Tonight I got ashes. I was looking forward to seeing what a Catholic church in England was like. Would it be any different from the American Catholic church after facing years of official, political oppression? Technically, that oppression mostly ended in the late 18th century, but the English hang on to things—old buildings, old traditions. Another American Catholic found the church, St. James the Greater. The beautiful old building came as a bit of a surprise to me. I had been under the impression that the Church of England had seized all of the nice, proper churches back when they split from Rome and had assumed that they hung on to all of them, forcing the papists to worship in hovels. This church was obviously neither a hovel nor a recent construction built by all of those Eastern European Catholics I hear are invading England’s shores.
I began to suspect something was wrong when I noticed the cross. It was huge, it was beautiful, and it was definitely a cross, not a crucifix. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Catholicism is embarrassingly limited, but I was fairly certain we always had crucifixes. The two boys wearing red riding hoods who led the choir in also seemed suspicious, as did the choirboys with vicar collars. It was hard to tell if these oddities were Protestant or just English eccentricies. There were three priests and I thought that one was a woman—which would have been a definite giveaway—but with the androgynous haircut and robes, it was very hard to tell.
Around this point, a horrendous bought of coughing cut my keen observations short. The acoustics in the church were wonderful. I have no doubt that even the people on the front row could hear me coughing as if I was right beside them. It will be sad when I have coughing fits in America; England has spoiled me. Here, when my coughs get embarrassing to the point where I have to retreat and be alone with my hacking, old ladies frequently appear with a glass of water and sometimes candy.
It was while I was lurking around the entry, trying to regain control over myself, that I found the final evidence for my Church of England theory. A poster on the bulletin board had bright young faces on it, urging parishioners to find their vocation. I had seen similar posters in Catholic churches, but not ones with “the Church of England” written in the corner. Unless the Catholics were recruiting for the Protestants now, I thought I had solid proof.
Flushed with the success of my brilliant observational skills, I slunk back to my seat (I might have been flushed with success, but I had still caused a distraction coughing and hurrying out in the middle of the sermon). The kindly old lady who had given me the glass of water had disappeared, so I took my now empty glass back to my seat. I had some trouble with my knee rest (a pillow hanging on the back of the chair in front of me) and ended up kicking my glass. I have a feeling I won’t be pressured to convert to Church of Englandism any time soon.

I got to class an hour early on Monday. Unsurprisingly, I was the only one there, apart from the people in the class that was actually meeting then. I walked in twice and stared around blankly, trying in vain to find someone I recognized, before I finally asked a girl what class was meeting. She said something that definitely was not Renaissance Drama, and I rushed out to find where my class had disappeared to. It wasn’t until I had gone to the fifth floor and back that I thought to actually check my schedule.
Since it turned out that I had almost an hour before my class, I decided I should spend my unexpected free time productively. I went to one of the campus computer labs to check my email—the internet was not working in the halls and I was starting to become shaky from withdrawal. The other times I had been, the lab was empty. Expecting the same thing, I slammed into the room (the door sticks). Everyone in the room turned to look at me. Apparently empty is not a constant state for the computer lab. After doing a brief, but impressive, imitation of a deer in headlights, I fled.
To comfort myself, I bought a Milky Way from the Student’s Union. I suffered yet another disappointment when I opened my candy bar, took a large healing bite, prepared for the caramely nougat goodness to wash my pain away, and discovered that British Milky Ways don’t have caramel. That’s not a Milky Way, people, that’s a Three Musketeer. I’m considering being a true American and suing for false advertisement.

Yes, I am a dumb American. Put a double-decker bus in front of me and you will see this for yourself.

At first, when I would sit on top I would scream every time a car or person would come near the bus. They look closer than they actually are. The British are used to living on a small island where everything is much closer together. Bus drivers can negotiate remarkably small spaces without fatalities. British people do not scream when they perform these amazing feats.

Bus drivers usually don’t stop at night unless someone sticks their hand out. I found this out after a bus passed us and we had to wait an extra half an hour in the cold for the right bus to come again. During this time, a drunken man came up to us. I thought this conversation might be the last I ever heard:

Crazy Drunk Man: Where are you going?
Remembering my safety advice, I say nothing and look away.
Emily or Sarah (near-death experiences make my memory hazy): We’re not sure, sir.
Crazy Drunk Man: Are you going to outer space?
Emily or Sarah: No, sir.
Crazy Drunk Man: Are you going to leave this planet?
At this point, I am convinced that he means he is going to kill us and send us to heaven. I frantically look for escape routes while thinking “you can’t outrun a gun!” and wondering which one of us he will kill first.
Emily or Sarah: No, we’re just going to stay here.
The drunk ambles off. I make the mistake of voicing my fears and am ridiculed and reminded that guns are very rare in England. This is a relief, because I could have totally taken that man in a knife fight.

