Me, Sophie and Elle went to see Jarhead tonight, and I thought it was a really good movie. I mean, it's not the kind of movie you wanna watch over and over but it was really good. Not sure if the people at home have seen it yet but most of you are in love with Jake anyway so I'm sure if you haven't you will...especially since he's naked, unless you count a Santa hat as clothing...meh, he never did anything for me anyway but I know someone will appreciate it.
During the previews they always have Orange commercials (Orange is mobile company...don't think we have it at home but then again I never had a cell phone at home). Anyway, these commercials are always so funny. They have a new one with Patrick Swayze in it and I've seen it twice now and I kill myself everytime. Watch the Patrick Swayze commercial here. So funny! Nobody puts Swayze in a corner! I love it!
They had another one before Christmas with John Cleese but I can't seem to find it for you guys to watch.

Anyway, that's all I had to say really! Good night!

Mucho frustration today. I went shopping cuz I had the day off and the plan was to find a pair of shoes. Now, technically, I've been looking for this pair of shoes since the beginning of the year. I need going out shoes...so I can wear something other than running shoes to a club. But I don't want heels cuz that just kills me...so I've been looking for flat shoes. Except they all look the same! They've all got a little bow or a little flower on the front and if they're not black or brown then they're some crazy metallic colour like gold or silver. And I'm not going to buy a pair of shoes just for the sake of getting shoes to go out with...I wanna get shoes that I see and go, "Those are the ones I want". But that hasn't happened yet. Or, it did but they didn't have my size.

And when I wasn't trying on shoes I was looking at the sales cuz there are tons of them on right now....and I didn't really see anything I wanted either. They had really comfy knit sweaters at Zara for 5 quid but they were in gross colours like mustard yellow and a gross green, or the only ones in normal colours were XL. The only thing that I actually considered buying the entire day was dark pink...and then I thought...since when do I buy pink? Maybe if I go back and it's on sale I'll get it later...

For lunch I had Burger King....the last BK I will have in a long long time because this one did not sit well with me. Blah. I didn't even want fast food but unless you actually sit down and have a proper meal there was only McD's and BK to choose from and I was really hungry to the point that my stomach hurt (although eating didn't make it any better). Oh well...it's good though cuz it's totally put me off hamburgers and crap for a while.

I just finished watching the Whidden slideshow....it was good to watch it but now I'm all like, "I wonder what I'm missing at home". You know? Gah, that was not why I wanted to watch it...it was supposed to make me all happy and stuff. Oh well. I was sitting here, talking to Sophie and Katherine and "Cecilia" came on my playlist so that inspired me to watch it...and I totally forgot that my song was on there! Good thing my flatmates stopped watching it after a few minutes! They've heard that song already and I'd be quite happy to never have them hear it again!

Anyway, must go to bed...which means, I will bum around on the computer for another few minutes and then read some of Narnia and then go to sleep. I don't have class til 1pm and that's my only one so it's all good....I think tomorrow I'm gonna go see a movie with Elle...but not sure which one yet.

Nite all.

Attention!! The video of Christmas dinner in the flat is now up.



Now that that's said...

I started school on Monday. Boo. I'm taking a biochem, biology practicals and earth history until mid-semester and then more courses are added on. Today I have a biochem "lab" but all we're doing is watching a movie about Watson & Crick, scientists who figured out the structure of DNA. It may not be so bad though cuz it was written by the guy who wrote the screenplay for Gladiator...and it has Jeff Goldblum in it. I'm not saying he's a fantastic actor or anything but...it could be worse eh? Tomorrow I have the day off = YAY!!

In recent randomness....I took a picture today of my pet snow that "Santa" gave me for Christmas. I had to water it today so it's looking nice and fluffy again:And for something else kind of random, we have this ad in our kitchen for stuff on campus:I thought it was funny obviously...cuz I've seen the skit, but they don't have SNL here! What's the point of having a funny ad that no one gets? No one in my flat knew what it was about! Anyway...must get ready for class...

MMmmmm a smoothie. I do like smoothies.

Yes that's right. That was my smoothie, and I made it with my new....Blender! Mmmmmmm...

I was at Sylvie's (my Dad's cousin) house in last weekend to visit and she got a blender for Christmas so we had smoothies for breakfast and I decided I needed to get a blender. They were pretty cheap at the grocery store I go to so I figured it would be a good investment for the remainder of the year. I was so mad though because the first time I brought the blender home it didn't work, so I had to go all the way back to ASDA (have to take the bus) to exchange it. Oh well, I have one that works now and that's all that matters.

