America, America don't you cry

9.27.13

It was dark and rainy.
We were hungy.
This is better than my photo

Dinner with some of the transfer team (I feel like I snuck in as a fake transfer student haha). OH HOLY VEGAN MOTHER OF JOY. I know all I seem to talk about here is food but wow... just wow... I thought nothing could beat Pulse back in Norwich, how wrong I was. Live vegan vegetable lasagna (it's all raw ingredients) and pumpkin spice soft serve... just yes. I was worried that out of the 4 of us I was the only veggie but I think the love was unanimously shared.

9.26.13

Anais, Rich, Enno and I ventured to the Moreland movie theatre to see Woody Allen's new film, 'Blue Jasmine'. The cinema was literally something out of a time warp, from the proper little ticket stubs pulled off a reel to the old style popcorn machine. We were all being tourists taking photos - I feel like it's socially acceptable to act like this until about Christmas when we'll be too cool and local for that shit. The only screen in the building pretty much empty, we sat in gorgeously old and loved red velvet foldy seats. The film was really good, a remake of Streetcar named Desire set in San Fancisco (ahhh only 3 weeks until I'll be there - fall break woohoo) made better in our fro-yo adventures afterwards (angel food cake, fresh berries and hot caramel sauce this time round!). I realize this blog is mainly becoming a food/tea diary - I'm accidentally heading into the horrific land of instagram. I apologize.

9.25.13

Today's photos don't do justice to how magical my wanderings around Portland were. Backpack filled, Ben Howard in ear I wandered to Sellwood to hunt down some new study spots. Neil had recommended the Blue Kangaroo as somewhere he's been so I headed there first. Really friendly baristas (as usual in Portland) and only $1.70 for a drip coffee with a free refill which I definitely needed trying to get my head round Derrida, it's like I never left Norwich.

Smiling at the clocks showing time around the world (I should probably go back and
tell them that their London one is an hour out!) I
definitely thought of Cadi who I imaged had been doing the exact same thing back home.










Before heading back, yes, I did stop at tea chai te (I have an addictive personality what can I say!) and tried my first bubble tea. Totally wish I'd taken a photo. It's a flavoured iced green or black tea (you can have it with or without milk) with  big tapioca balls - hence the bubbles (I went for blueberry bubble tea with a green tea base) It's like you're eating tea! So so good :)  Armed with this little slice of heaven I stumbled into a little local farmer's market and tried a lot of the free samples (apple butter anyone?) regretting the minute I got home that I didn't pick up some fresh bread and home made hummus. There's always next wednesday...

Finally, I spotted this guy as I was crossing bybee bridge who scared the holy bejeezes out of me when he decided he'd had enough of being papped and suddenly took off, heading straight for me!

9.24.13
A Frenchman with a croissant? How cliche. They got the seal of approval though!
It rained. Properly this time. I still have no waterproof coat. We took refuge at the Paradox.

9.23.13
Performance analysis had me chained to my laptop but on a coffee run I ran into a gaggle of geese who seem to have nested down on the lawn.

Plus Nico appeared outside my door with a pot of tea to keep me going at about 11pm. I love my dorm.

9.22.13
Rich turned 21. Any excuse to eat cake.

Later the TEAm from Mac3 (friendship on our floor is predicated entirely by a shared love of tea) headed to tea chai te for an evening cuppa where it somehow managed to get even lovelier than last time (I hadn't realized that you can climb up the little ladders in the train caboose and sit suspended over the whole tea bar in an olde little seating booth!) Also, clouds stick to the mountains after it rains here. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe it.

Born in the USA

9.21.13
'Marshing like a mallow'


