Awkward!!! Friday, October 13, 2006

Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert! Christine has just closed down the library on a Friday night.

Here I am on a Friday (the 13th) night sitting in my room, writing and having no life. It is sad but true. This week was less overwhelming than last, but I would still qualify it as terrifying. I am working on two projects (presentation poster and 4000 words essay) that are due this month and surprisingly I am not having the “time of my life”. Overall, everything is going well; I am just trying to refine the whole time management technique. The poster is going to be fine, but I cannot whip out a 4000 word essay the night before (been there, tried that, didn’t work so well). I hope to finish up the research and at least outline my paper this weekend. My professors make a HUGE deal of plagiarism, rightfully so, BUT it is to the point that I wonder if I need to add a reference after this sentence because someone could have written this or maybe because of something I read and I think this is my thought, but it really is not??? So this is funny because for my poster project we pretend we are the authors and pretty much copy and paste from the article to the poster (plagiarism); and then we write a 4000 word essay and if we do not pass the professor and plagiarism software test, we get a zero. I have about 4 of these essays to write over the semester and I have decided to title them, “How Christine’s Going to Change the World 4000 Words at a Time”. Don’t be jealous because I am going to spend every weekend at the library. Hahaha

Every Wednesday morning I attend Institute for my Church. This is on-campus and conveniently right before my first class. This year we are studying Eternal Marriage. Now don’t get any ideas, I am dating or getting married to anyone in the near future! I am taking it because I think I should and by the time I am ready to get married it will be too late to prepare. At least that is what I tell myself. Now to the awkward part…this class starts at 8 am and you would think you were asking people to be there at 5:30. The English do not start the day at 8 am, more like 9:30 am. So this week I was the first one there and praying that others would show up. The key word was others (PLURAL)! Yep you guessed it; it was me a one other guy and even better it was Chris and Christine. To put the icing on the cake the institute teacher sent out an email to everyone that personally thanked the two of us for being there. How embarrassing! I would say that is on the “Top 10 List” (Letterman, David 1993) for most socially uncomfortable situations.

Yesterday, the two German girls had Chinese food delivered. One had a duck dish and the other chicken fried rice. Susan, she had the rice, talked about her adventures in China and how she ate dog. Personally this is not something I would brag about, but that’s just me. Helen had the duck, and she loved it. Nadia, French girl, was really shocked by this. I have not really tried duck before, but it would not be my first pick from a takeaway Chinese restaurant. I might conduct a study of the duck population, mostly numerical, in the surrounding ponds and parks before ordering the duck. Anyway, somehow the duck dish came up again tonight and I found out that in France, the duck is considered man’s best friend.

I went to the doctor today to see if I could get refills on my medications or if I had to have them sent from home. The good news is that I can get them here, and the better news is that they are cheaper than in the states! The doctor apologized that the prescriptions were going to cost me about $12 each. I told him that was great, because they cost $45 each at home. Yet another great thing is that one medication is an “over the counter” med that only cost $8.50. The best news is that students can sometimes get medications and other health services for free. I am going to fill out the application and hopefully I will qualify; I love free stuff!

Every weekend they have stuff going on in town centre. When I went this weekend there was a bunch of inflatable slides and obstacles for kids. While walking through town I saw this cute old lady. She had her box out for donations, but I stealthily took a picture without her noticing.



Here is a picture of my DNA…how revealing??? (sorry that was beyond nerd).. I am in the lane farthest to the right. The first 5 samples on the right are ladders so we can quantify our DNA.

Oh My! Sunday, October 8, 2006

Where do I start? It has been about a week since my last entry and that should let you know how my week went. This entry will be composed of a bunch of random stuff that I jotted down during the week that was interesting.

Language barriers are interesting because usually every incident is totally different. One guy in my course speaks English as a second language and he does not understand some of the vocabulary that I use. I know that I sometimes use slang words, but I try to explain myself when appropriate. So…we were all doing an exercise in the lab and I called this guy a nerd because of something he did. He asked me what a nerd was and I told him someone that was really smart, liked school, and clarified that we were all nerds for studying DNA profiling. He sent me an email later that day stating, “thank you for the name you called me ‘nerd’, another English word I didn’t know but know I do. Have a nice weekend.” I replied back, “a compliment in all respects.” I didn’t think much of it, but the next day when I opened my email I received this interesting reply from him; “it is non of your business though. No hard feeling.” What does that mean? I could not figure out why being a nerd was none of my business and why there was a possibility of hard feelings? I did not want this to go on for the whole semester so I just asked him what he meant. He said he went home and looked up nerd in the dictionary and it said nothing that was good. I told him that it was not an offensive term and sometimes society puts an alternative meaning on words. It was like he didn’t believe me! He went on to say, “so you are telling me the dictionary is wrong?” I said that it could be used that way, but that was not the way I used it. Why would I insult myself? Anyway, it is all good now and I think next time I will just keep my mouth shut!

This week was a little overwhelming when it comes to school. It was my first week and I was not expecting it to be easy, but it was fine. BUT they were nice enough to give us all of our assignment for the whole semester. This can be seen as good or bad. It was good because we can plan everything out and start doing some research. The bad thing is that we have to start planning our whole semester and doing massive amounts of research. I really don’t like writing essays, and that is quite a large majority of my coursework. We currently have three 2500-3500 word (~10 pages) essays and one 5000 word (20 pages) essay for the semester along with other projects and presentations. I do not think I have ever written more than an 8 page essay. This semester is going to suck and I have no clue how I am going to do this. We received all of this info in two days, so everyone was overwhelmed. Our professors also gave us the plagiarism scare, over, and over, and over. I would definitely say that the highlight was when one of my professors told us that we need to spend about 90hrs of personal study outside of class. This pretty much wiped out any “social life”, scratch that, “life” I was going to have. This just seemed like a massive number to me so I did some math…
Total hours in a week = 168hrs
Minus personal study - 90hrs = 78hrs
Minus 8hrs sleep a night - 56hrs = 22hrs
Minus 18hrs of class a week -18hrs = 3hrs
That’s right folks, I have 3hrs a week for personal hygiene, eating, traveling to and from class, going to the bathroom, etc. Did I mention it is a 20min walk to class each way? I am already in the negative. My teacher is not getting 90hrs a week and I will not be getting 8hrs of sleep a night. Please remind me again why I pay to go through this???

Being the NERD that I am I bought a pedometer just to see how far I walk on the average day. Because I know you care…it is about 7500 steps a day which is about 2.5 miles for me. It is not a lot, but it is interesting to gauge. One day, this week, I had quite a few steps; I left my umbrella on the bus when I got off at the library and had to run to the bus station so I could get it back. I am cheap, and there is no way I was going to buy a new umbrella.

Speaking of being cheap, awhile ago I bought some chicken that was not cheap, $8 for 4 chicken breasts. I was going to use 3 of them this week, so I set them out on top of the stove appliance to thaw. In retrospect this was not the greatest idea I’ve had, but did not think there would be any problems. Wrong! A girl used the grill and that partially cooked my chicken and melted the bag to the chicken. I was calm, considering that I now spent $8 on one chicken breast. Oh well, I learned my lesson, mistakes happen, and I will not assume others will check the surroundings before using the stove.

I went to the open market this week, not scheduled into my “3 personal hours”, but I did not care. It was great! I did not buy anything, but found some good deals and lots of fresh fruits and veggies.



The best thing about school this week was our last lecture on Friday was cancelled. We were all so happy! We were having a guest lecture, but his lecture materials got taken away by the cleaning people. The question is who paid the janitor??? I felt bad for the speaker because he had his notes, books, CD-ROMs, and all of his materials in an evidence bag and the janitor took it away. I wonder why did the janitor grab an evidence bag? If it was not in the trash it should not have been touched? Our group was pretty useful with our “extra” hours and went to the library to do some research on the Human Genome Project (4000 word essay due at the end of the month).



I went to a baptism at my church on Saturday for a guy named Emerson. He speaks mainly Portuguese, but I talk to him in Spanish and we understand each other… for the most part. Anyway, it was great because the Spirit was so strong, so even if you did not speak Spanish or Portuguese, you could feel the Spirit testify to you.

First Day of School Monday, October 02, 2006

Today was my first day of class and I was somewhat nervous. I did not know what to expect; and thought I should have done some preparation for the first day, but I did not know what. My first class, at 11am, is Research Methods. Our teacher is interesting to say the least and somewhat scatterbrained. It was a relaxed atmosphere and I got a few good laughs out of it. At times I was bored out of my mind, but thankfully the class is only and hour long. I have a feeling that one hour is about 45min to long for most and don’t expect everyone to show up for that class every Monday. I almost forgot the best part…the professor loves cats and he used a picture of his cat as the background of a graph! Scary!

I thought we had a class from 12-1pm but found out that it is only a help secession for those who have questions or need help with the course work. This was really good news, because I have a class that starts at 1pm and was therefore not going to have a break from 11-4pm which would make Mondays even more horrible than present. My last class of the day is Forensic Genetics 2 Lab Practical. You would think that since we haven’t had a lecture we could not have a lab, but that is far from the truth. Today we went over machinery and not only did we stay 10mins extra, our teacher did not show up until 1:40pm !!! If I was still at Baylor I would have left 15 min after the hour. After we went over the very basics of the machine, our teacher informed us that we should look over the user manual and be VERY familiar with certain sections of the guide. F.Y.I. the user manual is 258 pages. At least now I have something to look forward to for the weekend???

Speaking of the weekend, I might go to the Lake District this weekend. Last week I joined the International Student Association; and they are hosting this trip. It only cost 8 pounds and I am really interested in going so hopefully I will be able. This will greatly depend on the amount of work I receive for the rest of my classes.

OH NO YOU DIDN’T! Sunday, October 01, 2006

On Friday a group of us from church had a surprise 24th birthday party for Josh. I had a good time and was able to meet some more church people from different wards. It was pretty relaxed; there was food, socializing, and “hating” on Americans. There was a bunch of Brits giving me a hard time, but it didn’t really phase me because I know I am the minority. One guy said his favorite American song was The Star Spangled Banner. I just laughed because he was trying to trip me up about American/English history; which supposedly others have fallen for before. I suppose his favorite American holiday is July 4th. Hahaha! I would say there is some definite harsh feelings toward the USA (aka: Former Europeans That Rebelled [FETR]) politically, but no one has told me they don’t like me because I am from the U.S.

In general, I like food and sweets. I have been eating too many chocolates since I have been here, so I decided that since school starts on Monday, so would my diet. It is a great idea, and I saved one last chocolate bar to eat this weekend. So Saturday night came around and I went to get my last chocolate bar (for awhile). That’s where the “Oh no you didn’t” came to mind. My chocolate bar was gone!!! I frantically searched the cupboards and my room, like it was a life-saving medication, but I did not find it. Who know you are addicted when one chocolate bar disappears and it ruins you whole weekend. Hahaha. I really hope it was my fault and I missed placed it, because if one of my housemates tells me she ate my LAST chocolate bar, it will be test of restraint. You don’t mess with a woman’s chocolate!

This weekend was General Conference for church. This involves a worldwide gathering, through internet, satellite, radio, etc. where we listen to talks from the Prophet, Apostles, and other leaders of the church. The time difference between Utah and England is 7hrs, so for us some of the secessions are rebroadcast. It is weird because the live secessions are from 5pm-7pm and then 9pm-11pm. I was not able to catch the late one, but I can watch it over the internet. Between secessions I was eating my lunch with 5 other women. Three were from Ireland and just visiting for the weekend. They were funny and told me of about 20 different places I “needed” to visit in Ireland. Being somewhat overwhelmed by the accent and the list of attractions, I don’t really remember many of the sights they mentioned. However, I don’t think I will ever forget one of the ladies. This lady was probably in her 70’s and as she was leaving she pulled this black rectangular thing out of her pocket. She asked me if I knew what it was; but I had no clue. It looked electronic, but that’s all I could come up with. It was a GAMEBOY!!! I started laughing. I could not believe this grandma had this toy and she went on to inform me that she also had a white one at home, a Play Station 2, and a laptop. I was shocked! I can just see her getting into it and probably making her grandson cry because he lost to his grandma…again. Hahaha. I never expected it, but she said she takes the gameboy everywhere; even to church.

Some thoughts from Conference:
“there is one who smiles on high when there’s love at home”
“do not limit the power of the atonement by not forgiving yourself”
“I will give away all my sins to know thee”
“God gave us memories that we may have June roses in the Decembers’ of our
lives”