Festive festivities and all that

Christmas has been great, really relaxed and filled with chocolate

good food, great company and sunshiney winteryness. I have watched a lot of TV eaten far too much and watched my brother lose his shoe in a boggy field. funnnyyy.

I have begun to feel old this Christmas as people are beginning to buy me practical gifts like mixing bowls (see picture!!) weighing scales and a potato masher thing, clearly I'm meant to be some domestic goddess by now or something.
:)

Where is the PVA glue?

right next to the fruit and mince pies... where else would it be?

I have come back to a house thats pretty different to the one I left, I keep trying to walk into doors that are no longer there and have not got a clue where anything is kept... whats more nor have the rest of my family.

:)

Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult...

yes I AM sliding down the banisters.
So with my last assignment handed in today, a final visit to the library and a truly horrific french exam I am finally done for this year at uni. It feels a bit odd to be leaving here really, a good odd as it means I get to see family and friends again but it will be bizarre not to be in my student 'bubble' of a world.
Anyway here are some things that I have personally learnt this term...
1) pajamas are perfectly normal day wear
2) peanut butter is a whole new food group that can be eaten at anytime of the day
3) they lull you into a false sense of security by telling you your first year at uni will be easier than your A levels and then when you get there you realise its actually not.
4) EVERYONE is smarter than you
:)

Every morning is the dawn of a new error.

This weekend Christmas officially crept its tinselly carol singing self into H block. I awoke on Sunday after the flooding fiasco which, by the way, has made the whole flat smell more disgusting than usual. I went upstairs to help do some peeling of vegetables and about 30 potatoes later (I kid you not) my finger was blistered and yucky and potato peelings were stuck to my pajamas. ewww.
Now the night before we (who were cooking and organising the meal) met to discuss timing of things and the guy who had bought the turkeys said that they were only going to take about an hour- so we thought he must be right as he bought them and they must be part cooked or something.
... SPOT THE DISASTER LOOMING...
so we had only allowed an hour for the turkeys to cook. About 12 we read the packaging of the turkeys and discovered that they would only take and hour... AFTER they had had their foil removed and had already had 2 hours in the oven- and this was from thawed which our icey turkeys definitely were not. the meal was meant to be served about 1.15- this was going to be a problem.
Notices were promptly placed on doors that the meal was going to be more like 2.30 due to "unforeseen turkey circumstances" but we still had to frantically cook these turkeys. SO... I decided to fill the sink with boiling water and dunk the turkeys in their packaging to speed up the defrosting process, this was fairly hilarious as these were large turkeys and they floated. Next we used a microwave to defrost some more and managed to splurt raw turkey juice most places so my next job was to go round disinfecting everything that it had come onto contact with.
We then shoved them in ovens but on a higher heat than the packaging said as we had a lot less time in which to cook them and generally hoped for the best. actually no thats not true- we had a prayer session about the turkeys- mainly that we wouldnt poison anyone and they would cook.
AND it worked!!!! they cooked!!!
Our meal was so lovely we had all the traditional christmas food and 24 H blockers were fed. We even had home made chocolate log for pudding and far too many chocolates (courtesy of the warden) which gave me such a bad chocolate headache for the rest of the day. ooo and we had crackers and hats and everything.
:)

sleep: no. flood-damage: yes!

Our block flooded last night. when I say our block i mean the corridor attached to mine.

So today is our Hblock Christmas meal so I knew that I had to be up early to peel potatoes and other do other such culinary things, so being sensible I decided to get an early night being in bed about 1. ten minutes into a blissful sleep I was awoken by someone running up and down the corridor screaming "we're all going to diieeeeeeeee." thinking this was just a drunken shout I attempted to ignore it but it did not go away and was followed by talk of "drowning". I hastily shoved on a pair of jeans and a hoody and went to investigate what was going on...
Water was gushing down the corridor next to ours and drunken girls in Santa costumes and stilettos were rolling about in it screeching. possibly one of the most bizarre things I have seen in a while. anyway I set off to reception after having established that they had already visited but the only action taken was that a form was filled in. After having assured the reception staff that I was not drunk and not making strange claims about flooding they agreed to send someone.

