Stone Across The Pond

Day 1: September 17, 2026; Manchester, England

I’ve just arrived in Manchester, and as I stepped off of the plane and onto English soil I was quickly overcome with a cavalcade of emotions. Ranging from “I can’t wait to explore the city that will be my home for the next year” to “What on Earth have I gotten myself into”, my mind was constantly racing trying to figure out how to feel about the predicament that I had put myself into. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through it but the only thing I am sure of is that I will, and after I do I will be changed; whether it is learning how to meet other people in an unfamiliar place or learning how to live by and with myself no matter where I’m at and who I’m with; I know I will be deeply impacted by this experience.

Day 7: September 23, 2026; Manchester, England

The past six days have been a whirlwind, and perhaps that is the best explanation I can give for the absence of posts from those days, that and the fact that very little has been going on around campus and maybe that is why these days have been so hard. The hardest part of studying abroad so far is , something that people tend not to touch on when talking to you about their experiences, the overwhelming feelings of homesickness and doubt that come from being alone in a place you’ve never been. No matter what I do or see or how much fun I’m having, it all brings up feelings of homesickness, a feeling that I don’t think I would have been able to accurately explain or describe until my friend Avery talked to me about it; as she described it, it’s this feeling that no matter how fun the thing you’re doing is you always wish that you were doing these things , and sharing these experiences, with the people whom you love back home. So to recap those things that I have been doing the past few days as succinctly as I can I’ll quickly detail it. Later that day on Thursday I met my first friend here in Manchester, Raam. He’s from Watford, right outside of London, and is studying Mechanical Engineering. On Friday I went to the dining hall in my dorm for the first time and, unsurprisingly, had fish and chips, beans, and broccoli. It needed a lot of salt, ( but what university food doesn’t) and in case anyone was as curious as I was to know what the beans that Brits seem to embrace as a national dish taste like the answer will likely be as disappointing to you as it was to me, that being that they taste almost exactly like Van Camp’s Pork and Beans. Also on Friday I participated in what seems to be the most common past-time here in Manchester, clubbing. All that I have to say about it is that it is definitely not for me, at least not in the capacity that everyone is doing it this week (which is going out with people you barely know, a practice that gives me far too much anxiety to let loose and have fun). On Saturday I spent my time out exploring town on my own. First, I went to explore the Manchester Arndale Shopping Center, in which I stopped both to eat and also attempt to combat my homesickness with a meal at Five Guys (pictured below).

Then afterwards I went to John Ryland’s Library, a beautiful library that looks like it was plucked straight out of Hogwarts with its beautiful cathedral-like architecture, to look at the “Manchester Odyssey”- a copy of the Greek epic printed in Egypt in 3 CE that is one of the oldest surviving copies of the story.

And to round out the night I saw a touring production of the musical Jersey Boys at the Manchester Palace Theatre. Which I found to be a very interesting experience since it is just as humorous to hear British people do American accents as it is to hear us do theirs. Although, I’m not sure if the theatre etiquette differs in the US and the UK but I was astonished at the amount of theatergoers that were singing along (usually not well) to the songs while the musical was happening. But despite that annoyance, I made sure to snap a picture of the marquee before walking back home to my dorm.

Now to quickly get through the past few days of this week, on Monday I went to an International Society event and tried to meet other international students, however it seemed that every time I mentioned that I was an exchange student and would only be here for the year their interest quickly wained. On Tuesday I got my Student ID card and went shopping at IKEA to get the items that I needed for my dorm room (and of course Swedish Meatballs) to help make my room feel far less cramped than it did previously. Finally, today I just went shopping around the city and have had overall a very casual day, which is why this entry focuses so much more on all of the other days that I’ve been here in Manchester. But, tomorrow I’m going to a social for other Exchange and Study Abroad students and I am very excited and hopeful that it will help me find other students in my same situation.

