//it will be a joyous reunion...

[music avril...]

so. the countdown is on. we're at two more sleeps until we touch down in the ol' country. i'm more or less terrified... pretty psyched for tim hortons though, to be perfectly honest.

oh, and i just discovered the postcards from amsterdam that i lost and never sent, so i'll probably beat them home.... yeah. i suck. but it's the thought that counts, right? haha.

there's also the little matter of trying to haul all my shit home. i don't think you really understand how much crap one person can accumulate in one year. it's rather remarkable.

oh, and highlight of the week. replacement bus from harrow-on-the-hill to ricky. coming out of the car park. stopped halfway over the speed bump. back wheels suck. hysterical laughter from a full bus. 10 minutes of futile attempts. finally makes it over with an old heave ho from the passengers rocking back and forth in their seats.

god bless british public transit.

like no other.

//flouresent adolesent.

i am officially unemployed and living at kelly's. haha. only kidding. work's over and now i'm just cooling my boots until i can head home on the 16th. all very exciting.

lots of sleep and re packing and daytrips to london this weekend, and les mis tonight on the west end. yay!

later, ciao. out of time on public computer.

//they call it evolution.

i have witnessed the dawning of a new era, the time when hookups no longer include asking for phone numbers and an "i'll call you" promise. that time is over and dead. now it's, "what's your surname and facebook network?"

the internet gods must be smiling.

"i'll add you"

//relax and relapse.

[musici the waiting line ]

at casa de bartlett this weekend. i've bee hanging out with my good buddy harry and the family. you can't really understand, but i haven't been in a proper home in a year and i kind of forgot how they feel. there's something undescribable about a family home. there's a certain warmth that doesn't exist in boarding houses and hostels.

the abundance of family photos helps.
we went and saw shrek 3 yesterday which was a barrel of laughs. it's really good. i'd say it's up there with the first one.

i now aspire to own my own donkey-dragon.

i was also fortunate enough to see Guilford's own bearded lady.

(i'm not talking about a little stubble here. full blown.)

and we went for a meadow and rain filled walk today with the family dog, gussy.

good weekend all in all i'd say.

now it's time for tacos. ole!

//what if the joke's on you?

[music something krump]

for the last year i've been subjected to sleeping in a single bed after many a year in a double. at first glance you'd think my bed was barely suitable for an 8-year-old (which was probably the last time i slept in a single!)

but between my bed in house and the couple dozen hostel beds (which on average are smaller than even the tiniest single - ha, amsterdam!) i think i could even comfortably do a night in a hammock. but now i'm thinking about when i go home to my supremely oversized double bed. i'm forseeing problems.

it's actually going to feel enormous. in greece kelly and i split a double and i could never sleep when she got up to go to the loo or to call her parents because i felt like i was drowning in the monstrosity that was our bed.

i'm so screwed.

i've also reached the point that i can get through an entire novel in a single day. nothing crazy, but a standard 300 pager. i fret that i have too much time on my hands.

and we're not talking that bullshit ' i read the fourth harry potter in 16 hours!' crap that some people do. i actually remember what i read, even stupid details that have no relevance to the story at all.

ask someone who read harry potter in 1 day some of the major events in the story and ten to one they wont remember half of it.

'i'm a quick reader' my ass.

anyhoo, that's todays observation.

i've been doing that a lot lately. noticing the little things.

i think it's all part of my going home panic.

i don't want to feel like i wished this year away, but i also don't want to go home and feel like i'm mourning a death.

... i think only kelly knows what the hell i'm talking about...

//...

here's my day in a handy alphabet list.

a) woke up to lizzie bringing me a cup of tea.

b) trugged off to the main school through saharah esque weather.

c) realized i was starving and had forgotten to eat breakfast.

d) spent the next 2 hours hauling large boxes of books from one room, down the stairs, into another room, and then cramming them into a cupboard.

e) on my last trip back to room 1, i dinged a 300-year-old table with my trolley. not to be undone, i left a large green crash mark.

f) had a 'mop up' meeting with Jayne. 20 minutes of, 'how was your year here, did everything go as expected, i know you had problems with alrun, i know you had problems with le roy, was everything alright here here and there?' ended up on a high note with me praising the school (not all lies).

g) covered the afternoon in high house. read, drink tea, check email, repeat.

h) worked in hillcroft with no issues other than the fact that one of our girls has gone home to seek help for drug and smoking issues. did i mention that she's 13?

i)had to miss seve's birthday madness due to work.

j) got called a kiss ass by my sister. :P

k) capped of the night by watching Britain's Got Talent with the girlies. i flipping love that show.