So yeah, last weekend I went to visit family. I left Leeds on Wednesday and was supposed to get the 10 o'clock bus to London but there was traffic and construction on Otley Road so the city bus I was taking to the bus station didn't get there in time so I missed the bus. Luckily they let me get on the 11 o'clock. Then when I got to London I was supposed to meet my Nan's sister, June, at the bus stop. But apparently I got off at the wrong stop no thanks to a lady on the bus who told me where to get off...so I was walking around with all my bags for about half an hour before I finally found June. That night we didn't really do much. Frankly I was too tired to go out anyway. And there isn't really a whole lot to do after dark for just me and June because I'm not gonna go out by myself and I think it would be a little weird taking June to a club or something. So we just stayed in a chatted and watched soaps....yeppers, Coronation St. and Emmerdale, which I'm pretty sure they show on the CBC. I'd never seen them before really but I'm still not hooked on them. Oh and we watched Celebrity Big Brother...and Dennis Rodman is on it! Why? Why? And you know that song "You spin me right round baby right round, like a record baby right round round round..." by Dead or Alive? Well the singer from that group, Pete Burns, is on Celebrity Big Brother and he looks like this! AAAaaahh! Scary!

On Thursday we went to Windsor, cuz I wanted to see the castle.
When we got there they were doing the changing of the guard, so that was good timing. But, when we got to the castle they told us that the State Apartments (which is essentially the main reason to see the castle) were being cleaned and we could only go into the Royal Doll Room and the Chapel for half price. So I decided not to go in cuz I figured I'd just come back and see the castle some other time and then I would see the Chapel, etc. at the same time. So the rest of the afternoon we walked around and looked at the shops, then we took a walk down by Eton College (where Princes Will and Harry went to school). Ooh and check out this crooked tea house! It's crazy!
The next day we went shopping on Oxford St. for a bit because I needed a new jacket. I had this coat from H&M (Steph if you're reading this, it's the one I bought when you were there) that ripped...and it didn't even rip on the seam, it was like, in the middle of the fabric...so I was sad because I liked that jacket. But I was trying to put it on over top of a thick sweater and apparently the coat wasn't made to accommodate big sweaters...oh well. Then we went to the Science Museum, which was alright. Most of the interactive stuff was in areas that were being renovated so a lot of the stuff we saw was more like the history of science...that's the problem with sight-seeing in the off-season: everything's closed for repairs or cleaning or whatever.

Friday evening I went to Tring to see Sylvie and Mark and Sylvie cooked a really nice meal! On Saturday we went to Oxford, which is a beautiful city. Every building downtown is nice to look at...so naturally, I took lots of pictures. Now, for anyone who's into Harry Potter, you probably know that the Great Hall in the movies are based on the Great Hall at Christ Church College, so I went there and I mean, I wouldn't object to living in these halls! But the Great Hall isn't only connected to Harry Potter...the windows and fireplace, among other things, are attributed to Alice in Wonderland. In the stained glass windows there are small pictures of the characters. They had a really nice chapel and...just everything looked nice. We went to Trinity College too, which was also really pretty. At the end of the day we went up the tower of St. Mary's church and the tower dates back to the 13th century! The staircase is seriously a foot and a half wide and spirals to the top. And this staircase is the only one so imagine trying to get people up and down at the same time. Obviously there wasn't enough room for 2 people on a step so they had little grooves where the windows were that you had to stand in to let people pass by. Now, I'm not usually claustrophobic, but going up there were a couple of times when I could feel my breath kind of getting shorter. Then, when you get to the top, there's about the same amount of room all around the tower, but it was a great view!The next day we went to Woburn Abbey and St. Alban's. But, when we got to Woburn Abbey, the estate house wasn't open, even though it said it would be in my Frommer's book. Boo Frommer's. So that sucked. We could still walk around the grounds and stuff but the house was supposed to be really nice. So then we drove to St. Alban's to the see the old cathedral.

So yeah, I left for home from the St. Alban's station. It was a good weekend though...good to chill out a bit before school started again.

Well hellooo and now it is time for the update of my Christmas (and pre-Christmas) break. Our "Christmas dinner" in the flat was on Nov. 30...because that was the only time we could all get together before the break. I made a video of it...but one site I uploaded it to is being dumb and keeps putting it in some weird file...and then google videos just takes a long time, so I'll let you know (as always) when it's finally up.

It was a good dinner though. We got a pre-stuffed, pre-cooked turkey...well part of a turkey...it didn't have the wings or legs on it. But it was good. It only took about an hour in the oven and it's not like I knew how to cook a turkey. And then we had veggies and stuff...pretty much the same as they have at home. The thing that was the most different was the "pigs in a blanket" which you'll see in the video. At home, it's like tiny sausages in a pastry, but here it's tiny sausages wrapped in bacon. I don't know which I like better...both very tasty! Nov.30 was also Katherine's 21st birthday so we were going to The HiFi for Motown night with some of her friends from class and stuff. It was quite amusing cuz with that kind of music no one really cares what they're dancing like...and I was the official picture-taker so that was lots of fun. I had to be up super early the next morning though to go to "Germany" so I left before most other people.

