Norwichristmas!

Today is my last full day in Norwich (HUGE sigh). I'm going downtown in a little bit to finish up my Christmas shopping. My flat is doing a Secret Santa tonight and I still have to get my person a present (no sense in waiting until the last minute, I always say). I'll probably wander a little bit too.

So Norwichristmas is what they call their Christmas festivities (catchy, right?) I have pictures of the lights downtown, but I haven't put them on my computer yet, so I'll just have to add that later. It's pretty crazy though..they start celebrating in early November in earnest. I had my first mince pie yesterday, which was tasty but I think would have been a bit better if I liked raisins. All the buildings on campus have full Christmas trees in them. Even the grocery store! And the library, accomodations, the art building...that one even has fake presents under it. So that is exciting.

I'm heading to London tomorrow morning and spending the night. I'm excited to see the M&M Tour at JFK, but I'm not too excited for the blast of winter that will greet me. See most of you soon!

P.S. Happy St. Lucia Day to all you crazy Scandinavians out there.

Come on City, Come on City

The Canaries won their match, 2-1. Pretty impressive since we're at the bottom of the league and Plymouth was rated 6th. I've never been really into soccer (excuse me: football) but it was actually pretty interesting. The games I watched in high school didn't have as much heading, flipping over people, and sliding. There is a really long Norwich City Football Club song/chant, which people would break out in, but mainly they just yelled, "come on city! come on city!" The kid next to me was probably about 10, and knew all the names of all the players. It was a lot of dad's and their kids. We had good seats in the 4th row (for 5 pounds! Not bad).

English sports fans are nuts in general and take this stuff really seriously. Considering this, they were actually pretty tame, I thought. A lot of insulting the ref took place (are you BLIND, ref?, maybe you should go to spec-savers, ref), but nothing too bad. My flatmates wanted to know if I'd picked up any good Norfolk swearing, but I hadn't. They said the Ipswich/Norwich game would be crazy.

I went for what will probably be my final walk around the UEA broad this morning. Writing about Norwich now makes me sad, because I'm trying to remember everything about it. I'll be pretty busy for the next few days, so I'm not sure how much I'll be posting. I am very excited to see you all, even if I don't want to leave here!

"The Good American"

I was sitting out in the hall with one of my flatmates last week (this is what we do, it's either that or sit in the kitchen) and I forget what we were talking about, but she said, "you are a good kind of American. We could use more Americans like you." Which is pretty nice. My Canadian flatmate and I are both leaving at the end of the semester, and the other flatmates are not happy about this. I was talking to two of them yesterday, and they were trying to figure out how to get us to stay the full year. I said that someone nice would probably take my room, and one of them gave me a dark look. "I doubt it. They'll probably be a confederate or something. And they won't give us popcorn." This last point might be true. When my 'rents and godmothers came to visit, they brought me enough microwave popcorn to last me about a year, so I've been leaving bags in the kitchen for the general flat enjoyment.

So this brings up an interesting idea...what is a "Good American"? Is it because I'm critical of the current administration? And I think gun control is good? I think the general view here is that Americans (read: Southern Americans) all have guns and hate gays and are super-religious and don't care about anything that happens out of the country. And to be fair, there are certainly people like that! But not as many as everyone outside the US seems to think. But anyway, you can rest assured that I'm saving our country's reputation one person at a time. :)

I just had some cornflakes for dinner and now have to bundle up for the Canaries match. The Canaries are the Norwich Football team (their uniforms are bright green with a yellow canary on them). I'm planning on wearing long underwear, I already have on a tank top and sweater, plus a vest, coat, scarf, and this knit hat I got in Scotland that makes me look like I herd yaks. I'll report back on the score.

My Sweet Little City

So in the three days that I've been gone, Norwich has about doubled its amount of Christmas lights and decorations. Edinburgh was amazing, and pretty, and exciting, and tiring, but I'm glad to be back here. I got back to my flat and one of my flatmates had gone and got a bunch of garlands and little Santa's, so our hall and kitchen are decorated. I missed my flatmates. I don't know what I'm going to do in two weeks when I fly out. I'm excited, I can't wait to see my friends and family, and Christmas planning and stuff, but...I'm really not ready to leave. I don't want to do work these next two weeks, I want to visit with people and walk around downtown and get ready to leave. Ahhhh.

Two American friends and I went tonight and saw Fred Claus, which was really goofy but good. I cried quite a few times (DON'T ask me why) and actually one of my friends did too. It was cheering, holiday movies always get to me anyway, especially if they involve little kids who might not be getting presents, things like that. We went to Wagamama after...I don't know if you all have heard of it, but it's a noodle restaurant. I had ramen with this coconut milk/chili/lemongrass soup and chicken, and we all got ginger cheesecake and split a thing of sake. It came to 41 pounds for the three of us! But it was a good "good-bye Norwich" kind of dinner, since I will probably be eating potatoes for the next two weeks, as my budget allows. So I'm glad to be back. And I'm really full and really sleepy, so I'm going to bed.