After last post I noticed that the diary actually marks the day for you automatically, so I'm not gona write that here anymore.

All right, today was my school placement day again as it has been on every wednesday. The day went pretty smoothly, nothing much for me to do~ sticked some stickers to the children's books and stuff like that.. watched them to work.

First subject was art. The children have been doing lots of stuff related to bonfires lately, and on monday they had decorated some cookie boxes with brown papers to look like logs. Today they added some yarn and real branches on them to get wood like texture on them. Only thing I have to say about that lesson is that children can make quite a mess with glue... yup I cleaned the tables after the lesson.

Next was handwriting, nothing much to say about that, everyone's on their own level of writing, some write really beautifully already and some well... I couldn't tell they had written "ee" if I didn't look as the text book for what they were supposed to do. But they're only 6-7 years old so that explains a lot.

After handwriting was playtime, first time the kids got a break, followed by english lesson. Their task was to draw a character of some movie or series in to their english books and then write down some words describing how that movie made them feel. Most of the children found this quite hard, I think they didn't quite understand the meaning or the word "feeling" yet, but after bit of a struggling they got on pretty well. One boy in the class was really cute and drew tinkerbell and the princess from Enchanted, he seems to be quite a lot into girly stuff like that and is real sweetheart most of the time. After they had come up with 5 different words for how the characters made them feel they were allowed to look at a dictionary for more words. The boy goes trough the dictionary and asks me "what does slit mean?" I was thought in my head for a second 'well you can for example slit someones thro... wait a minute, teacher cant say something like that to a 6 year old pupil...' "umm.. let me see what does the book say about that.. yeah there 'for example the hole on your buggy bank where you pun the money in is a slit' there you go" >_>;;; too much video games and horror movies for the teacher.

Rest of the day went just like the start of it, they had lunch then playtime and activity time just before home time. Activity time was kinda boring cos there wasn't anything for the teachers to do really.

For next wednesday the teacher gave me a task to plan an art lesson which I can keep for a small groups of the children, so that everyone gets to do it during the day. It has to have something to do with shadows as they will be talking about light and shadows next week~ I already have an idea and looking really forward to it. :3

07.11.2009
6:25pm

Didn't expect me back so soon did you?! haha!

I did some more sight seeing today, I went to the Manchester united stadium and had a look around at the manchester united museum. Nothing
too much to say about that really, lots of trophies and medals, some old star player shirts and shoes, some more trophies and medals, pictures... I'm not too big football fan as you can see. Here's some pictures I took while I was there. ^^



Last night when I was writing about the places I have visited, I forgot to mention the Imperial war museum.


I went there at the same day I visited The Lowry. I found this museum very interesting and well made, especially if you think about the school visits. The museum presents the events of 1ts and 2nd world war, and it manages to make you feel almost like you had been part of the war. There is lots of interactive action:

At one place you can smell most of the common smells at that time like tobacco, gun powder, burnt wood, smelly feet etc. one can only imagine the smell in the hostage camps at the time.

There was also an exhibitions with personal belongings like letters and clothes from the people who lived during the war.

At the start of the tour you could take a card with names and pictures of 6 people and during the tour you could find out what had happened to those people during the war and stamp your card once you found out.

During the tour you were able to try and disguise yourself to find out if you would've been able to fool the guards of the hostage cams, and also crawl trough an escape tunnel away from the camp.

Once every hour they show a 15 min long film in a big room at the center of the museum. The picture is casted in all the surrounding walls and the sounds of the war like bombing, hysteric people etc. and the story tellers can be heard all around the room.



You can also find some planes, cars and tanks that were used during the wars. All in all I think this museum is very interactive, interesting and "fun" way to learn about the wars. It gives you very realistic picture about how horrible and hard the life has really been at those times.

07.11.2009
1:37am


I'm here again, wooo!

At school we have this erasmus project and for that we need to visit at least 6 places where we could go to visit with a class of children and then write some information down of those places. I have already earlier visited "The Lowry" which is an art gallery for british artist named Lausence Stephen Lowry.


