Testing the Waters of a New Blogging Medium

As the title says, I've recently stumbled on to Tumblr through a friend linking a website and I'm giving it a go since this one will be ending when I return to Canada and I may still keep up with the occasional blog post.

Anyone want an update? I haven't been up to much, the Easter Holidays here were almost a month of being on my own and just doing my own thing. Exams are coming up, in a little over a month I return to Canada, spring and summer weather seem to go hand in hand.

My housemates are back now at least, which is rather nice, although I am still unconvinced they aren't figments of my imagination. Time will tell!

Also, since the new blog is nowhere near what I want it to be yet (and some of you on facebook may have noticed it was connected for a little bit, but that was just a couple tests), so I wont be linking it until I am happy with it and have it set up as I want for the time being.

Easter Break time

Just a small update, I’m on break and everything has been finished since the 22^nd of March. They sure like their breaks here, considering I have nothing until one revision lecture (maybe) in the last week of April, and a week of exams between the 10^th and 17^th of May, woo hoo. I don’t think I’ve ever missed not having a job so much. Also, as a small side note, I’m not going back to Canada until June 1^st, so that’s another few weeks of doing nothing ha!

On the fair side, I have started going on walks when the weather is nice enough, or doing some exercises in my bedroom when I have no desire to go outside. Since the university library as a good amount of films, I’ve been borrowing them as well, this past week I’ve had Blade Runner, The Book of Eli and The Queen. I enjoyed all three of them, I’ve seen The Book of Eli before, and wasn’t sure about Blade Runner but it did seem familiar while I watched it so I’ve at least seen bits before, and The Queen, oh I adored that film. Prince Phillip (Queen Elizabeth’s husband) and the Queens Mother were just played by two wonderful actors that helped cheer the mood from time to time, and Helen Mirren of course was just great, though she’s in a couple other films I love as great parts too, so it just fits! Other films include: The Prince of Egypt as the Queen and National Treasure 2 as Emily (she’s also in Inkheart, which I thought was okay, but that doesn’t exactly fall into “films I love”)

I’m also heading up to Luton this Thursday, so at least I’ll be out of the flat for awhile!

Winding down

It’s a few days later, but it’s time to talk about my birthday! It was really just an awesome day, International Women’s day, Shrove Tuesday/Pancake day and of course, my birthday! I had a very wonderful time with Emma, Hayley and Sophie, and could not have asked for a nicer birthday!

Where to start, well, I have to admit, because March is just a killer months for assignments for me, I did do homework on my birthday. I did research and a bit of writing for my paper, I also played a bit of Dragon Age later which is always fun. Later on, after everyone had finished what they needed to do, we started to get the pancakes ready for dinner. The day was really uneventful, aside from the bit of homework I just relaxed. I was a bit sad, I couldn’t find any maple syrup for pancake day, but then again, we were making pancakes more similar to crepes than pancakes I’m used to back home, so had some strawberries, bananas, chocolate spread, jam and a few other things to put in the centre.

Afterwards, we pushed our dishes to the side and went off to get ready to go out. I actually wore heels and a dress out, a dress I haven’t had a chance to wear yet, so I was really happy to wear it. Though, originally, the three girls had to push for me to wear it and heels, I was worried I might kill myself on the lovely cobblestone pathways on the way into the city centre. It was kind of chilly that night, but luckily you don’t feel it as much the more you drink and I did definitely have a fair amount to drink that night. The pub we went to was the Penny Theatre, we had considered going to Run of the Mill, the pub I often frequent, but because of the game on that night, it was just too full, the Penny wasn’t much better but the people didn’t stay so long.

Since then I have been lost to the land of homework, with all of my term work being due in this week, or present, except for one that’s due in on the 21^st, it’s been a bit of a struggle to get it all finished how I like it. Especially that Africa essay, with the regime changes and the various issues of each country coming to light, it fit into my essay of State Collapse in Africa. The last project that I’m working on is a portfolio of four resource sheets that can be maps or economic statistics sheets. Let’s just say that in the course of doing the maps, my hand is really aching because it is all by hand.

Well, back to it I guess!

Cheers.

I am alive!

Or so it seems anyways, I had planned more updates, but apparently Fate is a fickle mistress, there was a death in the family, Michael came for a visit, I got horribly sick and I have finally returned to the real world, and left the world of feverish deliriums.

I seem to be having a very strange relationship with germs in England, new country, new germs to get to know I guess, because I don't get sick all that often here, but when I get sick, man do I get sick. I have stayed for the most part in my bed, only getting up for necessities like food and when I really needed groceries because I ran out of food, medicine and tissues. Not only was I exhausted, I had fevers as I mentioned earlier, headaches, aches, coughing fits and I lost my voice, you know, everything fun you can get, even a bit of nausea early on. Can't say I remember the days very well, I'm so unsure of the days right now, that I keep thinking it's Friday.

My birthday is also in but a few more days, which is also Pancake day, I don't think I can ask for a better day really, birthday, cake, pancakes, etc. What more could I ask? (aside from all of my friends back home magically appearing to celebrate it over here, but not mastered that technique yet)

Anyways, Wales!

From where I left off last time, we had gotten to Chester after many hours, it was between 2:30pm and 3pm when we finally got there. We didn't get to see much of the town, so we popped into the nearby shop to grab a snack, stretch our legs and in my case, pick up some post cards. Then we got back on the bus and left Chester, I only managed a few pictures of it and they're terrible quality because it was from within the bus and there was window glare. From there, we drove into Wales and through the Welsh scenery (sheep, so many sheep) and made our way to Conwy to check out the Castle and the walls surrounding the town. We took a walk around the walls, they were very old walls and because of that, lots of rough uneven bits and lots of steepness, but the views were really cool!

