Pretty British Men Kinda Make Up for the Food

The city tour the other day was fun. I think I can find my way around now.
On the tour I met at very funny Italian guy named Giusewpe (however you pronounce that) and invited me to go see Edward II with him that was only playing for two more nights but we weren't both free on either of the dates but we may go some other time.
At the end of the tour, Junko and Ai and her friend and I stayed in the city to do some shopping. Ai and I got phones...and here was the dilemma with mine:
When I got home, I used it immediately to call mom at work to give her my new number. Before it rang a voice said that I was low on credit, which I found weird cuz I had just bought 10 pounds worth. Shortly after I left my number I was disconnected and I dialled the number to see exactly how much credit I had left and it was 2 pence. So that pissed me off. But I then figured out that I had to dial in a voucher number in order to get the credit. I did this...several times....and it would never accept the voucher number. I then went down to reception to get a new voucher number at the top up machine and that one didn't work either. After a certain amount of tries I was told by the obnoxious little voice that I had exceeded my allowed number of voucher number dialling attempts and that I was now barred. I know what you're thinking: why couldn't you call tech support. Cuz you need at least 25 pence of credit to do that and I only had 2.
So I now have a phone...that's not working. That's almost worse than not having a phone at all.

Before I can fix that though, I've moved on to other things:
Yesterday I took a campus tour and found out where to register with a GP. I then went to a meeting for international students that were planning on working while in the UK. I met a recent acquaintance of Junko's- a guy named Will from San Jose. He was gonna be a cop in LA but his Scottish girlfriend convinced him to come to England to study with her. He was a pretty chill guy and gave me a bit of a hard time for being from Humboldt.

Earlier I received an email from my tutor telling me where the meeting for all the drama associations was. It was in a bar in the Guild of Students building and I went over to figure out exactly where it was located. After I figured that out I went to the societies fair they were having in tents outside.

The first society I saw was the Film Society....and I think I met a British version of Lukas; a bit fawkward.
But he showed me a list of films that they would be seeing and the list included Brick, The Last King of Scotland, The Queen, Night Watch, The Usual Suspects, and Little Children. So that sold me and I signed up to be a member right away.
The rest of my look around the fair was quite entertaining. Every group was so painfully stereotypical; the film kids were artsy nerdy, there was a table for "Roleplaying Society" (all the gaming kids), there was an actual "Goth Society", the "Photography Society" was very silent and reserved (I put myself on their mailing list), at the "Fashion Society" table there was a haughty looking girl dawdling on her phone (my style being boho I knew I wasn't welcome there), and the "Wine and Ale Society" was rambunctious and buzzed (I defnitely signed their mailing list). I then fell upon one of the drama societies called Article 19 and the girl told me about all these shows they were holding open auditions for, one of which was for Oleanna! I became a member with them as well and she then gave me a flyer for the meeting John had told me about.

At the meeting I was welcomed by a girl named Flow (sp?) who was a member of the board of a group called WatchThis which does student-written works and she gave me a flyer for auditions for a play she was going to work on. She's also producing Oleanna. The rest of the groups included Article 19 which I was already a member of who do the straight contemporary theatre, 3Bugs which was the alternative theatre group, Infinity which donates their proceeds to charities, and there was the Guild Musical Theatre Group. At the meeting I ran into my neighbor Alice who I walked home with afterwards. She was at the meeting eager to get involved in the technical aspects of the theatre groups.

Apparently I remind Alice of her American friend, Sarah from Seattle. At one point she even called me Sarah by mistake. She says we say the exact same things "And it's not because you're both from America, I swear, you are like the same person!" she always says.
She invited me to come over later that night to watch a movie with her on her laptop.
Before I joined her though, Junko wanted to have a beer with me at the bar at the bottom of our road. We were hungy too so we decided to try out the dorm food.
I got sweet and sour pork.
I have officially gotten a taste of British culinary skills.

I washed it down later at the bar with a Magners (for you Barbara) where Junko and Candi and I watched the first half of a rugby match. It was the first game of rugby I'd ever seen. And I find the game hilarious; I mean how they pile up and pummel each other!
And Junko and I got pretty excited when we saw this guy:

Johnny Wilkinson: he's a pretty big deal. Very pretty.
If you need more pictures of him to be convinced do a google search.

I then watched Mean Girls with Alice and afterwards we got to talking and discovered our mutual adoration for Alan Rickman... and Jason Isaacs and Colin Firth.