I wasn't too found of his art works when I first went in to the gallery, but after watching the 20min. video about his life they showed there, I sort of understood the pictures better. He still isn't going in to my favourit artists tho. <.< I actually found the building it self more interesting than the art works. :x

The whole building is designed to remind a ship, both outside and inside, but in kind of an artistic way (I didn't notice it before our teacher told us...). The quite unusual use of shapes and colors inside the building was what caught my eye the most, purple walls, orange and green stairways, blue floors.. also some yellow and red at some places.. really colorfull now that I think adout it.. too colorful at some places in my opinion <.<



On thursday, 5.11. we went to another gallery visit with my art and design group. We went to the Manchester Art gallery, which has lots of works from various artists. We were kindof short on time to really have an opportunity to look around propearly, because we were with the teacher and he had all kind of tasks for us to do in there. There was nothing really special to tell you the truth, but I really enjoyed some of the art works we had to work with. and anyway I haven't visited in too many art galleries, so I don't really have too much to compare to.

At the evening of the very same day I went to a "Forbidden arts presentation for temporary autonomous arts" which is held from 4.11. to 7.11. in and old abandoned school. The school was at a place where I would not have dared to go if I had been alone. Typical dark alleys which we were warned about in the hall safety talk video(unfortunately I can't find a link to the video for you, it was hilarious really) keeping in mind it is not as safe in here as it is in finland.


I think the school was abandoned in the first place because these "rebelious" teenagers kind of came and took over the place. The walls were full of graffitis and paintigs, most of them really well made.


There was also opportunity to create your own art, but the place was quite full allready to begin with. We ended up experimenting with light graffitis with my friend, in a room equipped for that kind of action, and ended up with some really nice pictures. Can't show you any yet as they're still in her camera.

And today.. well I should probably say yesterday as basicly it's saturday already.. anyway on friday I went to The Manchester Museum with two chinese girls from my erasmus group. This has been probably the most inretesting place so far, withloads of different things from fossils of some of the very fisr creatures that lived in the sea to egyptian mummies and some other dead or still living coultures.

The museum was devided in to 5 floors. On the ground floor, where we went in from, there was the souvenire shop, café, discovery center that can be booked for children. On the first floor when you first came up the stairs, you were greeted with a huge skeleton of an elephant.

In a room to the left was the egyptian section, with jewelery, decorations, texts, mummies and from the aincient egypt, even a human skeleton.



As we went on we cane to the nature duscovery section, mostly designed for kids, but if you closed your eyes while sitting on a comfortable sofa, you could imagine yourself in to the nature, with sea, forest and a flower field all surrounding you.


After that we had to take the stairs back to the ground level to a section with rocks and minerals and probably the most interesting pre-historic life, with lots of fossils and a real skeleton of T-Rex. In here you could see fossils from the begining of life in the seas till the Ice age.


After this we continued back to the 1st floor and came to the Animal Life section, which was devided in to 2 floors. On the first floos you could see all kinds of stuffed animals: a tiger, a lion, some smaller cats, Lots of different monkeys, a polar bear... and at the back of the room they had put us some really nice scenes with animals you can see in the city or in the woods.




At the second floor they had hundreds of differetn birds and bugs. In that floor they also had few living lizards, snakes, frogs(some were the size of a fingertip) and a cameleon. :D


At this point we all started to be quite tired and hungry, but the museum had still something to see. After the living creatures we came to a room of Mediterranean Archeology. I was too tired to pay too much attention anymore and my camera was almost out of battery, so I just mostly walked trough this room. The next room was about money. Might have been interesting if I wasn't so tired already.

On the third floor they had picnic area, a play and learn area for children, life lab, and a greenhouse. We ended our tour to the childrens play and learn section, as we were simply too tired and hungry to go on any further. I think I have to go back to the museum on my own later, to explore better the areas I kind of missed this time, the entry is free after all~

After the museum we went to a chinese buffet, which had a huge selection of asian foods and ice cream for dessert. ^^ I really enjoyed my day, and the reason I'm writing this so late is because I fell a sleep on my bed after I came home, and when I woke us few hours later, I just felt like writing this... cos otherwise I might not have written it at all.

Till next time~

Heyy I'm here again! After 2 weeks instead of 2 days... well dunno if anyone's even reading these so doesn't matter that much I guess. O.O

As the title says I'm gona be telling you about gamecon! :D:D I'm a huge com fan, I'd like to go to every con they arrange in finland during an year (the number seems to grow every year xD) but so far I have only manage to get to animecons and sakuracons... <.< Untill now!

On this weeks thursday I was walking to a bus stop to get home from the city. I was there because we had to visit at an art gallery called "The Lowry" on our art and design lesson. The lesson was pretty nice btw, we took some photos of the interesting strucrure of the building, both inside and outside, I might post some of the pics to my dev account ( http://rienquish.deviantart.com/ ) later~.

