chronicles of the lost and found in Europe, chapter 1

(if you were wondering whatever happened to the second part of that update i promised to write, well, i accidentally deleted it when i reformatted my computer one frantic week in June before i left the Philippines, in the middle of doing my poster for Florida. in the meantime, life’s been rolling along without waiting for me to catch up, as always.

 

so i think it’s best if i go straight to what’s been happening lately, before i get overtaken by events again. my apologies to the people i was supposed to meet up with in florida, california and new york :( i was just too busy being with my family to schedule anything else. next time….)

 

tonight, i skipped the free pizza and traditional british games at the chaplaincy (when i dropped in earlier, it was actually boggle, twister and lottery bingo :P) and quiz night at the student union because finally, all the socializing has worn me down, and i just wanted to be alone and catch up with everyone i’ve left behind. that means you.

 

yes, i am now in Plymouth, Devon, UK--four hours by train and almost five hours by bus (or “coach”, as the british call it) southwest of London. this is the first stop of my erasmus mundus joint european master in water and coastal management program. i will be staying here till the end of January, after which i will be moving to Spain. if anybody cares to visit, you know where i’ll be ;)

 

Crossing the Atlantic

 

Sept 6^th, 7:30 pm, i boarded the plane from JFK airport in New York for Heathrow Airport in London. it was raining hard when i left, the rainiest i’ve ever seen in the city. because of that, the 7-hour transatlantic flight was delayed. also, it was Sunday morning when i arrived (around 3 am, new york time), and it seemed everyone else was coming in from their vacations abroad that weekend, so when i entered the hall for immigration, there were at least 500 people in queue (yes, i’m starting to talk british now), and there was just no getting around it. so i stood in line for more than an hour, which made me miss my trains that i had already bought tickets for online. well, they had to take my x-ray, too, anyway, so i figured there really was no use rushing anywhere anymore.

 

for some reason, all my friends in London were on voicemail that morning. this meant i had to decide on the best way to salvage the situation by myself. after getting all my luggage (which i could hardly lift myself :P had to devise a strategy to get everything on the trolley since nobody seemed inclined to help me), i went to a woman at the information desk who told me i could still try to catch the next train at Paddington. then she took one look at my luggage, and advised me to take the bus instead.

 

this was already 6 am in new york, mind you, and on the plane i stayed up watching Enchanted and part of Darjeeling Limited (which was on the german movie page, that’s why i didn’t discover it right away :P). fortunately, i usually slept around 3 am when i was in new york, so i wasn’t TOO dazed and managed to keep my head throughout all of this. the thing was, my landlord was supposed to pick me up at the Plymouth train station at 2 pm, and i was arriving at the BUS station at 4:30 pm. i had bought a sim card at the airport for ₤10 so i could call him, but i couldn’t top it up with my American debit card, so it was basically useless.

 

despite my frustrations and exhaustion, i was still excited to see the sights, but then we didn’t go through London, and i thought the landscape was just like rural America, so i decided to sleep for most of the trip. as soon as i got to Plymouth, i used  a pay phone to call the landlord, who was kind enough to still pick me up and even give me a quick tour around the city just so i could get oriented on where everything was. now let me tell you that landlords NEVER pick up tenants in this country, so i was very blessed with this one. he was referred to me by a Filipino who just graduated from my course, and who did her thesis in Plymouth, but all her coursework in Spain. she stayed in the same house for the summer, but left for Wales with her Welsh boyfriend just before i arrived, so i still haven’t met her.

 

Finding Hearth and Home

 

this is how i ended up living in a house with three Indian guys for my first eight days in the UK. fortunately, they were very nice, constantly asking me to try out their spicy food (which i did every time, since i’m always open to trying out new food, and besides, all i had was a wide array of bland british frozen meals, canned soups, and sandwiches :P). we would have long talks late into the night about culture, family, career, religion, marriage, and love while sipping coke and whiskey. (i was proposing that romantic love and finding a “one true love” is a western concept, but then they said, “do you know where the kama sutra comes from?”, and i conceded). it was good, too, that they were about my age, because all of my classmates i think are younger than me (some of them MUCH younger). almost-30 angst is so different from all the kid stuff :P

 

but then we had to move into a smaller house down the street this week, and they wanted to have the three small rooms upstairs where the bathroom was, and give me the big room downstairs. somehow, despite the incredibly cheap rent, very good location, a real gas stove and oven (as opposed to electric), free laundry on the washing machine, a nice living room, and internet, i just wasn’t comfortable with having to go up to their floor to take a shower, especially on winter mornings, so i decided to move into the building where most of my other classmates have been living for a month while attending the pre-sessional English course. and anyway, my clothes were starting to smell of curry :P

 

even though my “flat” now is a closet of a room (but with my own bathroom and kitchenette), has no internet (!!!), no communal area, costs at least double the rent i was paying at the house, especially with electricity (for the shower, stove, microwave, heater, etc) and laundry costs, is farther from the university, and my classmates keep saying, “it’s alright, we’ll suffer together” (but then their rooms are bigger, for the same price :P), i do enjoy my long, hot showers here (which cost me 10p--roughly Php 10--each on the electric meter, by the way). it’s very near the city centre and piazzas. also, it’s right behind the Hoe, which is a lovely historical park overlooking the sea.

