Exchanges really are full of ups and downs and everything in between. My second month here in Manchester has truly been an experience. I feel as though I have spent more time planning plane tickets and hostel reservations for all of my trips than I have spent reading for any of my classes. A couple of weeks ago was a period called reading week, where we basically had no classes for a solid week. But, being exchange students, I chose to go to Italy instead of reading.
If you are given the opportunity to travel, I highly encourage you do to do it. You learn SO much about the culture, the people you are traveling with and yourself. You learn that things will never end up the way you originally planned them but that, in fact, will make you stronger. For example, during my time in Italy I 1) Got on a midnight train going South to Cecily instead of North to Rome 2) Lost my wallet on a train and 3) Almost got caught in a riot at the Naples train station after filing a police report for my wallet. If these aren’t life lessons learned abroad, then I don’t know what is. But although the week wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind, I’m so grateful that I was able to go and experience it first hand and learn from it. It’s so true that your exchange will provide you with some of your greatest memories of all times. Although losing my wallet did cause me some monetary problems and my British credit card still hasn’t come yet… I still had an amazing time.
After reading week, the last remaining glow of summer has been extinguished and the Manchester rain that we had been so lucky to avoid in the first month has finally caught up to us. My friends and I are finally realizing that we can no longer avoid putting off our massive amount of essays that we need to write and are finding it much harder to get together. We have decided that we are going to try and finish all of our essays early while the weather is bad so that maybe we can really enjoy the rest of our exchange.
This last weekend I went to Paris. Luckily I didn’t lose anything and the trip was amazing. I even managed to meet up with Tori (who is studying in Nantes) at the Louvre!
Next weekend I will be going to Madrid and then before you know it, it will be time to come home. Until then!
Hey my name is Kimi, and I am currently a Junior studying abroad in Manchester this quarter. I have officially been living here for a month already, and the time has simply flown by.
As I said, there are always things to do in Manchester. So far I have been to several concerts (Manchester has two great music venues), enjoyed experiencing different English Pubs and even managed to get tickets to a Manchester United football game. Soccer is EVERYWHERE here! But I miss American football…
The cultural differences between the US and England are subtle but everywhere. Different phrases and ways of asking things always catch me off guard and sometimes I don’t know how to respond. Some people can be rude when I tell them I’m from the states, but for the most part people here are really nice and are always interested about hearing about which part of the States I’m from and ask me about my time abroad in Manchester.
Since we’ve been here, we have been proudly promoting the Foster Business School. On Wednesday, October 22, 2008, the four of us represented UW by participating in the International Fair for students who were planning on studying abroad. As we gave out school flyers and displayed our Foster School PowerPoint, we were able to talk to many interested students into considering UW as an option for their future exchange.
Holyrood Palace was my favorite part of the whole trip. This is the equivalent of Buckingham Palace only the place for the Queen in Scotland. It is definitely nothing like Buckingham in looks but it is still beautiful. The palace sits right underneath King Arthurs Seat which is a large hill/mountain. We got the audio tours and I wish I got audio tours for more things in the past because you get so much more appreciation for what you’re looking at when you knooooow what you are looking at. I learned all about Mary Queen of Scots and her very tragic life. The history was fascinating so much that it inspired me to read more about her story later. After going through the inside of the palace we went out to the Abbey. This abbey was ruined by some rebels that hated the Catholics and it was burned down. Only the ruins are left in the yard of the palace. The ruins are very pretty and you can only imagine how massive this abbey must have been. Then we went through the gardens and learned about the Parties the Queen throws once a year. Supposedly no one likes these parties because every time it happens it brings the worst weather of the year! 
