The Honeymoon Stage

I think I live in the wrong country.

It must be because I just got here, but I'm in love with Winchester. The grass is green, the blustery weather makes me feel like I'm in a Charles Dickens or Jane Austen novel. The English complain, but I love rain. This feels like summer compared to what I left behind in Wisconsin. The grocery stores sell almost nothing but free trade and organic products and clearly mark all vegetarian options. It's awesome even though I'm not even a vegetarian. One of the best clubs in town is the one in the student union. I was there today; it's pretty nice! The professors have the best sense of British humor and give us beer suggestions and tell jokes about crazy psychics. The best part is that the students here are incredibly friendly.

On Saturday a group of people from our floor took Sam and I to a really cute pub, Weatherspoons, for our first legal drinks. With the ridiculous exchange rate here, I spent almost $10 on two drinks! I may be a cheap date at home, but definitely not here. On Sunday James and Toby took me to a pub called County Arms for BINGO! BINGO cards are really different here.. there are no letters across the top and they have 3 rows and about 9 columns, 5 numbers per row with a bunch of spaces. They had to explain to me how to play, which felt really stupid. You more or less pretend the spaces aren't there and the letters don't really mean anything . The caller was this cute old man who made up rhymes for every number, like "All the threes, dirty knees -- 33!" and "56, we're up to tricks" and "Two fat ladies, 88!" I won a free drink and hooked Toby and James on Amaretto! When I got back, my neighbors Izzy and Pip had slipped a note under my door to invite me to watch Moulin Rouge with a bunch of their friends, which was really sweet.

Orientation all day yesterday was pretty boring. Hillary and I found a yoga class, though! So I think we're going to sign up for it! And then at lunch, I was trying to cut my kiwi in half with a plastic spoon, because I usually do that and scoop it out. The cutting wasn't working so well and one of the professors was laughing at me and suggested I just bite it. "Bite it? Like an apple?" He nodded, and it was delicious! That always seemed really weird to me, but I don't think I'm ever going to cut a kiwi in half again.

Last night we were going to go to the Porthouse, the dance club in town, but we were still a little tired and then we ran into some girls who were going... in Pegs' words, what they were wearing is what she "would wear if it were Halloween and I wanted to be a dirty school girl." So we just hung around Alwyn, our dorm, with a bunch of girls. This morning I had my first class, Cognitive Psychology, which was also boring because we just covered the history of cognitive psychology for two hours, but I think it should be pretty interesting after next week.

Danielle and I explored Winchester this afternoon and got milkshakes at ShakeAway, the best milkshake shoppe in the world. They literally take any ingredients you want, pop them in a blender with some ice cream and voila! It's magical. I had a chocolate muffin shake with a Dime bar and malted milk balls! The chain has only been open for four months and they already have more than 10 locations. The one in Southampton makes 700 shakes a day! They're opening one in Canada next, though I'm not sure where. Winchester is absolutely beautiful with so much history. It's also the No. 2 safest and best place to live in England this year.

I haven't figured out how to post pictures here yet, but you can find them all here: http://uwec.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2120222&l=cf27b&id=59511051.