Chapter One

Well after a month I have finally found the time to update anyone who is interested of my adventures so far. My flight over was long, but I managed to have fun...espescially the 18th of January - with the time zone changes it became the longest day I have ever experienced! I had a 6 hour stopover in Tokyo airport, where I met a couple of aussie travellers (Andrews' parents owns musos corner in Newcastle...what a small world!). Anyway, with so much time to kill we managed to convince the British Airways club lounge to let us hang out there and drink their free beer and wine to pass the time..thought I had better make the most of that opportunities considering the scary stories I had heard of English beer prices (which have since been confirmed!!).

I am living in Bodington Hall, a massive university residence (over 1000 students live here). It is working out really well since there is a group of about 10 exchange students living here from USA, Poland and Canada, so we always have someone to party with. We have 'family dinner' on sunday nights, taking it in turns to cook, which has been really lovely! Plus the last couple of dinners have been served with French wine, thanks to Aurelian (Jasmins French Boy)! Bodington is about as far as you can get from the uni, so we have a decent length bus ride to school each day...which is a good way to get to know Leeds and spectate each days new fancy dress 'Otley Run' participants - the local pub crawl that apparently has never been successfully completed!

The subjects I am doing at uni are really great, it is so nice to be learning some different approaches to psychology in some crazy subject areas...evolutionary psychology is a classic...my lecturer thinks we evolved from fish...kind of. I like his argument anyway! The major difference here is how few contact hours at uni we have. I am doing 5 subjects which only means a total of 6 hours in class...so much time on my hands. Oh and I have Thursday and Friday off uni, so looks like I will be taking some weekend trips around the UK and beyond....and working a new job at a sushi and smoothie shop (fingers crossed!)

We have managed to investigate plenty of local bars and clubs, we found "the Fruit Cupboard" which has 80's night on Mondays, (80p entry, 80p beer and 80's music...yaya!), the Bondi Beach Bar which has A REVOLVING DANCEFLOOR and of course the local walkabout bar was our Australia day hang out. I tried my first piece of BANOFFEE pie....our flatmates took us out for 'pudding' in the Leeds suburb of Hyde Park, and we just had to see what 'love actually' was on about...definately worth trying...yum! Leeds also has amazing shopping, we were all out of control for the first couple of days, until we considered our budgets...we are now sticking to pound world, god love it!

As for exploring England, so far I have managed day trips to Liverpool and to York. In Liverpool we visited "The Beatles Story" museum, then did a (self guided) walking tour to find all the bards and clubs they used to play in. The seagull sounds and the angsting teen punk scene were definately the highlights of the walk - it was interesting to do, but Liverpool was not nearly as attractive as Leeds. York was at the opposite end of the scale, it was such a cute old town! We travelled there as a group of 11, which definately slowed decision making processes! But we managed to see lots - The York Minster was amazing, we climbed the tower and found some fantastic views across the city. I was following the bibles (the lonely planet guide) instructions, and led everyone to "the Hole in the Wall" for lunch....it was amazing, I had the most gourmet steak and kidney pie I have ever eaten! We strolled around the streets of York, and found a cute little fudge shop and some great souvenirs. We also visted the Richard III museum which was actually inside the city wall! We also walked the wall before ending the day with tea and scones...how very English! At the moment we are planning trips to Newcastle and Manchester, and I am trying to plan my 4 week break over Easter..at this stage I am heading to Scandinavia then Eastern Europe, ending up in Poland before coming back to uni. Hope to hear from you all soon!