//it wont be soon before long.

back from the 'dam unscathed. it's actually a beautiful city. and despite rumours, no one approached us offering to sell hasha & cocana. only mifs about the city are that cyclists have the right of way (then cars, then pedestrians), and that the Heineken brewery was no where to be found. oh, and postcards cost more than the GDP of Sierra Leone. the weather was rubbish for the first couple of days, but cleared up and warmed up for the last. it's a beautiful city when you're not drowning in it.

our hostel was side by side with the Van Gogh Museum, so we went there first thing. unfortunatly, i wasn't able to fully appreciate it as i had just pulled an all-nighter on the coach from London Victoria to Amsterdam Amstel. i was more or less asleep on my feet, but i like to think i still took something out of it.

by 7pm that night kelly and i were out cold. we didn't rise from out slumber until about 10.30 the next morning, but tbh, i could have slept longer. (do the math on how many hours we slept.... ha.)

the next days was the anne frank house. absolutly amazing. although, it was larger than i imagined. still obsurdly cramped for eight people, but i was definatly expecting to walk into a cupboard, or be able to touch all four walls at once. you'd be suprised that an old canal side house would have such an enormous attic.

we hit up a couple more museums before we left. went to Vondel Park for a stroll and had a proper meal for once at the Hard Rock Cafe. (i have the shirt to prove it).

all in all, the 'dam was great. somewhere i would love to revisit.

//makedamnsure.

[music soundgarden]

it's pissing rain to the point that 'we should start building an ark' (j.j.) we're leaving for the tube in a couple of hours, so here's hoping it lightens up a bit. we (kelly & i) are going to amsterdam today. and by 'going' i mean that we arrive tomorrow sometime because we're taking a coach there. somehow we temporarily lost all memory of the horrors of the edinburgh coach journey back in december.

we'll save a load of money...

what were we thinking?

updates on the netherlands to come soon.

(don't worry mum&dad)

j. my condolences.

//blimey!

[musicmaudie's whistling ]

in a desparate attempt to procrastinate my university course selection, i decided to bake.

i made something like 3 dozen milk chocolate/cranberry cookies (still chewy) for the peeps at the music school.

i'm helping out with exams there again and they always put on a show.

the praise was rather amazing.

it's like they've never had homemade cookies before.

although i spose they haven't. the british with their biscuits and all.

// it's like being born, but in reverse...

so last night i had to kill sometime before calling and wishing my mum a

happy mother's day

and found myself infront of the VCR with a copy of casper.

casper, the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know.

i now have a renewed love of devon sawa and christina ricci.

but especially devon sawa.

//famous for being famous.

[music cynical coalmines]

this weekend we got a little treat - shelby & emma.

they came over to the big island from the little island to visit kelly (and me).

the flat was crowded and all i did was cook all weekend, but we really did have fun. caught up on the post-highschool antics and learned all the goss. apparently claremont grads have gone to hell since we left the country. it sounds like anarchy on the van isle.

saturday consisted of me making fajitas and giving shelby & emma a crash course on the first two seasons of veronica mars (since we forced them to watch the third).

on sunday we headed out bright and early for the church. we got there an hour early and we actaully turned away because it was beyond it's capacity.

-this is a first-

we figure that because monday was a bank holiday everyone decided that it would be good fun to go to the church and get faced with monday to recouperate.

i 'spose business folk have to party sometime.

instead we had the single greatest burger of my life at o'neill's (irish chain pub)

and partied it up at walkabout in shepard's bush (aussie bar).

ran into a couple guys i met the last time i was there and was deafened by bad rock music, but all in all had a great time.

yay salvaged sunday afternoon.