Procrastination. Leads to a beautiful evening with some incredible people.
I'm supposed to be writing a performance evaulation of the show I saw last night today. Instead I walked to Safeway (ON THE HUNT FOR ICELANDIC SKYR YOGHURT!!! YES STEPH THEY HAVE SKYR HERE!!!!! Although I was bitterly disappointed that my particular safeway doesn't stock it) and floofed the day away until meeting up with some of the lush transfer students for dinner. With Bailey, Alex, Morgan, Grace, Erika and I all squished into Bailey's car (again) all totally legit ofcourse, we headed to ole ole - my first Mexican restaurant (unless you count chips at Chicos back in B-Town which, you definitely can't). Mexican food in the US, especially in the Texas and on the West Coast is a huge deal. It's kind of like our Indian take outs at home (which are pretty fewand far between here!). I've been in a fair few conversations about the intricacies bewtween fake Tex-Mex and authentic Mexican, so I was pretty stoked to try it for myself. Asking the guys what I should go for, a veggie chile releno burrito, I tucked in. It was pretty tasty but didn't blow me away or anything. Slightly disappointed. But as Bailey agreed, it wasn't the best Portland had to offer for sure, so I'm remaining cautiously optimistic. Piling back in the car (a little less room considering the size of all our portions) we moved on for pudding. Back to the lovely lovely land of Salt and Straw. With my hands clasped around a strawberry honey balsamic and black pepper waffle cone and with Jose Gonzalez, Heartbeats, playing in the background, we had a pretty hilarious time exchange accents and phrases - it's hilarious how many variants Californians have for Weed - the sticky icky is perhaps my favourite aha. On a slightly side note, I really am turning into the size of a house. It's quite alarming. And also kind of great.

9.20.13
'Lining up your ducks'
(new Americanisms I'm picking up. Ta, Morgan and the South for this ^ little nugget)
  
Oh Lordie what a friday! After excitedly discovering a Tea Chai Te on Hawthorne during O Week but not having enough time to return (remember the glorious salt and straw/brunch day? Yeah it was then), I've been dying to get back. But in the car with some of the other Performance Studies people last week, I heard a rumor that one of the three Tea Chai Te cafes  (Portland cafes tend to have their own mini chains just in and around the different neighborhoods) was in a converted train caboose!!!!! Well, a little googling later (mainly of what the duck a train caboose was) and holy guacamole were they right. FINALLY, I found time today to hop on the bus (it would have been a half hour walk tops, but America's made me lazy like that) and  be transported to ABSOLUTE TEA HEAVEN.  Row upon row upon row of EVERY TEA IMAGINABLE, including Portland's own specialtea blends!! M.a.g.i.c. I never thought in a million years that America could out-tea us, but oh yes, have I been proved wrong. Saying that this: http://www.bbcamerica.com/mind-the-gap/2013/01/08/how-to-do-tea-in-the-usa/ (oh how I miss the bbc) is a pretty good guide at elucidating the suffering I go through most of the time I try to buy tea off-campus.

 
  
Anyway, after discovering it would take us a while to decide on a tea we nested down to hungrily devour the menu. Settling on a rose vanilla chai and some little gorgeous biscuits, we had a few minutes brewing time to gaze out to the little waterfall pond in the courtyard and at the rather divine looking customers (ok, so maybe it's just me but a guy with a bowel of tea in front of him and a Gertrude Stein-esque book in his hand has suddenly entered a new realm of ohhelloness no?) before delving into tea induced euphoria. Oh my. Not only was the tea pretty special but gorgeous little chinese style teapot and cups had my mouth equally watering! Well done America. Well done.


Getting in some seriously productive work down, (this week's performance studies ridiculously difficult reading did keep me amused with phrases, I kid you not, such as 'and here I must let some of my cats on the table' or, 'we can insincerely promise to give a donkey a carrot', and my personal favourite, 'the procedure of baptizing is inappropriate when applied to penguins' (what is my degree!?!?)), time at Tea chai te inevitable came to a close and after a little wander around Selllwood, picking out future houses to live in and checking out a cute little arts supply shop where I bought yes, another American map, we headed to Nectar - a froyo place thoroughly recommended by Anais. AND OH MAN DID MY DAY SOMEHOW MANGE TO GET EVEN BETTER. Two words. Nutella. Froyo. The holy grail of all edible foods. So a froyo cafe works very much like I image heaven would. You take teeny little cups, as many as you'd like, and try out as much of as many of the flavours. for free. for. free. I'll let that sink in. Once you've had your fill and finally settled on the best (but let's face it there really was no comparison), you vend yourself a cup full and then head to the buffet cart of magical delight - fruit, granola, hot fudge sauce, sweets, brownie pieces, butterscotch drops, popping candy - you name it, it was there, to sprinkle on top. And once this whole shebang is done it turns out that all your cup has set you back is the grand sum of $2.50. Enough said I think. Floating back to Reed in gorgeous tea/nutella joy, we ran into Jen - a theatre senior - driving a golf buggy around campus. "fancy a lift back to your dorm?" erm... duh. hehehe. After a quick spruce up in my dorm I was out again to see my final TBA show of the season, jumping into Kate, my theatre professor's car we headed off to experience the incredible Itai Erdal, How to dissappear. Getting back (and locked out of my dorm... oops, all of the nutella and tea had evidently blissed out my mind so it wouldn't think stright) I finished up my night with The Crew/L'Equipe, seeing in Rich's 21st birthday with a celebratory rite of passage - the walk to 7/11 where legal alcohol buying could commence. Yeah I feel like this day was all made up too.









