Week 9, Trip to Manchester, Trafford Centre

Monday was the day of figuring out where to travel next. Places I want to see are all around UK and train tickets cost a lot! Hardest thing is I want to see as many place as possible so I will be over a night only in the few places. Scotland, Durham, Hadrian's wall, Stonehenge...also I would like to see some film destinations. Whole Monday I was just figuring out what to do and when :D

I did collect British coins. I wanted to
 have this picture of  shield :)

On this week UCLan's Photography society met first time! I was waiting for it. I want to getter better at taking photos and hear other's advises and ideas. I'm not so good at photographing, especially if people ask "What shutter speed I could use this kind of picture?", I'm always so confused. I live in the moment and figure out these by trying different shutter speeds, not by using my brains to remember. :D

Photography is import to me. First cameras I had, were disposable ones, and now I'm having my third digital camera, Canon EOS 700D, which is also my first DSLR camera(Digital single lens reflect - camera). But since I had my first camera, I have been really enjoying photographing as a hobby. In these days, almost everyone haves DSLR camera, so I just decided not to compare myself to others and take pictures for fun!

Wednesday was epic sport day. I was rushing to climbing from my classes and we did bouldering & 30 seconds plank challenges when I came and again when I left. I also broke my plank record. Last time it was 2 minutes 40 seconds, now it's 3 minutes 30 seconds! :D And I was doing some pull ups and random climbing teacher came to say me I did my pull ups so calmly. After that I went to gym and did almost 1 hour treadmill running. So exhausting day and next days my abs and right arm were hurting. It could have been worse.

Shoe project getting further! Soon cutting
pieces from foam!

When there's not enough time to cook, perfect luch:
Oatbread from freezer to toaster and anything
you like between pieces! :D

At Saturday I did Cocoa swiss roll with butter-sugar icing. It was good and I already ate it :P Treat of the week.

My day plans were going to Manchester and to Trafford shopping centre. I used bus for the first time and of course, I went to top deck. :D I wanted to experience real British double decker bus. It was nice at first, but I realized windows got fogged really badly. I didn't see through...

Stay behind the yellow line.
- Train station

Busbusbus

I did some shopping at Trafford Centre. I bought souvenirs to home and found perfect mug for me! I was trying to find some nice big and wide mug from Disney shop, I wanted princess mug, but didn't find any good one. We stopped by small shop. I don't remember the name, but they had almost everything you won't need. Mostly ridiculous kitchenware. I found porridge mug with handy 'how to make porridge' -introduction printed on it. I eat porridge every day at breakfast, so it was perfect!

Random violin player smiled at me

My perfect mug!

Trafford Cantre is huge shopping centre and so beautiful from inside! Many different architecture styles mixed together.

After shopping we went to Sealife. It was small place with few fishes, but it was nice. Ticket cost 19£ so it was maybe little bit expensive compared to experience I had. I like fishes even I can't eat them, it's so relaxing to watch them to swim peacefully. My favourite ones are Clownfish and Jellyfish. No more words really...

At sunny Sunday I tried for a first time, traditional English Breakfast, including: hash browns, sausage, tomato, egg, beans, toast and bacon, with brown sauce. It wasn't bad at all. Stupid expectations. And I prefer English bacon. It's more soft and tastes more like ham. :D

5/7 days were sunny days this week. I just missed sun so much! Hope there's more days like this in next weeks!

Week 8, Sauna experience

Week 8 started with terrible busy days. I had to do my assignment for Tuesday and I was kind of been lazy on earlier and didn't even realize it comes so quickly. Well, it meant I was sleeping during Monday - Tuesday night only 2,5 hours. :D Sounds terrible. And it was it little bit. I had some technical issues with my report and I had to do it again in 7 hours! I did it but it's quality was not so nice....

At Tuesday, after these lessons I had my presentation and gave my report to teacher, I had to do for Wednesday 50 drawings of shoes. Cause we have been drawing so much recently, it wasn't so bad. I slept my night better. I was doing those shoes for Fiskars and they turn out to be wellies! Tuesday was also Shrove Tuesday and here people have that day some English pancakes. Luckily Nina had crepe dough from weekend. And we had some crepes with my luxury cloudberry jam.