Bus drivers also don’t stop during the day at unpopular stops without being flagged down. Waving does not work. In order not to seem too pushy, Jason, Emily and I all waved at the bus driver in front of Price Busters. Smirking, the bus driver waved back and drove on past. He definitely knew what we were doing. An old man came and told us not to wave at the bus, but to stick our hands straight out. This seemed nice, until we heard him laughingly relating the story to his friend. The English are a cruel race.

Friday night I thought one of my friends was going to try to kill me. B is the grad student who lives next door to me. She’s very nice and one of the last people I would suspect of being a homicidal maniac. Usually. It all started in the Chicago girls’ huge and wonderful, but slightly spooky room. Unlike me and my fellow residents of W House, they do not live in a house built to be as boring and plain as possible so that no one would forget how modern and stylish it was. Instead, they live in one of the old converted mansions in an enormous room with wood paneled walls, high ceilings and probably secret passageways. I have to hold firmly to my conviction that it is also haunted to keep from being consumed with jealousy. Unfortunately, I think I was the one who started, and then encouraged the continuation, of the ghost stories. It was one of those times when I temporarily forget just how big of a wimp I really am. I thought that I would be safe coming back to my modern little cell block, too modern and dingy to possibly be haunted. How wrong I was.
The trip back to W House in the dark was uneventful. Still foolishly convinced of my own bravery, I laughed at the girls who had been scared of the ghost stories. My superiority all came crumbling down when I was standing in my doorway talking to B. The actual conversation has been wiped out of my mind by the sheer terror I felt when I noticed that she had slit pupils like a cat! Instantly, my normal-pupiled eyes darted to the exit, which she was blocking. I carefully edged out into the hallway to make sure the monster pupils were not just a trick of the light and to clear my way to the door. Out in the hall, her pupils appeared to be normal. I told her what I had thought and we had a good laugh then said goodnight and went into our respective rooms. Once in my room, my well-trained overactive imagination kicked back into gear and I realized with a horrible certainty that I had just told her that I knew she was really a cat monster! I always yell at the people in movies who do stupid things like that! Trying not to make any sound, I ran down to E’s room, which is safely at the end of the opposite hallway. We watched Friends (S has unwisely let us borrow the season she brought with her. She’s not getting it back without a fight.) until my paranoia was mostly replaced by sleepiness. I couldn’t suppress images of B waiting for me in all of her slit-pupiled glory, though, when I went back to my room. I checked everywhere, even under my bed. It seems that she has decided to let me live, even though I know her secret…for now.

Don’t let all of the whining I’m about to do fool you, I’m having an amazing time. I’ve seen cathedrals, towers, palaces, monuments and museums (and toured many of them), yadda, yadda, yadda. But that’s not what this post is about.

I’m sick. I don’t want to point fingers, but I blame it all on the blackcurrant juice I had for lunch yesterday, because I felt fine before that. What is a blackcurrant anyway? Probably some sort of poison berry that these wily Brits have built up a tolerance for so that they might kill poor, unsuspecting Americans like myself. Although the stress, time difference, long waits at the bus stop in the cold and massive amounts of digestive biscuits I’ve consumed, probably haven’t helped matters. In the future I fear I will have to limit my digestive biscuit purchases since I obviously can’t control myself around them.

My trouble with distinguishing between right and left has made this whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing the English do very hard to figure out. Half of the time it seems perfectly normal to me, while the rest of the time I keep having thoughts like, “Good lord! What is that very small child doing driving such a large car?!” I’ve pretty much given up on trying to figure out which way to look when crossing the road. Sometimes I just look one way the whole time because I figure that this at least gives me a 50/50 chance of making it across safely.

I’m no longer blaming this cold on the poor blackcurrant juice. I now blame the POISONED water I have been drinking! That’s right. Apparently making all tap water come from the same clean source is just too simple and safe for the English. The only water that is safe to drink is cold tap water from kitchen (and certain specially marked) sinks. Water from hot water taps and sink water tap is not for drinking, because it comes from a “tank” and is not safe to drink even when boiled! I have been blissfully consuming the tap water from my bathroom since I got here. If the nice British girl from down the hall had not seen Emily about to use hot water in the kettle when we were making tea, we never would never have known that we were drinking water from a tank where rats sometimes crawl in and die. I feel very betrayed by all of the study abroad coordinators, travel books and friends that have lived in the UK who failed to warn me not to drink the dead rat water.

Leicester is home to one of only two remaining paternosters in the entire country. It’s this elevator thing without doors that moves constantly (like the beads of a rosary, hence the name) and you just hop on and off. The Americans (myself included) have had an embarrassing amount of fun with it. Then I learned the paternoster’s dark side. It breaks down and people are forced to either wait in the ridiculously long queue for the single elevator or take the stairs. Wheezing up fifteen flights of stairs with my sickly lungs was not exactly a good time.

My first post!

That is all for now. Just had to get that out of the way.