To live or to party? That is the question...

So finaly I'm writting in the blog again! The problem is not that nothing is hapenning, rather that I am still busy doing something else. I was telling myself that I will write a post per day. But sometimes I just don't feel like writting or sometimes I don't know which is the topic that suits the day. I just like to write when I feel the inspiration inside me. The first days here in Belfast were really full of strong experiences, so in a way all the feelings wanted to find their way out. Release the tension. But now I found my routine in life. And that made me think.
I don't have much lectures and I often don't feel like reading something to school. So, believe it or not, I started to feel bored. I am bored during lectures as normally in school or when I watch too much series during one day. And sometimes I feel hopeless here too. Especially when I imagine writting essays in english. I can study if I want. And I feel I should because Erasmus is a study programme. I was surprised I can feel like this. Erasmus is exciting and cool, right? So why am I bored? And I feel angry at lectrures because the study style here doesn't suit me much and they have totaly different approach to psychology here. But I will write about this some other day.

When I moved to the university accommodation I realized I missed getting to know other students. But I also wanted to have fun. Thank God, there is still something going on and especially some people still organize common activities for international students. At my dorms people are very nice and friendly. So it's possible to talk or socialize with them too. I don't know how, but suddenly it's not even possible to have a free evening during the week. But I also need to study, to have time to call home and so on.

I found out that when there is an event but I decide to stay home, I feel that I'm missing something. I was always like this a bit. Just now I also have the feeling that I am not enjoying the Erasmus stay to the full when I'm at dorms. And no, it's not about Erasmus being just one long party and drinking! What are you thinking about?
First of all, the beer is so expensive that it's not possible to get drunk. Secondly, going out is not about getting drunk, it's about getting to know other people. And meeting people is one of the most important benefits of Erasmus stay, in my point of view. Today most of the people I know went to a pub crawl - walking around the city and buying alcohol in different pubs. It's not my style of party. On the other hand, the belgian pharmacist Jan summed it up quite good: "It's the closest I can get here to being drunk." Btw: On Sunday we went hiking and he skipped the trip because he was hungover. Even though his argument was very strong, I was still convinced today is not a party day for me.

I realized that I am here for half a year. It's a long time. I just can't party all the time. It's not healthy. So even though one other friend wrote me about going to the cheapest pub in city, today I decided to stay home. I wanted to finaly write a post, call with my loved ones, study a bit and other calm and my activities. It's very nice to spend one evening home too. In the time you'll be abroad, enjoy company of other people as much as possible. But don't forget to take time for yourself.

PS: I'm trying to get used to a british keyboard. This is my first post written using it! I'm happy about it! :)

Motto of the day: You are studying and living abroad. It's part of your normal life. Life includes party, excitement, fun, but boredom, anger (and hard work) too. Also it's not healthy to party all your life.

St. Valentine´s rugby

Today is a day of showing love, being with our loved ones. Well, when you´re abroad, it´s kind of hard. So when international students think about what to do, rugby is a possibility.
People here seems to be totaly crazy about rugby. In the university area there is Rugby Road, every Friday it´s possible to visit one of the local rugby matches. When there´s rugby on TV, streets are somewhat emptier and social life is moved into pubs where you can support your team with shouting and drinking beer. Once we went to see live music into a bar and the music was at least hour late. We left before it even started. But visitors were totaly satisfied because there was a rugby match on TV. I suspect bar staff that they postponed the music because of rugby.
Today was match Ireland vs. France. Most of the international students in bar was from France so the fan bases were obvious. In the Czech Republic you can never watch rugby though. Some other people with me haven´t known anything about rugby rules. So for us it was challenge to try to figure them out. For guys, rugby is obviously manly stuff. The more dirt and blood is on your face and body, the more you are attractive and happy person. My theory is a bit different. After all, it´s St. Valentine´s.
Principles of the game are still hidden to me but obviously it´s about hugging. They can try hard to say it´s about manly strenght but obviously it's not truth. I just think man going to war are actually missing their women´s tenderness. That´s why they needed to make up a sport in which they would still look tough, but they could also receive a lot of love. In rugby game it is a big privilege to give a hug to somebody, so you need to try to hug just a few people so that hugs remain a not so easy to get article. Problem is, that if you have a ball, everybody tries to hug you. So you need to try to escape them. And if you manage to escape far enough (behind the final line), you get 5 points for your team, you are saved for a moment and closer to a happy winning hug of whole your team.

