Hometime!

OK, so we've established Bunsworth can't do regular updates. I knew that already, just waiting for it to become common knowledge, although the actual in-person perstering took this whole internet phenomenon to a new level, I have e-friends from my e-blog! If you haven't guessed from the title, I'm already home! Woo! University is fantastic but I needed a break and I missed my mummy (sad, I know), plus novelties like TV and a fridge with food in it are wonderful. I have got a bit of work to do, but with my "flower-arranging" degree as someone called it, there's not too much to make the holidays unenjoyable. Hmm, lets see if I can think of what's gone on since my last update...

I got snazzy new glasses for a bargain price, that definately was a highlight. Did lots of silly poses like this (seriously, pictures of me at uni all have that same pose!) :

I'll just pretend it has something to do with singing along to some music or other. I managed to hand in all my end of term assesments and think they went well, although I can never judge that kind of thing. It's sad to have left all of my new friends for a while, I missed their Christmas meal which was a bit sad but apparently it got a bit stressful so maybe I was a better off out of it. I have also dyed my hair even though it's not the clear from that photo. Actually it was a while ago and I've forgot about it but apparently it does look different.


Well, I probably should get back to working with Dad and his computers (my occupation for this holiday) and also allow you to continue the debate on Mrs Teapot's blog. Please don't vote for me, I'm not the cuddly christmas type.

Due to popular demand

OK, so I've not been posting regularly. In my defence this week has been "reading week" so I've not been in Uni at all and thus not done that much really. But I guess EB and Heidi are right, I should be posting more than this. Sorry.

Hmm, so Sheffield? I really enjoyed seeing school friends and it was great to be in a different city for a change (even though I prefer Leeds by far; the city centre is much nicer and our Student Union is better too). The gig was fantastic, The Cockpit in Leeds is a great venue and I recommend anyone who is the kind of person to travel to see a favourite band to make the effort to get to Leeds. Having said that, great venues still have their problems and with this one it was finding people. One friend disappeared for the whole gig, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend, and so it ended up just being me and one other guy being into it. Definately made me want to get the Cooper Temple Clause's next album in the New Year though (brownie points if you've actually heard of that band. In fact, if you can name one of their songs on my comment system I may give you a prize. No googling though!)

One thing that's starting to get on my nerves is sleep, or lack thereof. For some reason my sleep pattern is just completely shot, I regularly can't sleep till the early hours and then end up napping in the day or just completely crashing out (multiple occassions with my curtains still open so people can peer in at me in strange twisted positions on my bed. Fortunately with all my clothes still on). Now I know this is mainly my fault, and that if I regularly go to bed at a normal time it wouldn't be a problem but I feel that cos I don't see my flatmates in the day I should stay up with them in the evening so I spend time with them. Oh well, guess my first week home for christmas will be spent sleeping!

Oooh, just remembered something interesting. I still keep in touch with the teacher from Bishop Vesey who ran the CU. She retired just after I left but still goes into CU to try and support. She e-mails me every now and then with updates and the like and the last one was particularly interesting. Apart from her complaint of lack of support from Sutton (won't go into that) she mentioned that at the school's recent "Founder's Day" (an incredibly mind-numbingly boring event where the whole school goes to Holy Trinity for a service to "celebrate" the life of the school's founder, Bishop John Vesey) the Qu'ran was read alongside the Bible. Also, the prayers provided by the CU were billed by the deputy head as "all inclusive", along with an Islamic speaker being the main attraction. Typically, the service has always been recognised as a Christian service, John Vesey was, after all, an Anglican Bishop (although probably a Mason). People of other faiths have been excused from the service and the sermon has always been from a Christian speaker. What intrigues me the most is that apparently the complaints came from the non-religious, even atheistic, staff. I knew the new head was incredibly PC and liberal (he typically ended assemblies with the "prayer" : "May the God you have chosen, or the God that has chosen you, or perhaps quite simply, those you love and cherish, go with you.") but this is a new level. Combined with a heavy Masonic influence in the school I think these are things to pray about!

