Today a most disturbing (and very scary) fire spread at a warehouse in Wolverhampton, very close to my friends accommodation halls but fortunately not "close enough" so to speak. They did however evacuate, which is really frightning. The smoke was visable from everywhere and really thick, and the city still stinks of smoke now during the evening.


-Outside my dorm-


So, to escape the smoke (and for other reasons such as need of furniture) me, Ashley and Rachel had decided to take a little trip to my dear motherlands invention IKEA. Just the thought of reading some swedish words again made both me and Ashley all giggly and goofy, poor Rachel had to stand us mumbling in Swedish all afternoon.. After a trip by the student bus over to Wasall, and then a taxi to IKEA we did our thing (like bosses), complained somewhat over the smallness of the store and the lack of products (like a normal can opener...grr) we had somewhat of an adventure getting back home to Wolverhampton, including Polish taxi drivers, 3 misleading directions, a shut-down bus-stop and a logn wait for the bus home. The day ended with online ordering of chinese food and some taboo. Great day!

  
- Rachel and Ashley - IKEA - Wasall tower -

 

- Finally got a Semla and proper coffee, like a Swede! Why can I never smile normally on pics?-
Word of the day: Wellies [Gummistövlar]

Is it just me, or is the news about the Swedish new royal generation (aka the new princess) a moodbooster or what? Being a big fan of the royal household, which I know several of my friends is not, I'm really happy over this. To the extent where I doodle pictures of Sweden VS the presidents of the world and giggles about it to my classmates. One of my french friends replied: a princess? So what, you're dressing her up in little pink dresses and everyone does the same strotting down the red carpet?
- We're having a MONARCY, not a COSTUME PARTY. Sigh.

   

- Cut it extremly short this time, compared to before... Still getting used to it, but it's very useful to have so short hair when working out -

Anyhow, I'm doing fine here, have always stuff to do, travels to plan and assignments to procrastinate. The only thing I'm a bit sad about is that it seems none of my friends from home can come and visit me, which of course sucks for me but I can't blame them, most of them have good reasons. But I'll manage, and keep on being awesome with my friends here, and I'll see everyone when I get back home!


-Awesomenss in a pose! Pic stolen from Helen-

The skill of daring to speak with new people has proven itself very useful to me lately. Last time was last night, when I spoke with one of my friends dorm-mates only to realise she's a fangirl like me, shipping various stuff and playing the same games. For some time now my fingers and mood have been itching to do some con-going and cosplay, however I've no clue to do anything about that while being in England. So to my surprise she told me that there would be an event for games-tv series - anime in the next town. Without second thought I wanted to join in, and luckily there was still tickets left to buy at the entrence. So for the first time I went to an Expo abroad. And I loved it, naturally ;)

   
-Cosplayers - Actors - Photobombing Conn -

It was really nice to have a few people to walk around with, even if the area of the Expo wasn't all that big. The name of this event was MCM Expo (in Telford. If you google/youtube it I bet there'll be films to see from the expo if you're interested). It felt good to be able to speak about the shows you like, comment about cosplay and discuss fanfiction with people again. Talking about Anime Helen is helping me with a great deal, but being with other geeks is always a comfort :)

  
-The tardis - Crossplayer - Movie poser-

The best part I must say was to be able to ask some questions to the actors Tom Hopper and Adetomiwa (he actually forgot how to spell his own name while signing the photo :3 ) from the series "Merlin". Fortunatly they made it really easy for us fans to talk with them, because more than me was really nervous spekaing with stars from you fandom, even if they aren't the main characthers.


- My head is up the clouds~ Now I just need to see Bradley James and Colin Morgan <3 -

This is one event I've been looking forward to over two weeks now: the "Party Animals" Bar Crawl. A bar crawl is an event in which you visiy several bars during one night. For us it was also with a theme, so we decided to go all out and dress up properly! Lions, Pandas and bunnis was common in our group.
   

However, once we went to the bars it scattered, since you was supposed to follow the other people with the same colour on the shirt, so half of us (the dutch people of course) went to the orange t-shirts and we other (dutch and swedish) headed off to the black group. It was so much fun, seeing all the people dressed up, the flow of the evening and all the happenings :)






We all had some great stories from the night, since we all had been to different parties so to speak. In the end, we all gathered at the biggest club in Wolverhampton, Oceania, after reading the schedules on our t-shirts' backs and confirmed that both black and orange should be there at the same time. The night couldn't have ended better than meeting up all the friends again and dance as if we ruled the world!

Due to a high demand from family and friends most of these pictures are now already on facebook, but I decided to do a post about my trip to Bath anyway!