//...

this is my official boycott of irish men in england.

here's to you jackass who peed on me.

yes.

pee.

while doing nothing other than ordering my drinks,

i was hit unsuspectingly by urine.

for that, i hope it falls off.

//...

[music closer - travis]

it's 2 am and i can't sleep.

i've been roaming the internet and found a new guilty pleasure.

(and temporary deterance from myspace/facebook stalking)

www.selectmodel.com

cannot compute.

//...

[music take that - shine]

back to the use in england. work, bored, fighting about scheduals and suffering an intense craving for a mcdonald's fillet-o-fish.

i'm also downloading copious amounts of illegal music on a school computer which makes me feel all happy in a 'stick it to the man' kind of way.

i have three months until i come home with atleast three more trips planned. we're going to dover at the beginning of may, mid may is france again and then ireland sometime in june, but i kind of just want to come home. everyone is getting off school and starting their summer, and i'm kind of bummed. i want to watch sailor moon on youtube with sarah, and have dodgy bonfires with adam and phil and bullshit astrology with maimes up on mt. tolmie. and what i wouldn't do for an ice capp....

i'm refusing to unpack from italy and greece and the result is not pretty. my couch is covered in crap - gifts for myself and my family, postcards that i haven't sent yet, dirty laundry and everything else that you might expect to find in an american ghetto.

it's actually pretty skank.

other than that though things are good. i missed my girls, so it's good to see them again.

/cut to amanda downloading italian rap and greek pop/rock.

//iraklia, iraklio.

[music hostel music?]

i have 4 minutes and am under siege by mosqitoes at the moment. finally made it to crete after spending a night outdoors in the freezing cold on an island that was not crete. news to us. 60 euro later and three ferries and we finally made it to a hostel that makes us feel like we've infiltrated a cult. they're like a huge family. check out www.yhplakias.com for photos and everything. two minutes. love you all. back in england on monday. stay tuned for photos and stories.

//athens.

so quick one on athens.
we're either being shot at 12 times a day, or there is a serious car backfiring problem here. i put it up around iraq on the frequency scale. all hours of the night. it's a show.

on the fabulous side, it's so warm here. 23 degrees or so. i have the begining inklings of a tan. yes. a tan. on my pale ass. who knew it was possible.

oh, and happy easter to all. i called my parents house last night and it was kind of hysterical. 10 people or so from my family all piled around the speakerphone shouting things and asking questions. i heard maybe half of it and rambled on about the things i thought were interesting, so if i missed any questions, feel free to ask. god knows i love to talk about myself. haha.

but i'm off now. have to get some cheap knock-off shopping in before we leave. i actually just picked up a sweet pair of Dior sunglasses. they could be real....

//greco-roman.

i'm in athens, greece. this is stop 5 on our three week italy/greece tour.
my favorite city in the world at this current moment in time is rome. i actually can't even express how much i love that city. well... cities, if you count the vatican. which would then bring the count to 6 cities, but whatever.
rome was amazing for several reasons. the architecture was stunning. the food was amazing. the hostel was a circus. and i was with two of my best friends.

we went to: the colosseum, st. peter's basilica, st. peter's square for palm sunday mass, a billion or so piles of ruins that were all equally brilliant, the cat sancutuary (random, i know).
we ate: real italian lasagne, thick and thin pizza, an array of baked goods and more gelato than one person should consume in a lifetime.
we hung out with: two americans from philly and cinccinati that made the hostel stay all the more memorable. and of course, maria and kelly.

so, on the subject of americans comes the subject of memorable events. the first of which comes care of our new buddy paul. we comes into the common room pale faced and obviously disturbed. we proccedes to tell me and John (pronounced YAWN, cause he's Russian) that while at the call center talking to his girlfriend he encountered a rather drunken prostitute. she wandered around bugging people until she finally found a wall to squat down at. "and i was like, thank god, now she'll stop bothering me. and then she started to pee. and there was a huge puddle and it was coming at me, and i was like, 'ew, my shoes!'" then she stood up, whipped out a beer and cigarrette, and left. left a big puddle on the floor, but left all the same. now if that's not memorable...
there was also a conversation about steak. it went from craving a 40 oz to deep frying the whole damn cow. it takes a north american going through beef withdrawl to actually think that that is a good idea.
also memorable... 1 bathroom for 13 people. yeah... yeah.