Now skip a week or so...cuz I've already explained the whole "Germany" trip...class finished on Friday the 9th and I flew home on the 13th. That weekend I basically spent researching for my stupid Anglo-Saxon Cultures essay that was due when I came back in January. The original plan was to have the essay done before I left, but with my procrastination techniques that was never gonna happen. I actually didn't even finish it over the break...I waited until the day before to do it after I came back to England...it's so bad. I really have to stop doing that, but I swear I do my best work right before it's due!

On the 13th I had to get up at some ridiculous hour...5am I think. I had to catch a train to Manchester Airport at 6:30 and I'm sure I could've slept in an extra 15 min. or so but after "Germany" I just wanted to get there early so I had no problems. There was no way I was gonna miss my flight home...cuz by this time I was ready to go home. You know, you start missing people, missing Tim Hortons, Dairy Queen, snow, hockey games...
So then I had to get a flight from Manchester to Heathrow and Heathrow to Toronto. Thank goodness my luggage just got sent through on to the next flight because four pieces of luggage is pretty exhausting when the terminal you want is on the other side of the airport. My flight from Manchester to Heathrow was possible the loudest flight I've ever been on. Do me a favour....put your lips together and vibrate them. Yeah, that's what it sounded like. But it was only like a half hour flight. Oh and we flew right over that big gas explosion or whatever it was outside of London, all you could see was this huge plume of black smoke. Heathrow to Toronto was alright cuz I got to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I hardly had any leg room...and I can never sleep on planes so I was so tired. By the time I got home in my house it was about 3am England time...and I'd been up since 5am, so I was tired, but when I got home all I wanted to do was talk and visit so I was up for another couple hours after that.

The whole Christmas break was a blur though...I went to Hamilton a couple times to see the "family", I went shopping...for Christmas presents and for myself, oh yeah...and I got my wisdom teeth out. That was a joy, I'll tell ya! I had to get all 4 out and they were still in my gums...they weren't even causing me problems, but the dentist's been wanting me to get them out since before university started, so I figured I should get it done cuz the last thing I want is to have to get teeth pulled here in England. So I had to get anaethestics but when they intubated me they had problems so they rubbed against my throat a bit...and it was actually the sore throat that hurt the most. My teeth were fine after about 3-4 days really but my throat hurt all the way up to Christmas. Turkey and stuffing were pretty much the only things that didn't burn on the way down.

You have to check out this picture of me and my brother though...I got him an England Rugby jersey (yes Chris, the same one I got you) and I got this whole olympic get-up from my family for when I see the hockey game...and Mom was taking pictures of us in our new clothes but Robert was being stupid so this picture was the result:
Oh yeah, and you have to see our massive Christmas tree! The day we were gonna get our tree it seemed like they were sold out everywhere, which sucked cuz I made my family wait til I went home...but then one of the centres said they were getting about 40 trees in the next day...so we went back and they were all huge! Like the diameter of this tree was bigger than my arm span...biggest fattest tree we've ever had!!

New Years was good, eh girls? Me, Mel and Sher went up to Sudbury cuz Sher goes to school there and their house was having a party. We got to watch the Canadians beat the US at the World Juniors...so that was an added bonus.

Speaking of the Juniors, I flew back on Jan.5th, which was the night of the Gold Medal game against Russia. And I was so mad because my plane was supposed to leave at 8:15pm which meant that I would miss the whole game, and chances were pretty good that they weren't gonna show it on the plane. But, my flight got delayed until 11pm which meant that I got to watch the whole game at the airport! It was great! The thing that sucked about the delay was that when I arrived in Heathrow I was originally supposed to have a 3hr layover before my flight left for Manchester. Except now my layover time was 15min! And I had to switch terminals! So there was this other lady who was on my flight so we were rushing around together...and it turned out that she used to live in Stratford...and then when she moved from Stratford she moved to Burlington or something and worked at Mac! And then we ended up sitting together. Hey guys...do we sense one of those weird coincidence things again? It always happens to me! So anyway we made our plane thank goodness...just as they were saying "Final called for flight yadda-yadda to Manchester". Then when we got to Manchester, we found out that our luggage didn't get transferred because there wasn't enough time in between flights. And as much as that sucked, it meant that I could get my luggage delivered to me instead of lugging everything through the train stations like I did on the way home. So, all these bad things that happened ended up being for the best I guess!

