Thursday, September 24, 2009

Pictures! (Long post is long. Sorry guys.)

I finally bought a card reader since I left my camera-computer cord at home.  The problem is that I now have way too many photos to share in one journal entry, I think.  So maybe I'll just do some highlights.  Anyone who wants to see all of them can go to Facebook- I'm going to work on getting them into Albums by event, since by week would be too many pictures in one album.

EDITED TO ADD:  You can see all of my Facebook photos here (it should work even if you don't have a facebook account):

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/photos.php?id=11614283

So!  Lets do this chronologically, shall we?  Begin!

The trip there:
Here we have Adam (my brother, for any non-family and non-people who know my brother) messing with his video camera.  Much like I HAD TO HAVE my riding boots, helmet, and chaps, he had to have his camera.

This is on the train from Manchester to Sheffield.  Fairly typical countryside around here- I feel like I'm in a movie every time I leave the city.  Seriously, this really /exists/.  It's not just sets built by movie people!  I know!  Wild!





We then move to Week 1 (well, really, getting there was that week too.  But SSSSSH, we won't tell anyone.)

Anyway, week one was, as mentioned in a previous entry, the week of Residential Orientation.  It was also the week of Go to Hull to visit Angie and see the clipper race.  I have pictures!  Ironically, none of them are of aforementioned Angie or the clipper ships.  No, they are of the Red Darts or Arrows or Red whatever-thingys.  They're like the Blue Angels.  And they're very entertaining.  It's been donkey's years since I've seen an air show, and I had a blast!


This is called the Apollo Lander.  You see the resemblance, right?  I thought that was just almost the coolest thing I'd ever seen airplanes do.  They flew formations named after things for a good long while, and then proceeded to prove that they did something cooler by doing wicked aerial maneuvers in which a millimeter off probably would have caused them to crash burning into the Humber, taking boats and people with them.  But no worries, these are experienced pilots, and sans one dude running out of colored smoke, nothing went wrong.  I have pictures of that too!  I want to include all of them, but that'd be overkill, so I'll pick like... the coolest two or three.  And I'll put a link to my facebook albums at the end- I've set them so everyone should be able to see the pictures, even without a facebook account (but we'll see if it works.)

Arguably one of the most awesome of the smoke effects, all 7 of them flew straight at us and broke off in all directions to make a fan.  With colored smoke.  A fan with colored smoke.  I mean, seriously!  The whole time we were watching the air show, we kept saying, "I understand why pilots are notorious for having egos!  These guys are awesome!  If I were a pilot, I think I'd be a total show off.  Even on the ground."  And of course the planes and everything they were doing was so awesome and fun I remembered some of the stories from Moky, and the various aerial feats he and his flying buddies got up to.  I think, Moky, you'd have liked the aerial show very much.  I wish I'd had enough camera battery to record it!

They kept doing this thing where two of them would fly straight at each other and then flip over and pass each other.  We all thought they were probably going to get themselves killed, which was probably exactly what they wanted us to think.  Red and blue smoke!

This was pretty fancy too.  That plane trailing red was flying spirals around the smoke trail of the two white-trailing, UPSIDE DOWN planes.  I don't know why they were upside down.  It was probably more amusing that way.




I don't know quite how to describe this one.  Basically, there are 5 planes flying in a delta formation.  The two closest to the center plane loop out to the side and the two farthest, out on the edge of the delta, slide into their places, while the first two end their loops on the tips of the delta.  And then they do it again.  It's really neat, but I don't have that many pictures- this and one more close up.  But this one is after the tip planes have slid in to the middle, and the two above are about to get back into place on the tips of the delta.

Whooboy.  So that's Hull, without seeing any of Hull.  Sorry about that- but hopefully Adam is doing something since that's his city.  But wait!  There's more.  From week one.  Can you imagine how many pictures I /really/ have?  Yeah.  Like a bazillion.  These next ones are from orientation in general.  Most of the pictures are of parties, which I know we don't all need to see (and I'm not in any of them, anyway, so of course they're not /that/ good.  Haha.)