//i lika your shoes...

Roma. home of some of europe's creepiest men and some of the most friggin amazing architecture you'll ever feast your eyes upon. i've already decided that i'm retiring here in 50 odd years. we've gone to the colosseum, the vatican, and seen a mass on palm sunday that was presided over by the pope. we went to saint peter's basillica today and went to the very top of the dome. 551 stairs. i became asthmatic somewhere around the 320th. we were actually slightly retarded and decided to run up nearly the first 100... it was not pretty. and then we galloped/pony-ran all the way down. we're masters, clearly.

aside from all the madeness of big stone monumental esque things, we've been roaming aimlessly and befriending americans. two of our hostelmates are from the states (cinccinati & philly) and we've been having random ass talks into all hours of the night. from diabetis & apple pie to the bronx zoo & italian prostitutes peeing on your shoe while on the phone... Paul from Cinccinati had a little incident the other night while calling his girlfriend back home. Actually one of the funniest reenactments i've ever bore witness to.

we leave tomorrow morning for athens, greece. we actually have a flight at a decent hour tomorrow. 2 pm. it's our saving grace on this trip i think. so, more updates from greece. ciao.

// italia.

[music italian football match]

super quick. i'm currently having a rather epic battle with an italian keyboard. it's kicking my ass, if you must know. on the end of term break with maria and kelly. we hightailed it out of england last saturday and haven't looked back yet.

venice - exactly what it looks like in the movies. aka. amazing. however, being northern italy, it was still freezing and rained alot.

florence - again, amazing. better weather and tons to do. saw the david and spent a solid 15 minutes just staring in awe. he's the furthest thing from over rated. absolutly worth the £6 to see him

pisa - saw the tower. refused to pay the 15 euro. got the pictures. had fun anyway. successfully ordered food in italian without maria's help. score!

rome - day one and it's already the most amazing city i've ever been to.

next - greece. the most movement i'll be doing that week if lifting the beer to my mouth and spreading the suntan lotion.

more updates when i get a decent keyboard. lovelove.
happy easter.

//feliz cumpleaños

[music - reggaton]

happy 23rd birthday to maria.

she has been 23 for 7 minutes.

yay maria.

tonight we party in venice.

how's that for memorable?

ciabatta anyone?

//apparently it's march...

[music marianas trench]

belated :(

[music reef - put your hands up]

this is a belated british mother's day note.

i love you mummy.

and i love that i dared you to eat a silk worm in thailand and you actually did it.

once more with feeling.

//cosmic realignment.

[just jack - starz]

you know how some people can sense change coming? i'm not one of them. change has a way of just smacking me in the face.

i'm having some karma issues this week. for everything good that happens, something 5 fold worse sneaks up on me. the best part, it's only wednesday.

and perfect example... i just wrote out this whole post. i was starting to feel good, relaxed a little, and then just as i went to publish it, it dissapeared. poof, gone. -cut to my blood pressure skyrocketing.-

tuesday i went on a field trip with Anna and the other upper fours. we went to a Hindu Mandir (temple) in north LDN. Tracy (High House Assist. Housemistress - AHM) and I were chapperoning which meant that we got to tag along, do minor work like round up with kids and hand out packed lunches, and sleep two hours there and two hours back on the coach. *** we must have looked fabulous with our mouths gaped open and our heads all askew... we had a great time and had so much fun with the kids, plus we're field trip buddys. we always end up getting called in together, and it's always a laugh. so, i get home and decide to check my email. there's one from Jayne (Gap co-ordinator amongst other things) telling me that i will no longer be working in le roy, but rather taking the crap ass job of doing cover on friday nights. bare in mind that fridays used to be my day off, meaning that i could leave early and have a long weekend. maria and seve both have mondays off and i had fridays off. it was a beautiful arrangement. now alrun has stolen my thursday nights in le roy (le roy being the youngest house with 11 year olds in it, and my favorites) AND my day off. friday was the only day that worked for me because i have to be here every morning to help Anna any way. (and completley beside the point but relevant to me hating her -- apparently alrun has now dyed her hair the same color as mine. first my job, then my day off, and now my hair? wtf??)

