October 10

Sorry for the delay, we've been really busy!

Alan and I have both finished classes for today. We were very successful participants by speaking in class and doing all of our readings ahead of time.

Today, I won a book. Our teacher had a guest lecture and I answered his question and got a book! It was exciting :)

Alan and I are looking to buy tickets for a football match for Sheffield United, which is the Red Sox of the UK. They have the oldest stadium and are the first team to coin 'united'.

Today in the mail Alan recieved his absentee ballot and I received my National Trust membership. It is a year long membership that lets you get into any of their sites of the English Heritage sites for free! And its really inexpensive and I got a whole packet of books and binoculars!

Last Saturday Alan and I went to a living museum with my classmates, Sophia and Dave, and our module director, Paul. We went to Abbeydale, which is a site of a watermill where they produced steel. It was really amazing! All the pictures are on facebook for what the buildings looked like. They had steam engines and were still producing some materials as demonstrations for blacksmithing. They also had historians who were giving tours dressed up as characters and would tell real stories they read about in the newspaper about criminal activities and what went on at the mill. It was an interesting approach to presentation. I also talked to a girl from the museum on how to use funding that they are receiving and so I'm now on a mailing list to receive information for volunteering and their conservation efforts!

In class this week, part of the assessment for my accounting and finance class is a group analysis of a company. When we were choosing groups, we first had to assess ourselves on our best skills out of several that we would need for the project. I was a commodity because I said that my best skill is writing :) Then, we chose groups and we had to have 1 person from each of the 6 categories of skills (except for the ones like me where there were only a few). I ended up grouping with my CHM classmates, the music students from Italy, and a CCI student from China. We are a strong team with a hard work ethic and a really interesting dynamic!  We've already been planning things through email and have our first meeting tomorrow after lecture.

If I haven't explained this yet, my program is a dual program with the management school. Technically, I am based in archaeology, but for purposes of which classes I take, think of it as CCI (Creative and Cultural Industries) is the main group. There are about 50 students (very small and specialized sector so we get lots of attention!). Within CCI, there are three tracks. These tracks are music, archaeology, and general management. I am one of three in archaeology. I think there are twelve in music and everyone else is general CCI. All of our management based classes we share with this group of 50 and then the few archaeology classes are just the three of us. So my "home school" and my dissertation and research are based in archaeology even though my courses and majority of studies are in management. It brings it into a very interesting and very marketable for employment situation. I get to learn about tourism and other industries (and how they do things) as well as archaeology and I am taught by professionals within their expertise as well as anthropologists within the management school. It's really interesting.

Yesterday, when we were talking about food, I learned a lot about America. Apparently, much of our food isn't as global as I thought. Marshmallows, mac and cheese, pancakes and waffles, PB&J...these things are all commodities, if they have them or know what they are. There were a handful of stores across the UK that sold "American food." It's mostly now an online thing, but it's really exciting to see that I can find poptarts and spices to cook with somewhere (its VERY different here). Alan and I have stuck to fresh produce and our grains for the most part, so we are getting all the vitamins we need at least. I'm going to have to make mac and cheese fancy again soon.

For now, I'll make a list of foods that should be stocked for my arrival home :)

Foods Missed:
Dill pickles
Mac&Cheese
S'Mores
Pancakes
Waffles
Cookie Dough Ice Cream
Good New York Style Pizza
Cereal
Wegman's Special Multigrain Bread
Bacon
Five guys Cheeseburgers
Jelly beans
Gummy bears
Pop tarts

That's all Alan and I can think of for now.

Lauren and Alan