Many drawings from Wednesday's lesson. 

Crepe with cloudberry jam :P

Wednesday was also the day when I went to gym! I didn't have any time or energy in a month so now was perfect time to start new session before our assignments return on next moth. We have to return at the same day assignments from 3 courses. All our works and reports and everything...terrible even think about that... It was so nice to be at gym. I walked little bit at treadmill. It's not clever to start running too fast when there's been long pause since last time. Way back to accommodation I took nice photo of one of UCLan's buildings. 

St. Peters Arts Centre

I started again to practice English  with Erasmus plus OSL. When I applied here my CERF test result was B1!!? Well...I'm not so good at tests and especially if I have to read I and there's limited time to do it, I'm really bad. But I have noticed, that number doesn't really tell my real level, cause I understand English quite well. I just can't find right words to translate sentences. My brain works in weird way. :D

At Saturday, this amazing day started early. I woke up at seven and it was so sunny! I did my laundry, took some nice pictures of flowers and plants, did healthy muffins without any butter and cleaned my room and kitchen. I had so much energy to do lots of things! I even went to gym! And I did everything before 12 pm. :D

Beautiful time of the year has started!! :D

Sunday was sauna day! I went to Marriott Hotel in Preston to swim and checking local sauna. It was relaxing day and nice experience! It was spa, so it costs 12£ per person. We tried Jacuzzi, swimming, sauna and steam room in there. Price allowed to use gym also, but I was so tired about last day's gym session, I didn't even think chance to use that. When we left I realized why my mother always had these snack with us when I was younger and we were swimming. You get so hungry and thirsty after sweating in water. You don't even notice it.

Week 7, Tasting sweets

Week 7 was all crafting first cardboard model of camera backpack, drawing shoe sketches and preparing for return of assignment. My room was huge mess in this week, even I cleaned my floor and desk every day after working on. And it's not helping that I have carpet floor, especially when I'm cutting card and theres millions of pieces of it. I just don't get it, cause the carpet is s

I didn't add anything else there, cause this was enough to see does
everything fit there. Turned out to be just little bit too small.

Luckily good food helps always! It's so nice to cook
something and do something totally different. 

I also tasted finally some British chocolate and baked good.

Cadbury is British multinational confectionery company and it's second largest brand in world, after Mars. (And never heard of it before coming here!) It was established in Birmingham in 1824. (Finnish chocolate brand Fazer was founded in 1891) So I tasted dairy milk small chocolate bar, I think it's maybe their basic chocolate. Taste was good and really sweet. It had not so good texture, like something was missing and wrong i  there. I felt like they don't maybe use real milk in their chocolates. If I compare to Finnish milk chocolate brand Fazer, they have more smoother taste and texture. It's more rich. 

Second one I tasted was baked good, Cherry Bakewell from Mr Kipling. Mr Kipling is producer of cakes, pies and baked goods from UK and it was introduced in 1976. You can find their sweets at almost every food shop here is. (For comparison, there might not be so big brands in Finland.) Those small pastries tasted all right. Overall they were sweet, bottom was quite tasteless, icing really sweet and really industrial-flavored, cherries I didn't care. I could eat those if someone offers me, but I wouldn't buy. 

At Saturday morning I had to see new Disney movie Moana. At first when the trailers came I thought nah, maybe that's not so interesting, but then I heard from everywhere it was good. Also I listened song "How far I'll go" too many times before seeing movie and I'm loving that so much. I obviously were only adult there, if I don't count parents with children. The movie was really good, goes absolutely to my top 5 animation movies! I just loved the songs and especially "Who you are". I think I feel having something similar with Moana, loving home, but feeling yearning to somewhere else what I don't know so well.

Weird shaped building

At Saturday we also tried to do Finnish Shrovetide buns, but something went horribly wrong. They were flat and hard buns... Never had flat ones, but I ate those anyway, cause Shrovetide buns you eat once in a year. We also had new experience with cardamom. We found only cardamom pods, we had to open pods and crush what was found inside. It looked like mouse shit. :D

Cardamom?!