Hugging victim trying to escape. But it's not gonna hapen.

It is very hard to reach the final line. In 80 minutes it hapenned only once. In the field, you fight for every few centimeters and the ball is always in someone's hand, so there is still excesive hugging going on. I really think the most dirty and bloody men are so happy because they have been hugging so much. There is even a big group hug on regular terms. Honestly, I think it is just opportunity for one big hug and touching other's guys asses. See for yourself.

Preparation for a big group hug

Sometimes the game even looks like dancing. They have special kind of jump which looks like Dirty dancing last scene and it serves to catch balls in big hight. Also when it comes to art, rugby players are very creative performing different kinds of pirouettes. Rugby is just filled with love, joy, happiness and blood. On the other hand, there is lack of teeth. Players are violent to reach their hug but still they obey some rules to hurt each other a bit slowlier than they would like to. I have Killing me softly song in my head.

Dirty dancing

Ireland finaly won 18:11. In a raffle we could win a jersey of Ireland. The happy owner of Ireland jersey is french of course. But he seemed happy about it. And why not. It is St. Valentine's and love is all around us.

Motto of the day: Even a tough butcher is capable of love.

Přidat popisek

Finally singing in Belfast!

I discovered one sad thing. I miss music in Belfast. At my home university I was attending university choir rehearsals twice a week (Hey guys, I miss you!), plus concerts, our Illegato vocal group (Hey guys, I miss you!) and just singing at parties. Here, I had none of it. Everything escalated quite quickly and when I caught myself listening to the university choir concert recording for a third time in a row, I discovered I´m probably damaged forever. I just need some music in my life.
Taking in mind that I´m here just for one semester and I don´t want my voice to die in the meantime, I wrote an email to a Queen´s university chamber choir school contact. This man told me to contact an auditions lady. The lady answered to me in few days and told me just to come 10 minutes before start of a rehearsal to meet a director of the choir. So I went there, after this comunication round, I expected I will have to sing something at least. The director wrote down my name and asked me which voice I want to sing and gave me musicsheets. I have to say I expected something harder to get in when I saw the management structure of choir. But here I am :D.
There is approximately 30 singers in the choir. At this particular rehearsal there were 4 boys and for a moment it seemed I´ll be the only alto. But finaly we were 2 or 3! I´m not sure. For me it is really different style of work than I´m used to. At my university choir there is 60 people and carefully balanced voice groups. Also they practice in very spontaneous way. That´s in a way more fun, in a way I don´t know what to sing much and I miss the detailed work on every phrase or note. Also an accent of the director is not possible to decypher for me so far. That complicates any communication between us. Because when he asks something I´m still just dumb smilling and saying "Oh yes". Another difference between this choir and mine - we didn´t go for a beer after the rehearsal. On the other hand I have to admit the people in choir have really beautiful voices, so the potential is huge. We´ll see where it will evolve. And the songs they sing are just amazing. Especially the irish traditional ones. I am so happy to have the opportunity to sing them! And you can understand the harmony much more when you sing in choir.
One of the songs we will sing. Yes!

I also found amazing showcase in School of Music where the choir rehearsals take place. It´s full of different director´s batons. There are cool historical details about using batons too. Like that first reported use of conducting baton is dated back to 709 bc. Or that a baton was directly responsible for death of  Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), who succumbed to gangrene after stabbing his foot whilst conducting.

Cool batons

More of them - it´s hard to make a photo through glass

The choir will have a concert at the end of april. I think it can be pleasant activity to do during free day. So everybody will be welcome!

Motto of the day: Don´t stop your hobbies during study abroad. You will miss them. So find a way!

