An International - British - Christmas

Saturday the 7th of December 2013 was declared the E203 flat Christmas. We began the preparations for what I will now refer to as Christmas (because thats what it felt like for us) just after Thanksgiving. I provided the food, Flora (from France) provided the decorations, Nadine (from Germany) provided the presents and the weather quite conveniently provided the snow. All week, despite the up and coming exams, we filled the flat with christmas music and got way too excited!

Finally the morning arrived and you could honestly hear Christmas music from all of our rooms. Nadine kicked the day off with a note for each of us with our required preparations such as photos from our traditional home Christmases, Christmas songs in our native language and any traditional poems or stories. Unfortunately I was too busy slaving over a stove for two hours making the best Christmas dinner they could ask for to prepare my poems etc but I did manage to share photos! Now in all of my excitement to have a Christmas Day I completely forgot the fact that not all Christmas dinners are British Christmas dinners... So I bought all the food, prepared what I was going to make and in the midst of all the plans continually referred to food as 'we'll have Christmas dinner' until my French roommate actually asked what we were going to eat... Then it finally hit me that I was preparing a day like the one I have at home without realising that it wouldn't be what the others were used to.. Opps.

Anyway, we all agreed that we liked the sound of a British Christmas dinner so my mistake was quickly forgiven and apart from the lumpy gluten free gravy, I don't think it was bad for a first attempt! So at 6pm (only half an hour off schedule) we ate, drank candy cane flavoured vodka and were merry, very very merry. We shared photos, learnt German Christmas Carols and found that one of us doesn't even give presents at Christmas, never has. Nadine bought us all matching Christmas socks and we took photos around the tree!

To top the night off we took a trip to a salsa dancing club called 'Mangos' in Oklahoma city and danced the night away surrounded by all things Spanish. The level of culture I experienced that day was second to none and we vowed that one December 7th in the future we will get together, wherever we may be, and relive that day and I really hope we do!

So from the four countries of E203, we wish you a very merry Christmas.

All The Little Things...

Christmas is on the fast approach and homesickness is sweeping through the exchange students like the plague everyone knows they’re going to get. Those who are only here for a semester will be leaving in less than two weeks and those all-important bonds of friendship we’ve formed will be under incredible strain as we pain ourselves to say goodbye. As sad as I will be to say goodbye to people leaving, especially my roommate Nadine travelling back to Germany, I can’t help by smile at all the little things around campus. 

Throughout my time here I’ve noticed that school spirit isn’t limited to sports games but spreads like wildfire around the whole campus all year long. People are genuinely just happy to be here and want to make it a happy place and it is so humbling seeing all these little things going on. It really keeps my head up high when I’m feeling overwhelmed by this whole experience and it’s something I would like to share with all of you…

I walked into the bathroom (or restroom?) on campus after one of my classes a month back and found these posit notes to the right dotted all over the mirror. This is where I first got my inspiration for this blog post, and since then I ran into the sight below written in chalk on one of the pathways. Seeing messages scribbled across the floor in chalk is not a strange site at OU as everyone joins in and it’s more often than not how I find out about events at the student union! These little things just make you take a step back and realise you’re in a truly happy place. This certainly is not the atmosphere you would experience at any time at the University of Hertfordshire, unfortunately.

As this week is the last week of class one of the girls baked a load (I mean a huge load) of peanut butter cookies and chocolate brownies for the students in all of her classes that day. This is my second experience of girls on an impulse baking for their class, it’s just a shame I couldn’t eat any of them! But they looked good… 

I think the spirit of OU is what I’ll miss most often.  

An All American Thanksgiving

In 1621 the first harvest celebration in the form of a huge feast took place in the USA between the British colonists and the Wampanoag Indians. In 1863, during the civil war, President Lincoln declared the last Thursday of every November the official Thanksgiving Day… And so on November 28^th 2013 I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in Dallas, Texas with the McAlister family.  

My week started with a 7am trip to Dallas in a car my French friends had rented and so aptly named the ‘gay mobile’. The gay mobile was a small, bright green car which made a little ‘toot toot’ sound every time the lock button was pressed and to be driven all around Texas by three French boys. Needless to say they were less than impressed when this was the car they were given at the rental shop as the larger one they booked had gone.

Nevertheless I arrived in Dallas around 10.30am to be greeted warmly by the McAlister family who I hadn’t seen since my 18^th birthday! My week was filled with family fun at a beautiful outdoor park, an Ice sculpture show, the Dallas reunion tower and finally Thanksgiving dinner accompanied by a traditional game of American Football.  

