Sunday, October 28, 2012

Day 61, Liverpool

So we got to attend our first winning game on Wednesday! LFC beat Anzhi 1-0, which was awesome since they have drawn our lost all the other times we've been to Anfield... This time we had amazing seats near the Kop in the Centenary stand, with an amazing view. So much fun to be there again, this is our fourth game in two months, we have been very lucky to actually get tickets for two PL games and two Europa League. Usually EL is a lot easier to get tickets to than PL.

Yesterday we celebrated 7 months together by going to the opening night of the new Bond movie. Won't spoil anything here but I was quite emotional at the end. Such a good movie.We went to the Fact Cinema in Liverpool, nice comfy seats and everyone was really quiet and well behaved, not like when the teenage brigade lays into the decor in Sweden...

So anyway, today we headed back into town for a nice dinner at La Tasca, a spanish restaurant close to the city centre for one of my favourite ways of eating: Tapas. We had some Serrano ham, paella, tortilla, chicken romesco, lemon chicken and pork belly, and churros dipped in melted chocolate for dessert. David hadnt tried tapas before but luckily enough for me, he was very keen on the idea. The place was wonderful, nice athmospere without getting too noisy, and the food just to die for, everything was well cooked and we finished off each pot we were served. I was going for some Sangria but since D was driving and I wasnt too keen on an entire jug for myself I skipped it, that might have been quite clever of me...

                                                        Picture from johnlewis.co.uk

                                                       Picture from store.liverpoolfc.tv

Also got some shopping done, besides some nail polish for my now very vast collection and some dvds I also got a new polo shirt to ride in and a scarf from the LFC store, and a nice Barbour coat for when the weather gets colder. Didnt plan on buying one but I feel in love and it just had to be. Hopefully it will last for a long time!

So anyway, I'm off to play FIFA!

xxx M


Thursday, October 25, 2012

Day 59, Liverpool/Leicester

Hi people! Sorry for the long absence, I havent really been in the mood to blog with all the hassle I have had lately, but today I can share the happy new, we have finally beaten CSN and my student grant is coming in. Such a relief, this has been weighing on me for quite some time. Its been a hard few weeks on a fairly restricted budget courtesy of my way too nice father who stepped in and helped while we fought this battle, but now its done.

So, anyway, I started uni four weeks ago, I had originally planned to do Contract, Torts, Intellectual property and family law, but family law clashed so I ended up in the dreaded Criminal law, which is without doubt the hardest module I am taking this year. Its all very different from our Swedish system and half the time I am very unsure of what my lecturer is saying. Our textbook is a bit clearer though.

The system here for Uni in general is very different from what I'm used to. In Sweden we rely on a big, fat book containing all the laws we could possibly need, whereas England provide you with something called a "statutory booklet", which is basically a thin little booklet with the statutory acts. I estimate my contract one to about 15 pages and that's it. Here we also have one or maybe two textbooks per module and instead we read lots of cases, journals and articles, often up to 30 pages long. I am yet to find out where I can find those cases, I think we might have something like Zeteo but who knows?? Also, here we do all four modules at the same time, and write exams for all four in January and June. Stress doesn't even begin to cover it when you have a mountain of material to work through and no real idea of how to organise it. How did I do this in college?? (Gymnasiet, Swedish peeps)

Contract law is amazingly fun here, very similar to what we did in Sweden without being identical, makes for lots of interesting comparisons and discussions. Intellectual property is also very similar due to the simple fact that its mostly based on European law, Torts is terribly vague since our lecturer is quite shit, and Criminal law is... help.

So, I ended up in a student hall since I didn't know if I would get any money from CSN, but its really nice! I have some awesome flatmates (all girl flat) and they are all very neat, so we have an amazingly big and very clean kitchen. Perfect for predrinks! Hehe.

I also trialled for and got into the riding team for Leicester Uni, my first competition is the 7th November, bit nervous! You compete on borrowed horses in both jumping and dressage, and the points are then combined for the final score. I've had two lessons so far on two different horses, and I love it, I've missed the riding, and even though this is not really the same as what I used to do, its still horses.

What more? I've been to three Liverpool games in total now, and going to the fourth one today, a Europa League one against Anzhi, which I look forward to. Tomorrow David and I are celebrating 7 months together by going to see the new Bond movie and going out for dinner. I look forward to that a lot.

We also had our first social with the Riding club (a social is basically a night out at a club, often with a theme of some sort) the theme this time was Zoo project, so all us riding girls went as Zebras, with face paint and all! Next social is cuban night with cocktails, and of course the Halloween bar crawl.

So, that was a quite lengthy update, I'll be back with some more!

Xxx M