1st weekend in manchester
here’s a recap of our first weekend in manchester, with plenty of pictures.
friday night wendy’s late night snack was “porridge”. i love oatmeal, but porridge just makes me think of goldilocks and the 3 bears. this wasn’t too bad.
saturday morning we stood in line before the bank opened to apply for an international student account. everything is so vague and bureaucratic. after bringing my passport and a special letter from school we still need to come back in a few days and make sure it’s processed and then approved and then they will send a debit card 5 days later.
zeke is particularly excited about this because you have to have a UK bank card to be able to buy an iphone (and you have to show your passport). apparently people are smuggling iphones to the states and other countries so they’ve added all these hoops for buying them.
after the bank we went across the street from school to a neat-looking place we’d heard about. it’s kind of a coffee/pastry place in the AM and crazy live music bar/beer garden at night. zeke ordered an omelet, that looked like egg pizza, but was pretty good. wendy ordered a belgian waffle with chocolate syrup and which seemed to be deep fried. it tasted like something you’d get at the fair. i could hardly finish half of it. definitely a dessert, not a breakfast.
then we headed back to the city centre to get more of the things we need around the apartment. i guess it was much busier since it was saturday. there are so many people in this city!
in one of the stores called primark, which wendy has deemed the british target, we found a few things we weren’t necessarily looking for. we got a few household things at marks and spencer and practical things at boots.
i love trying on hats and this one reminded me of M & K from disney paris.
we were pretty tired after all that and went home and waited for our grocery delivery. i didn’t want to be a fan, especially since ASDA is owned by walmart, but it’s so awesome. you pick the stuff on the internet (it even saves your list) and they bring it all right to the door. they were one of the few places i could find hangers.
i have still yet to find a travel mug in all of this huge city. it appears the british do not bring their own hot beverages to sip on the commute. you can only have a thermos or order your take-away. this may be zeke’s mission on his short trip to the US.
on sunday morning we went to the neighborhood church which is a 5 minute walk down our street. right before we left we found out it was catholic, oh well. there was lots of incense and it brought back great memories of wendy’s time in european cathedrals. the parish was full of nice people and seemingly diverse, but the man in front of us had a serious, almost concerning, lack of hygiene. after the giving of the peace we noticed the experienced catholic behind us pulling out hand sanitizer.
this is in front of our building (just wanted to show you how green and lovely it is). the weather is nice and crisp and it is truly fall here.
our neighborhood has these little posts all over with bees on them. bees must have some symbolic connection to manchester. they are on the university’s crest too.
on sunday afternoon we walked to a pub to watch the manchester united vs. manchester city soccer match. two teams only a few miles apart… rivals… sound familar ACC people? to get in we saw people showing IDs and got ours out. the security laughed at us and after hearing our accents said, “you only have to look 18 here, not 21.” 
the place was as packed as IP3 during an italia soccer game. standing room only was quite an understatement. at half time we went to a more civilized establishment for lunch.
look mom: they serve wine from a tap. (weird) we didn’t try it, but zeke did try a local beer that tasted like horse urine. if you ever visit, never try a beer called “northern”.
the food was pretty good and we were relieved to see that yorkshire pudding isn’t as scary as black pudding.
then we went home and after a sunday afternoon nap we watched the panthers game on the computer hooked up via slingbox. the game started at 6pm here. 
notice i have my steve smith jersey on, but i’m drinking tea.