9.19.13
The awkward moment when british kids can't hold their caffeine

http://instagram.com/iloveberrygood
(I forgot my camera again)

I love berrygood and so should you. They're so so cheap. Their fruit is so so good. They're local. The guys are really friendly. And their little stall is just across the road from Campus by 28 West. Enough said. I realized that they deserved a mention seeing as I wander down at least once a week :) Today I got a pear. It cost me $0.36.

Typical Tuesday with nothing much to report. Modernism was much better (waheyy) and Performance Studies was great as per. Spent the evening hanging in the quad. Rich and I had a cup of coffee each. The resulting caffeine crazed high was ridiculous. We think the coffee in commons is spiked.

Miss American Pie

9.18.13
Instead of a photo today have some poems I wrote for my Found Poetry class :)
(I'll pretend this choice was deliberate and not because I forgot to take any photos...)

There here
http://www.screencast.com/users/Scatteredship/folders/Default/media/705ab496-f07b-4e23-a516-ac0a0f9b1ec0

Let's pretend

All my life, watching America

9.17.13

Sprinklers. In Portland. Makes no sense.

Avoiding the rotatey ones outside our dorm turns into an episode of takeshi's castle or ninja warrior.

Anais and I just about survived.

First paper

9.16.13
I wish I had a more exciting day to report

Portland Institute of Contemporary Art - TBA festival

9.15.13
I lied about the newsy post.
Tomorrow

Lola Arias - El año que nací (The Year I Was Born). AGain, stolen - I left my camera charging!

Parentals, People in the 'wich, Performance, Pizza, Paradox :)

Down by the riverside

9.14.13

 

So today was Grace's 20th, and as Morgan had discovered this beautiful little spot on the Willamette river about 4 miles from Campus, we hit up some Voodoo donuts and headed down to spend a very chilled out afternoon in glorious divinity. Not only was it, like all of Oregon, breathtakingly beautiful, the water was so flirtatiously provocative that we couldn't resist dipping a toe in. Whilst the girls went full out swimming (if I hadn't been wearing the dress I'd spent a week sewing I definitely would've joined... maybe) I sat with Grace's Nikon (am definitely missing my little lovely Konika) breathing in the gorgeous afternoon. I can't believe it's only been 3 weeks since I've been here and already I've been able to discover so many of these stunning little gems! Heading off to see Trajal Harell at Portland's TBA festival with some people from my performance studies class tonight which is pretty exciting. Will try and have a proper, wordy post for y'all tomorrow! x x x

Local life

9.13.13
People carry jam jars of iced tea around with them.
It's very pretty.
It's very impractical.
I'm very on the fence.

 On the advice of the lovely Anna and Sophie (last year's UEA Reedies) I checked out another of Woodstock's lovely coffee houses, Pappacinno where the mighty fine waiter may have had to serve coffee to a n embarrassingly mumbly and blushing English girl... not cool. There's only so much a British accent can do to help. I then got chased down outside Safeways (literally) by a guy yelling duuuude duuuude how'd you curl your hair like that, who walked away and then came running back shouting duuuude where's your accent from, do you have time to go talk about it? (I smiled and took cover in the oatmeal aisle)

(another shitty out of focus picture I apologize) 

Oh yeah, on mac3 we communicate via candy and love heart sticky notes :)

I also went to my first kegger at the ultimate frisbee (yes) team's house near campus. Like everything in Portland it was very chill, no BRIT house party that's for sure!