Apparently someone had left the taps on in the upstairs kitchen which consequently flooded their hall and kitchen and then cascaded through the ceiling to the the kitchen and hall below, making the downstairs kitchen over a foot deep in water. I went upstairs to see where the problem had come from and had a good laugh at the 2nd floor that were merrily splashing about in it all whilst one poor flat member in pajamas and a dressing gown frantically attempted to mop it up. funny.
:)

Essays are the perfect opportunity for me to systematically come to the wrong conclusion with confidence

I HAVE FINISHED MY ESSAY ok bar footnotes and a billion checks of the spelling and grammar sort. I had to get it done today so I decided to go to early morning prayer cos that way I had to get up... so I was in the library at 9 and have just got out (at like 6).yey. tomorrow is another day for fun, I need to get some french done then Friday its full day of lectures and a French listening test. I really do have all the fun.
:)

Friends, fun and freezing feet

So this weekend I had some visitors- as Frosty the Kellogg's tiger would say they're grreeeeaat! And they brought me chocolate, it was an awesome weekend (not just because of the chocolate!)

After assuring people that I live in the 'sunny' South the weather wasn't great all weekend, it was very VERY cold (both Zoe and I spent all weekend with frozen feet) and it was pretty wet too. I took them to see the building where I have most of my lectures and then we went to the common had some fun in the leaves before heading back and defrosting ourselves by my radiator whilst looking through pictures and reminiscing old times. In the evening we went out for a meal which was really nice, it was so great to catch up on all thats been happening back home.

On Sunday we had pancakes. yey. then went to explore the docks and set off for a bit of a road trip up to Winchester to see the Christmas market and all the pretty lighty things. It felt so chrsitmassy with the smell of mulled wine, people ice skating and Christmas songs being played. After freezing our backsides off (and having found Jane Austin's grave) we found a little pub with a fire to sit around and ate some food. yum.

:)

Some things don't change

:)

At-trac-tive...

... yea okay maybe not, but I was impressed by this...

:)

Every morning is the dawn of a new error

gahhh. I have had my library card barred for a wholllle week. right so I knew I had to return one of my french books on Monday as it was only on a 2 day loan and it appears that I returned the wrong one making me a day late on the other one. Here they don't fine you any money because no student has any money instead they bar you from taking out any books for a week. :( id rather have the fine. no seriously I would. I also have now lost the book that I placed a hold on that had just become available because I cant take it out of the library and I was in a queue to get it- so now I'm not going to get it :( gahhh.

this is an issue as due to my subjects I rely heavily on the library, now I am actually going to have to live there. more than I do already. you can pretty much guarantee that most of the people sat in the library for hours do history. gahhh

but on a brighter note autumn has been so lovely here, the colours are just so beautiful :)

Happy is the person who can laugh at himself for he will never cease to be amused

This weekend I went on the CUweekend away. It was great fun and a good break away from work and the like. On the Friday night there was a fancy dress party and I went as a sheep. Its amazing what can be fashioned out of a pillowcase, about 400 cotton wool balls and some PVA glue. yea ok I looked ridiculous :)

Everything will be ok in the end. If it's not ok it's not the end.

YESSSSS!!! ok well everyone else got their history options put on their programme for semester 2 (term 2 to those americanphobes) about a week ago, and I was getting increasingly worried as mine weren't up. Today I was going to take the trip down to the humanities school to go and sort it out but It was raining really heavily so I didn't feel particularly inspired to do the half an hour walk down there. So after checking my programme one last time to make sure it wasn't up I had a bit of a moan and then asked God if he could help me sort it all out as something had clearly gone wrong, probably with me filling in the form or something. before shoving on my wellies i checked. again. and waheyyyy my choices were there, and... I got my top two choices!!! So am waayyyy too excited, I am going to be studying the Northern Ireland troubles and McCarthyism
:)

What if "the hokey cokey" is REALLY what it's all about?

Here goes, well recently I have felt really challenged to think about things a bit more and so have started to question what I actually think about life and stuff. Questions like what the heck am I doing here? What is my purpose, is to just simply be born, make money reproduce and die? Is the world's intricacy due to some happy accident? What/who do I look to for love and identity?
ok so a friend sent me these links, seriously WATCH all of it, over lunch or in your break or something, some of the stuff he talks about is insanely cool. No matter what you believe/don't believe just please bear with me on this one and watch it all. please. is that enough begging to get you to watch it??
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?=_1EAmfOu9lE&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UE5sF1rdxM4&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?cuF629DW9kI&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?UCJ0HHMSbY&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6OoBEV10rjc&feature=related
:)

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average male can see better than he can think.