On Thanksgiving morning we all sat down and watched Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on the TV… This parade lines the streets of New York every year and is aired nationally for all to experience the elaborate floats, Broadway street performances and music stars singing their current hits. The whole parade was started by Macy’s (the department store) and grows every year with new floats. After that we made little turkey place cards, I got to make my own which didn’t turn out as horrible as expected considering my crafting abilities. We then said grace led by Sue, the wonderful host of the week, during which she spoke of what she was thankful for…

Having the whole week to internally reflect on what I may be truly thankful for (even the Facebook status bar read ‘what are you thankful for?’) I came up with many people, experiences and things I have to be thankful for and in a nutshell I decided that aside from my health and the health of my loved ones this year I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to be studying abroad, experiencing places and culture I may not have had I not been here, and my family and friends at home and here who have supported me the whole way and made it possible. I am thankful for all the people from different countries who are now such a huge part of my life and I am so so thankful for the opportunity to spend a traditional Thanksgiving day with such a lovely, warm American Family!

Next was the food, oh the food! I’ve decided that Americans are very lucky in the respect that they get Christmas dinner twice a year! I feel like this is something us British should look into… We helped ourselves to turkey, ham, stuffing, vegetables, American gravy (which is a different colour to ours), bread, pickles, olives and I even had seconds. Desert was equally as plentiful as I tried my first rocky road ice cream, raspberry jello desert and pumpkin pie.

When we were all far too full to move we sat down to watch an NFL game between the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders. Although I got the gist of the game I realised watching it with true fans I still had a lot to learn!

All in all I learnt a lot about the tradition of Thanksgiving and learnt that Christmas celebrations such as the tree, songs, lights etc don’t really kick off until Thanksgiving is over, one holiday at a time people! I had a fantastic time with fantastic people and I will never forget it, thank you McAlister family 

Weather Report: Norman Oklahoma

So far I've briefly touched on the weather here... In my last post I mentioned how overnight it can go from a terrifying thunderstorm to clear blue skies and temperature in the 20's and all my photos so far have been me enjoying the beautiful sunshine however this week the weather took a turn for the worse. 

Now naturally in the winter you would expect the weather to get cold, right? Wrong. It has become apparent to me that the whole of Oklahoma is in denial about the fact the weather is not always humid and sunny... Unfortunate I know, but ignoring the problem does not make the cold go away however hard you may try. 

Amount of snow which caused school to be shut

I say they are in denial as the second they see ice, they shut down the bridges, restaurants and even University.  A friend of mine said she was too scared to drive in the cold, what concerned me most was that she is Austrian and should be used to it. When I questioned her she gave me the best piece of advice I could of asked for at this time of the year "The roads are dangerous not because of the ice but because Americans don't know how to drive in it". Now 'Americans' is a large generalisation but certainly is correct for the people of Norman as they can't learn to drive in conditions they hide from. 

Growing up in Wales I am used to cold winters, more recently I've even become accustomed to snow but I have never in my life felt cold like I have here. When it is cold, it is freezing! Its a chilling cold which gets you right through to your bones... Needless to say last week I purchased two coats, two scarves, a wooly hat and a pair of gloves in good old British fashion. The Oklahomans are still walking around in rain boots, macs and leggings but at least i'm warm!

If the weather here was a person it would have bipolar. Saturday I was kitted out for the ski slopes and still cold, today I'm walking around in the sun in jeans and t-shirt and i'm still warm. Go figure. Today we're having highs of 20 and by Thursday it is going to drop to below 0 and we can expect more 'snow' and ice. 

                                                            Wish me luck. 

The happiest 5K in the world

For those of you who know me you'll know I ran my first 5K 'The Colour Run' in early October in Oklahoma City... Now for this post I'm going to play catch-up and tell you all about it although it happened weeks before I began this blog.

The above picture was taken when myself and my international friends finished the run and amazing 'paint party' that followed. Now i've never been greatly athletic but I was very proud of myself when I managed to jog/run the whole 5K and not look like the usual beetroot I've been known to turn into after exercise. This however was not the most exciting part of the run for me.. The most exciting part was that it wasn't cancelled! See, the night before the run I witnessed first hand my first of Oklahoma's thunderstorms and I must say, it was not fun.

