Oh Holy Hell.

So, I'm back in Norwich. I certainly don't mind being back in England, but I feel like my break was rather short, and I also feel both overwhelmed and unprepared for this semester, and it hasn't even started yet. I was just reminded that I have some readings to do for tomorrow's classes, so I should get down to doing them, since, oh yeah, ALL FOUR OF MY CLASSES ARE ON MONDAYS. This means I'm going from 10AM to 6PM every Monday with no breaks for food or bathrooms, but I have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. While it's nice to have all that time off, I'm going to come to hate Mondays with a firey passion. Also, there isn't time allotted in the schedule for me to get from one place to the other. So, my first class goes from 10 to 12, the next is from 12 to 2, the next is from 2 to 4, and the last is from 4 to 6. Even without the broken foot and Wafflestomper (the Aircast), I couldn't manage to run all the way across campus to 3 different buildings in the span of a minute, and one of the buildings is about a 10-15 minute walk from the main campus. I think I might scream.

In other news, it has snowed in Norwich. Apparently, there's been snow on the ground pretty much consistently since I last was in the country (it figures, doesn't it?). When I arrived on Friday night, it had obviously just snowed about 2-3 inches, and it was all very pretty. I continued thinking it was pretty until Saturday afternoon when I went into town, when I realized there were no plans to plow the roads or shovel the pavements (sidewalks). Apparently, since there aren't really snow plows in this country, they just throw sand ("grit") down on the road and have cars roll over it until the snow melts. This takes a while, and it makes a mess. Secondly, no one seems to own a snow shovel, including the UEA maintenance staff or the Norwich City Council: the pavements in town, on campus, on side streets, you name it, are covered in stomped-down snow. Wafflestomper isn't exactly compatible with snow. I've been putting a plastic bag over the squishy part of it, which has been keeping it dry fairly well, but walking on uneven, slippery surfaces with a fractured foot, a heavy boot, and little to no strength in my leg muscle isn't so fun. Today my friends and I went out to brunch, which was very nice. Unfortunately, it's Sunday, meaning the buses run infrequently, and it was cold and heavily snowing a sort of slushy snow, so rather than stand at the bus stop and get drenched while trying to get back home, we thought we'd at least keep moving. It was a good plan, but Wafflestomper protested due to the fact that there isn't bare concrete anywhere to be seen. I understand that England doesn't have very many snow plows or salt, or anything very hardcore for dealing with snow, but Christ, you'd think maintenance staffs and city workers would own SHOVELS for other things, and that they would be directed to use said shovels so people, broken feet or not, don't kill themselves while walking in a country wholly dependent on public transport (which all but shuts down in inclement weather). Individual people and families don't seem to own shovels, either. It's both funny and maddening when I have a hard time walking as it is.

I also pretty much 100% decided over break to not bother doing the Dickinson class, even though I'm forced to. This means I will fail the class. However, the grade isn't factored into my GPA (or "yearly aggregate") according to UEA, so as long as Dickinson can't do anything particularly nasty, like stab me in the back by withholding anything since I failed the class, I'm almost definitely not going to do the paper/project. I'll still go to class and do readings, but looking at the semester I'm in for, I can't handle writing a stupid paper that doesn't matter to anything anyway while simultaneously keeping up my grades in my four other classes that DO matter. Even though I know now that I have Tuesday through Sunday off, I need all that time to do reading and work for my UEA classes, as well as go food shopping, do laundry, clean, and all of those housewifey things that I actually like doing much more than schoolwork. I might include breathing in that list, too, but I'm worried I won't even have time for that.