From Conwy we made our way along the coastline, took a drive around some cliffs, and up some cliffs, didn't get many good quality pictures, again because I was on the bus, but look, here's me! (we stopped for a few minutes)

From here we went on to Llandudno, a nice little town on the Wales coast with a very nice hotel that we stayed in, I didn't get any pictures of the outside, it was dark, but I did get a shot of the room and a bit from outside of the town.

We ate out at a really nice pub, with really nice food, the pies came loaded with gravy with mashed potatoes and carrots on the side, was very tasty, and then it was back to the room to be asleep by 11pm. We ate breakfast at the place we stayed, the owners were really nice people and great cooks.

From there, we drove around the Wales again, first to Caernarfon Castle where we stopped for some photos, and then to Anglesey over the Menai Straights.

Afterwards, we were back on the road to a place with an exceedingly long name:

And I need to stop for now because I need lunch, but stay tuned, hopefully I wont drop off again because I get even sicker.

Cheers,

Wales part 1

Well then, seems every time I sit down and write about my Wales trip, my laptop battery dies, I get distracted by work or something else comes up. So yeah, I’ve been a bit on the busy side, and lots being going on.

Ah, Wales, let me start by saying this about it, it’s an absolutely beautiful little country within a country, and I did very much enjoy the parts of the trip that went right, which is thankfully, Saturday evening and all of Sunday, but Saturday morning and day, oh my oh my.

I didn’t go to sleep the night before, thinking I’d probably sleep through my 5am alarm, so by the time Saturday started, I was already exhausted. I planned the trip with Anne, and we went to the meeting point for the tour in Canterbury together, where we met Rachelle, who is an altogether lovely person and helped make Saturday enjoyable. She’s another exchange student from the USA at Christ Church, but I hadn’t met her before as she lives in a different part of the city, and is in the history modules.  We weren’t sure how we were being picked up, so I ended up calling the tour company to ask, Martin, the one who seemed to be in charge of the tour arrangements, was surprised that there was no one there yet to meet us by 6:20am, so he arranged another cab.

Said cab finally showed up about ten minutes later, and although we were unsure of ourselves because he kept asking us where we were going, the tour company said that it was the right cab and that it would take us from Canterbury to the bus meeting point in London. Now, I’m very prone to falling asleep when I’m a passenger in a car, plus I was tired so I almost immediately fell asleep. I probably woke up on and off as we drove, but when I finally came to the driver told us we had arrived in our location, we looked around, it was a very very very very rural town. No way was that place London, and the driver kept saying we were in London despite us telling him flat out, no this was not London. We were in Smarden we found out, which is part of Ashford, we had been driving for two hours at this point, while London was only an hour and a half or so away from Canterbury and they were connected by a pretty straightforward motorway. We were lost, and the driver was not paying attention to us, so we called the tour company again to find out where we were and how we could get out of there and to London. Finally, Martin from the tour company told us to get the driver to call his company, and that we needed to go to the nearest service station we could find.

The driver was getting agitated, yelling at his higher up on the phone that he was in the right place, that he was at the place his satnav had taken him, he kept asking where we were supposed to be going (the tour company arranged this part, we didn’t actually have a clue), kept passing his satnav to Anne who was getting frustrated as well because of everything going badly. It took us another hour to find a service station, with Rachelle and I watching the signs and being extreme backseat drivers, telling the driver to turn down this exit, or get into that lane, because the man was determined to take us to London, instead of a service station like he was instructed by his boss.

Finally, we arrived in Essex, and waited in a service station for another driver to come pick us up and take us to where we needed to go, the tour company had called back to say that the tour had moved on, but we would be caught up, and stated that we were getting a refund for the hassle we had gone through. Finally, our second driver arrived in a nice Mercedes-Benz and told us that he was taking us all the way from the service station we were at to Chester on the border of Wales to meet with the rest of the tour.

This is the car we traveled in from the station to Chester, that's in Chester, and I’ll have to continue this later, because this is getting long! 

Wales!

Well, tomorrow I'll be doing the tourist thing and taking a tour of Wales. Have to get up rather early, it's supposed to leave at 6:20am, so Anne and I have decided to take a cab to be on the safe side, and lets face it, walking about before 6am is not fun in the least.

I'll be seeing the coast and mountains mostly, though according to the website the highlights are as follows: Chester, North Wales Coast, Conwy Castle, Snowdonia Mountains, Steam Train Ride to Mountain


I'm looking forward to it of course, and I will attempt to post pictures afterwards. 


The link for the website is: International Friends: Wales Tour

New month, new update

I've started my projects for this term already, despite every single one being due in March. I'm taking a look mostly at the ones for my Cities and Regions of Risk, an essay and a presentation. I've found a couple books for the essay on France's suburbs, and a website from the SSRC which I can use, and the books for Coastal hazards were far easier because there is more written on it in English.

Aside from boring school work, I've been hanging out with my housemates more and more, we've been putting  together movie nights, or on one occasion, gathering together to buy alcohol from ASDA and playing drinking games in the kitchen, and even on occasion, continuing to get together and go to the library to get work done. We've introduced Emma to zombie films, the Resident Evil series, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead, which has been fun!

I will be away this weekend, off to visit Luton and my boyfriend for a nice relaxing weekend, and next weekend I am off to Wales to do some sightseeing along the coast and mountains. Yes, I am actually leaving England for the first time, I know, it's gasp worthy it's so surprising. When I get back from Wales I'll try and put some pictures up, I'm looking forward to the trip, but waking up by 5am to catch the transport at 6:20am is not going to be pleasant, but at least I wont be alone, I'll be travelling with Anne.

That's my life currently,

Cheers.