Sisters in Durham
A few weeks ago now, my parents came to visit me in Durham. Two weeks after they came, my sister and her boyfriend came to visit me too. Now that Epiphany term is gradually coming to an end, I’m reflecting back on how this term has gone and I must say, it has felt very different to the first. Although the first year as a whole is a foundational year, I think I am starting to form my university identity now that Epiphany term is coming to a close. In the first term, I was dipping my toes in everything, trying lots of different things and meeting lots of different people and through that, I have given myself a pretty good idea of what Durham is like as a university and how exactly I fit into it. This term in contrast has felt a lot different because I’ve socialised with slightly different people, I’ve organised my time differently and I’ve been more specific about the activities that I’ve wanted to get involved in. As such, I have become a bit more settled than I was previously and that has given me the space to enjoy more things as time has gone on. When my sister came to visit a couple of weeks ago, I felt as though I was able to enjoy the experience and enjoy the places that we went to visit which I probably wouldn’t have been able to do last term. No doubt, I do have my moments of high stress and there certainly when a moment when my sister came but overall I really enjoyed the visit.
When my sister and her boyfriend arrived on Friday, I showed them both my room and my flat before taking them on a whistle-stop tour of Durham itself. We started off at the Vennels Café for lunch since my parents both said that they loved going there to eat when they came to visit. We had some really nice sandwiches and a good catch up on life and what we’ve all been getting up to. Then, after that, I took a circular route around the city and took my sister and her boyfriend to the key places in Durham. Unfortunately, part of the cathedral was closed off to the public that day for some reason so we didn’t get to see all of the cathedral. However, we started off at the cathedral and I was able to show the main parts of it, alongside the courtyard area where a scene in Harry Potter was filmed. Then, we came out of the back of the cathedral and walked along the Bailey to the bridge. It was such a beautiful view that me and my sister decided to take a photo there together. As we both got ourselves into position, my sister told me that I had a bit of lipstick on my chin. Logically, I proceeded to make myself look presentable, asking my big sister for feedback to see if the lipstick was gone. Unbeknownst to me, my sister’s boyfriend was taking close-up photos of the entire thing! Oh well, I guess the photo tells a story (lol). From the bridge, we looped back around, passing the Bill Bryson Library as we did so. We couldn’t go fully inside without my student ID card but I was able to show them where I often go to study, which was pretty cool. Then, from here, we looped back around and returned to my flat where we relaxed for a bit.
Overall, I really enjoyed the walk that we did. It was actually the route that I did on Matriculation that I hadn’t done since so it brought back strong memories of marching bands and swore feet! I digress, it was actually a really good walk and we all remarked how beautiful and sunny it was too! I will probably do that walk again in the future because the scenery is actually really spectacular. However, as this is a blog about authenticity and honesty, I should be honest in saying that I didn’t feel my best that day. If you read my blog post about my reflections on the first term of university, you will know that for my module on South Asian history, I have a particularly difficult lecturer and seminar leader. Unfortunately, I have her every Friday which meant that I also had her seminar the day that my sister and her boyfriend came to visit. All-in-all, I think it’s pretty fair to say that it was a rather awful experience. For the entire hour, she did nothing but nit pick everything that we said. One girl in my seminar group was asked to read out a passage of the text that we were focusing on and the passage had a quotation in it. As she began to read it, she left out the quotation marks and was stopped instantly by my seminar leader who said to her that when you you read the start of a quotation, you say start quote and when you come to the end, you then say end quote. She then asked me to read out a different part of the text and she instantly stopped me after I said that word “Urdu” and corrected my pronunciation. She would also ask questions regarding certain aspects of the text, trying to get us to find specific quotations. When the room fell silent because no one knew where the information was she would question if we’d even read the text at all. This was seminar 5 of the year so far and it’s been like this for pretty much every seminar so far. Overall, I left the room feeling pretty crap about myself. I felt like I was targeted the entire time. I actually enjoy all my other seminars and I really enjoy actively taking part in the discussions. I find that when the seminar leaders leave room for answers and let people say what they have to say, even if it’s not perfect, I find that I almost have too much to say. However, when I tried to act in a similar manner in my South Asia seminar, when I tried to talk enthusiastically about what I read, I was just shut down. In that seminar specifically, she even responded to one of my points by saying that my point was not original enough and just a repetition of what other historians had already been saying about this topic. Even though the other students around me said they agreed with my point.
It’s hard in some ways because I was actually awarded the highest mark in this module by her for my formative essay. Overall, I got awarded 75% for what I had written, which is a first class mark, and I must stress that what she wrote in my feedback was insightful, thoughtful and full of honest praise and admiration. For my first essay at university, I was really happy with the mark. But I feel in the seminars that she wants me and the others in the room to produce the answers that she wants and that she’s looking for specifically, rather than being open to varying interpretations, which is a given for any text that you read. When I had genuinely put in the work to understand this complex material, which it is when it comes to South Asian history because it’s all new, it hurt when she even questioned if we had even read the material. As a result, I was not really myself for the rest of the day. When we were at the Vennels Café, my sandwich slipped off my tray as I was walking out to my table and the waitress kindly got me a new one on no extra charge. I also cried on the phone to my parents about the seminar. I got frustrated because I don’t think they understood where I was coming from to start off with. My parents were saying just to accept who she is and to not let her opinions affect me because I was never going to change her. Whilst that may have been true, I was getting affected by it because I had put in the effort and she spent the entire time tearing down things that were not really important.