Day 8: Thursday, September 24, 2026; Manchester, England

One week down and 12 to go until I come back for Christmas, and maybe this brief return in not too many weeks is one of the reasons I am able to keep going in these early stages of the program, that and the other exchange students that I’ve been able to meet so far during my time here in Manchester. This second support system has grown greatly today due to the Study Abroad student social I mentioned in my last entry. I was able to meet a big group of people including two people from Canada, one from Toronto and another from Prince Edward Island; one from Cologne, Germany; two Australians with one being from Brisbane and the other from Sidney. After meeting them we all went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch, and it was only alright but at least it was cheap. Following this, I spent some time in my room to relax before meeting Raam for dinner in our accommodation’s dining hall and going to watch Inside Out as it was being shown as a ResLife event. Maybe it wasn’t the best decision to watch this movie or maybe it was because of how poignant the story is to what I am going through now. In the film the main character Riley has to learn to balance emotions to be able to allow herself to be sad when thinking of her old home while also being open to making new, fun, memories in her new home. I think it goes without saying that I cried during a good amount of the movie (something not specific to this watch through as it seems to happen each time I see this film), but luckily I went from there to the Wetherspoons (a large chain of pubs in the UK) closest to my dorm with the international friends from earlier. We stayed there and talked and hung out for a while before we started to thin out in groups, with me and two others deciding to go to McDonalds for a quick meal before walking back to our dorms for the night.

Day 9: Friday, September 25, 2026; Manchester, England

I don’t have too much to write about for today, the biggest “adventure” of the day was just trying to find a backpack for classes starting next week, and spoiler alert I was unsuccessful in finding one that I wanted. Outside of this journey in and out of the city center I primarily just relaxed in my dorm room which is something that when I first got here I tried to avoid as much as I can when I first got here to stave off homesickness but is now something I see as needed in order to feel at home in this city. Since I eventually won’t be able to outrun my homesickness I need to be able to live with it and feel at peace and at home in my dorm room. I’m planning to go to the Northern Quarter tomorrow to try and find more decoration for my room to make it seem more home-like and less like a 6ft x 8ft white cube.

Day 10: Saturday, September 26, 2026; Manchester, England

Well we never actually made it into the Northern Quarter, instead most of our time was spend in Afflecks, a large market of independent stores that range in products from art to food to music. Here I was able to find four posters to decorate my room, all of which were picked out to make my room as uplifting as possible. The posters that I got were two Lilo and Stitch posters, an X-Men poster, and a Bluey poster. After this we went back to our dorms before going out for a night of Spoons and darts.

Day 11: Sunday, September 27, 2026; Manchester, England

There isn’t too much to recount from today other than my participation in what seems like an institution here in England, the sunday roast. Some of the other exchange students I met here and I went to a place here in town called Sam’s Chop House to have a sunday roast. This roast consisted of a beef roast atop mashed potatoes with parsnips, a salad, roast potatoes, and a yorkshire pudding topped with brown gravy and with it I had a merlot (which is one of the only drinks I’ve had that made me more thirsty after drinking it). This roast was a nice way to celebrate before the first day of classes tomorrow, however with the price it is definitely a meal for special occasions rather than a weekly occurrence.

Day 12: Monday, September 28, 2026; Manchester, England

Well my first day of classes definitely had its ups and downs but overall it has really helped me to feel acclimated here. My first class was Advanced Topics in Aesthetics (which is the philosophical study of humans’ perceptions of art and beauty) which was really engaging and I can tell that I’m really going to like this class throughout the semester. On the other hand, my next class was Ethics. This class was exactly the opposite of the one I just talked about, the professor droned on and went on tangents about everything including the ethics of torture (ironic since his class didn’t seem too dissimilar). By the end of the two hour lecture I was mentally exhausted from having to pay attention that whole time and even more stressed out than when I entered. After this class I had my mind pretty much made up that I couldn’t mentally handle that this semester, so I dropped the class and enrolled in a course entitled American Literature and Social Criticism 1900-present. The course title seems a little misleading, though, since the first book I’m assigned to read is Uncle Tom’s Cabin which came out in 1852; however, I’ve been wanting to read it for a while so I’m more than happy to do so for this class.