Stand up comedy today and forever

Sometimes it surprises me what kinds of different activities it is possible to do here in Belfast. Every day it´s something different. And when a friend found stand up comedy evening which was free for couchsurfers, there was no other possibility then to go see how concentrated irish humour looks like. In the common room in my dorms there was quite a lot of people so I asked them if they wanted to go too. Finally me, my 3 friends from some time before plus 6 other people spent a very nice evening. So I got to know people from my dorms a bit more too. There was me - a czech girl, 1 serbian, 1 indonesian, 1 belgian, 1 german, 2 brasilian and 3 french students.
The place is called Pavilion and it´s beautiful with vinyls on the walls. Irish accent of speakers was so amazing that when we came, I understood approximately 30% of what they were saying. Through the evening it slowly got better. From 30 to 40%, if I´m speaking about recognizing words and not about understanding the meaning. Unfortunately, the main speaker could see all of us are not laughing in the moments when everybody else was crying from laughter. So we needed to admit we´re international students and the guy was making fun of us. That we don´t understand if he tells all of this and that... I don´t know what he was saying but it involved genitals and activities with them.
During the evening there was a competition, when audience could write down their own jokes. The best one won 10 pounds voucher at the bar. That means 2 and half beer in this crazy expensive country. On the other hand, for me it is like detox. It´s not possible to get drunk here. Anyway, this is joke which was chosen as best:
What is the difference between Jesus and his picture? To hang a picture you need just one nail.

Then I remember this one:
What is the best kind of bees? Boobies.

And then we had to guess what is something furry on a surface and moist inside and something else. And it was not a women´s genital organ but a coconut. Now we also know that well educated pirate is called Aaarrghademic.
My joke was so good they even didn´t bother to read it. Even though I considered it pure british style, translated and culturally changed to be possible to use it in english. On the other hand they read just half of joke by a belgian guy so it was without a punch line.

My joke was:
A polar bear swimmes in an ocean and says: "Cooool..."

Original:
Plave kapr v medu a říká: "Hůstýýý..." (A carp/fish swimmes in honey and says: "Deeense". Does it make seeense?)

The czech one is just better. In a way I understand why it was not so funny for them. Even though we had problems with understanding, the show was fun and we definitely plan to go there every monday just to catch the irish accent. We´ll see if the speakers will handle poker face audience :D.

Motto of the day: Life is a stand up comedy. In (Northern) Ireland, you don´t understand it much.

First stand up comedian

British kezboard and other technical complications

I mentioned how much I love Queen´s (University) Library many times. It´s beautiful, it´s eco-friendly, it´s huge, it has a café, it has a Narnia reading room, homeless smelly guy... I even can print and copy there. Anything is possible here, everything is in one place. But if you need to use a computer, it´s just pain in the ass, especially when you need to do something very quickly.
It takes half of your life (approximately 5 minutes) just to log on the computer. And then it´s not from the quickest machines anyway. But I guess it´s hard to run one house with 200 computers for students. So far I have biggest problem with british keyboard which makes the university computers impossible to use for me. Probably more for chatting or writting something informal than for my school work. But still, they use qwerty, we use mostly qwertz. And all the stuff like brackets or : or ! are for me in very strange position. So I just don´t use any smily faces at the library, because suddenly they all look demented >). And also I miss all of these: ůúěščřžýáíé. It´s so confusing. And the shift+alt magic to switch between czech and british keyboard is not working in UK. I don´t know why. I just need to do my schoolwork only on my laptop. Otherwise all of the sentences will look reallz crayz.

British kezboard

There are other confusing technical issues too. For example I totally forgot that in UK there is different kind of outlets. So I came here with no way how to charge my notebook or phone. It´s possible to buy travel adaptor everywhere, so it´s not a big deal if you will forget about it too. I´ve been to UK before but I´ve forgotten that there could be a problem like this. Every outlet here has it´s own switch. It´s probably good for safety or saving energy but it means that when something is turned off, the outlet is probably turned off too. In the Czech Republic we have these IT jokes like "I have broken PC" "And have you tried to turn it on?" or "Have you tried to plug it in?". In UK the joke has continuing "Have you switched the outlet on?" But we´re approaching british sense of humour here too.
One of the strangest things here is that they drive in left side of the road. Everybody knows it, so no surprise. But still it´s very confusing. When I am at crossing on a road I still don´t know from which direction I should expect cars comming. Now I´m at least getting used to really looking both ways, to the left and to the right. But first few days were hell. Busses are totaly opposite shape then I´m used to, so when I don´t think much and I want to get out of the bus, I always try to infiltrate driver´s little cabin. And going by bus is really anxious time for me because I still feel we are just overtaking the cars on the right side and we should at some moment go back to the right line. But we´re never ever going back to the right line! I just still feel something is horribly wrong with the world when I´m using some kind of transportation.

Devilish outlets with switches

Last technical problem I face here is tap water. Every sink here has 2 taps. One for hot water and one for cold water. That means you can choose from 2 possibilities. You can either burn yourself or freeze your hands. I still don´t know how to use the taps so that it will be pleasant to wash my hands. Or to peacefully wash my dishes. It´s really not user-friendly. Please tell me how to wash my hands here and not hurt myself in the process! :D

Motto of the day: You can meet weird everyday stuff on your study abroad. Try to look for them before leaving. Then it won´t be big surprise for you and you won´t be screwed for example when your phone runs out of battery.

God save the Queen

The Queen. The most powerful woman in the world (after Angela Merkel). She´s everywhere, she knows about everything, she is an idol. The life can´t go on without Queen´s impact.
Back in 1849 Queen Victoria visited Belfast for few hours. Result is that we have not only Queen´s University Belfast here, but also shopping center Victoria´s square, Queen´s Bridge, one of the main roads in Belfast is called Victoria´s street and more and more. There´s also nasty object of Queen´s impact - Dukes at Queen´s Hotel. I would like to know what kind of people spend there nights. At the Victoria´s shopping center you can use stairs or elevator to go up under the globe from glass, look around and see all the Queen´s stuff around.

Queen Victoria´s statue in front of City Hall

Victoria´s square shopping center view

Queen´s university is also filled with Queen´s influence. Student´s handle their agenda on web Queen´s online. You can subscribe to sport facilities at Queen´s sport center. As new students we were adviced that we will be guided through our enrollment by Queen´s wizard (here it starts to be a bit creepy). We all should even carefully save our school work on a Queen´s drive. The lady just knows everything including content of my essays! But I don´t want to make a furious beast out of her. There are cute things including Queen too. For example in the Czech Republic we use ECTS academic credits, Queen´s uses Queen´s CATS. And they are twice as value than ECTS :-/.

Queen´s cat online

While drinking Guiness beer, a friend told me about possibility to test quality of beer foam and save Queen in one moment. (He also said this is the origin of saying God save the Queen. But I guess this is not the whole truth.) It´s said that the right beer should have such a thick foam, that when you lay 1 penny on it, it should go down very slowly. You should drink the beer before the penny drops to the bottom of the glass. That´s the only way how to save the Queen, whose picture is on every coin and also on every banknote made by Bank of England . I have to admit, we tried not only with 1 penny but with other coins too. No matter how you put the coin on foam and which coin you use, the Queen will always sink immediately even though I would love to save her.

This is what you see in the moment of dropping the coin. Best result we got.

Guiness!

Motto of the day: Don´t forget to save your work regularly (on the Queen´s drive). And don´t throw money into beer. It sinks and it´s not hygienic.

Homeless wisdom

Queen's university is very open-minded. I like all the crazy and funny things you can find around like this pavement sausage or the CS Lewis reading room.

Sausage... Who knows what is it good for :D

Since first day I came to Belfast I´m nearly every day around our perfect library. It´s really cool place and there is even nice café. And every day there is one special guest. I would call him a habitue, permanent piece of inventory. I don´t know his name, but he is homeless probably. Smells according to it, looks according to it and always comes with 3 or 4 plastic bags full of secret stuff. He reads books. Everytime he has some giant book on the table in front of him. I think so far I saw him only with title Modern Pharmacy. The book looks quite new.
I was expecting somebody will tell him to leave university buildings but everybody looks just fine with him being there. Students go to discuss with him, people passing by are telling him "hi". I was spending in the same room quite some time when I didn´t have internet at my accommodation. And I didn´t like his presence much, especially when somebody opened the café´s door and draft took his piss smell to my nose.
I don´t know much what to think about it. Is he some professor of sociology doing creepy experiment? Or is he university´s mascot? Because if he´s not from university, where did he get the book? I would go ask him, but I´m starting to think I´m oversensitive for smells. The 2 houses I lived here before were both in a way smelly. University was first few days smelly to me too because of this guy and now I´m happy if I can just breathe freely and sniff around with joy. So I´m sorry, but his identity will probably stay hidden to us. But I ask you - if you know backgroud behind all of this, don´t be afraid to comment! On the other hand, education is handy for everybody. And homeless people could have lots of time for studying.

Motto of the day: It´s never too bad time to study.

Mysterious mascot