District Conference Part 1

Yesterday I made it back from my adventure to Leeds for the District 1190 annual conference.  I’m still pretty exhausted, even though I let myself sleep in this morning (all the way until 9:00!).  The conference spanned over three days, each of which were fairly packed with activities, so I’ll spread the topic over a few posts. 

After leaving Lancaster at the bright hour of 10:00, we arrived in Leeds around 12:00.  Fortunately, my room was already prepared for me to check in, so I dropped off my things, grabbed a bite to eat and then we navigated our way from the hotel to the Leeds Town Hall where the bulk of the conference activities took place.  The town hall is absolutely amazing-make sure you click on the link and look at some of the photos of the interior. 

The first session introduced us to some exciting people:  the Lord Mayor of Leeds, who opened the conference, the Rotary International representative Anton Hilscher (from Vienna), the RIBI representative Ron McKechnie, as well as District Govenor Tony Parrini who presided over the whole event.  After they greeted us, we had a presentation from the Royal Airforce.  We learned all about the different jobs with the RAF, and they shared several video clips.  While I did enjoy it, my overwhelming thought was, ‘My dad would love this!’. 

After we were dismissed from the first session, we wandered back to the hotel, ate dinner and then returned to the town hall for a concert from the Band of HM Royal Marines Scotland.  Fan. Tastic.  They really put on a great concert with a lot of variety in the music they played, which ranged from marches to Sinatra.  I really enjoyed it, although the conductor kept making jokes thinking that we were all from Yorkshire, when in fact we were all from Lancashire and Cumbria.  Consequently, we laughed at all the wrong spots and cheered when he thought we would boo.  Poor man.  I hope somebody told him!

It was a long day, but a good one!

 

Pancake Day

For starters, this post is about a week late considering Pancake Day was a week ago, but better late than never! 

Anyways, I first found out about Pancake Day when I was hanging up my giant Wilkinson’s free calendar on my bare bulletin board that needed some stuff on it (my bulletin board is much more cheery since Christmas when I hung up all my cards!).  I noticed that there was a Pancake Day and I’m pretty sure that my first thought was, “Oh how cute, a day celebrating that glorious breakfast food!”.  I thought it might be something like “Talk like a pirate day” or “Pi day” (which is March 14th if you were wondering).   Then come to find out-it’s actually something that people celebrate.  Which is awesome.

In the US (specifically New Orleans) the day before Lent is called Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday.  The premise is to get rid of all the things from which you will fast during Lent.  The more official name is Shrove Tuesday, but here they call it Pancake Day, although the pancakes here are quite a bit thinner and not as fluffy as the way Dad makes them.  Still very tasty, though, and I know this because I was fed so many pancakes on Sunday and Monday of last week in advance celebration of the day.  I had never really had savory pancakes, but I did enjoy them.

The funniest part is that after being fed pancakes on Sunday and Monday, I was walking home from class on Tuesday (the actual Pancake Day), thinking about what I want for dinner, and all I wanted was pancakes!  So I looked up a recipe and tried my hand at making them myself.  They didn’t turn out too bad:

Two ham and cheese and one with chocolate chips.  The middle one got a tad burnt, but overall, I’m pretty proud!

 

A watch is always too fast or too slow

We’re half way through the Lent Term here at Lancaster University, which means that my grandparents will be here in less than five weeks!  We’re planning a great holiday in England, Wales, and Ireland (where my cousin will join us).  I’m hard at work getting papers done early so that I don’t come back from my vacation with a mountain of work to do.  Rotary events have been minimal this month-somehow I ended up scheduling no presentations this month, but I am helping out with some can shakes.  Last time we were at Asda (English Walmart) collecting spare change to support the Galloways Society for the Blind, and this week we’ll be doing the same at Morrisons (which I am told is much warmer than the lobby at Asda!)  I’m also putting together my article for the Rotary Norwest magazine and my five minute speech for the district conference. 

Weather-wise, it’s actually been really warm out lately.  Warm means the mid forties (Fahrenheit), but I can sense spring coming.  At least I hope it’s coming!  I’ve never been a huge fan of winter. 

I thought you might enjoy a super cute photo of myself when my family was living in England:

Don’t I look thrilled to be a great ape?

 

Super Bowl XLIII

In an attempt to share a bit of my culture with some of my friends, I decided that we needed to have a party for the Super Bowl (which is an American football game between the two top professional teams, and has nothing to do with bowling, which some people thought).  Fortunately, my friend Helen was willing to have her house hijacked.  The BBC did air the game, but since it didn’t start until 11pm on a Sunday, and I don’t care much about professional football, we celebrated on Saturday in true American fashion: 

We had the food.  Everyone brought a snack to share so there was plenty to eat.  Pringles, dip, chicken nuggets, and even some fruit for the health conscious.