As I cannot be back home listing all my reasons why girls are waaaayyy better than guys here are some that I can think of. (due to yesterdays comments)

If women are short they are petite, if men are short they are just short
You can cry without pretending you have something in your eye
If you are a lousy athlete you don’t have to question your worth as a human being
If the person you are dating is much better at something than you are you don’t have to break up with him, its ok to not be good at everything, its seen as cute when we can't do something.
Girls never have to worry about a receding hairline
We don’t feel we have to get drunk to be able to share your feelings
We can do better stuff with our hair
We can wear open toed sandals in the summer and not look like an idiot
We can borrow guys clothing and look cute, it doesn't work the other way
Men die earlier, so we get to cash in on life insurance
We can wear pink without compromising our sexuality
We can sit cross legged
We never have to pay for a drink
Doors just get opened for us everywhere we go
Heavy things are for boys to take care of, so are spiders
We can multitask
Books or movies, happy endings actually make us happy
We feel totally comfortable asking for help or advice when lost or stuck
When we're mad, a guy might not find out until later when it’s convenient for us to let him know. Girls’ nights are way better than boys’ nights.
We can give "the look" that will make any man want to cower in the corner
We don't need to have scored a goal in football to be allowed to have a group hug
:)

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night

Its very very rainy here today, but it's all ok as I am wearing my wellies... although the gaffa tape repairing them has come off.

I am slowly becoming nocturnal, yesterday I went to bed at 4, today it was 5- this cannot be good. The thing is, as my flat mate was saying, we have to do just as many hours as all the scientists just none of it is contact hours, its all independent study which we seem to do in the unearthly hours of the morning.Having said this I didn't so any work all weekend so I can't really use that excuse for why I was up so late. I am going to try and be good and go to bed at sensible hours as this week is my reading week for French, which is deceiving as it involves no reading so really it should be called 'do-as-many-essays-as-possible week'.

To add some sort of visual aid to this post so its not all writing here is something we found in our history self-directed study group... not something you see everyday in historical writing...

:)

Question: Answer

I do want it to seem like this blogging relationship is reciprocal so I am going to answer a question that I was asked relating to yesterday's post.
Question: Why do you have green marker pen running down your window?
Answer: I have marker pen running down my window as a friend lives on the third floor of a block perpendicular to the one I am living in. We discovered (not in a stalkerish kind of way of course!!) that we could see into each other's bedrooms and from this moment on writing notes and sticking them to the window ensued. Now the dripping marker pen is due to the amount of condensation that forms on my window, making any sign turn to pulp. His room is more modern than mine so he has double glazing making it not a problem for him.
:)

I cant think of a title...

Good things: I have washed up. I have got a vague idea about what im writing about in my essay, in fact I have written 1493 words of it. Our food arrives today. I have discovered that if I get someone to hide my internet cable I am a lot more productive work wise.
Bad things: I have a hole in my rubber gloves. I have green marker pen dripping down my window.

:)

(this is the sorry state of our fridge before the food came... my shelf contained 2 tubs of margarine, butter and mayonnaise)

A good essay is 10% inspiration, 15% perspiration, and 75% desperation

Yes, as the title suggests this week I am attempting to write my very first University history essay. I'm not going to lie... its not going overly well. It's amazing how many other things there are to occupy your time as soon as an essay is set. For example:
The wikipedia game
choose a topic that from the homepage using no scrolling at all you must click on links to find that topic, the person who does this in the fastest time and with the fewest clicks wins. I was soooo proud of myself for finding 'banana' in 6 clicks... biggest university achievement yet.
Wait for top-gear to come up on iplayer
sit around waiting for it until the early hours of the morning until it's put up on the Internet and then communally watch it in the bedroom with the largest monitor.
Decide what to eat
we have ordered all our food online this week, unfortunately its not going to come until Wednesday. We pretty much ran out of food on Saturday, there is a limit to how many recipes there are that just use mayonnaise... something we have in abundance.
Go out for coffee
it is quite incredible the number of people there are that will meet up with you for coffee if you want to avoid any form of work. It need not be coffee you go out for either... tea, hot chocolate, water and banana nesquick milk will also do.
Sift through your fridge
deciding whether a carrot has gone off or not is a time consuming job, but one that must be undertaken nonetheless.