My name is Natalie Lomax, and I am currently a Junior that is studying abroad at the University of Manchester. The University of Manchester is located an hour and a half north of London, England by train. It is the second largest city in the UK although you would be surprised how small it really is. Lined with matching brick buildings, old architecture and friendly British accents, Manchester gives off a great vibe. I am studying Finance and Marketing back at UW and Manchester has been a great fit for me since there are so many electives I can get credit for over here. The teaching style is different, much more independent and be prepared to do lots of reading, but overall the course load is manageable and leaves a good amount of time to travel. Every weekend that I am here I am traveling somewhere new. Since I have been here I have been to Edinburgh, Wales, London, Dublin, Stratford and am leaving for Italy in three days! Of course the education is important but I feel that I have learned so much more here that goes beyond lectures. I expanded my knowledge on other cultures and inspired curiosity of more of the world. I would recommend going abroad with the UW Foster School of Business to anyone…its an amazing experience.
For this summer, I am doing work experience (aka an internship) at Academy Music Group (AMG), owner and operator of over a dozen live performance venues all over the United Kingdom. Three of our venues are in London: Carling Academies Brixton and Islington, and the Shepherds Bush Empire. I was fortunate to see Death Cab For Cutie in July at our Brixton venue, then The Dandy Warhols the week after at the Empire. Before each show, I toured the venue with the resident venue manager and chatted about their experiences working at the venue. Many of our managers have been at their respective sites for nearly ten years or more! The majority of my work is not on-site, rather, I operate out of the AMG headquarters above the Brixton venue.
Our marketing department is comprised of myself, the marketing and PR intern; Justine and Lauren, the assistants; and Louise, the marketing manager. Technically, I report directly to Justine, but both Lauren and Lou are very participative in my work experience. Daily tasks which I have taken on over time include: searching for relevant press in regional and national publications, maintaining the digital and hard press archives, locating artist press contacts, and uploading show details on venue websites’ gig listings. Some unique projects I conducted were the research for marketing opportunities and demographic points-of-contact in the Liverpool area for festival outreach and the design of interactive spreadsheets for internal purposes. Learning about the London music scene has been amazing as well! I’m fairly familiar with how my industry works, but there’s always something new to learn when you see how other companies in completely different cultures and geographic areas strive for the same goals and outcomes.
One of my Seattle friends was in town this week, so Saturday we took her to Borough Market, a huge farmer’s market by the Thames. It’s off of Borough High Street and is extremely popular for grocery shopping. They have nearly every produce you could imagine, fresh fruits and veggies, smoothies, bakeries, fish vendors, tea, fish and chips, turkish delights, falafel, beer, wine, BBQ, it goes on for quite a while. Between the three of us, we ate BBQ, fish and chips, and more BBQ!
We stopped into a boulangerie and shared an amazing strawberry tart. The custard was the texture of whipped cream and melted in your mouth, while the strawberries were sweet, and the buttery crust just the right amount of flaky. We also found (we think) the world’s largest pyramid of brownies!
This last weekend, a fellow American traveler and I took a three-day excursion to the green lands of Scotland. Scotland reminded me of Seattle, with the clean, crisp air and greenery; however, Seattle is a very dark forest, while Scotland is the brightest emerald. The Highlands have rolling hills and textured mountains, which are not green because of trees, but the grass and moss that cover nearly every inch. Loch Ness is a lake; that’s all I have to say about that. All lochs (or lakes) are gorgeous in The Highlands, but to be honest, they all look the same to the not-so-Scottish eye. No Nessie, sorry guys! Scottish Highland cows are fascinating creatures: they look like yaks, but they 
have the brightest orange hair which flows down their face and covers most of their vision! This picture was of one that spent most of its time at a rest stop in The Highlands examining tourists and posing for photographs.
made of sturdy stone, and still standing with McDonalds, Boots, and other modern
shops inside. Edinburgh began as a fort in the 7th century and blossomed into a metropolis; having been around for so long, the part of the city considered “new” is actually 200 years old. We toured Edinburgh on a bus for two short hours, then ventured around on our own and visited Edinburgh Castle, which is smack in the middle of the city on top of a plug of volcanic rock. We also trekked the Royal Mile, down which the royal family moved back and forth from their two homes. We also spent some time on Princes Street at the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal Academy’s Impressionism Exhibition. We had chai and a latte at the Starbucks on Princes Street, where from the
second story you got an amazing view of Edinburgh Castle. It was so strange to be from Seattle, in a Starbucks in Scotland, and to see an amazing castle high up on rock out the window!