Late night London Fog (an earl grey and vanilla steamer)

9.12.13

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/us-news-travel/americas-best-doughnuts_b_3101621.html

 ^ And the Huffington Post don't lie

You want some stunningly clever, beautiful poetry? Hit up Paisley Rekdal. She read at the chapel tonight. Mind blown. Holy cow can the woman write - sonnet's whose entire contents is made up solely from letters in the title (a Mae West one liner)... the skill...

The Pearl District

9.11.13         But nobody mentioned it all day

35 degrees

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

09.10.13

classes, co-op, catch up, coffee, cook-out

The making of Americans

9.9.13
First US Starbucks, bagel (with hummus ofcourse) and grocery store trip :) A nice few American stereotypes to tick off the list!

This is an acorn squash. Yeah. And apparently I'm weird for finding that baffling.

SEATTLE ROAD TRIP - I really do have a thing for ferry boats too

9.7.13 - Wake up in the morning feeling like... well actually like I'd slept through my alarm and had ten minutes to run across the canyon to meet my lush road trip crew - Grace and Morgan. Speedily clothed (hair, not going to

lie, was doing its weird poodle/Brian May impersonation, we bundled into Morgan's Texan number plated car (our beautiful savior! Morgan I mean, for being so lovely and driving us, not the car. Well, the car too I guess :)), and with my first peanut butter filled pretzel under my belt, we hit the road. First road trip. And oh lordie it beyond exceeded my expectations. The three hour drive flew by, we were out of Oregon and into Washington faster than you could blink (we're literally on the border) and after a quick rest stop for free coffee and weird home baked cookies we were heading into Seattle to the tune of Destiny's Child. Now as you've probably gathered from my previous posts I'm having a bit of a love affair with Portland. Well if that's true then today I found my husband. Seattle has to be my favourite place on earth - no question (and NOT just because of all the procrastination hours spent watching Grey's Anatomy). After a quick brunch of crumpets, ricotta and nutella, and a hazelnut chai steamer we hit Pike place market. Imagine a lush upscale Camden market full of banjo playing buskers, pomeranian pooches, frozen yoghurt and oh yeah, the first ever Starbucks - which was absolutely tiny! After mooching around we headed down to the waterfront to drool into Elliott Bay and my inner five year old child started jumping up and down at the sight of a real Seattle ferry! We wandered along the waterfront taking in the stunning views - for the rainy city, we were met with the most stunningly glorious sun we've had for the last week (the Portland rain is here in full force), so sunburnt in Seattle I may well be. Pretty sure most people can't say that!! We stumbled across some beautiful stalls where I got chatting to a lovely jewelry designer who had the most stunning statement necklaces on display. 'Dare I ask how much?' but a mere $39 seemed like daylight robbery - so the pearls have been bagged in favour of this beautiful chunky delight :) After checking out Seattle's fake London Eye and caffinating up (coffee doesn't need milk in Seattle, or in America for that matter, it's just so good by itself!) and mooched along the pier, the girls lovingly indulged my ferry fantasy and we hopped on the boat to Bainbridge Island (was marginally disappointed with the lack of McDreamy on board). The ferry ride was however, a dream,and tbh we all could've easily just stayed going round the bay on that boat all day I think. But Bainbridge was hilarious in its own little small town way, so I'm glad we went! I mean, I almost died getting run over by skateboarders and their lush looking pie shop had closed already but the giant frog statues and pathetic 'waterfront walk' kept us more than occupied. Then, after another dreamy sail back to Seattle we headed in search of food - which ended up being at my first Hawaiian restaurant. As per, the food was awesome and I had my first slice of legit American banana cream pie (am currently punching new notches into all of my belts - it's totally worth it). Stuffed to the nines with food and glee, we jumped back in the car and headed to the Space Needle for some quick snaps before beginning the journey home. Armed with Shakira (in Spanish - trust me, Morgan has me converted - it's better), and grape flavoured bubble gum, the three hours flew by and before I knew it we were saying goodbye in the parking lot and I was heading up here to word-rave all over the internet about how magical today was! Snuggled in my new Seattle jumper and organizing my photos (I got far too carried away with boats and wheels and banjos) I am definitely loving life. Will definitely be going back to Seattle. Will definitely remember today forever. Mainly because of the incredible company (but also a little bit because of the journey)

 Here are some photos
x x x