Day 13: Tuesday, September 29, 2026; Manchester, England

Today was a relatively relaxed day and there are only two different things that I did that I want to talk about on here, the first is the Manchester Museum and the second is the Film Society event that I went to tonight. Starting with the museum, it is free to attend and has a focus on natural and cultural history. There were exhibits focused on Asian (both east and south) and African human history as well as animals and plants from all around the world; the ones that stood out to me the most being a preserved Hellbender and a dried Sorghum plant, both of which made me think back to being home in Kentucky. After I finished looking around the museum I went back to my dorm to eat before going right to the Film Society’s screening of one of my favorite films, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I, of course, loved this film as I do every time I watch it, but the most fun part of the evening was the pub crawl that the society went on afterwards. At this crawl I was able to meet and talk to many different people who all had interests in and around film and it really felt like I was finally starting to find more of “my” people here.

Day 14: Wednesday, September 30, 2026; Manchester, England

After having a late night out the previous night I attempted to use the fact that I have no classes on Wednesday to sleep in, or at least try to. I say try to because my sleep was rudely interrupted by a fire evacuation drill at 8:00 in the morning…

I was not amused at this very inconvenient timing, although I guess I’m glad that I was one of the people sleeping instead of one of the people in the shower when the alarm went off. Luckily, I was able to go back to sleep after this quick drill and did so until around noon.

After I fully woke up for the day, I ventured out into the city to walk around and go to study at the John Ryland’s Library in the City Centre. After which I closed out the night by going to the Palace Theatre to see a stage production of Dirty Dancing. The show was pretty good, however the accents they have in this show aren’t as exaggerated as the ones in Jersey Boys (the previous show I saw at the theatre) and because of this their British accents kept slipping through and, at least for me, it was pretty distracting. So overall I enjoyed the show, but I am glad that there isn’t another show I’m interested in being shown here for a little bit for my wallet’s sake.

Day 15: Thursday, October 1, 2026; Manchester, England

Today I had my first lecture for my newly added American Literature and Social Criticism class in which we discussed the play Waiting for Lefty, a 1930s piece of propaganda playwriting to advocate for labor strikes and better treatment of the working class. After this class some of the other exchange students and I went to a “pub quiz” that was being hosted in my dorm – it was quite the experience. While I’m a big fan of trivia back in the states, this one was quite different. So many of the questions revolved around British culture and as a team full of exchange students we had a big knowledge blind spot in that department, so it goes without saying that we definitely didn’t win but I had fun and I’m sure the other people with me did too so I guess that’s all I can ask for.

Day 16: Friday, October 2, 2026; Manchester, England

I had my first seminar of the year, seminars (and tutorials as both are similar in practice) are hour long meetings that are smaller and more informal than the dedicated lectures for my classes. These provide time to dive deeper into specific readings and allow for more direct engagement from students compared to the lectures. But this specific lecture was for my American Literature class and we discussed the play I mentioned yesterday. After this class I went to the library to continue my reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well as to look around some more of the city centre that I hadn’t gotten to previously. After I had gotten my reading done for the day, or more accurately once the library closed and forced me out, I met up with some friends to go to a pub near campus. While there I saw something so small that just really made me happy. I’ve noticed and talked to other people about this odd phenomena when seeing, hearing, or sensing in some other way something from your home city/state/region that you just feel so deeply about it and while I was first here it hurt and made me feel homesick but now as I have settled in here more it just seems like my home and my new home coming together. All this is to explain why I had such an emotional response to seeing a Jim Beam Bourbon bottle being used as a vase at this local pub.

Day 17: Saturday, October 3, 2026; Manchester, England

For most of the day I wasn’t up to much outside of reading some more and finally getting halfway through the book, however the second half seems to move a lot faster than the first. But after this I went to one of my friend’s dorms to have an autumnal hangout with apple cider and Little Women (2019), both of which I greatly enjoyed and altogether had a fun night even though during the tail end of the movie I was more focused on the Kentucky football game against South Carolina that I was watching on my phone.

Day 18: Sunday, October 4, 2026; Manchester, England

Today was the very definition of a lazy Sunday as most of my day consisted of doing readings for my Aesthetics class focusing on monuments and watching NFL football, although I guess fortunately I had to go to sleep before I was able to watch my team, the Detroit Lions, lose to the Carolina Panthers.

