Knick Knack Paddy Whack Give a Dog a Bone...

This weekend has been pretty low-key, but yesterday I went down to Sunderland which is a 45 min metro ride away to explore the city just south of here. I was definitely not expecting it to be as dead as it was, but I guess when everything closes at 5 they really mean it. I did see this lovely pub named Paddy Whack and it inspired me to write a little something in my blog. This is the pub:
Other than that I saw the Empire Theatre (notice the re instead of er) and the river Wear. Newcastle and it's surrounding cities are near two rivers. Newcastle is on the river tyne (thus it's called Newcastle Upon Tyne, and Sunderland is on the Wear (and most likely called Sunderland Upon Wear). The metro that connects the two cities is approriatly called the Tyne and Wear Metro.

This week my flatmate Haley and I met Brom...Brom is the ice cream man who "comes around 6 nights per week" we are pretty sure he doesn't come on Tuesday nights which we thought was random. Every night we hear him coming by the student flats and we debate going out to get ice cream from his trunk.

We also went on the search for corn meal (to make the lovely blueberry corn muffin recipe that Sarah gave me), which was not very easy to find. It was in the 4th supermarket we looked at and under the name maize meal and polenta. I got some pretty strange looks asking people for corn meal, and the stock boy said he had never had a corn muffin (I looked at him in disbelief).

Other than that I have added more words to the pile of odd things brits say:
spillage, buggar, stead fast, maize, zed (for the letter z), theater (Operating Room, and probably spelled theatre), Lue (same as toilets), fortnight (two weeks)

Words they pronounce differently:
Cervical (cer - vy - ick - all)
Repiratory (Res - peer - atory)
Schedule (Shesh - wull)
Issue ( iss - eww)
Mobile ( Mo - bile)
Umbilical (Um - bye - ical)
Amino ( A - my- know)
Skeletal (Ska - lee - tull)


I wanted to end with a pretty picture to proove that it isn't always raining here, so this is a picture of the North Sea from my trip down to the coast last weekend :
That's all for now, cheers and have a great week!

Minnie Mouse, Chesire Cat, and Robin Hood, Oh MY

I've finished my first week of medical school, and I now have a holiday weekend. It called the late August bank holiday, I'm assuming it's similar to having labor day right before the students go back to school. The internet in the flats hasn't been working for the past few days because the lovely people in the office forgot to plug the network into the surge booster and there was a fire.

This weekend I went up to Alnwick (pronounced an-ick) Castle where the first and second Harry Potter movies were filmed. We then took the Magical History tour of the castle and found out all the places that the movie was filmed and how much money they wasted on everything. Apparently they spent 2,000 pounds (about 4,000 dollars) just to bring a particular tree stump in. This was my tour guide:She was totally decked out in Grifindor garb! They also had an owl exhibit where they let you pet the owls....This is Rambo, a tropical screech owl, clearly they were catering to the harry potter fans here, but it was still pretty cool. I then went out with some friend into Newcastle, and this is what we saw...

Apparently the people of Newcastle really like to dress up. There are always hen (bachellorette) parties going on, every day of the week with the whole group wearing ridiculous clothing. We just had to stop these ladies to get a picture, and when we asked them why they were dressed up they said for fun, so naturally we are all planning to dress up at some point and go out. Any theme ideas would be welcome...it's literally like Halloween everyday here.

I'm really having a great time here, sometimes I can't actually believe that I'm in England and then I'll hear someone talk and remember. Yesterday was a really nice day, and I was actually able to go to the coast (the eastern side) and dip my feet into the North Sea it was very cold, but also a lot of fun.

Cheers!

My education thus far... phrases

So I haven't learned much medicine yet, but I have learned a lot about England, Newcastle and there culture. I especially wanted to let you all know some of the unique and interesting phrases that I have heard so far.

qwery - question
lifts - elevator
toilets - restrooms
cash point - ATM
hash sign - pound sign (on a phone)
leaf through - browse through
bloody hell - darn
cheers - thanks
mobile - cell phone
Hen/Stag party - bachelorette/bachelor party
ring - call
Zed - the letter Z
take away - to go

Well this is all I remember for now, but I'll make sure to update this list with each subsequent post.

I thought I'd tell you all a little about Newcastle, and let me be to be the first to point out that Helaina (for all of you who know her would absolutely love it here.) It is the most energy and water conscience place I have ever been. All of the outlets (including the stove) have a switch that you have to turn to turn the appliance on. The elevators and hall lights all turn off when you aren't in them it's truly amazing. They really seem to be on top of keeping their environment clean and doing what's best for everyone.

Eating in Newcastle is also an interesting experience, everything is more expensive if you stay and eat in the restaurant. This included places like starbucks where they actually put your drink in a ceramic cup if your eating in and charge you some percentage more (not actually sure how much it is yet), but I do know it's mandated by law for them to charge you more for eating in.

Well that's all I have for now, Cheers!