Now, while this may come as a shock to some of you, I have learned to be outgoing!  And friendly!  I made friends, for the first time in my life since a long time ago.  I mean, real friends, as in we all know each others names and meet places to do stuff.  Yep!  It's really cool.  Anyway, from left to right I suppose: Paolo, Julie, Carmen, Marc, and Fatou-Ma.  Countries Italy, France, Spain, Spain, France.  These are the few who were with me at the time- I have another picture which I think has more people, but let me pause to tell you that we are like the UN.  I seem to recall another family member who was once accused of dating the entire UN, so I guess it's almost a family thing (except I'm not dating any of them.).  So there's usually all those guys, plus me, and Germany, South Korea, Austria, maybe Bulgaria, and Hungary.  People kind of come sometimes and not others, so it varies, but that's the usual core group.  And yes, I know everyone's name.  I can even pronounce them (sort of).

 Well, you're just never far from the golden arches.  Don't ask me if they have the same food, because I haven't been in.  I'm sure they do, because what I've seen people bringing out is the same.  Just as an aside, you don't get a burger and fries here.  If you could find a real burger, you could have that, but you get chips.  They're just french fries by another name.  Chips as we call them are crisps.  Ah, English.

Alright, I don't know what the purpose of this thing is.  I mean, presumably to see the city, right?  But there's not a whole lot to see.  Not like... you know, London.  I think Sheffield just wanted their own version of the London Eye.  It's not nearly as big or impressive, but it is pretty all lit up at night.  And I'm sure you can see the whole city, all 7 hills worth.


Picking pictures from Chatsworth house is like picking air show pictures.  Anyone who has seen the most recent Pride and Prejudice would instantly recognize the place as none other than Pemberley, AKA Darcy's country house.  I believe I remarked sadly that it was too bad he wasn't real and therefore wouldn't be there.  (Which turned out not entirely true, because there's a marble bust of what'shisface actor dude who played him.)

Me, with the house in the background, because I know you all wanted to see my bright, shining face!  Unfortunately it's not a very good picture of the house, but you get the general idea.  See facebook for more.

This is the fountain and... pavilion thingy that are behind the house.  You can go in the fountain, and our assistants did (and nearly fell down, which would have been most unpleasant).  It was very cold, so I didn't want to get my feet wet, alas.  So I just took pictures.

Okay, and now I have pictures of where I live.  Basically, of my room and some close by stuff.


I call this game before and after.  This is before.  Awwwww, how clean!  And sterile, and uninviting.  Well, we can't have that now, can we?  Heavens no!  That would make me homesick and insane!  And we don't want that.  So clearly something Must Be Done to remedy this issue.

But don't worry, it didn't last long.  This is from earlier this week, probably the afternoon of the day after that first picture was taken.  You can see it didn't take me long to make the place more homey.  And by homey, I really mean trash it out really well.  Also I got bedding and things when I went shopping with Angie and Mark when Angie came to visit.  That's why there's a ripped up Primark back there.  It has since gotten cleaner, because I just nearly murdered myself on those clothes.  Also I was tired of not being able to see what I had to wear.  This will come as a surprise to those of you who have lived with me, but even I cannot stand clutter forever (although it did take me til a couple days after this to actually move stuff.  I kept just stepping over.).

Turns out you're never far from Wal-Mart either.  Well, technically.  It wouldn't be far, if I could drive.  But I can't, so this is like The Place I Will Never Go.  Unless I hop a bus.  But I thought it was funny anyway!


This is the view out my flat window.  You can see one of the other residence buildings across from me, and the parky area that is very green.  Down to the left is a tiny duck pond.  I'm up on the 4th floor (or 3rd, if you're English and can't count floors properly, just like you can't drive on the correct side of the road...)  But we have a lift!  So it's no biggie.  I use stairs anyway.

The whole big happy family +1.  We have Anna, who is over there transferring the tuna pasta bake from bowl to casserole dish.  At the bar/table are (right to left this time) Faustine, who is from France, Anneleen, pronounced Anna-lane, who is from Belgium, Alex from the UK, and Anneleen's friend whose name I have since forgotten.  I was taking the picture, but that's my empty chair at the end.



And there you have it!  My life for the past two and some weeks in a nutshell.  Tonight I'm going on a ghost walk (not to see ghosts, but to hang out with my friends who are going) and tomorrow is the sports fair.  I'm officially registered for classes, and I also have an address, but I'll post my address in a seperate entry all its own in case people want to save the email.  Hope you all are doing well!  You'll be happy to hear I'm feeling much better.  I'm still coughing, but I feel fine in spite of it!

Wait, one last photo.  We had a formal party kind of thing with club dancing afterwards.  I wore my fetish necklace because it was the only "traditional" thing I could think of.  Nerea is another of my friends, and I don't remember who took the picture, but I think it's a good one.  We had a blast!

Much love to everyone!



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