Day 19: Monday, October 5, 2026; Manchester, England

Once again I don’t have much to share today outside of my classes. But when it comes to those classes I did have a more eventful day than not since Monday’s are by far my most packed day when it comes to the amount of classes I have. I have two lectures and one tutorial each Monday, and today was the first day that I had my Philosophy of Language class, a class I was honestly the most apprehensive about because of my lack of background in formal logic, however these doubts were quickly determined to be unfounded since my professor directly said that he did not create this class with any expectation that we would have this background. Getting past that I am very excited for this class and can already tell that the discussions that we will be having are going to be very engaging and interesting to me. Following this, I learned about Kant’s “sublime” in my aesthetics lecture before building upon that same concept to expand it to monuments with a discussion in the tutorial for the same class. Outside of these structured class-times most of my time was spent reading some more as it seems that I’ve made the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons here on campus my home for these past few days, and it will likely continue to be so throughout the year with the amount of reading necessary for my classes.

Day 20: Tuesday, October 6, 2026; Manchester, England

Have you ever thought about the logical and philosophical implications of the word “and” and its use in the English language? No? Well, me neither, at least not until my class today where we spent an entire hour discussing this specific topic. For the sake of your sanity I won’t get into the specifics of this discussion and instead will talk about the more fun parts of my day. Today was the birthday of one of the other exchange students here that I’m friends with and to celebrate a big group of us exchange students went to a Japanese restaurant for sushi and/or ramen. This was, surprisingly, the first time that I have had authentic ramen, as opposed to the Maruchan ramen that so many American college students are closely familiar with.

Day 21: Wednesday, October 7, 2026; Manchester, England

The most eventful part of today was something that I hope to be a weekly occurrence for the next few weeks, this being a Dancing With The Stars watch party before going out to have fun in town. Once in town we went to 42s a dance club that plays all kinds of pop, rock, and indie music (so most everything there is I listen to).

Day 22: Thursday, October 8, 2026; Manchester, England

I had my American Literature lecture today in which we discussed the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that, prior to my reading of it, I was not aware took place in Kentucky for so much of the story. In class we specifically talked about the impacts that the novel had, which was the only capacity in which I had learned about it previously in High School. Being in this class which is specifically focused on America made me realize how many things that we, as Americans, learn at such a young age that people outside of America obviously wouldn’t. The thing that made me realize this originally was the basic explanation that needed to be given to the concept of The Underground Railroad, including the disclaimer that it is not an actual railroad. Following this class I went to a social that the Film Society here in Manchester was having where we used our top four favorite films as well as some movie themed conversation starters to meet new people. This went really well, I met a lot of different people who were as much film nerds as I am and following this I ran right back over to my dorm to do a pub quiz once again, and once again our lack of knowledge of British subjects stopped us from being able to win.

Day 23: Friday, October 9, 2026; Manchester, England

Today was much less busy than some of my others have been, something that I would have hated when I first got here but now that I’ve settled in it’s a good change of pace every so often. I had a class at 9:00 and then after that I spent most of my day in the Learning Commons here on campus just relaxing and watching movies on my laptop. I did this until going to a book signing for a novel that I am, as of now, yet to read but will be reading later on in the semester for my American Literature class entitled Waiting on a Friend by author Natalie Adler.

Day 24: Saturday, October 10, 2026; Manchester, England

Other than my movie watching that took up the greater part of my day, the only other thing of note was staying up until midnight to watch the University of Kentucky football game against LSU. Of course, I am very happy that UK’s football team is doing so well this season however I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t some part of me that is jealous that the year we are finally good is the year that I’m in a completely different country. I was also a bit scared that some of the other people in my hall would think that something was wrong with me as I was jumping up and down repeatedly following the 2 point conversion in overtime that won us the game.

Day 25: Sunday, October 11, 2026; Manchester, England

Most of today was slept through due to how late I stayed up to watch the entirety of the Kentucky football game but once I did finally wake up the majority of my time was spent once again watching movies as well as NFL football on my laptop in the Learning Commons. This would be the second night in a row that I stayed up late, although not as late tonight as the game started at 21:30, to watch a football game and I’m very glad that in both instances the team I was cheering for won.