Anyway I was walking to the bus stop when I saw an advertisement about some "game '09" on the wall of the building I was passing. I just walked past it before I started to think "hey, that might be something they're arranging here! About games!" So I walked back, took a better look and indeed, it was a gamecon they were going to arrange in this city, at the coming weekend! The poster didn't say where in here would it be, but there was a web bage so when I got home, the first thing I did was to go and wheck it out!

I found out that they were arranging it in the palace hotel, the same building where I had seen the ad, very easy to get to :) Bad side was that the ticets for each day cost 10£ @.@ I decided to go anyway and so today was the fist day. :D

To be honest there was surpisingly little ppl.. well I'm used to the over populated animecons in finland, and this wasn't about anime, but games, ofcourse there was much fewer ppl in there >,>. At first I just wandered around, finding all different places with different activities and sellers and traders and of course players. :P I saw lots of card and board RPG's on sale, but didn't really took closer look on anything since I haven't really played stuff like that so I don't know too much. There was also lots of neat decoration figures and stuff, but I already have too much of those to be honest <.<. I was very interested in the room where people were playing with the minifigures, like warhammer and stuff. I've always wanted to try that, but haven't really had a chase. I was tempted to ask some of the players ir I could watch their game or even if they'd want to teach me, but I didn't want to be rude, so I just wandered around slowly, admiring all the neat miniatyres.

Bit later I found a room where there were actually some guys demonstrating and teaching how to play with them! I was soo exited and went to hover around the 3 tables till one of them freed. the guy at the table asked if I wanted to play and I said "Yes, I've never tried these before o.o" and so I played my first game and won! mwahahaa. WEll the guy was pretty much telling me what I should do and what's the best option to do and stuffs, but still, I won! :D and it was fun, lost like the rpgs I've played on computer.

After the game I went back to the room where they were playing with the miniatures and selling them, and actually bought some >,> Maybe this will become my new exiting (and expenceive...) hobby. :3 There was a guy who was painting some miniatures, and he told me that if I'm interested in painting them, here's actually some plase where I could go and ask some advise o.o I don't remember where he said that place is tho, so hopefully I can ask him again tomorrow. xD Now I just need to get some friends who I can play with! :D

Sorry if there's lots of mistakes in my spelling, I'm just too lazy to check it now <.<

Hopefully will write something on here again soon cya~<3

Current Mood: amused

28.9.2009


Ok first, yea I said I'd try to write at least on every other day and as you can see it's been 5 days since my last post... but I have a good reason for this! And it's called "freshers week"! So basically I've been out drinking almost every night during my first week in here and during the day I've been either sleeping or spending time with my new friends in here, trying to get ti know them better.... Soo I haven't had that much time to sit on computer and tell you what has happened at the night clubs every night since I've been trying to socialize a bit more than I usually do. o.o I have also been little bit sick soo yea... excuses to be lazy!

But as the title says, freshes week is now officially over, we all made it trough it alive and it's finally time to start thinking little about studying. Today I had my first "art and design" lesson, which was basically about what we're gona be doing at the course during this year. And the first thing I need to do now is to find a store which sells cheap notebooks with plain white paper, because we need to have a sketch book with us at every lesson and we also need to write a journal about every session... I think I might go to the city for that because they don't really sell things like that here at the village and I doubt they have things like that in the supermarket.. but who knows I'll go check from there tomorrow and maybe I'll get lucky :3

this weeks Wednesday will be the first day I'll be spending in primary school. I haven't yet spoken with anyone from the school I'm gona go to, and most likely the first time I will speak with the people is when I go there in the morning. I'm really looking forward to it because in finland I haven't yet spent so much time with the pupils at school and here I'm gona be doing that on every wednesday. I believe this will give me experience and confidence for my teacher charier in the future. If I'm ever going to work as a teacher that is. <.<

As I said before I have been spending quite a lot of time with the local students, and I have noticed that a phrase "Oh my days", which I have never heard of before, is really common among the young ppl in here. It's used when something unexpected happens or when someone doesn't understand something, or pretty much when ever actually. I'm just waiting the day when I start to use it too >,>