:)

Corridor: (n) a narrow hall or passage with rooms leading off of it... an obvious place to hold a dinner party

So the other day I helped cook a meal for over 20 people who live in our block, it was really cool. We had a proper meal right down to the coffee and mints and everything. ooo and we had flowers on the tables.

needless to say the washing up was pretty horrific...

:)

If you can't fix it with duck tape you obviously haven’t used enough

So I shall paint the picture for you... a birthday party in a kitchen, cake and jelly, music, a lot of people and about 500 asda smartprice paper napkins. Now what can I do with these? I ask myself and begin to fold one into a hat shape. Then all the guys want one... not just normal hats but customised and decorated ones. Anyway one thing led to another and before I knew it we were making capes and masks and skirts with the help from a bit of duck tape.

:)

Pocoyo, Parties and Relative Pronouns

I am beginning to see a pattern of me going out and getting back very late on Thursday nights, perhaps this is not the most logical night on which to go out. On Thursday I went to the history social which was a heroes and villains party. woop.

I eventually decided to go as one of the incredibles (take your pick as to which one... preferably I was one of the females) and thanks to some shockingly cheap shops, safety pins, an orange bin-bag, some black card and the library printer I put together an outfit.

The good thing about an incredibles costume is that you instantly have to become 'friends' with anyone else who is dressed as one. There seemed to be some great costumes but the place was jam packed so it was difficult to see them all.

Now this is why Thursday nights are not such a great night to go out on... I got back at 3am and had to be up again for 8am for my day of 2hrs of history, the library to do some printing and then 2 hours of french. concentrating for that long a period is hard enough without the added elements of:

a) lack of sleep

b) it being taught in a different language

c) it being a Friday

d) it being me, who has the attention span of a goldfish with learning difficulties

In french we looked at relative pronouns. fun.

Aside for those who know a little about french: so about the conjugated verb agreeing with the preceding direct object ... it appears in my learning of french some fairly huge grammatical issues were missed out.

Oh well they are working me hard, improvement will happen. Plus I have taken to watching 'pocoyo' in french on the Internet, (really basic kiddies program that they have here too, it consists of a baby and a couple of animals and a narrator and they repeat words like 'butterfly' for a good ten minutes) which is perfect for my french.

:)

Friends, Bristolians, Blog-stalkers lend me your ears/eyes...

Fear not, I will update about what I have been up to. I will. I am just waiting for some photos to be put on facebook so that I can steal them for my next post.

In the mean time I shall update you on what I can without pictures...
Um, so Friday night is the Big CU meeting called Unite and I was very very tired so declared to the people I was with that I would be disciplined and not go to the pub afterwards or go to hot chocolate in a kitchen after that.
Guess what?
I went to the pub and I went to a kitchen gathering of the hot chocolate dispensing kind.
I really shouldn't set goals that I clearly can't keep, there would be much less disappointment with myself... :)

I love talking about nothing; it’s the only thing I know anything about (plus it means delaying any form of work)

This morning I got up early to do laundry!!! Now dodging the rogue socks, tumble dryer fluff, empty bags and spilt mounds of washing powder I successfully managed to wash all my things, and tumble dry them too! I ignored all the labels of my things as they all said not to tumble dry (see fat logo on the the left) and nothing shrunk :) yey. google told me that it would probably be ok as long as the garments didn't have any wool in them. Thank you google.

So a question for the domestically wise types... What should you not tumble dry?

:)

A wheely good time...

all the cool people go to rollerdiscos :P so much fun, although I have a large blister on the side of my foot now because of my skates. ewww.

please excuse the awful title. It's all I could think of.

My history presentation at 9 went well despite the lack of sleep last night... I had to get up the unearthly hour of 7.30am to go to the library before my seminar and print something off. How I miss having a printer :(

:)

Sponge in a Wok, crispy cakes in a washing up bowl... the joys of student cooking.