OK, enough of my ramblings. Will endeavour to update more often, but can't promise anything. I'm off to go see Borat, that'll probably give me something to talk about. Is nice?

It's been a while...

Ok, so I probably should update this thing. I knew this would happen, a combination of laziness, "busyness" and boredom has kept me from posting for a while. Oh well. Let me think what I've been up to...

Hmm, Jenny (my sister, not some random girlfriend thank you) came up to stay for the weekend. It was good fun, although most of my flatmates were away so she didn't get to meet any of them. I think I spoiled her a little, but it's not often I can do that so it was all good really. I hope she enjoyed mosaic church though, which is where I'm pretty much settled now. It's strange, but when we're with a load of people my age it really reminds me how Jenny is only 16 and has a while before she has to face any of this stuff yet.

Other than that I'm pretty much settled into a pattern. I've had a bit of work to do, but nothing over my head yet and in some ways that bothers me. Uni should be an academic challenge but a lot of what we're doing hasn't gone past A-level yet. We've started looking at literature and it's made me realise how much I wish I was doing English and not just French. Don't get me wrong, I love French and am looking forward to becoming bilingual, but English was my thing, the one subject I could just do. (Look who's found the itallics button) At least I get to do an English poetry module next semmester, although I have to get a 2:1 in it (eek!) to be able to switch to an English and French degree next year.

Well, this weekend should be good. I'm seeing a lot of people from my school back home. It works out really well because I've started missing them all this week. We're going to a gig tonight and then back to my friend Rosie's house tomorrow in Sheffield which means I get to see loads of people. (For some reason about 11 of my friends went to Sheffield Uni) Need to make sure I'm back in time for church though, I love services that start at 4:30pm.

Peace out.

Name-tags, is there anything they cannot do?

So, it's been a while. I'd intended to update after going to church so I had something to talk about on here but as I didn't get back from church till about 10:30pm I couldn't really be bothered. But to please the reindeers it had to be done today.

Not an overly interesting week to begin with. Had birthday cakes to consume and a bit of work to do. My flatmates are getting steadily more jealous of my ten hours a week schedule (they're all scientists or doctors who have at least double that), although I don't find it as good as it's cracked up to be. The work isn't too hefty now but I can see that soon it'll pick up and I'm going to spending a lot of time sitting here doing it! The weekend was a bit of a non-starter too, we just watched DVDs and lazed about. Nice and a good way to get to know people better but nothing exciting.

Church was different. After looking through the Student Handbook (and the not-so-fun visit to South Parade last week, see Dad's blog for details) I chose a church called Mosaic, a New Frontiers church that meets in Leeds' Hilton Hotel. I went all on my own, incredibly scared and knowing no one, and ended the evening by going to the pastor's house for dinner (hence the name-tags) and meeting 20+ students who go to the church! I'm fairly sure this is the one for me; the worship was fantastic, the people were friendly and welcoming and the teaching was direct and quite frank. I'll give it a go for the next few Sundays and see where I end up but whatever happens I've made some new friends at least.

Ooooh, just remembered something funny that happened today. I had a "Travaux Practiques" which is where a group of about 10 people sit with a native french speaker and discuss things. A conversation class, if you will. Today the topic was advertising and media and the teacher gave us photocopies of magazine ads to discuss in pairs and then report back what they were about. All of them were fairly straight forward and most other people had ones about drink driving or sexually transmitted diseases with fairly easy to describe pictures. I, as always, got an awkward one. It was selling toilet paper (papier de toilette) which in itself wasn't a problem. The problem was when we had to "Decrivez l'image". The ad featured a pretty much naked couple on the floor of a bathroom in a (fortunately artfully done) embrace. Now, my spoken French is quite good but somehow at A-level you don't quite learn the words to describe those kind of things. Didn't help either that the girl I was working with just clammed up when it came time to report back and I had to do all the talking! That teacher has a cruel sense of humour.

Oh well, I just realised I end nearly all of these posts with a sentence starting with "Oh well" thus I wouldn't want to break with tradition. Till next time...

At the end of the day...

Thank you to Heidi and others who wished me a happy birthday: it's been a strange yet pleasant day. Mum and dad (and Jenny) came up for today and we've just been out for a meal (probably the most I'll eat all week) which has been fun.

So, first week of actual lectures? Mainly boring as they all were introductory welcome-to-the-course-this-is-what-we-do talks, which I despise. Also, the course entitled "The Sounds of French" is just a sneaky phonetics/linguistics course, eugh. I have to learn an entirely new alphabet (the IPA, its that squiggly stuff in dictionaries next to each word, it's supposed to aid pronounciation) which doesn't look fun :( Bulgarian and Russian on the other hand are really fun, and even though I have to learn another new alphabet for Bulgarian at least it's vaguely useful. My shelves are pretty much full now, so many books! I knew I shouldn't have brought so many with me but I always think they'd be useful. I may have to take some home to fit my french books on though, I hate losing books.

I went to CU cell group on Tuesday which I enjoyed despite (or maybe because of, who can tell) the lack of other boys. It was the same as Life Groups from Sutton (the youth cell groups we used to have) and I can see me getting on with everyone. No French students though.
The CU looks great, I think it'll take me a while to get my head round it all but I think I'll have fun there. Looking at a church tomorrow with mum and dad and I'll probably spend the next few sundays church-hopping til I feel settled in.

Oh well, Jenny's sleeping in my bed so I better go get ready for the floor.

End of the most hectic week of my life

So, Freshers' week is over. Everyone seems to be recovering from a week long hangover (not me though because 1) I don't get hungover and 2) I'm not that stupid as to drink all the time) so it's pretty quiet for a change. A nice change though. It's been good I think, everyone seems to be in a position where they've got to know each other well and can now knuckle down to work (or maybe just palm down in mine and others' cases, why change the habit of a lifetime?). I need to do so much washing as well! Damn clothes and their dirtiness.

On another note, I have been down about what's gone on recently, especially Friday as I was up here instead of at Matt's funeral. I've been hiding it well (or at least I thought) but one or two people have noticed and commented that I didn't seem quite right. I didn't want to have to talk about it with complete strangers; I didn't want a load of sympathy in my first week here for something most of them won't have a clue about. But the few people who I've ended up talking to about it are a real God-send. They're not Christians but I do thank God that he's given me such great friends here and pray that I can be as good to them.

Oh well, can't sit around in dirty clothes forever. Better find these washing machines.

Here we go

The last week or so has been a tough one, understandably I guess. But I'm not going to let what happened hold me back or darken anything, neither Matt nor Chris would want it nor is it even appropriate, considering where they are right now. So, university...

Leeds is amazing :) My flat mates are very cool (although none of them are doing the same stuff as me) and we've got on straight away. In fact, everyone in this block of flats is really sociable. We've gone out as a big group every night and no one else seems to have that kind of relationship. In terms of academia it's a slow start and I have no idea what's going on really! I've chosen my elective subjects which are incredibly random. I wanted to take English as it was my passion at school and easily my best subject but due to poor grades in French (I know, it makes no sense whatsoever) I had to take just single French. My plan was to take English as an elective subject, prove myself, then switch to a French/English degree in my second year. Unfortunately English clashes with nearly all my French lectures so I can only do one module a week in my second term, not exactly what I'd hoped. Cos of that I had to fill in some gaps on my timetable and for some reason everything I looked at (History, Philosophy, Theology) all clashed. I finally found some courses that didn't and so I'll actually be studying French, English, Russian History and Society and Beginner's Bulgarian in my first year! Ever random!

Oh well, I've got to go put a quiche in the oven (and that is not a euphemism) so I'll leave it there. Peace out.