i'm a little more than miffed about this, but anyway... the news has been out for less than 24 hours about my getting me boot, but le roy (bless them) are already up in arms about it all. they don't want alrun working with them twice a week, but would rather i get the double shot. i've actually heard rumours of petitions. hahaha. i'm down with doing both tuesday and thursday. infact, i've proposed that as an alternative to the astronomically idiotic idea that they currently have in place. i've been wanting to work more anyway. load me up with le roy goodness. but now that i've vented (twice) and made you all feel my misery, i'm off for lunch with seve. i'll keep you updated on my crap life that has become this week.

ps. mum & dad - too lazy to email... can't find that letter of proxy thing on the uvic website. sos.

// the evil and the gleeful.

[music x mika - grace kelly]

my house has devil children in it. take me as a piss ant 14 year old, times it by 5 piss ant little girls and then multiply all the crap that i did by 12. they are satan spawn and should be expelled. they honestly make me wish that capital punishment was still okay here.
everything from lifting the goldfish out of the bowl, to throwing billiards balls at the walls (which leave large, perfectly round dents in the plaster, btw,) screaming, swearing and just generally annoying the crap out of everyone else in a 100m vacinity.

this is me aplogizing to j and mum & dad for being such a terror, because if i was even a 16th of how bad these kids are, i must have been unbearable.

but on gleeful note, we had a fire alarm go off at 7.30 this morning (that part's not so glee inducing), and as i walked inside after freezing my ass off on the tennis courts for 20 minutes, i noticed the fish. two goldfish live in our front common room and swim around merrily enjoying their 3 second memories. it then occured to me that they are fire-proof-pets. they live in water. you always worry about getting the kids out, but never the fish because they're fire-proof. kind of a brilliant idea for a pet, i think.

//frankie says relax.

[music x dirty pop]

i've discovered the quickest and most effective way to disolve a friendship.
independently try and book a complex, multi-country, overseas vacation at 9:30 in the morning. Guarenteed to end in stoney silence with only the quiet crackle of Dr. Pepper to be heard. Italy and Greece are killers. Eff you ferry company that doesn't allow you to book tickets if you're not booking a quadrillion pound hotel. EFF YOU. But glory, glory, once in a while you find a random site that gives you everything you want, need and desire, all in the form of one reasonably priced flight. it's at that moment of discovery that all the ill will and death threats become things of the past. no one cares about the time you tried to smoke the other in the head with the computer mouse - it's water under the bridge because you found the answer. halleluja. and then you finish booking, print off all the conformations and head home. a month later you go, get lost, fight, utter familiar death threats, and still have the time of your life.

a month later it comes time to book the south of france in may.
lather, rinse, repeate, murder.

// flapjacks.

[music x venus commerical]

today was pancake day. it's the day before lent starts, or so i'm told. today was my education.

peter (sandra, my housemistress' husband) came out and asked if i would like to join them for pancakes. i abliged as i was to lazy to actually make a proper supper for myself. i went into the kitchen and we got to talking. now i was thinking that pancake day was something like jeans day back home. apparently not. sandra started rambling on about lent and emptying your cupboards, and what did i say? "it's a christian thing, right?"

i am beyond uncultured sometimes.

//...

[music x a.p.a - let U go]

i was watching the hits desperatly trying to nail the dance moves to bye bye bye for my audience of no one when i started to wonder why it took us so long to realize that lance is gay. if the highlights weren't a dead give away, i don't know what else could've been.

// got cheese?

last night tamzin (my assistant housemistress) walks into my room holding about a kilogram of cheese in her arms.

"don't laugh, but i'm confiscating their cheese."

apparently the girls had left a huge brick of cheese out on the counter all day and it had gone bad.

cut to tamzin's creative punishment.

i now have enough cheese to feed the majority of winchester in my fridge...

if anyone's interested in some tasty animal by products, let me know...

