Update from Leicester

The past few weeks have been busy. I started off with watching both a women's football and men's rugby game for varsity week. During this week, Leicester uni plays against their rival team, DeMontford uni in a battle to see who comes out on top. Rather than playing in the normal school pitches, varsity week means that teams play in the city's stadiums. The experience of watching one of the matches is unlike most university sporting events in Canada. The stadium is crowded and loud, they sell beer and food, and every point or goal is returned with a loud cheer from thousands of people who come out to show their support. Very cool.

Later in the week I went to a talk on campus from a Holocaust survivor who spent his time during world war II in an internment camp in Vienna. During the day he repaired railways that had been bombed by the RAF. While during the night he waited for those same planes to come back, filled with a mix of appreciation for their efforts and fear for the bombs they dropped. His talk lasted for about an hour and finished with a simple message, "if you see evil happening, even in the simplest form, don't sit on the fence or hesitate, do something about it"

The latter half of the week I celebrated St. Patrick's day with my flatmates and introduced them to a few new North American ways to celebrate ;) Finally, made some plans for the summer, finished an essay (one of the rare times I find myself doing school work), and packed for my 5 week Easter Break (which proved harder than I thought...fitting everything into one bag was like a complicated game of Tetris).

Above all, I found myself this week thinking how amazing it is that you can spend such a short period of time in a place and become so comfortable with it. Already I find myself sitting on the bus to and from school, or into the city and zoning out while I listen to music. The sights and streets that were once so unfamiliar have become part of my everyday. Undoubtedly I still appreciate everything about my new surroundings and being in a different country, but in a different way. The new and exciting has now become the familiar, and dare I say it, in more ways than one, home.

Lumineers

Just got back from a quick trip to London where I spent the night at a concert for one of my current favourite bands at the moment, The Lumineers. The concert venue was called the O2 Academy in Brixton and housed just over 2,000 people within the amphitheatre setting that included both a floor standing section and a balcony seating area. We were in the balcony section after buying last minute tickets off eBay, but there was no sitting to be had. Everyone was up on their feet within the first few songs and stayed there for the rest of the night. The performance was polished, down to earth and the quality of the sound perfectly showed off their grassroots tone and effortless musicianship. It seems the once in a lifetime moments just keep adding up.

"When we were young, oh oh, we did enough
When it got cold, ooh ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told, ah ah it can't be done"

Manchester

Manchester on an overcast day is red brick rubbed
smooth from weathering
and tiny sized hands,
that prick and prod the edges
on their way home from school.
Clad in tights and cardigans,
dress pants with rolled cuffs to accommodate growth spurts
and socks that hug the body of their knees.
Fathers and mothers waiting at home
watching the window where the stadium looms,
on guard against predators
who prey on boys running to be men,
chasing dreams down a field toward their goals.

Manchester on an overcast day is a city of facades,
where buildings wear masks of the old,
the historical,
the memorably forgotten,
and cover the hidden urbanization beneath them.
Stores shelve themselves between each other along the street
as customers trail their fingers along the overcrowded stock
and choose between them.
They stop and ponder window dressings
never having to choose between old and new,
ideally situated in a present that allows them to be in both
presences.

Manchester on an overcast day is an apparition
of industrial smoke,
billowing from long ago closed chimneys
that gave life.
Reproduced through textiles and metal
and corn exchanges,
where the people would stand at yell as the numbers scrolled past
one
after
another
predicting the future.

British Banter

After reflecting on some of the things that  are unique to Canadians, I thought it might be time to evaluate the culture I'm living in. Here are some phrases and daily things that still surprise me about England...

1) Traffic lights: Usually these lights blink in a pattern of green yellow red green, but here they go green yellow red yellow green. The extra yellow lets you know when it's just about time to go. There also doesn't seem to be any stop signs anywhere. When you come to the intersection that precedes the entrance to my residence off the main road there is no stop signs, the cars just automatically stop and proceed when safe. Common sense.

2) Light switches: On is off and off is on

3) School: The lecture and seminar structure here is a lot different than back home. In my English classes the professor giving the lecture seems to rotate through a cycle of lecturers that change every class. Lectures themselves often differ from what you're covering in tutorials, so that one week you may be reading Oscar Wilde while your lecture covers a different book entirely. Each lesson is only an hour long and there is no time in between to get to your next class so it usually starts late. Class discussion in tutorials is very good though and everyone participates without the usually agonizing taunting of seminar leaders.

4) Red Solo cups: These things are like gold to British people. They don't sell them here anywhere and epitomize American culture. My flat mates told me that last year they had a Red Solo cup party in which the soul purpose behind the party was to use Solo cups.

5) Keyboards: Very different here, the @ symbol is where the quotation mark symbol is and vice versa, there is also a pound symbol next to a dollar sign and a euro sign

6) Style: Fashion here is very different, I have concluded that people dress as if they are part of a band that is about to audition for a gig and have mild success after but never really amount to anything. Leather and jean jackets are popular, as well as studded flats, converse and tights. The guys prefer button up shirts done all the way to the top and thick holiday style jumpers. Super Dry is also a hugely popular brand here, and has whole stores devoted to it, which is odd given that it's Japanese

7) Transit: public transportation in Leicester is pretty good on the whole. A bus runs every ten minutes from my residence to campus on school days. Interestingly, the bus driver will give you change when buying a ticket, and these are printed on flimsy newspaper paper that he rips off from a stack. However, if you don't wave down the bus, even there is a big line behind you it will drive right past.

4) Language: there are a lot of different phrases used, here are some of my favourites....

• hoover - a vaccum, "John hoovered the floor today"
• pulled - to pick someone up on a night out, "He pulled that girl last night"
• knackered - exhausted, "I'm completely knackered after that work out"
• gutted -unhappy, "I was so gutted by the result of that football match yesterday"
• fit - attractive, "That lad is well fit"
• cluedo - this isn't really a phrase, but I discovered the other day the board game Clue is called Cluedo here and in Australia
• y'alright - how are you, how's it going, "Hi y'alright?"
• hiya - hello, "Hiya good to see you"
• cheers -  thanks, "Cheers mate"