The whole day we'd been having severe weather warnings however the sky was blue, sun was out and it was around 22 degrees if I remember right. It wasn't until midnight when I was cycling back from a friends birthday party that it started to pour down with rain, despite that I managed to fall asleep only to be awoken at 3am by the brightest flashes of light I have ever seen and thunder so loud I thought my ceiling was caving in. When I realized I wasn't getting back to sleep any time soon I received two text messages from two friends living in other apartments who were equally as terrified as I was..After an hour it finally calmed down to the point I was able to fall back to sleep. When I woke at 6.30am ready to leave for the city in time for the 5K it was still dark and windy outside but the rain had subsided. No one knew whether we'd be able to run or not but by 9am the sun was shinning and all was back to how it should be - summer time in October!

I guess that's what Oklahoma weather is all about. Crazy.

Back to the point of this whole blog, I would totally recommend anyone who gets the chance to do the colour run do it! The whole run they provide you with paint packets to throw at each other and at the end all participants surround a stage playing music and throwing paint everywhere. I mean, what more could you want?

GW Rescue Zoo

Yesterday I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life...

My flatmates and I decided to take a day trip to an animal rescue park in Wynnewood Oklahoma where they allow you to take a tour of their endangered animals and interact with some of the babies. I was lucky enough to hold a baby alligator, several snakes, baby pigs, skunks and a baby tiger.
Upon arrival we drove into a small carpark only big enough for around 12 cars and found our way to a small shop which served as the entrance. There we were greeted by two women, one cradling a baby human and the other placing a baby snake in her hair where it remained quite content for the rest of the day!



Its safe to say the park was very humbly run by volunteers, most of which are from the same local families. It has no grand entrance, fancy signs or expensive food stands.. It is simply a park filled with animals which you can experience up close and personal guided by people who have dedicated their time to learn about and get to know the animals you're handling. It was a very grounding experience to appreciate the animals for what they are - beautiful - and see what people are doing out there to try and conserve their natural environment as well as breed those they have in captivity so that my children, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren can also experience what I did today.

As well as hold many of the baby animals I also got to see the white tigers feeding time, which was slightly terrifying, and meet a very angry goat who took great pleasure in throwing himself full force at the feet of a camel which i'm told is his best friend, who would have thought? I also saw my very first Liger - offspring of a Lion and a Tiger - which was breed and born in the park. Ligers have no growth gene so they continually grow throughout their lives. The one I saw was 7 years old and already larger than both its parents and will only continue to grow!

So playful you forget it could be dangerous..

Frat Parties

A week or so ago two friends from home emailed me and asked what an ‘American Frat Party’ was as my home university’s student union was trying to re-create one. For those of you who don’t know, this is what it is…

A frat party is held at a Fraternity house on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. A fraternity house is the male equivalent of a sorority house; a house occupied by 60 or so American University boys and one poor house mum who takes care of them all. Fraternities share the same recruitment process, secret pledges and Greek names as their sorority counterparts however the rules for a house full of boys differs ever so slightly from the rules for a house full of girls as you can well imagine.

By the time the weekend roles around the sorority girls, most of which are below legal drinking age and who are not - under any circumstances - allowed boys passed the living room of their sorority house, are more than ready for a party with the boys. The huge frat house is turned upside down with music, traditional red party cups and holy water. Holy water is the name given to a traditional concoction of pure spirits the frat boys unleash on the unsuspecting girls; something I can live without trying.

Now here’s where it gets tricky. Technically, as the University of Oklahoma is a dry campus (no alcohol permitted on campus AT ALL) and the fraternity houses are part of the Uni, alcohol is not permitted in the frat houses.  This however doesn’t stop them, it just means you have to be prepared to dive under any table, bed or bush to hide from security if they come to break up the fun.  In a sense it’s like having a giant party at your parents’ mansion only they come home from holiday a day early… And you’re in huge trouble.

I appreciate that it’s probably my British upbringing that makes me sceptical about fraternity boys but there is something about a man in his twenties choosing to sleep in bunk beds in a room with one or more men that is not quite right in my mind. I understand the bond of brotherhood they achieve and that it is a fantastic way to make friends in your first year of Uni but it just doesn't sit right with me. The only thing that gives me hope is that Brad Pitt was a fraternity boy when he was at Uni in Kansas; this I found out from my sorority sister whose Dad was in the same house as him at the same time… I guess Brad turned out alright.