We had the music.  I downloaded a Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits album since we wouldn’t be viewing his half-time show.

We had the competition.  It was indeed the Cardinals versus the Steelers in an extremely heated match.  The first half was a game called Succotash, a game with three rounds of guessing phrases the participants have written on a piece of paper: catchphrase, charades, and one-word hint.  After the half (and eating more food!) we played the cereal box game, three-on-a-couch, psychiatrist, and a couple other little games.  If any sound fun to you, I’ll send you the rules. 

As a Cardinal, I’m disappointed to announce that the Steelers did, in fact, take the game.  But it wasn’t for lack of effort…or shouting…I was a bit hoarse by the end of the night!

 

Two weeks of term, gone already?

I’m really impressed with how quickly time has gone since term started, although I’m not at a loss to explain why.  The term has started in full force:  I have a literature review due on Monday and almost every spare second has been spent researching articles or trying to add those one hundred extra words in before I go to bed.  It’s not completely overwhelming.  I started early enough that I have time to do it all, plus I’ve been rewarding myself by rereading Pride and Prejudice, then Northanger Abbey, and now Mansfield Park. 

Rotary things have been going well, too.  I’ve done two presentations in two weeks, for the Lancaster club and the Morecambe club, my first twilight meeting and lunch meeting respectively.  It’s always a lot of fun to meet new people and to share my culture and my experiences here thus far (all with the aid of my handy power point presentation!  )  I am officially attending the district conference in Leeds in March and have even been given a five minute speaking slot.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make it enjoyable, although I’m a bit worried that all I’ll be able to fit into five minutes is my name and where I’m from.  I’ll also be helping out my hosting club with some fund raising in February, so keep an eye out for me at Asda!

My courses this term are super interesting:  Educational Change Management and Educational Policy.  I’m really excited to turn my essay in on Monday so that I can finally start devoting a significant amount of time to the classes.  I can tell that the assessments will be challenging, but really valuable.  I get to do a ‘cultural audit’ on an organization for Change Management, which just sounds fun!

Hopefully I’ll be able to post soon with some pictures of my mom’s trip to Tanzania.  She just got home this week and is in the process of launching a forestry to fight poverty effort.  I couldn’t be more proud!

 

Christmas Vacation

I’ve been super blessed this holiday season to have my family come and visit for a week!  The six of us stayed near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, were super busy, but had a great time!  To commemorate the week, I’m going to share it with you!

For me, the holiday started on December 22nd.  I forwent my course work and spent the day cleaning, doing laundry, packing, and fun stuff like that.  On Tuesday my amazing friend Helen drove me to the train station to catch the 6:30 train to the Manchester airport where I caught the bus to Terminal 3 and met up with my family!  We sorted out the rental car, and made our way to Thirsk to do some grocery shopping and mill around the town before we went to our cottage.

We spent Christmas even in York.  We went to the Minster and walked around with my trusty Rick Steves self-guided tour.  After lunch we drew names for a Christmas draw and went shopping for the person whose name we drew.  (I think the winner was Katie, who got Dad one of those puzzles that makes a cube when you put the peices together correctly.  Apparently, even after the flight home, the pieces still don’t make a cube.) My favorite part of the day was attending a carol service in the Minster.  It was so lovely!

Christmas morning we opened our Christmas draw gifts, ate a light lunch, and went for a hike around the White Horse near Kilburn.  When we came back we had Christmas Dinner, watched the Queen’s speech, the new Wallace and Gromit, and the Doctor Who Christmas special. 

On Boxing Day we visited Skipton Castle, then made our way to Lancaster to see the city and where I live.  It was really fun to see the castle – my brothers haven’t traveled outside of the US and Canada before, so it was a first for them to see places that are so old!

The next day we took a bit of a break, slept in a bit, and only went as far as Thirsk to visit The World of James Herriot.  James Herriot is my mom’s favorite author, so she definitely enjoyed the museum which is in his house.  I thought the museum was really interesting and now his books are on my ‘to read’ list.

We were super ambitious on Sunday to make up for not doing a lot the day before.  We visited the Wensleydale Creamery to see where they make Wallace and Gromit’s favorite Cheese, then to White Scar Caves, then on our way back we went to the Ripley castle (which is neat because the family still lives there).  It was a long day and we were all exhausted at the end, but we certainly saw a lot!

We went back to York on Monday.  Volunteers run a free guided tour of the city every day, and if you are ever in York, I highly recommend this (so does Rick Steves!).  Our guide knew tons about the history of the city and I know that I’m smarter now than I was before the tour!  After a pub lunch we went to the Minster again having only done the main part of the cathedral on Christmas eve.  We toured the undercroft, then Dad, Ryan, and I climbed to the top of the central tower for a spectacular view of the city.  We did a bit of shopping afterwards then made our way back to Thirsk.

