It's been a busy week this last week. Thursday and Friday I was away at a conference in Durham (England, not NC). It was my first trip to Durham and I liked it very much. It was a bit chilly, but it didn't rain as many people said it would. The conference was about Blackboard, and I got to learn about the new features in the next version of the product. I also did a presentation at the conference with several other people from Sheffield Hallam University. I think our presentation went well, as several people told us they thought it was the best one they saw. We brought two of our student interns in to talk about their perspectives on using Blackboard. They did a good job, too.

Victoria and her friend Sarah organized a large reunion of their friends from Salzburg on Saturday. We had a big Christmas party at Victoria's parents' house. There were 14 people in total. A lot of Victoria's, Sarah's, and my time were spent cooking a traditional Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious, but a lot of work. Victoria and Sarah had also made two large games to play, which were fun. The party didn't fizzle out until 4am, so we were exhausted by the end of the night. We stayed Sunday and Monday as well to help clean up and relax a bit. Last week I spent some time getting Christmas placemats ready. I made a collage of Christmasy scenes and then substituted the face of each party guest for Santa's face.

I took Monday off, and returned to work on Tuesday. However, we invited everyone from our building over for drinks to get some people to meet each other. It was last night, so we still have not had a chance to completely relax and do nothing. Luckily work has not been that busy these two days, since it is the week before the break. The university closes early on Friday and will stay closed until January 3rd.

Today Victoria and I went to the Kelham Island museum. It is a museum about the industrial heritage of Sheffield; my parents visited it during their trip. It's pretty close to our house, but it's surrounded by mostly vacant warehouse buildings and old steel and coal mills. We didn't actually go to the see the museum. Instead we went there for the annual Victorian Christmas Market. They had traditional dances, storytelling, and crafts. We didn't buy anything though because it was very crowded and difficult to shop comfortably. We did get to pet some donkeys that were there, though.

This week my big accomplishment was buying Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They are doing a slow march across England. When I first arrived last year they were only available at Harrod's and at extremely expensive prices. During the summer they popped up at Victoria train station, and other places across London. The largest supermarket in Britain has started selling them at some London stores.

Finally, a store has opened up outside of London. It was in Birmingham, about an hour and a half south of Sheffield by train. I was in Birmingham for a two day conference. The conference was put on by SEDA, Staff and Educational Developer's Association. I'm an educational developer now, so I was trying to get a feel for what other institutions are doing, make contacts, etc. The conference was pretty good, with its share of good and bad sessions. The final keynote address was just awful though. The speaker had created a powerpoint with whole paragraphs on it that he read to us verbatim. He also had the annoying tendency of stopping his sentences halfway through, expecting us to know what he was going to say.

After the conference was over, I had thirty minutes before my train was supposed to depart, so I went to the nearby brand new mall, the Bullring, where I had heard there was another Krispy Kreme. They even had a compact doughnut factory built into the store. They were giving out free samples, so I took one and then bought some to bring back to Victoria. They are still more expensive than at home, but less so than in Harrod's. At about $1.50 a doughnut or a dozen for $12, I didn't buy too many. Still, it was a good taste from home. I think Victoria, Vernon, and I may take a day trip to Birmingham sometime after the Christmas shopping season to get more doughnuts.

Yesterday we walked out of our door to run straight into about twenty police officers in riot gear standing around the back entrance of a nearby pub. Around the front of the pub were another large group of police officers. It reminded us of South Korea, when we saw hundreds of riot officers on the street. There were also patrols driving around the city, and helicopters. Apparently South Yorkshire policemen were not allowed to take annual leave yesterday. The reason behind this was that Sheffield's two football (soccer) teams were playing each other yesterday. In the past this has led to rioting and fights.

From an internet search, it seems like the pub up the road is well known as a pub for fans of Sheffield Wednesday. I guess they wanted to make sure there weren't any fights before the game. The end result was the Sheffield United beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0, and there weren't any riots or anything that we saw.

One of the strangest things about Sheffield is the way people walk. In London you can walk down the sidewalks of a crowded street fairly easily despite the fact that the sidewalks are narrow and busy. People just weave in and out of each other like in most places.

In Sheffield, despite the large sidewalks and car-free shopping streets, people will run into you if you are not careful. They have a tendency to zig-zag down the street, step into oncoming groups of people, and stop in the middle of traffic. It's very strange, and we are not the only ones who have noticed it. Vernon and some other people from outside Sheffield have talked to us about it. Someone from Victoria's workplace called it the "Sheffield shuffle."

If you are walking down a huge shopping street with only a handful of people around, you can be sure that someone will head straight towards you, causing you to move to avoid a collision. I think it's one of the quirkiest things about Sheffield.

Last Friday we did karaoke for the first time since leaving Japan. Vernon, who lives in the basement flat, works at the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce. Some of them organised a karaoke night at a chinese restaurant. We tagged along, and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we had to share the karaoke room with a large bachelorette party. Despite that, we still had a good time.

On Saturday we went to Lincoln for the Orla and Niamh's birthday. They cooked a large dinner and had over about 10 friends. It turned out I was the only guy who came, but it didn't really bother me. We went out to some pubs and bars afterwards until 2am, then came home and collapsed.