a really fun adventure, and I’m really glad that I was caught in the rain with the people I was with because we didn’t have any grumblers or complainers, just people willing to go with the flow (almost literally!). 

 

London!

My flatmates and I decided a while back that we needed to take a trip to London before we left Lancaster and after weighing the options we decided on the last week of May:  after papers were due, longer days, a possibility of sun and warmth, and before the full masses of tourists arrive.  It turned out to be a great decision and we had an awesome time, and we even had some sun!

Day One:  Train from Lancaster to London Euston; our first experience with the Tube, wandering about, and a cruise on the Thames.

Day Two:  Natural History Museum, British Museum (and the Rosetta Stone, ooh!), Guided Bus Tour

Day Three:  Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

It’s actually really neat how we were able to tour the Houses of Parliament:  a member of parliament was the guest speaker at Lancaster Loyne’s charter dinner the week before our little trip.  In chatting to her, Geraldine Smith, afterwards, she asked if we would like a tour and her awesome assistant set everything up for us.  It was really interesting to tour around the interior-it’s such a famous building for its exterior!

Day Four:  Tower of London Museum, Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, and coffee in Soho

Day Five:  An amble through Trafalgar Square and St. James’ Gardens, the Changing of the Guard, picnic in Hyde Park, farewell to the Tube,  Train from London Euston to Lancaster

I have a ton more photos up on my facebook account.  You can view them here.

Overall thoughts:  I don’t like big cities, but I actually really enjoyed London.  I left thinking that it would be great to come back.  I didn’t even mind the Underground which is really saying something considering how much I dislike the underground in Paris and Rome. 

Seeing a play at the Globe was one of my favorite parts.  There was this huge sense of, ‘this is how Shakespeare imagined his plays being performed’.  The whole production was very well put together and I laughed the whole way through. 

It was a great little break before starting in on my next set of assignments which are well underway at this point!  I’m hard at work, but there are some fun things coming up and I’ll keep you posted!

 

Wigton Rotary Club

I had a fantastic visit to the Rotary Club in Wigton last week.  This club wins the prize hands down for Midwest connections.  When I arrived at the meeting I was greeted with, “So, have you ever been to Danville?”.  This is quite the odd question if you are familiar with Illinois geography since Danville is not a place one would automatically visit while in the States.  Nevertheless, this Rotarian had been a part of a GSE team to central Illinois and, considering that, along with Danville, they also spent a day at the Indy 500, they probably traveled within 15 minutes of my house.

Wigton is quite far from Lancaster-I had to take the train to Carlisle (about a 50 minute ride) to get there.  Thankfully I was given lodging for the night and the next day my amazing host Alison and her golden retriever took me out for some walking and sightseeing.  It was really nice to be out in the open and have a break from my dorm room!  Here are some photos:

Near Mirehouse

I am reasonably certain this is Skiddaw, the highest point in the Lake District

Ember playing fetch in true Golden Retriever fashion

 

International Cafe!

My flatmate and I attended an International Cafe last weekend.  For the entertainment, an angklung group from Lancaster University came to play.  Angklung is an Indonesian instrument that you hold in your hand and shake to make a sound.  Here’s a photo since I’m not doing a great job of describing it: 

There were several people-maybe a dozen or so-each holding two or three of these.  They would play them each according to the music so as they played their own rhythms the melody and harmonies came through-a lot like a bell choir.  They even let the audience play so I had a chance to participate.  The second half they taught us a traditional Indonesian dance, which I suspect inspired the Electric Slide.

Here’s a video of an angklung group on youtube-not the one I saw, but it’s a good example!

 

It’s Spring!

I realize that I have completely left you waiting to hear about the end of the district conference!  Hopefully my excuses are reasonably valid.  I was on holiday with my grandparents and my cousin for two weeks, and since then I’ve been hard at work on my course assignments.  I have 13,500 more words to write before my work is complete for this year, so I am still hard at work :)  Somehow reading and typing at a computer all day doesn’t make me want to type up more blog posts.  Funny, that. 

