Week 2.677

Sorry for the delay since my last post. Two of my friends for University of Illinois, Haley and Arianna have been visiting so I haven't had as much free time as usual. It's been good to hang out with some familiar faces, even though it has been a bit cramped in my 8x10 room - ha.

The picture is me and two other girls from the University of Illinois at the shopping part of town. Apparently its a big deal that we have a "TopShop" as well as other pricey stores. I was in there for less than 5 minutes before I left for "Primark", the English equivalent to Kohl's. Much more my style.

Last weekend I went on my first trip. I went to Liverpool for the day. It was a really cool town. Less like a city and party town than Leeds, but I think it was a nicer looking more scenic town. It helps that it's on the coast so it has a lot of water and ports. We took 7 coach buses there as a group. I ended up on the bus with the adult students, who were going with their entire families. I ended up sitting next to 4 little kids that absolutely drove me nuts the entire time. They were making paper planes the whole time, one kid cried three times, and another went to the bathroom 6. It was terrible. I felt like a camp counselor for first graders all over again, except this time I couldn't give them pool time to get them to stop. Longest two hours of my life.

Once we got there I met up with my flat-mates and a few other people and we walked around town. The Leeds chapel is the biggest Anglican church in the world so we paid 3 pound to go to the top. On the roof we were on a 450 foot tower, but its at the top of a hill 500 more feet above sea level, so we had a great view.

After the church we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the Beatles museum. Now I have never been an avid Beatles fan but it was pretty cool to see the history of the band. It focused a lot on local places in Liverpool, where the grew up, went to school, and all started playing. Beyond that everywhere we went there was Beatles music playing. Musicians on the street, every store, pubs, etc - all Beatles music. It was fun for a day, but I'm pretty sure that would drive me crazy to live there. After that we headed back to the buses. I grabbed my first McDonalds of the trip, it was as delicious as ever, and headed on the bus (sure not to sit by the little kids again).

Besides McDonalds and pub food I have tried to try some of the local cuisine. Bangers and Mash is terrific. Its just a huge pile of mashed potatoes, sausage, and tons of brown gravy. I tried some some Chicken Tikka Marsala (Indian Food - It's as big here as mexican food is in the states), it was really good but I had no idea how to eat it. My favorite thing so far has been the english big breakfast platters. It is 3 pound (about $5) for 2 eggs, 2 english bacon strips, 2 sausage, mushrooms, half a tomato, baked beans, and chips (french fries). I started getting these meals as a direct result of me getting sick of eating peanut butter and jelly, pringles, cereal, and frozen pizzas.

Organizing trips in itself is a job. Just the few weekend trips I have down are getting hard to keep straight, its going to be really hard to travel for my 4 week Easter Break and keep everything straight. It will help that the fam is visiting during that time, so I can let mom and dad be the organized ones for a week, ha. My first big trip is Feb 18th-22nd I'll be in Paris and Versailles.

I am jealous of everyone who gets to watch the superbowl with the commercials. We have tickets to watch it at this big sports bar, but they have their own commercials so I won't get to have the full experience.

As for the Rook Uncles and their interest in the alcohol class. This week we learned about the different early parts of the brewing processes. First you take the Barley and germniate it, Kiln it, then steep it and based on the temperature and times you get different shades of malts. Little known facts, even the darkest beers like Guiness is 95% pale malts. Also, Barley is most commonly used to make beer because the stem is within the seed, whereas wheat and others have external stems so they are more fragile. That is why until more recent technology wheat beers didn't exist. Anyways I've been thinking that my project to create a beer could be a great opportunity to start a Rook family company. We could base it off of one of Uncle Dave's favorite Goose Islands, grow the barley and oats on the Coulter farm, Brew it at Uncle Pat's Papa Dells Chain in Wisconsin, my dad will be the salesman, and Uncle Bob will design our corporate structure. Deal?

Also I found out our cafeteria is the same building where "The Who Live at Leeds" was recorded. Random fact.

Sorry it was long, I'll try to be more regular about this.