Norfolk Terrace, UEA, Norwich, Day 141. The
Waffle House and Otter-Watching
 |
| Yep, this is a waffle. |
 |
| Outside Mary Chapman--all that white..those are words. It was an art project on this particular building, Morgana said. |
The sun wasn’t unbearable today, thanks to
the cool breezes in the fields and streets of Norwich. Marika and I walked to
the city centre (passing ‘Morning Glory’ flowers, as Marika pointed out), got
lost, and finally found Morgana and had breakfast at The Waffle House, a place
that serves almost anything…on waffles. I had a really good hummous (as it was
spelled on the menu) and advocado waffle. The three of us proceeded to Morgana’s
flat in the city—dorm housing through UEA, but quite far from campus—in the
complex named Mary Chapman. I appreciated Morgana’s ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ activity
calendar sheets pinned to her wall. Basically, the object is to write on the
top of the sheet the name of the activity you want to keep up and every day you
do it, you cross off that day. The object is to not miss a day. I definitely
want to try this out for myself.
 |
| On the Walk |
Marika
and I walked back to campus, knowing the shorter way through the city this
time, and stopping at Tesco’s for sports drinks to quench our thirst. I miss
Gatorade, of all things. Powerade was sold there, but I just have a thing for
Gatorade. I tried the British sports drink called Lucozade, the orange flavour,
and it was fair.
 |
| Second food pic on this entry! Woo! |
Later
in the day, I watched How I Met Your Mother once more, and skyped Katya earlier
than usual—a 4pm/8am date instead of 6pm/10am one. She was eating breakfast
while I was an hour or two away from dinner time. Much later, I cooked up a
random assortment of foods from onions to chicken to potatoes to mushrooms and
put it all together, topped it off with tikki masala sauce, and put it all over
basmati rice. Strangely, almost everyone in the flat had pizza tonight—it really
was a blah evening during the sun’s final crusade to keep the air warm and dry.
Yet
finally the air cooled outside and the shade covered the grounds. Marie, Jen,
and I decided to go for a walk around the Norfolk Terrace Lake—well, apparently,
it’s a ‘broad’ instead of a ‘lake’—and it turned out to be really exciting. We spotted
an otter and stood on a jetty/dock for fifteen minutes tracing out the bubbles
in the water and predicting when the next time the otter would come up to
breathe. We got lucky a few times, but not lucky enough to capture a picture of
the otter. Still, we caught a glimpse of the body, the head, and the tail of
the otter at various times. Finally, we had to move on.
 |
| 'Haha, Nettles. Stingy, stingy!' |
Marie
mentioned how it feels weird that we all are nearly at the end of our time
here. And it really does feel weird. By the end, I will be here for just under
150 days, a bit over a third of a year, and yet I feel like much more of my
life has taken place here than that. I feel at home but not in the sense that
the home back in America is any less—these are just different homes, different
phases in my life: before England and after. Maybe there hasn’t really been
that much of a transformation. Maybe I’m just a better cook and night owl
through all this. But maybe I’ve learned a few more things that I don’t even
know that I know. By the end of the walk, where we saw baby ducklings—well,
Marie believed they might’ve been teenagers, rebelling from their parents—and where
Jen said, now-famously, ‘Haha, nettles. Stingy, stingy!’, the sun was setting
over the broad and the reds and oranges of the sky struck a line over the
horizon. It was a good day.
 |
| Way out in the distance is Norfolk Terrace. This...is the broad. |
No comments:
Post a Comment