Since the last update I have moved across the road to another residence and have already been here a week! Luckily we were able to get the key for the Ricky rd flats (proper name Richardson Road Residence) on the Friday, so Renee, Emma and I had the weekend to move our stuff over and then on Monday we could hand back our Marris House keys.
It was rather disconcerting to find how much stuff I have accumulated over the past 10 months… especially with textbooks. And it didn’t help that the Thursday before the library were selling off a lot of textbooks for £2 (all those where the newest edition has just been released) and naturally I couldn’t resist getting those that I had used throughout the year. But it did add extra loads to the whole moving experience. And I get to do it all again at the end of July… oh joy!
The new flat isn’t as nice as Marris House, and is nicknamed “The Ghetto” by the...
It’s been a while since my last update. In the meantime the University year has come to an end for most students, except for us accelerators. We now rule the Medical school, have the pick of library books and generally are feeling very sorry for ourselves that everyone else is already enjoying a well-deserved holiday, while we still have 1 ½ weeks of lectures left!
The weekend before last was quite a hectic one for me socially. On the Friday evening Michael (from my group) decided to try his hand at cooking and invited 7 of us to Simone’s house (since she has more space) for supper. And boy can he cook! He made a spicy prawns in cheesy sauce starter, a chicken curry for mains and two desserts – an apple crumble and a chocolate bread and butter pudding. We all had too much to eat and I definitely had too much Pimms – one of my recently discovered firm favourites that complements our U.K. summer weather beautifully (though I am...
Its June already! And Summer has arrived here in Newcastle… I am enjoying the sunshine, blue skies and heat enormously! I’ve been ensuring that I get all my work done during the week too so that I can take the weekends off to gallivant!
I have just spent the past long weekend in the Lake District with Renee, Katerina and Sierra (an exchange student from the USA). What an absolutely amazing place! And we had lovely weather there too – blue skies and sunshine – which is apparently quite unusual to see for 3 days in a row in the Lake District! And I now have hundreds of stunning photos and sunburn as a memento.
We started off stopping at the Aira Force, beautiful waterfalls that are close to Ullswater lake. We had a lovely walk up the mountain next to the Falls, and then took our picnic lunch and sat next to Ullswater, enjoying the view.
Afterwards we took a leisurely drive through the countryside, stopping...
It has been an eventful week and a half. I am sure you have all heard about the Swine ‘flu from Mexico… it got really interesting here in Newcastle when a classmate’s flatmate returned from a holiday in Mexico and developed mild ‘flu-like symptoms. It turned out that she had the first case of this ‘flu in Newcastle. But since the symptoms are only mild, none in our class were very worried. Though the MedicalSchool did cancel our hospital visit and respiratory practical on Friday – but being typical students, we didn’t mind!
Thursday was Renee’s birthday, so that evening Renee, Katerina, Emma and I headed off to movies – we watched the new Wolverine movie. Not really my type of movie, but it was ok.
This weekend was fantastic though – we had a Bank holiday on Monday, and since Renee’s sister was visiting her from USA, we hired a car and explored Scotland for 3 days.
It’s been an interesting two weeks since I last wrote…. Most of it was spent doing Uni work though!
After our Scotland trip we only had a three day week at Uni, since that Friday we had a free day (it’s a hard life!) But I admit that I didn’t do much that week except Uni work…
Siv, the flat mate who moved into Katha’s room a few months ago but who had been staying with her boyfriend in York since 2 months, officially fetched all her stuff after Renee and I returned from Scotland. She isn’t finishing her degree here anymore.
And on Friday (our free day), I flew to London Stansted early in the morning (had a taxi fetch me at 5h30 since the Metro only starts at 6!) and went to visit Mandy for three days. It was a lot of fun – I joined Mandy at work for a bit and we generally just lazed and caught up on all the happenings! What fun!
After a lovely Easter break in Austria, I have been back at Uni again for a week already, and it feels like I never had a holiday!
But the weather since my return has been breathtakingly beautiful… I love Spring, with the blue, cloudless skies and sunshine (with warmth that you can feel), the blossoms on all the trees and everything is a beautiful green. And it seems that all students have the same appreciation for Spring as I do, as they are lounging in the sunshine on all the grassy verges around campus and the res. And the smell of barbeques has become a daily occurrence too, with the corner shop making good business selling aluminium-foil containers filled with charcoal and covered with a metal grill – an instant barbeque pack specially for students!
I arrived back on Sunday evening and immediately rushed to Grainger Market on Monday morning to stock up on fresh fruit and veg. Monday afternoon saw me chairing the final feedback session our group had...
One week left until Easter holidays for me…. Hurray! This week has been rather uneventful, but my weekend more than made up for that!
I had last Monday off, since we managed to finish the PPD session on the Thursday before. So I spent the afternoon working on Immunology, trying to understand this “new language”, and the morning was spent in the city, doing odds and ends.
Tuesday I again did some Immunology, in between lectures. Wednesday, after morning lectures, Stuart and I went to visit our patient for the last time. She is a really nice person and we are going to try to stay in touch with her. So that visit motivated me to do some work on my Patient Study. I spent Wednesday evening and Thursday evening (after a full day of lectures) working on it, and then we had Friday off… so guess what I did for that whole day! But I eventually managed to finish it all, so it can be handed in today, as soon...
What a week its been! But I am officially on a 2 week break! Hurray!
Spent most of Tuesday printing out my Patient Study (and almost tearing my hair out trying to get page word counts in the footer of each page – Microsoft Word is definitely NOT user friendly!!!), but I eventually handed it in on Wednesday.
And then I developed a sleeping sickness! All I wanted to do was sleep and I had no more motivation to do anything… it was as if my energy reserves had a puncture!
But I survived the last two days of Uni too, managing to chair the last PBL session and learning all about metabolic disorders in children (often a cause of Cot Death – very sad!)
And Friday we started the holidays! So to celebrate Nicola picked up Renee and myself and we spent the day touring a bit of Northumbria, which is to the north of Newcastle.
We had been experiencing blue skies and sunshine everyday of...
I have been very industrious this morning and have just attempted my first ever batch of brown rolls. And I am pleased to say that they turned out rather well… amazing what I will do to avoid working on my Patient Study!
This week has been a busy one, most days were 9-5 at Uni, and our trip to Middlesbrough to sign the lease for the house has been postponed to next week too.
Monday evening our class held James’ memorial service at the St. Thomas’ church near Uni. It was a non-religious service and it was beautiful and sad at the same time. James’ parents came out from Kent to attend, and the service itself was filled with our memories of James in the short time that we knew him… 3 months just wasn’t long enough!
Otherwise the week was packed full of studying, and nothing very exciting happened at all. Except perhaps that the Reverend (my personal tutor, who is also the Ethics lecturer) had his beard...
This week has been fantastic and I think the North East of England in springtime is spectacular. Everywhere you go the daffodils and crocuses are flowering and the trees all have green buds on them. There has been sunshine and blue skies… and generally everyone is in a good mood! Or that might have something to do with the fact that this last week was the last one before a long Easter holiday for most of the students around Uni, except for the accelerators. We still have another two weeks to go.
Monday and Tuesday were long days at Uni again. But we’ve started Immunology at the moment, which is quite interesting.
Tuesday was St. Patrick’s day, and seeing as we have 3 Irish students in our group, it was only natural that we celebrated that evening… at Laura’s. She outdid herself with the Irish decorations and hats, and it was a very good party, even though we all faded before midnight. I think that we are all looking forward...