 

Local Colours

Plymouth is a small city, with some streets still paved with cobblestones. a lot of the houses are from the 1800’s, which i like, but they also have a very modern mall, which i like, too. when i say i like them, i mean their architecture. the city is quite hilly with lots of roundabouts, but everything is walkable, which is nice. my first few days, i walked as much as i could around the campus and city centre to discover where everything was, understand how everything was connected, and find the shortest routes between places. what i found unbelievable, though, is that most of the shops at the city centre—including the whole mall!—close at 5 pm on weekdays, earlier on Sundays. and to think i was shocked that most stores in dumaguete closed at 7 pm :P even worse than dumaguete--i remember how i was complaining about this there before--the usual lunch break is from 12 to 2! and offices close at 4! but at least the library is 24/7 :) and just over the hill from the university, civilization is normal, with restaurants closing at a decently late hour.

 

the first few nights i was really freezing under two blankets. then everyone told me to get a duvet, which solved much of the problem. whenever i still felt cold, i’d use the study lamp under the covers to warm my feet and hands with :P nobody would dare use the heater this early, because it’s not even really fall yet! fortunately, i think i’m getting more acclimatized. these last few days, i’ve tried to wear as much light clothing as i can handle so i can get used to the cold faster. and anyway, thank God, we’ve been having more sun lately, too, instead of just for a few hours in the afternoons. it’s just the nights that are very cold. the rest of the time it’s gray, even though it hasn’t rained very much since i arrived. rain is fine with me, but cold wind is not :P

 

Plymouth, by the way is very near Dartmoor and Cornwall, which are more famous. i haven’t had time to check out the beaches, though. FYI: this is the place from which Charles Darwin sailed to go to the Galapagos (where he developed his theory of natural selection, for those of you who care) and also where the pilgrim fathers set off to go to America.

 

about the prices, well, yes, everything is much more expensive here than in the Philippines, especially food. it’s a good thing our studentship comes in euros (converted to pounds), so i don’t have to think too much that i’m spending way more than i would in the Philippines (or even the US) for basic stuff like toothpaste or bread. of course, i’m trying to save, too, so i’ll have travel money for the rest of Europe :) one thing about the british is that they’re so big about energy saving, recycling, climate change, organics, plastic bag bans, trans fats, and fair trade. in other words, there’s a lot of politically correct food :P which is great for me. for breakfast, i’ve been living on cereal bars, which i can’t get enough of and which there never was enough of in the philippines. what i really want, though, is trail mix (nuts and dried fruits and grains/ cereal), which i recently discovered in the states, and which i so far haven’t seen here and have never seen in the philippines. if i had that in dumaguete, i wouldn’t have been eating nagaraya and pesticide-coated apples, pears, and bananas all the time :P

 

as expected, i’ve bumped into a couple of Filipinos on the streets, although i haven’t talked to any of them. they’re all middle-aged women who, i guess, are nurses, as my landlord told me he used to have Filipino tenants who were all nurses. i wanted to talk to one when i was in the park, since she looked homesick to me, but she was having a tantrum with her british husband, so i thought it wasn’t exactly appropriate to cheerfully introduce myself.

 

Going to School with the United Nations, So Far

 

this week is orientation week for international students. this is why there’s a lot happening right now, and lots of free tours, films, meals and cream teas (clotted cream—made only in Devon—is the best!!!). i’ve been hanging out with my classmates from Trinidad & Tobago, Kenya, Brazil, Russia, and Croatia, but haven’t spent much time with the ones from Mexico, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and China, because they’re always somewhere else. we also have one from Ethiopia whom we haven’t met yet. i’m the only one from southeast asia. so far i’ve been finding more in common with the tropical people, even though we all come from different continents. all in all, this is a very internationally diverse city, especially considering that it’s so small, and so far from London.

 

today we went to the “immersive vision theater”, which was SO cool (better than imax!), because it’s a theater with a dome screen. only a few places in the world have it. originally, it was a planetarium for naval students, but they’ve been developing other uses for it in the past two years that make you feel like you’re in a 3D film. tomorrow night there’s salsa dancing at the student union, so we’re looking forward to that. i’ve also made friends with other Europeans, many of them also Erasmus students who are here only for 3 months, especially this Polish couple whom i befriended while i was looking for another house to move into yesterday. it’s more difficult for them because they’re not used to speaking English. it’s very interesting what i’ve been learning about other countries and cultures so far. it turns out that Poland exports nurses to the UK, too! although i think it’s still only in the Philippines where doctors and lawyers study to become nurses.

 

anecdote: so we had our picture taken (see the one at left), and when they saw it, they said, “oh, you look good there. you’re very photogenic. did you study how to pose for a magazine?” because they’re taking up media arts. and i just don’t feel that it’s a compliment :P i must look very disappointing in person.

 

our induction (that’s “orientation” for us) is next week, and then we have our enrolment, and then school starts the Monday after that. i already have a student number (but no card yet, so i can’t get into the library), a computer account, an NHS (medical) number, a phone number (that's +447523656149, again, for those who care), and a bank account with a debit card (but no money in it yet :P), so i’m pretty much established here. the only thing i haven’t got is a permanent address :P it used to be 17 Clifton Place, which would have been 10 Shaftesbury Cottages had i decided to move with the Indians (in fact, all my mail goes there right now), but currently it’s Rm 311, Opal Villas, 167 Notte St, Plymouth, Devon. i’m still hoping it will change by next week, but God’s will be done.

 

i think i’ve covered everything important. i am now open to entertaining any questions ;) kidding aside, i hope you are all well, and have the audacity to dream and accept God’s grace every day.

 

more photos here :).

 

PS i just joined facebook last july, and finding it less of an effort to update, which has made me more lazy to post content here the past months. so see you there if you’re there :) although, of course, multiply is still my website for published and publishable writing and photos, as well as videos (i don’t think i’ll ever migrate to youtube :P)--that means travel/ literary/ documentary stuff. it will just take longer for me to update, as i get busier and busier with my new worlds. so sorry for not being able to keep updated with everyone else’s lives, too :(