2 Weeks in 1

Sorry I missed updating last week. School is winding up. I had spent the week working, the weekend playing, and Sunday came and I suddenly had no more time to put off my homework. This weekend I have had time to do some writing though. I've had the flu this weekend so it was more difficult to distract myself from my homework O.o

Good thing is that every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better ;)

Pictures from when I was well enough to have fun last week!

 

Last Saturday we went to the Lake District. We took another train. Instead of going up a mountain this just took us a short distance to...

 

A ferry!

We rode the ferry across one of the lakes of the Lake District. It was a rainy day, but our bus driver said that it is almost always raining there. So we decided we were okay with it because we were having an "authentic" experience :P

Around lunch time it cleared up though and we hung out at a beautiful area with some lovely gardens. Sadly a bunch of my photos were corrupted because when I was moving them over my computer had a melt down and crashed...But I still have several good pictures.

Such as this one :)

After class on Tuesday I went with a few of my friends to see Dirty Dancing, the musical. I have not seen the movie but one of my friends is a HUGE fan and was very very excited to see this.

That's the stage. My camera wasn't cooperating that night. Every picture was either washed out by the flash or blurry.

I've only seen one musical before, Wicked. I have to say Wicked was better, but this one was okay. For the Dirty Dancing fans, this was exactly what they wanted. I felt that as a theater show, it felt rushed and they were constantly changing "scenes". I think it is just a scene by scene repeat of the movie. I'm told that there were one or two new scenes added in the musical though. By the end, I enjoyed myself and someday I may actually watch the movie. Nothing to worry about though if you miss it, unless you are a die hard fan.

This feels like a short post after having missed a week. I'm going with the excuse that I'm still sick. You are lucky to be hearing from me at all :P This Wednesday is our last class :( Many of my classmates are leaving this week. I need to suck it up and get to feeling better because this week will be our last hurrah!

Mother's Day 2.0

It is now Mother's Day in the US, Germany, and Finland. Probably other places as well but these are the ones I know of. It was already celebrated here in the UK, but there is nothing wrong with celebrating it again, hence this blog's title.

As classes wind up I've been busy...but not with school. We (my classmates and I) have been out trying to fit in various things we all wanted to do in England but hadn't gotten around to doing yet. This month will be nice and busy and so far lots of pictures to share :D

 

I've started working at the library again which is fun :) Sitting at one of my bus stops I saw this milk truck. Yes, there are still trucks just for milk! There are probably some in the States somewhere too, but I've never seen them before. I thought this was too cute not to take a picture of.

 

Share my Coke??? This is a new thing on the UK bottles. It amuses me, but I don't share :P

 

I went a Manchester City game! This is the stadium for the City team.

 

There were police on horses patrolling the stadium, in English saddles of course. I'm easily amused, sorry. But also there's a horse!

 

Whenever you go to a game you are obligated to have a hot dog, right?

Since I'm in the UK I ordered fish and chips to watch a soccer game. It was good, but it's just not the same as ordering a ballpark hot dog with everything on it.

But I was really there...

Manchester City is the light blue guys. Whoo!

 

 

Manchester City won!

Afterwards they immediately started mowing. Again, I'm easily amused. I just though it was cute, all of them mowing together >.<

 

 

Then it was work, work, work then SATURDAY! My friend talked me into going on a trip with the international society to Snowdonia which is the second largest national park in the UK, located in Wales. It was AMAZING. I'm now also planning on going on a trip with them to the Lake District now :D

 



 

We took the mountain railway up to the top of the mountain, Snow was the name of it (I think). The tallest one in the park (and Wales)

 

This is a spot we found wandering around before we got on the train. Gorgeous.

 

On the whole ride up the mountain is was pretty much this foggy. We got to the top and saw...nothing O.o It was also very cold. We took pictures then hurried inside to warm up and buy a few little souvenirs.

Our train as we get ready to go back down.

As we descended it started to clear up!

It was also raining intermittedly. There are a number of hiking trails up the mountain too and we saw lots of hikers out. Some were smiling, it mostly look miserable though. It was cold, foggy, and rainy. They looked wet and cold, but some were still smiling! The ones in just windbreakers and shorts were the ones not smiling... 

The ride down was breathtaking. Beautiful landscapes that we hadn't realized we were passing on the way up.

This is the train we rode on, the Yeti :D

Down at the base of the mountain there were sheep in the soccer field!

The little town where we got on the train from.

 

We went to Swallow Falls which was very cool. Then looked around a little Welsh town there in Snowdonia.

 

You'll be amazed to know this, I'm sure. There are lots of sheep in the UK :P I thought I'd get tired of them by the end of the day but they were still adorable on the way home. Mostly because of the lambs...So cute.

 

This has become a really long post so with that, I'm calling it good.

Barbeque and Liverpool

And now we move into May! Started off this month with a May Day party at a classmate's house. Apparently May Day is a big celebration in Finland. We had fun, partied and ate good food. Next morning they invited us back to finish off the party with a barbeque. Those of us who were still alive after the hangover came ;)

 

 

It was a perfect, beautiful sunny day. We had grilled mushrooms, zucchini, bell peppers and I showed them how to make s'mores. The grocery store was out of graham crackers (seriously, what is wrong with these people?) So we had marshmallow and chocolate in some rye bread crackers instead...graham crackers are much better. That's all I have to say about that.

 

Despite the lack of graham crackers we had a lot of fun at the barbeque and after we ate we sat in the intermittent sunshine and tried to absorb some vitamin D.

 

I went with my friends to see Doll's House this week. This is a shot of the stage at the Royal Exchange Theatre. It's a really cool theatre (British spelling, not a typo). There is seating all the way around the stage so the actors stay in motion the whole time so they never have their backs to anyone for very long. I really enjoyed it and I plan on going back again!

 

I got my Easter-themed care package from my loving family! The important thing is not the timing, its the fact that it got here at all :P Here are the quesadillas I enjoyed with the El Pinto's hot sauce my family sent me. Thank you guys! You are keeping me alive and well fed!

Because we've had some sunny days lately I took my laptop to the park and wrote the last couple of pages on my script outside. A great day! Sat under this tree here as I wrote the end. Now of course I have to go back and fix all the many errors and inconsistencies, but I have a finished document to work with now!

Me, writing. I actually have celtx open on the screen there, and you can even see me :) I really like this picture actually. When I took it I didn't realize you could see me in the reflection but it looks like a really well thought out shot...

Sun shining through the trees. Can't get enough of it.

I went to Liverpool on Friday! First time out of Manchester. A whole bunch of us from class went because BBC Writer's Room was hosting a seminar about Top Tips for screenwriting. We walked from the bus stop and went through this park on the way.

Our view from the hill, looking down at Liverpool.

 

This is where the seminar was held, a building called The Lighthouse. We didn't learn any new ground breaking stuff at the seminar, but that is actually a good thing. Everything they talked about was familiar because we had learned it in school. It was really good to feel like I had really learned a lot through Salford's program. Still good to attend the seminar though and here the same things from someone new and also to refresh on points we may have forgotten.

After the seminar we went to a club called the Cavern. It's Famous for the Beatles playing there about 200 times in their early days.

The music was nice, played Beatles era songs and had a live band. I liked the brick walls and style of the place, BUT it was still a loud club which is just not my thing and my shoes stuck to the floor because it was so dirty which was really not cool. On the whole, glad and I went and experienced it, but not something I want to go back for. Have to spend some more time in Liverpool in the daytime and go to the coast.

This week I'm going to a soccer game! I will be taking my camera so I should have some more good pics next week.