So, why Bath? Several reasons actually, the geeky one being Charlieissocoollike's birthplace, the less geeky one is the historical aspect due to which I wanted to see the places shown in the Jane Austen/ the dutchess movies and thirdly I wanted to see more of England. The sun was shining which made everything look really pretty, but it was really cold.There was many things to do, but unfortunately too little time to do it all so we had to cut some things out, but we still managed to see the vital things.

The group of four girls started with the Abbey and the Roman Bath....we thought. Instead we stumbled into a long queue and an ongoing wedding, so we decided to go there later instead. So we started with the famous Brigde, which is one of the two in the world which has stores upon them (no source to this fact though), one here and the other in Venice.


-The Bridge-

After escaping from some nasty pidgeons we went to the Jane Austen House. I had no clue Jane Austen ever worked or lived in Bath, much less that they had a house with facts of here there, where the employees wore old-fashioned dresses, sold books from the printed edition in the 1800 century or had a love café at Gay Street, but now I do!


   
- Costumes - Fan language - Colin Firth - Fika <3


-Tea time with Nien and Leonie, my "dutchessess". Ashley was kind enough to take the picture-


After some lovely cream tea a lá Mr Darcy and scones we went up to the Cresent, a house which for a long time have been on my "must see this building before I die"-list, due to it's role in many of my dear movies about the 1800. And I wasn't disapointed, it was stunning. On the way we passed the famous "Circus", a turnabout with beautiful houses along the edges. A very fancy, and expensive, part of Bath.


- The Royal Cresent-


-Wiiih!-

So, after all this we decided to tackle the Abbey and the Roman Bath again, and was more successful this time. Even if we had to stress through the Roman Bath to make it to the bus, it was worth it, and I can't help but always be impressed by the quality of the Roman's ideas and work. This was altogether a great day, Bath has been placed as top two in my favourite cities in the world and I'm so glad I finally saw the city of my beloved books in real life. I did however also got an little heart-attack when a friend stated:
"Ida, you're standing on a body."
After a shout and a jump back, I realized it was "art" for a calm demostration against the Soldiers in Afgahnistan, but how was I supposed to know? I was busy looking at the gorgeous Abbey, why bother looking down? (well, because there might be a body there apparently...)

  
-Inside the Abbey - Dead Body - Outside the Abbey
    
- The Roman Bath from above - R.B. with the Abbey - Phone booth - R.B


And this is the heap of things I got home with me. I feel like a true Jane-nerd and fangirl, which is absolutely true! ;)


-I'm a happy girl today-
[Also borrowed some of the pictures from Leonie, so it wouldn't be all the same]

Today I've been in Wolverhampton exactly one month. It's very hard to believe, the days just rush by and I really don't know where these weeks have gone. I feel like I'm still processing the fact that I am in England, a country I've wanted to live in and/or visit properly for such a long time. Sometimes you're living the dream without even knowing it!

I've gotten a grasp of the modules, created a day-routine and made many new friends, some which I think will last a really long time. I now realise how my exchange students who comes to JIBS are feeling towards the swedes though: it's much easier to blend with other exchange students than the british people, since we have a higher need of getting to know people than they do. As you know I absolutely LOVE my exchange students from back home, and love hanging out with them, so I'm perfectly happy with my networks here :) We are having british people within our group of course, but generally speaking the englishmen likes to be with the englishmen, as swedes likes to be with swedes. No surprises there. It's been a fabulous first month, and I can't wait to experience more!




Some funny comments teachers have made during lectures:
- "Hang on, are you LATE? Or are you early for next week?"
-"I can tell by your faces that you bitterly, bitterly disapprove of that" (regaring ending the lecture early)
- "It's youtube morning this morning folks!"
- "You know me, I love to spread!" (regarding scattered papers)
- "Monotone is sexy!"

So, today decided to eat brunch. Ha! As is a simple brunch could ever satisfy us, the brave warriors of the Erasmus programme! So instead we grab out big bags and warm jackets. Why the warm jackets? Due to a sudden snowfall yesterday which resulted in most cars in Wolverhampton in desperate need of a push to start and closed taxi services, but left us swedes laughing in pity. But even if heaps of wet snow remained we carried on, and the trains left on time: we were going to Birmingham.

 
 

In Birmingham we didn't have time to see much of the city: the shopping centre was far bigger than any in gothenburg, and we spent the day walking around in this mall called "the bull ring". However we started with a full english breakfast. How anyone can dislike beacon is beyond me. So, we, me Helen and Leonie, drag poor, but there voulantarily, Jimmy around to various girl stores to gather both clothes and supplies and props for the upcoming "Party Animal" bar-crawl, gonna be really interesting! Several bags of various shopping and a bento box of sushi was brought back home to Wolverhampton whhen the stores closed. A true, fine, british sunday!


  
- I now have a Panda Hat and a Milk & cookie shirt... NOTHING CAN STOP ME!