// the church.

welcome

to the church.

meet maria, caleb and seve.

kelly spotted the strippers.

everybody was KUNG-FU fighting.

clearly, those cats were fast as lightning.

ciao.

//?

anna nicole is dead?

tbh, it's one less celebrity that i can meet which saddens me.

i think we can all appreciate her taking the bullet and marrying the 89 year old oil tycoon for the sake of raking in a portion of his $1.8 billion when he finally kicked the bucket.

edit.

my sister has pointed out that the anna nicole "baby daddy" drama

is still plastered on CNN.

let's get back to Iraq, shall we?

//red tide: the phenomenon.

a couple weeks ago kelly and i were sitting in her flat when out of the blue she asked me what is/causes red tide. now, being the knower of all things random, a title upon which i pride myself, i tried to bs my way through it, but gave up when i realized that i had no idea what i was talking about (sadly, not an unusual occurance). i ended up asking dad as he is the original knower of all things random and obscure, and after a week of what i'm sure included many sleepless nights on google.com, i have an answer.

from dad himself, the answers of red tide!!
___________________________________________________________________

it is actually an algae bloom that happens from time to time when the ocean warms up in the summers. it is called red tide because the algae often has a red tinge to it so as it rolls in with the tide it can look reddish. the problem happens when the bi-valves like clams and oysters feed on the algae, the toxin that this type of algae has in it naturally builds up in the clam. it does not bother the clams/oysters at all but can poison and kill mammals (including humans) and birds if they happen to eat to much. the old wives tale is no never pick and eat clams/mussels/oysters and such during months without an R in them (namely summer months may-august) . now a days though the fisheries test the water for signs of the algae regualrly and post warnings if it is starting to build up. it has always been around, there are reports of crew members on Captain Vancouver's ship dieing after eating mussels they found on shore and from the discriptions in the ships doctors log they are sure it was from red tide. (they do think that polution has caused it to be worse and more frequent though)

_____________________________________________________________________

oooh, pretty.

//...

BUGGER LEONARDO DICAPRIO.

and never try to do an african accent again.

//our savage frontiers.

this made me lol.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/12

//...

charlie and the chocolate factory

+

baileys milkshakes

=

happy maria and amanda.

//"i'm getting really friendly with the photocopier..."

"well, at least i'm not asking you to laminate again!"

That is the conversation that Lynette and I have every day. Lynette is the ayatolla of st. swithuns resources and i'm her go to girl when the work starts to pile up.


I'm currently sitting in the resources room waiting for the mammoth of a photocopier to finish printing off job number 7 of today. Eight 30-page booklets on light yellow paper, double sided, whole punched, not stapled.


I've decided to fill you in on London. Christmas break was Scotland, Spain, France, London/Rickmansworth. We arrived in England on the night of the second and spent the next day or so recouping from our adventures. my birthday was really low key which i spent with kelly and katrin. we went out the next night on the 5th to London's Ice Bar. Yes, this is literally a bar made of ice. well, an ice room, rather. the chairs are ice, the walls are ice, the glasses are made of ice - it's crazy cold too! but they give you these brilliant silver poncho things with fur hats and arctic trek gloves, so it's pretty cozy, aside from your feet... it's was really fun and the lot of us had a great time, except for the little bit about us missing the last train home and having to taxi from harrow-on-the-hill. but it was only 25 quid between the 5 of us, so it could've been worse.

I went home saturday morning and spent the weekend cleaning my flat, dancing to the sweet sounds of justin timberlake and sean paul, watching movies and washing every item of clothing i own. believe it or not, this was relaxing compared to the madness of the prior three weeks. monday night, however, was back to the madness. kelly, katrin and i went out for my birthday present. kelly bought me tickets to see Chicago on the west end.

we also had supper at Porter's restaurant before the show. it was so much fun. my recommendation of the week is to come to london and see this show. it'll pretty much blow your mind.

then, the most glorious thing happened. i was heading home, waiting for the train at the undergroud, passing the time by looking at the big ass posters everywhere. (this is the good part) i see a sign. it's justin timberlake. futuresex/lovesounds. i get all giddy. then i realize that it's not promoting the cd. it's promoting the tour. the tour that's coming to london in july! the tour that's coming to london in july BEFORE i go home.

he's bringin' sexyback.