Yesterday I met this new girl who is staying in the same hall as I am. Her name is Anna and she's from Sweden, but unlike me she's not in here only for exchange, she's gona be studying in here for 4 years or so. I met her at the cafeteria and she asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her later and I thought why not. So we left towards the Didsbury village but decided to not go along the main road at it's pretty noisy and it's harder to hear what the other is saying. We turned to some smaller alley and after walking for some time we found ourselves lost.. again.. I seem to have a habit to get lost with new people I meet in here. On the way she had been telling me that she gets lost really easily and I remember thinking 'well not with me' but what do you know... >,> After wandering around for some we finally found out way to some bigger road with bus stops and maps and figured where we were and made our way back home just before it got dark outside... before the "wolfs" are out o.o

I guess that's it for now, I'll try to write little something again soon. ^.^/

21.09.2009

Last night I was planning to spend my evening in my room, maybe playing something and then go to sleep early. But before I got anything started I heard a knock on my door and my new friend invited me out with him and his new friends and so I ended up going out, to check the night life in manchester.

We were supposed to leave around 10pm, but I think we were finally ready at 11. So we headed to the buss stop, and got on to one that would take us into city center (we live about 20~30mins from the center). The bus was already full of drunk students and I must say that brits are really loud when they're drunk. People were singing, shouting, banging the roof and windows with their hands and floor with their feet.

We were about at the half way when we stopped to get more people in. The bus stood there for what seemed like for ever and we even saw the next buss go past us. Everyone started to wonder why aren't we leaving and one of the girls that had just come in said that the bus ain't leaving cos of us. Everyone was like "what the heck?" but we got off the buss and it left.. I think all the noisy people were with us and that's why the bus didn't leave, cos we were too loud or something.

We started to walk along the street thinking what we should do next when we got stopped by police because few of the guys were holding bear bottles and I guess that's not allowed on the streets here then. At the incidence one of the girls also got arrested because one of the polices pushed her out of the way and she was just asking why the hell you pushing me for?" and the police went all "one more word and you're arrested" the girl "wha?" police "one more word!" girl"..." and today at school we were told that the polices are all very nice and help full... yea right >.> they even called that girl stupid after everyone had calmed down a little.

We continued to walk to the next bus stop to get into the next bus and one of the girls was getting really drunk. Others tried to get her to drink water and eat so she would be able to get in the night clubs. We ended up to order a taxi to take us to the club and on the way that girl started to feel sick and threw up out of the window. When we finally got to the club the sick girl wanted to go back home and one of us went with her. Then one other girl didn't have her id with her as we tried to get in the club cos she had given it to one of the girls that went back home. In the end we all managed to get in cos the guards were kind enough to let us this once.

In the club it was ok, the music wasn't really my favorite kind, but it was ok. All the ppl I was with were really nice and in the end the night was nice. Quite exiting first night out at foreign city and country I'd say.

20.09.2009

My first morning in england started with "nice" sunshine which woke me up around 7 am as it was sneaking trough my curtains. 'Clearly my window is pointing East... need to remember that next time I want to sleep late...' I thought and turned to face the wall, I didn't want to get up yet.

After few hours I finally got out of bed and started to unpack my suitcase, I was too tired to do that last night. This only took me few minutes and I was ready to go get some breakfast and that adapter for my laptop.

This time I went straight to the nearest Tesco and got some bread and jam, but they didn't sell adapters, so I had to go look for somewhere else. hey told me that they certainly sell adapters in the bigger Tesco but I came back to my room and ate little breakfast before I set off again. I asked from the staff members who always hang in the main hall and they told me there's a computer store next to the supermarket I just had been in the morning and that they might sell adapters there. 'weird.. why didn't I notice that before' I set off again, the computer store should be on my way anyway. I found the store, it was right next to the road, but it was closed, of course, it's sunday... so I had to walk all the way to the bigger supermarket again.

My prayers were answered as I got introduced to the adapter shelf, I would be able to use my computer again! This time I made sure not to get lost on my way back, and found straight back home.

After that I have just been sitting in my room taking it easy and preparing to meet all the other exchange students tomorrow. I've also taken some pictures which I might put up to somewhere later.. oh and they still didn't have any pillows at the supermarket.. bloody bastards!