On Tuesday we drove to Lancaster to put the left over groceries in my refrigerator, then drove up into the Lake District, near Keswick.  We visited Castlerigg Stone Circle, then traipsed around Derwent Water for a bit before going to our hotel in Manchester (since my family had to be at the airport super early the next day).

All in all, it was a great vacation!  It went so fast, I wish it could have been a bit longer, and I know my family feels the same way!  You can see all of my photos from the week here. 

I’m back on campus now and gearing up to finish up some course work and launch one of my self-directed studies.  I have two Rotary presentations this month, too.  2009 as a whole looks very promising!

 

Dad said my blog was ‘stale’

I’m not sure what he could possibly be talking about…   It’s hard to believe, though, that today I go to my last class of the term, and that my family will be here in twelve days!  My course work was very time consuming in November with two deadlines, and now I’m already feeling the crunch on my next set of due dates – even though they aren’t for another month! 

I’ve been busy with other things, too, so I’ll catch you up via an exciting photo presentation:

My flatmate (with the hat) had a birthday.  We decorated her door and hid in her room with a cake.

I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my flat.  Chitundu helped me with the pies (pumpkin and pecan) which turned out fantastic!  Lots of fun, tasty food, and being thankful together. More photos.

I took a day trip to Edinburgh with some friends that same weekend.  This is the St. Giles Cathedral.  We also visited the castle-the most amazing part was arriving and going though the queue just to find that we happened to come on a day with free admission!  You can see more photos here.

A friend an I met up with another Ambassadorial Scholar in Manchester and we spent a few hours milling around the Christmas Markets.  The photo is at one of the markets with a bratwurst and a singing reindeer right above me.  Classic Christmas, right?

Well, that’s a very, very quick update, but hope you enjoyed it!

 

 

Fireworks Night

It would appear that I have fallen off the face of the blogging planet.  Please let me assure you that is not the case.  Classwork swelled up very quickly, although that wasn’t unexpected.  While I have a lot to do, I’m on schedule with my work.  My paper for next Monday is written (hooray!) and my paper due in two weeks time is getting a lot of attention this week.  Then I’ll be able to take a bit of a break since my next assignments aren’t turned in until the end of January. 

With last week came the celebration of Guy Fawkes Night/Bonfire Night/Fireworks Night.  To put it simply, a group of people failed to blow up Parliament, so now they celebrate by blowing up other things, namely fireworks.  Lancaster had it’s celebration on Saturday and I joined two of my flatmates going into town to see the fireworks.  It was really nice, even if it was rainy.  We barely got on the bus, though, it was so crowded!  Then we probably queued for a half an hour to get the bus home.  It was really exciting being around so many people all headed to do the same thing and we all had a good time-particularly when we got home, changed into our pajamas and drank hot chocolate!

 

I can’t escape

As an Indiana resident for most of my life, I have spent my years in the happy bliss of not having to bother with Daylight Savings Time; however, my state saw fit to join with the rest of the continental United States (except Arizona, from what I hear) and in April 2006, I had to ‘Spring Forward!’ for the first time.  Now I’m not going to complain, and I’m sure that there are advantages and disadvantages to DST, but every time I have to switch my clocks, I have a mini panic attack the next day because I don’t know which clocks are correct, which are wrong, if I moved the time the correct direction, etc.  Usually it ends with me typing into Google, “What time is it in Indiana?”  and that puts me at ease. 

My point in all this is that before I came to Lancaster I’ve only switched my clock five times, and Saturday before I went to bed, I switched it the sixth time.  I still had a panic attack Sunday morning, and I still Googled “What time is it in Lancaster UK?”, so I don’t think I’m close to getting used to this.  An interesting note, though:  I was told by a friend, and I confirmed it on Wikipedia, that DST is an English invention.  Who knew!  Also, if you are remotely interested in the tumultuous history of time zones and DST in Indiana, Wikipedia has an extensive article on that as well.

 

A quick weather blurb

Yesterday I was enjoying the sunshine pouring through my window.  Well, it doesn’t pour through my window since it faces east, but I enjoyed the sunshine pouring onto the building across from mine.  All of the sudden it starts to rain, which is typical, but then it started to hail!  We definitely get hail in Indiana, so it wasn’t something new for me, but we don’t get hail so often that it isn’t notable when it does come.  I tried to take a picture of it, but I don’t think it captured the true essence of the experience.

A while later I left for class and as I waited for it to start I glanced out of the window.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  I turned away, but when I looked back, there was a rainbow!  It was amazing, and faded after about five minutes, but it still brightened my day.

The humorous part was a conversation afterwards with my flatmate:

Me:  Did you see the hail today?

Andrie:  Hail? No!

Me:  What about the rainbow?

Andrie:  There was a rainbow?

Me: Yep!

Andrie:  Where was I today?