HOLLA! so, it's been decided, written in stone and spit-hand-shaked on that we're going. my life is very soon to be complete.


best birthday ever? pretty much.

// we'll always have paris...

and the fond memories of loosing absurd amounts of money. allow me to start from the beginning...

we land in the early morning hours of december 30th at paris, orly. (we being kelly & i). we get all our crap together and head straight for the metro. i had gotten uber dodge directions from the hotel website the night before, so we were finding faith in an airport, praying that they were correct. we decide to buy and all day metro ticket as we foresaw a long day of sightseeing ahead of us. €17. 'nuff said. we hope on the metro and eventually find our way to "the nearest metro station" - la defense. we hop out and begin our search for the elusive D7. (allow me to make it clear that we did not know if D7 was a bus, train, metro, or road...) we searched for a solid 45 minutes before learning that Suresnes was infact an outskirt of paris and that we were actually 15 miles from it. yeah.... super!

we then went on a hunt for the bus. (with a solid 25 kilos of crap luggage strapped to our backs, mind you.) to this day, i'm still not clear on the events that lead up to us not taking the bus and walking 10km, but somehow, this is what happened. after an exahustive 3 hour (give or take) walk, we finally stumble upon our hotel. with tears in our eyes, we check in and haul our sorry asses up to the room. katrin (one of kelly's beloved germans) was already there and all rarin' to go. we quickly got changed, and then realized that the insessent growling was not eachother's subtle hints of frustration, but rather our stomaches as we had not eaten in more than a day.

thus began the hunt for mcdonalds. yes, we ate mcdonalds in france. yes, it was because NOTHING else was open. god knows why... between the three of us we ate enough for six. no i am not kidding or exaggerating in the slightest. it was revolting. but i ordered in french, so i still take a certain pride with that meal. needless to say, after a 10km+ root march and a french burger feast, we headed back to the hotel and crashed for the next 15 hours or so.

the next day was new years eve. this, in summary, consisted of ridiculous amounts of rain, 12 stops at the self-cleaning port-a-potty, 6 really drunk but amanda saving czech republicans, one bottle of unopenable vodka (katrin, i still love you for that phonebooth miracle!), and one very unenthusiastic parisian new years (unenthusiastic by paris - we rocked the kazzbah!)

now this next part, i wish i was making up, but alas, it is all too true. throughout spain, kel and i had just been going to coach stations on the day of and buying tickets, no problem. we got tickets on christmas eve, so all was good in the hood, or so we thought... ended up that every single coach for the next 4 days was completely booked. there were no trains, planes or automobiles for days. actually, that's a lie. as it turned out, there was one really flipping expensive plane. yay....... by really expensive, i actually mean that mum and dad had to take out a second morgage after i charged it to their visa as i was s.o.m(oney). (tbh, i'm paying them back in full, so there no "daddy's money" in this scenario... i've screwed myself this time!) there was also the additional ordeal of booking the flights seperatly, and the price jacking up for the second ticket... my ticket. this led to me taking a later and cheaper flight, and just barely catching the last train to kelly's place in london. gong-show. i'm sure something else went horribly awry, but i'm currently blocking it out.

don't get me wrong though... on the whole, paris was great. we all had fun, despite the weather, and are hoping to go back before year's end. t'was good times in the land o' france.


EDIT: i forgot to mention. i also got ripped off €17 at a convienience store. officially the most expensive water and apple that i've ever boughten. but seriously, you try arguing with minimal french/ zero english and jack help from your friends. i finally just swore and stormed off with my €18.55 apple and water. tasty.

//bausch and lomb for the wealthy.

so... i just spent £9.95 on a 240ml bottle of bausch & lomb contact solution. I could have gotten a bottle of dodgy british stuff for a quater of the price, but considering that i've been using kelly's for the last 2 weeks and it nearly turned me blind, i decided to pony up the cash and stick with what i know. curse my sensitive eyes. curse the british import cost. impaired vision be damned, that was expensive.

//...

oh hizza.

it's my birthday.

party party 19 party.

aka legal in bc.