Invitation of the Mayor

The week started great with me finishing most of my studies on Monday during the day. Also I decided to try to get into the handball team, which obviously won't be easy, but it can't hurt. So I had to buy indoor sport shoes on Tuesday after my lectures finished. I went to the City Centre which really is a brilliant place to shop, if you want designer clothes. As you can imagine, it took me some time to find a shop that. In the end, I found a nice shop, and I was greeted like a king. Needless to say, I got some shoes without having to spend much time trying different shoes on. I spend a lot of money for them, but that was al right. When I got home, our landlady who did a house inspection again was already gone, and all she left was a note, that we would have do decide whether we wanted to rent the house next year again or not. That was not really a question for me, and I did not do very much the rest of the afternoon, apart from eating my first McDonald's menu in England. It was delicious. My plans for the evening were exciting. The mayor invited the international students to a reception. All you needed to do is show up in your national dress or smart clothes, and bring your invitation. The reception was in the Pump Room (see picture below this paragraph), which is a beautiful room, with a big chandelier in the centre of the room, and a grand piano on a podium on one side of the room. Since my description is nowhere close to what the room looks like, just enjoy the pictures, that convey some of the beauties of the room. In my opinion it was even more beautiful than this. After speeches by the Mayor, a student representative and a spokesman for the Roman Baths we were invited into the Roman Baths at night. While it is supposed to be a wonderful place at daylight, I have not been in there, so I can not judge myself, it is breathtaking at nights. For pictures, see below again.

the Pump Room

 the Roman Baths

 the Abbey in the background of the Roman Baths

 Chloé, Beatriz, Christopher, me and the Mayor of Bath

 Me, Edgar, Chloé, Beatriz and Christopher

my favourite picture of the night

Not only was it a reception, and a tour through the Roman Baths, but also was it a nice reason to meet Beatriz, Chloé, Edgar, Christopher and a lot of other people which I met coincidentally inside. At 9pm, I thought the night was over, and I would get some well deserved sleep, but instead we met some people outside of the Pump Room, who did not get a ticket. So Chloé, Edgar and I joined Lara, Clotilde, Valeria and Carolina for a drink. This was the perfect ending of an almost perfect day, and I was so happy when I fell alseep after having dinner and talking to Andy for about an hour.

This was not the only things that made me happy on Tuesday, and I apologize in prior for not answering in person; I received a mail from Germany asking me several questions, and telling me how great it was of me to write my blog so consistently. First of all I have to say: I don't. The reason why I will not be able to answer in person is, that I have not had a day without something going on in the evening since Monday, and since I will be in Wales over the weekend, there is just no time to do so. So I would rather answer the general questions here, and give more details when I am back in Germany. So this paragraph will be about small details, funny little differences, and all the stuff I would leave out because it seems insignificant to me. Starting with the advent calendars. I bought mine on Monday with Paul, and it has 25 doors, so 25 pieces of chocolate - take that Germany. I've included some pictures about how we get electricity, the first one shows the stick, which you have to take to a supermarket. You then tell the cashier how much money you want to pay. You pay it, and he charges your stick with that amount of cash (kind of like prepaid mobile phones). After that, you take the stick home, and stick it in the fuse box (2nd picture). There is also the amount of money displayed that you have left. Our electricity was really low this week, so we had to top it up by another 60 pounds. (realize, that I just answered 6 questions!). Moving on: I would lie, if I said that I still had a lot of work. It is not easy and it is time consuming, but compared to what other students have to do it is barely anything for me. This is why I can travel so much and I really enjoy doing so. I planned of introducing a lot more people from abroad and talking about their backgrounds, but it is a thing I have to have time in order to do that. I think when I am back in Germany, I'll spend some time trying to talk a little bit about people from other European countries and probably, if I know enough by then, of someone from Mexico, Japan and India (well, India will happen eventually, since I do a lot with Riddhi). Thinking of this, I should probably add the nationality of each person in my blog so far, but that destroys the text in a way so I won't do it. Instead I leave you the possibility to guess. I am aware of my drinking habits and it just so happens that whenever someone takes a picture, I have a drink in my hand. It is not because I drink a lot, but instead it is, because I have the same drink in my hand for the whole night, or is it? I think there's three questions left, one of them, I'll answer the writer in person, the other two were no real questions, but I'll answer them anyway. Yes, my English has become a little better, in fact, it has become solid enough to mess with my German already. And yes, I am feeling fine, but reading my blog gives a much better answer to that, and therefore, you are right not to ask me the question. I was really happy to receive the email, and I am looking forward to Christmas or even to the time before Christmas.

On Wednesday, after my two English classes, which were great fun and quite successful in the sense that my essay and my summary were graded as high as I would never have imagined, I went for the Pub to meet Dan to watch Tottenham versus Bremen. But thanks to the buses, I was almost an hour late for that. I still had an enjoyable second half of a bad football match, and I am keen on seeing more football games in the not too distant future. After getting home, we decided to watch another film, and go to bed after that. With a feeling of pride because of my good essay, I went to bed happily, and just got up to inform you about the first half of the week.