19.09.2009

As most of my friends already know, I started my exchange year in england, yay~!
I decided I'll start to write an on line diary about my year and try to add at least few sentences every day :3 so you can all read about my wonderful adventures. :D It'll also make it easier for me to remember everything that happened later. ^^

So yea I arrived to Manchester by plane today. Trips went without problems, I didn't have to give away anything at the security checks and my luggage didn't get lost or end up to a different place or anything. After getting all my things I was little bit lost. I knew there was supposed to be some ppl to meet me and get me to the accommodation, but I had no idea what they would look like, or where would I find them. I just kept following the signs that guided me towards the exit, until I heard that all the incoming students were supposed to go to the information desk. Lucy for me I happened to be right next to the desk and I found the person that was there waiting for the international students.

The person put me and one Swedish girl in to a taxi and in few minutes I was at the hall I would be living in for this year. All the staff members were really nice, they gave me my keys, some papers and told me where would I find everything.

When I got in to my room, there was little surprise waiting for me: I should've brought all the bed covers, pillows and blankets with me, since they didn't have any in here. I asked if I could get some from here but they told me I'd need to go buy my own.

I think it's bit weird that they expect even the exchange students to bring thins like that, I mean I had already too much stuff with me without all that, and I left out everything I could. But then again I kinda understand that they don't have services like that for the local students because it's easier for them to bring more stuff with them since there's no weight restrictions in cars and stuff. Just as a side note I had 4kg overweight but I didn't have to pay for it :3.

I decided to drink a cup of tea before I'd leave to search some place where I could buy all the beddings and while at it I made my first friend in here. He was also new to this place, I think he said this is his first year in here and he had also arrived yesterday. He knew just as little as me about our hall and the stores and stuff near by, so he decided to come with me to look for some pillows and stuff for me xD.

The staff members told us that we might get some from Tesco, which is a supermarket quite close to the hall. I had heard earlier that there was Didsbury village close by and we decided to go look from there at first. I think I can say, without lying, that 95% of the buildings in the village were either some sort of food or drink stores, or restaurants. We walked all the way trough the village, but there was no place which would've sold any beddings. So we decided to turn around, walk all the way back to the halls and try the other way. My friend knew that there was supposed to be a superstore that way, but he had no idea when would it close and it was almost 6pm already, the time when stores close at saturdays in finland.

After some walking we arrived at the Tesco! A superstore woo~! We went in and started to look around. We went trough the whole store but saw no beddings, nothing like that. We went out and went to some building across the road, thinking maybe there would be some store. It turned out to be a cinema and some sort of fitness hall in the same building. We were already starting to get tired of all the walking, so we decided to ask if someone in there would know where could we buy some pillows and stuff. We got directed back to the Tesco, but this time we decided to ask if they sell stiff like that. Turned out they didn't, but they told us that there's a bigger Tesco bit further away and that they'd probably sell beddings.

And so our journey continued. We followed the road we were told and soon we noticed a sign that said that we were about to enter into another village. We stopped to ask directions again, cos we weren't sure if we were supposed to go this far. The restaurant keeper directed us to continue till the next street lights and then turn right. And so we kept walking, until finally we arrived to the store. We were already planning to break in if it would be closed, but turned out that the superstores are open almost 24/7. After some searching we found the right section and I got everything I needed but a real pillow.. turned out that they were out of pillows so I had to buy a small decoration pillow to sleep with, hopefully I'll get a real pillow later...

We got out of the store and it had gotten dark outside already. We were thinking that maybe we should take a bus on our way back, but we decided to walk which turned out to be a bad decision... yes we ended up getting lost. We asked for directions few times and after what seemed to be an eternity we finally got to the road where our accommodation hall was supposed to be. Now we finally stopped a bus and asked if that one was going to where we wanted to and the driver told us that they had come past that place already. Good thing we asked, otherwise we might have ended all the way to Manchester city center. Somehow he had managed to walk past our campus and the village near by and somehow ended up to the other end of the road. So we headed back and finally started to see some familiar buildings.

After walking for hours we decided to buy a bottle of wine for ourselves, since we had deserved that xD. I hadn't eaten anything for the whole day, so I ate a ready meal at first and then we tasted the wine. I'm really not a wine person, but he seemed to be and said it was good wine. I slowly emptied my glass while he showed some music videos from you tube he liked.
After that I went in to my room and finally opened my lap top and connected it to the internet. But soon after I found out that the adapter I had bought from finland didn't fit with my laptops power cable... Luckily laptops have batteries, so I was able to use mine for sometime anyway, but I'd need to go look for a new adapter on sunday.

I was really tired of all the walking and all the new thing about the country and the village and all, so I just went to sleep pretty quickly