So today I baked cakes. CU roped in all our cell groups to make cakes for an event called 'afternoon tea with JC' its like a cafe type thing people can bring their friends along too. anyway they needed cakes so we were asked to provide some. So after yet another trip to Asda some fairy cakes (decorated with smarties) and chocolate crispy cakes were made. It was hard what to decide to make as, being a student in a studenty sort of kitchen, I had no baking things. Eventually I chose to make the sponge in my Wok as it was the only thing big enough for all the mixture.To mix all the rice crispies into the chocolate the only thing big enough was a spare washing up bowl.

It all looks vaguely ok. edible at least. the sad part is that I can't even try anything as its all got gluten in it, it was cheaper to do it that way. :( I did get the guy that was helping me to try it though and he didnt keel over so I think its probably alright. students will eat anything anyway.

:)
(sorry that there are no pics of this. I have no camera.)

A semi-illustrated (badly) guide to my last few days...

Friday

Well in the evening we had Unite (thats the big CU meeting) and it was being held in a big local church (see pic), so we packed out its pews and had a good time as always, with many notices and much signing up for things (ahh well at least its just like being at church at home:)) All this was followed by some pub visiting and many new people had the pleasure of meeting me and my germy coldyness. Then -taking some of the newly met people with us- we had a bit of a hot choc session in a kitchen.

Saturday

I did some work, slept and blew my nose.

Sunday

I went to a new frontiers church called 'Life' and had to catch the bus at 8.55 to get to it. shock horror :O. It meets in a cinema, obviously not whilst there is a film showing. Subsequently the seats were very comfy but I was disappointed that they did not hand out popcorn for mid-service snacks. In the afternoon I took myself and my excessively large french dictionary to Southampton common to sit in the sunshine and look for synonyms.

Monday

In today's history lecture we were told repeatedly "the best historians are the best communicators so keep your prose clear and simple". Obviously nobody has ever told that to all the historians whose books I've just read. I also had another french speaking class and we played the game mafia, but in french so it was called 'les loups' as it was about wolves instead of Italians. I still can't speak french.

I'm sure I have walked miles today, which is good considering the amount I'm eating. The thing is that as a student it is hard to gauge portions and only cook for one so me and my flat mates are all pretty much eating for 2-3 people :). I really need to go shopping though as I'm fast running out of remotely fresh vegetables. I know I'm getting desperate as I counted one of my five-a-day as the tomato sauce on my pizza. :S

:)

I'm sure I'm getting geekier by the day...

that's all I have to say really. Uni is nurturing my inner nerd.
So a question for you today: Whats the last nerdy thing you did?
:)

I'm slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.

Well today I had a day "off" so I got up at 12 having been to Oceana the night before (to those of my more aged readers 'Oceana' is a club)

I did exciting things like having a shower and eating lunch. I then started to do some of the history work I had been set. Now, already having read a good chunk of a book I began my historical journal and it has taken me all afternoon to read and make notes on half of it, I need to get it done my 9am tomorrow for my 'self directed study group' so I am able to make scintillating conversation about Victorian feminism. As my title suggests I am painfully slow at it, predominantly because, like any good historical article, I am having to translate what it actually means. I think historians need lessons in putting more full stops in...

"Despite their enormous numbers, the role of the lesser gentry in the epic battle of commercial versus gentle mores is virtually never mentioned. By implication, the gentry can be subsumed into one camp or the other: either they represented the lesser echelons of aristocracy, somehow sharing the world view of noble families with one hundred times their income, or they should be seen as rural rentier bourgeois."

Additionally I have the cold I say 'the' as it is the one that everyone seems to have got. I was doing so well at avoiding it too, popping zinc and vitamin C supplements daily.

to make this a more colourful/aesthetically pleasing/emotionally uplifting post here is a picture of my legs at our UV rave.

:)

When in charge, ponder. When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate

Today was my first day of lectures and it started well with strawberry asda smartprice angel delight with my flat mates at around 2am.

My first one was french, so I turned up to discover there were only six of us and it was an oral class. o dear. Yea it was bad, especially as the 'lectrice' I will be having is the one I had said previously that I really didn't want as she was the only one I couldn't understand. another o dear.