Day 31: Monday, October 17, 2026; London, England

Today I went on my first journey outside of Manchester, which seems appropriate with this being my birthday weekend as well as marking a month since my arrival in Manchester. This journey started with me walking to the train station here in Manchester at 5:30 in the morning to catch my train from Manchester to London. When I first arrived in London, after dropping my bags off at my hotel, I went to explore the area near my hotel including Tower Bridge, where I got to go up into the walkways above the road and learn about the history of the bridge and how it was built and operated and how it is now maintained.

After this I went to go get lunch at one of the only Chipotles in the UK, all of which are within the London area. After this lunch, which helped to satisfy a want for Mexican food that I haven’t been able to easily help while in Manchester, I went back to my hotel. The hotel was a DoubleTree which importantly means that I was given a delicious cookie upon my check in that was just as good as they are in the US. After eating this cookie and getting some much needed time off my feet in my hotel room, I took the tube into the SoHo neighborhood to look around and shop before going to a French restaurant for my Birthday Dinner, pictures of which are below.

Beside this Birthday dessert you can see the set of Rent, the West End (English Broadway equivalent) show starring Gaten Matarazzo that I went to go see after my dinner. The show was very good, so good that at the intermission of this show I was already booking tickets for me and my family when we go to London together in late March next year.

Day 32: Monday, October 18, 2026; London, England

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Today, despite being my birthday, was relatively relaxed and slow paced, which can be encapsulated by the first activity that I did today in the city, going to The National Gallery – the main art museum in London located in Trafalgar Square.

Here at the museum I saw a variety of artwork ranging from pre-renaissance to modern pointillism artists like Seurat and impressionists like Monet. The last of those artists was the painter of the piece that I was most excited to see in the gallery, namely Monet’s Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies (pictured below).

After looking through the gallery I had worked up quite the appetite so I went to Hard Rock Cafe, having my requisite “Twisted Mac Chicken N’ Cheese” as well as a complementary ice cream sundae for my birthday, as a late lunch and early dinner before heading to the train station to head back to Manchester and get ready for class the next morning.

Day 33: Monday, October 19, 2026; Manchester, England

Despite attending all of my classes that I had today, that isn’t what I’m looking to talk about to represent today here. Instead, the most notable thing that I did was going to see an early screening of DCU movie, Clayface. This movie was an amazing body horror and I cannot implore you enough to see it if you are at all interested in either DC comics or films in the body horror genre generally.

Day 36: Thursday, October 22, 2026; Manchester, England

After my American Literature lecture focused on what it means to be a citizen in America as well as the use of poetry as a form of social criticism, after this I watched a documentary on the history of the ACT UP movement in preparation for next week’s class focusing on AIDS. To end out the night, I met with a few other friends to go to a quiz hosted by the Film Society here at Manchester and, despite a valiant effort, we ultimately lost coming somewhere in the middle of the pack of the other teams participating in the quiz.

Day 37: Friday, October 23, 2026; Manchester, England

Today, after waiting many hours following my 9:00 class I went to the movie theatre here in Manchester to watch a 22:15 30th anniversary re-release of the 1991 horror classic, and one of my favorite movies, Scream. After this screening I walked home while also watching the Kentucky basketball exhibition game against Texas Tech and continued watching it in my room after I arrived there. Luckily, we won and I’m hoping this luck can continue to the Kentucky game I’ll stay up to watch tomorrow night.

Day 38: Saturday, October 24, 2026; Manchester, England

Due to how late I stayed up the previous night I slept in a good amount this morning. However, after I finally woke up I went to the City Centre with some friends to look for Halloween costume pieces (with varying degrees of success for each of us) as well as going to other various stores along Manchester’s Northern Quarter, an area well known for its independent shops and businesses. After this we went to another area of Manchester, this one being an area known as Curry Mile due to how common Indian and other South Asian restaurants are along this strip of road. Here we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant which was very delicious after which we went to Wetherspoons for drinks before going our separate ways back to our own dorms. In my dorm, in addition to doing my laundry, I watched the Kentucky Football game against Vanderbilt which luckily resulted in a win for the Wildcats marking a good end to a great day.