Strange Goings On

I had a traditional English breakfast this morning at a restaurant nearby. No more free food from Queen Mary. Now I have to fend for myself in this cruel British world. The food wasn’t that bad though. It cost four pounds for an egg, some bacon, a sausage, some baked beans (which the English commonly eat with breakfast), four pieces of toast and a hot, steamy cup of tea, which was bland, but drinkable.

I took a picture of some British money and my dorm room to share. The gold coin on the left is one pound; from there, it goes fifty pence, twenty pence, ten pence, five pence, two pence and one penny. I think there’s also a two-pound coin, but I haven’t found it yet. The bills are twenty pounds, ten pounds and five pounds.

The room is small, but it’s okay because I don’t have to share it with anyone. I have a sink in here, and then I share one and a half bath with five other people who live in my flat.

It snowed very lightly today and everybody got very excited. It’s been very cold, apparently colder than normal.

I’m pretty sure I was supposed to go to class today, but the online system is so confusing that I wasn’t sure what sessions I was supposed to go to. Here’s an example of the information provided for one of the classes I’m taking.

Timetable: Lec: Wednesday 9-10am,Thursday 10-11am, 3-4pm; Tut: Monday 9-10am and 10-11am,

Tuesday 9-10am, Friday 12-1pm

Am I supposed to go to all the lectures? Am I supposed to go to all of the tutorials? There are two lectures on Thursday? And on top of all of this, where in the world are the classes located? It never mentions where I should go to class. So in an act of good old fashioned American civil disobedience, I didn’t go to the classes I may or may not have had today.

Over here, sometimes you need to do something special to exit a building as well as enter it. In my building, you have to push a button to release the door so you can leave, but more often than not the button doesn’t work. I’ve probably left the building less than ten times since I’ve been here, and I would guess that I’ve punched that button over fifty times. I went over to the engineering building and followed someone through the card-access front door. When I tried to leave, my card wouldn’t open the door back up. I couldn’t leave, and I just stood there dumbfounded, trying to think of a single good reason to only allow authorized persons to exit the engineering building. I’m still thinking.