To sum up the conference, Sunday was fun.  The highlight, though, was probably talking more to the GSE team, and receiving about fifteen invitations to Malaysia!  It’s definitely going on my list.  In current Rotary news, I’m very nearly booked up for speaking engagements.  As it stands, I have about one every other week for the rest of my time in Lancaster, although they aren’t equally distributed (ooh, math terminology!) .  I’m looking forward to my club visits-they are always fun, and I like meeting all of the people!

My holiday was great, too.  Grandma and Grandpa and I explored the Lakes, spent about four days in Bath (which was a literary dream!), traveled back north to Conwy, and after a bit there we took a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin.  We spent about a week in Ireland-that’s where my cousin met us.  It was fun having “Irish Breakfast Tea” in the morning, although I was surprised at how glad I was to be reunited with my box of PG Tips.  Anyway, here are a few photos, and a link to my facebook album.

Grandma and Grandpa at Stonehenge

My cousin Ross and I in Ireland-a bit windy out!

Facebook photos are here!

 

District Conference Part 3

The next bit of the conference was easily the best five minutes of the entire thing.  That’s really a joke, but I had the opportunity to address the crowd at the beginning of the second session.  I was a bit nervous, mostly about fitting everything into a five minute frame, but I did get to share what I’ve been learning through the scholarship opportunity and how it’s fulfilling its objectives.  After myself was another short presentation from a man thanking the district for their work in Mali.

The next speaker was Denis Murray, who worked with the BBC for over 25 years reporting on Irish politics and the Northern Ireland peace process.  He gave a very interesting speech on the peace process in Northern Ireland.  I think that at a conference based on “Peace the World Over”, it was particularly important to consider peace in a place that is so very close to home for this district.  Next up was another professor, this one Cranfield University.  Professor Richard Holmes spoke on strategy, the different levels of strategy, and how to approach peace with a similar mindset. 

After the close of the session we had an afternoon free.  I wandered off to the main shopping center (I know…but Lancaster doesn’t have an H&M!) for a look around, then headed back to my room to get ready for the Gala Dinner held at the Leeds Armouries.  This event was definitely cool, particularly the location.  The conference attendees had the whole museum to ourselves.  If you’ve ever seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks with Angela Lansbury, it was like walking around in a modernized version of the place where all the old suits of armor were kept.  Although they didn’t come alive like they did in that movie, there were a couple presentations, including one with two men in armor sword fighting.  The dinner was great, too.  I sat at the table with the GSE team, and it was definitely really fun meeting (and later dancing with) them. 

 

District Conference Part 2

The second day of the conference was definitely the longest, since it was the only full day, so at the lovely hour of 9:00 I found myself back in the Leeds Town Hall.  While I’m definitely more of a morning person, this was no mean feat.  Keep in mind that I don’t have lectures until after 4 in the afternoon, so 9 am is still early to actually be somewhere. 

The first speaker was Professor Paul Rogers from Bradford University who works with the Rotary Peace Fellows program there.  He had many encouraging things to say about the program and the students who have gone through the program and are now all over the world with a well established network of peers who work in areas such as peace negotiations.  Following this was the Group Study Exchange team from Malaysia who are taking several weeks to tour the district, speak to Rotary clubs, and also take ‘vocational’ days to observe business and work environments here.  They gave a very fun presentation that let us know about themselves (there are five:  one Rotarian and four working professionals) and about Malaysia, and ended their presentation with a traditional dance.  After this was District Governor Yael Lazarus who is presiding over the Rotary district that covers Israel.  She spoke about the difficulties of leading a district that had such diverse and even conflicting people, which was extremely insightful and eye-opening.

Like I said, this day was long, so I’m going to leave you with a few photos and update you on the next session of the conference soon!

The GSE team performing their dance:

In front of the town hall, trying out the wind swept look: