Hello Again Everyone,

Sorry for the delayed update. It has been fun settling in and meeting new people. I live with 3 girls from France and a girl from Korea and have met two wonderful girls from next door from Venice, Italy and Buffalo, NY.
Nottingham has been quite enjoyable to get around even if I do manage to get a little lost at times the people are quite friendly and helpful here. London thankfully it is not. Sorry Raquel I think I am still in the truce stage with London.

So I managed to delete three long paragraphs with the stroke of a key. So please forgive this extended delay due to an crankiness with keyboards for a bit.

So to summarize what is new... I am really enjoying Nottingham. We have a free bus service provided to us to take us to the University and city centre. I am very excited to start exploring the countryside. I am thoroughly enjoying my roommates and being able to listen to french conversations. I am enrolled in two french classes and two history classes so my noveaus amies will come in very handy. We are helping each other with our native tongue.

We had freshers week last week and I think that I have decided to join the travelling club, the caving club and there is a walking club as well. It may be difficult to fit everything in but I will attend what I can and it does not cost that much. I have been having a very difficult time sorting out my internet though and this has impeded my ability to search courses, correspond and basically keep in touch with the world. While there are some joys in this enforced vacation from technology it has created a need to deal with techy people who do not listen and offer partial solutions only. I am still without internet because I have no idea how to find out an ip address from my ipad.

* Note to the future student travellers, An ipad is not sufficient to get you by without wifi access in older residences.

We have had some lovely times though as Helene made crepes on Thursday to celebrate La Chandeleur (Candlemas) and associated with the blessing day of the Virgin Mary. It was a lovely evening meeting new spanish and french people. I picked up some Maple syrup to add a Canadian element and this was very much appreciated.
On Saturday, I did not venture into town as it started snowing. The snow here is perfect for snowball fights and making snowmen it was lovely to see all of the students playing about. I promised to try making pancakes for my roommates but with all of my goose chases trying to get my internet working I did not get a proper pancake recipe. I know the basic ingredients but baking powder is not overly easy to find here. I had to make a trip to Tesco's in the morning which was quite lovely with the fresh snow (not turned into slush yet). I attempted to make pancakes but as some of you know I am not the fondest of pancakes and do not regularly make them. They were passable but I felt very bad for my cuisine victims. Amel asked what we called taste testers and so now our private joke for offering food to anyone is to call them a victim. I couldn't think of a better word than taste tester and so joked that taste testers are victims in that they have to eat very odd food.
They were gracious enough to say that they enjoyed the pancakes, although the berries I picked up and the syrup definitely helped. I will try again another time now that I have baking powder. They asked what else we do with maple syrup so I tried to list different ways that we use it. My list was limited but I mentioned how in the east they pour the fresh syrup on the snow and so Helene and Amel immediately ran out to pick grab some fresh clean snow. I assured the others that people have been eating snow for years and it would be fine to eat just a little bit and no one would perish. They proceeded to bring in two bowls and we poured some of the syrup on the snow. It was actually quite lovely and fun. I was quite happy that it snowed and we had a lovely joint breakfast. My roommates are quite good and speak french as often as they speak english so some of my french is starting to come back.
Well I should get going, I need to speak with my tutor and then finalize some stuff for my trip with Saretta and Saila. I am getting very very excited.

Cheers,
Tan