We had an hour to discuss "une montgolfiere" (hot air balloon) that was going down and we needed to throw someone out and we had to each argue our case to not be the one chucked out. We were each allocated a character and I was Nicolas Sarkozy. In the end we all decided that donald duck should be thrown out on the grounds that he was fictitious and there were other ducks in the world. my french is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad with a capital B. it did not go well I resorted to mumbling.

Then in the afternoon I had my first history lecture which was very exciting. I met my tutor and the course I will be taking this term was explained. I get to do 3 mini projects and the first that I have to do is 'gender ideology and practice in Victorian society' which sounds great. (basically looking at feminism and historical perspective) However I have A LOT to read, a basic historical journal every week and then extra books on top. like this one I took out the library today. Whats more is that I have to do it all by this friday as I'm in the group of 7 in charge of leading the discussion for this week. eeeeeek.

:)

p.s the bleeping was fixed but then started again today and hasn't been fixed.

The mysterious bleeping noise and other stories of sleep deprivation

So knowing that I would have to get up early to go to church in the morning I decided to have an early (ish) night. I slept well until about 2 when I became aware of a bleeping noise right by my head, it was really annoying so I went through my room trying to locate where it was coming from. Eventually, in my sleep deprived desperation, I turned off all of my plugs and phone etc thinking it must solve the problem. NO.

Now I really couldn't sleep with it bleeping slow and repetitively like that, I'm sure it's the kind of noise used as torture. So I harnessed the light of my mobile and went to explore the stairwell in my pajamas to discover that it was the fire alarm system the other side of my wall that was making the noise. It was flashing "fault" and "fire" but I couldn't mess around with the buttons to get it to stop and turn off cos I didn't want to be deemed an arsenist should the whole building actually catch on fire. Not knowing who to phone (it was now getting close to 3 in the morning) I just had to leave it bleeping by my head.

This morning it is still bleeping, apparently an electrician is working on it. Also we have no hot water today and most of the Internet and our online timetables and everything won't work. The cause? about a couple of seconds of powercut yesterday.

Lycra, free pens and a pizza

Today was good. yes good- I have nothing to moan about. I pretty much had the whole day off which was nice after being out late last night at the 'tight and bright' UV rave. I made use of our old P.E lycra blue short things that we used to wear under our netball skirts (remember??) needless to say I did look ridiculous, but then so did everyone. Today I went to the freshers fair to pick up lots of freebies, most stuff was complete junk but I did pick up millions of free pens which saves on me ever having to buy any. ever.

I then had a CU freshers welcome and we made pizzas that had to have a Bible story theme, our team did the parting of the red sea :) Later we all went to the main CU meeting which was ace a guy called Krish Kandii (or something like that) was speaking on identity. Afterwards I got back and introduced my flat mates to the joys of ground rice with nutella (its like a gluten free semolina) as they were having a quiet eve in, we then made paper chain men to further decorate our kitchen (how cool are we??!!) and now we are playing guitar heroes wearing paper hats and eating chocolate.

by the way this is a picture of our fridge. pete is our cleaner. this was the other day it has now become a lot more decorated with those sticky pompom things with eyes. in fact we have covered the top.each one has a label that we have written its name on (again the coolness of us)

:)

It's not easy being green

so today I went to the poster sale and purchased this for my room...

o yesssss how cool am I? :)

Historians... good on dates

Today was the so called 'bunfight' but much to my disappointment there were no buns and no fighting only lots and lots of societies wanting you to join them. I think I spent most of the time being sqaushed against tables by large rugby player types, that and discovering myself in the marshall arts isle. Anyway I did eventually find the ones I did want to sign up to- like the histsoc that had the title I've used on their hoodies.

Yesterday night was really good, I went to the CU small group session for my lot of halls and met loads of lovely people and then we all treked off to the pub together.

I did do another 4 hrs in a lecture theatre today but really its not worth writing about. I did find out who my personal tutor is going to be and there were meant to be times for when we could see them, concerningly mine is the only one to not have a time... apparently they haven't contacted the office back to say when they are free... hardly a good start :S

:)

Death by Powerpoint

As the title suggests I have been to more than my fair share of introductory meetings and have another 3 days of them. Today I met some more people doing my course, there are 6 of us (3 boys 3 girls) which was groovy cos we could be utterly confused together and they do seem really nice.

Nothing seems particularly organised here if you are attempting to do combined honours because everything seems to clash and there is not a lot of communication going on between my two subjects so we have been told a fair bit of wrong info today.

To add to all this, nobody else has half as much to do as lang students on the first week so others can just bum around,unfair. I was up at 7.45 this morn for my half and hour walk to the campus for my 9 am French test. I had to write an essay for an hour entitled 'my arrival at uni' at least I hope thats what it meant :D
I then had a tour (all in french of course) and had to fill in a 'quiz' (!!??) (again all in French) it does seem a bit hard on us all considering it was our second day at Uni and id say more than half of the people there were *somewhat* hungover.
Apologies for the rant as it does not make a particularly interesting/ uplifting read.

Despite all of this I think it will be great, at least there is def the potential to have a lot of fun :)

Change is inevitable except from a vending machine

waooooo my first post from Uni!! so just a quick update...

this is my room number. hehe. at least It's easy to remember...

and it's such a beautiful day(again)here- apparently this is the second sunniest Uni you can go to in Britain, oh yeaaaa

my room is HUGE and I share my kitchen with 4 people (although there is another 4 down the corridor that seem to have taken a liking to ours for social reasons)

:)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds profound).

So tomorrow I am off to Uni, which is strange because I'm sure your meant to be vaguely 'grown up' to do that.

Anyway in case you lot don't already know I really really dislike packing. Seeing as I have just spent this afternoon squeezing all my worldly belongings into bags I now am perfectly aware of exactly how much 'stuff' I own

yea it's not quite going into my bags that well :S. I did recieve a very lovely present from my mum today though, it appears she is concerned about my culinary skills (or lack of them)

:)

It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.

So we had our leavers meal last night which was really groovy and a great way to see everyone before we go. I was given this T-shirt, cool huh?

errrm not exactly unconditional love of a friend but I thought I would make a handy badge to stick on when necessary.

:)

"No pain no gain", my philosophy: no pain, no pain...pleease no pain!

Today we went Ice-Skating and I was determined to hold all my joints in place so I went prepared...

:)

The Book Thief

Ok so I just finished reading this ...

a truly lovely person, who is very very into books, lent it to me and I LOVED it. I would definitely recommend it, I'm going to buy my own copy of it :) it was so beautiful.

now at this point I would like to point out that things in real life really don't often make me cry... but books, books I can sob my way through.

With this one I was doing so well! I even said to my lovely friend "It hasn't made me cry yet!" as I was through nine out of the ten sections,but boyyyyy did I speak too soon...

I actually cried the WHOLE way through the tenth section, beginning to end through the blur of tears I cried.

Unfortunately once I had finished it I was called downstairs for dinner, and O we had a guest round! so It had to be explained to all exactly why my face looked so puffy and red and why I could not stop sobbing. oh the embarrassment. I do not cry in front of people.

on a brighter note I did buy these today...

right well I'm meant to be going out this eve so hopefully the red blotchyness of my face will go :)

Budget: a method for going broke methodically

ok so i am perfectly aware that i do not have the money to spend on random things for myself, in fact i am trying to save some money as the next couple of months are likely to be expeeensive :)...
... but I have wanted leg warmers for AGES


at least i now have toasty ankles :)

Thank you university for the lovely 3d glasses

heck yes

and I got sweets too...
:)

Why does it always rain on me? (thanks travis)

So I leave work and then it decides to rain. it was fine at first as I did have my umbrella but then the rain, (obviously seeing my dryness due to my handy parapluie), decides to pee it down so rain appeared to be pouring up the umbrella too... needless to say I got very very wet.

I didn't really get any good pictures, butttt here is one of my sodden shoes

(note: they are not that colour normally)

:)

Lets start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start...

So I thought I would have a go at the whole blogging thing. not because I have anything particularly interesting to blog, but because it might encourage those who are doing groovy things in the next year to do one. plus it's not entirely fair if I can blog-stalk everyone else but they can't do the same to me :)
also I have pretty 'hip' grandparents who I know will read this...