That was the big, stressful aspect of the day on Friday. I was a bit annoyed that I started crying on the phone when my sister’s boyfriend was there. I don’t mind crying in front of my family but I don’t think it’s something that someone else should hear. However, he was okay with it and agreed with my sentiments and I think my parents gradually understood where I was coming from too. But I tried not to let it ruin the rest of the weekend and thankfully it didn’t. On Friday evening, we all went out for a drink at the Boat Club by the river. My sister’s boyfriend couldn’t get any alcohol because he was the one who was driving but he got a diet Coke, whilst my sister and I got a Pornstar Martini and it was really nice. Then we all went to Aldi to get some ingredients to make tacos for dinner. I thought that the Aldi in Durham was pretty good but it took us a long time to find the ingredients that we needed. I now realise that they put everything in Aldi in a really random order so what should have been a 10 minute job, turned into us spending half an hour trying to look for ingredients. Eventually we found what we wanted and returned to my flat to make dinner. I felt a bit bad because my kitchen wasn’t the cleanest that day but thankfully, my sister and her boyfriend cleaned it up whilst I was dropping off some dance competition costumes. When I came back, I helped make the tacos and we all sat around the table to eat them. It could have done with a salsa or guacamole but it was still delicious!
The next day, we all decided to venture up to Newcastle since my sister’s boyfriend brought his car and it was only a 20 minute drive from Durham. On the way there, we stopped to see the Angel of the North, a massive metal sculpture and key landmark in the North of England. It was a really cool experience because I hadn’t properly stopped to see it before. After we took some photos, we all walked back to the car and it was in this moment that I saw two cute dogs sitting in the back of the car parked next to ours. Like an actual idiot, I stopped to say hello to them through the window, calling out to my sister and her boyfriend to come and see the cute dogs too. It’s only then that I realised that there were people sitting inside the car, wondering what the hell it was that I was doing. I immediately ran back to the car and ordered my sister’s boyfriend to drive on!
After that embarrassing moment, we finally made it to Newcastle. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Newcastle. I guess in some ways I was definitely expecting it to be bigger and more industrial than Durham. In some ways it was but in other ways I was completely taken by the cosmopolitan buildings and the big, impressive bridges. When we arrived, we parked the car and walked around the city to find a place to eat lunch. We decided to eat at a small café that was located next to Grey’s Monument and we had pizza and sandwiches whilst looking out onto the streets of Newcastle. Then, we decided to go to the shopping centre to try and find my mum a birthday present. As I am writing this, my parents have gone to visit my grandad who lives abroad. If you’ve read my bio for this website, you’ll know that my mum was born on a small island in the Indian Ocean called Réunion. In the time of empires, the island was considered to be a French colony but now it is regarded as a French province because it’s still a part of France but France is no longer an empire. A lot of people have heard of Mauritius or Madagascar before but not Réunion so if you ever get the chance to visit, definitely do because it’s a beautiful, tropical island with a volcano, mountains and coral reefs. So that’s where my parents are now. Whilst I’m at university, slogging away at my readings, they’re out there enjoying the sea and the sun! I digress, I was able to go last year on my gap year but this year was just a little bit different. Just before they went, me and my sister bought my mum a couple of lipsticks for her to take to Réunion. My mum doesn’t really wear a lot of makeup but I hope she liked the lipsticks anyway. For the rest of the day, we went to Superdrug to buy a couple of things, before walking around and admiring the impressive engineering that lay behind those bridges. Overall, Newcastle was a fun experience.
When we came back from Newcastle that day, my sister and her boyfriend returned to their Airbnb and I went back to my flat to relax for a bit. After I finished my ballet class that evening, we all decided to go out for dinner at a really nice Vietnamese place called Vina Pho for some soup noodles. I had a little panic after dinner because I could not find my keys to my flat. However, I ended up just walking out of my flat without them so after much persistent knocking on my flat door, I was kindly let back in! Crisis averted.
The next day, we decided to walk back to the Vennels Café to get some breakfast. This time, I didn’t drop anything on the floor because I asked my sister’s boyfriend to carry the food for me! We all decided to have a full English breakfast because the last time I was at the café with my parents, we saw other people having the full English and it looked really good. To be honest, it was a really good full English breakfast and I was savouring every part of it. We decided to eat breakfast in the cosy outdoor bit and as I peered over my sister’s shoulder, all I could see were the cutest couple of dogs peering up at their owner who was cutting into what looked like some pretty tasty sausages. Just as we were looking at the dogs, one of them turned around with the most stupid puppy smile on his face. It was equally hilarious as it was cute. Overall, although I had a little bit of a moment on Friday, I had a really good weekend with my sister and her boyfriend. It felt really nice to go to Newcastle and do something a little bit different for the weekend. This is your reminder to not let bad moments get you down. If you have to take 5 minutes out to contemplate, then do. After that, give yourself permission to start enjoying life a bit. Even if that means staring at cute dogs! Just as long as they’re not in the back of someone’s car!
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s blog post. Let me know if you’ve got any siblings and any fun experiences you’ve had with them in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to reply to them. I love hearing what you have to say!
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See you next week,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette