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

:)