So I'm here now. For the next 6 months. I brought back 12 packages of Tim Horton's Coffee, 500mL of 100% maple syrup, and a package of Oreos (although it's down to half a package now). Hopefully it'll tie me over til I get home again.
Oh man and I can't believe I forgot about my snow! In my stocking for Christmas "Santa" gave me this white powder stuff that if you add water it looks just like snow, just not cold. I say that's the best snow ever! So it's in a tin in my room now. And all I have to do is rewater it every once in a while and I can have snow forever!

My procrastination tactic of the day is to update my blog. I have so much to tell! So much that I had planned on telling over the Christmas break but it was so good to just be home that I didn't really feel like updating. Plus, most people that read this blog will have already heard most of my stories, but this is more for purposes of writing down what happened so I can reflect on it later I guess...

The last weekend in December I had plans to go to Dusseldorf, Germany with three other McMaster students. We left on Dec.1 and came back Dec.5. However, this isn't what happened really. It's kind of funny cuz when I talk about this trip I still say, "When I was in 'Germany'", but when I say "Germany" I do the quote fingers, but that is where we were supposed to be. Don't get me wrong though...it still ended up being an awesome weekend!

So it all started on the Thursday (Dec.1) morning. Our cheap plane tickets were out of London, so we had to take a bus down to London at 9am. Lucky for us, since we booked early enough, the tickets were free!! Unfortunately, not everyone made the bus on time...so we missed it. So we were like, okay...what do we do now? Luckily National Express runs busses to London every hour, however these ones weren't free. So we got tickets to go on the 10am bus. While we were on the bus, just about ready to go, the guy I was with said, "Do I need my passport guys, cuz I think I forgot it.".....yeah....he needed his passport. So, we got off the bus, he went back to the flat to get his passport, and we got on the 11am bus to London. Now, it's about a 5 hr. drive to Victoria Station, and our flight was supposed to leave at 7:20pm from Stansted Airport. If everything else had worked out the way it was supposed to we still would have made our flight. However, the shuttle bus from Victoria to Stansted (which is definitely NOT in London!), which was supposed to take 1 3/4 hrs. was caught in traffic (apparently there was flooding in London somewhere, not to mention it was also rush hour), so the trip actually took 3 hours. We missed our plane. It was seriously like being in a movie...we got off the bus and ran to the check-in only to find out that the plane had just taken off. So then that was crappy. We were in Stansted Airport, going nowhere. We'd booked a hostel and paid for our flights and we were still in England. Luckily, the guy at the service counter said that we could claim the taxes back so really we only lost 14p (30 cents) each for our plane tickets (yes, they were that cheap), and we explained the situation to the hostel and they let us cancel without having to pay for any of the nights. So moneywise, it could have been worse.

We decided that since we came all the way there, we might as well just stay in London, because it's not like there was a shortage of things to do there. We got this awesome hostel called the Globetrotter. Even though it was the same company as the one we stayed at in Edinburgh it was SO much better! It was only a minute's walk from an underground station, it had nice rooms, a cafeteria, a bar, a movie room, a big kitchen, a gym...I mean this place was really great! If you book on Hostelworld you get really good prices too! (ie. It was 8 pounds a night from booking online but if we hadn't it would've been 17 pounds a night!) And we got free breakfast!! It was great.

So, what did we do when we were there? Well, we didn't do a lot of really typical touristy stuff like Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London and stuff like that because Erin and Elle had been there the weekend before (obviously they weren't intending on going two weeks in a row!) and I had seen that stuff before when I visited as a kid. So, we walked by a lot of the touristy stuff and took lots of pictures. At night it was nice to see the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge and stuff all lit up:




The first day we were there we took the underground to the Parliament Buildings and when we came out of the station, this is what we saw:

It was great! We sat in on some parliamentary proceedings...although it must not have been an important matter because only about 10 people were discussing it. It was something to do with the crime bill.

Right beside the Parliament Buildings is Westminster Abbey. We just walked around it though cuz we didn't feel like paying to go in. It was really crazy though, because when we stood beside the abbey and looked up (so you see the view in the picture below), it made this kind of optical illusion where the building was falling down backwards because the clouds were moving forwards...it was really crazy.


One of the days we were there we went to the Museum of Natural History. It was free to get in! And we spent the whole afternoon there. There were lots of dinosaur skeletons!! Please excuse the "Ross" but I love dinosaurs...they are so cool! And they had this animatronic T-Rex who roared at you.

And then they had all these "alternative" reasons for why the dinosaurs went extinct which were kind of funny.

So there was a life sciences section with all the skeletons and stuff and then there was an earth sciences section that had this simulation of an earthquake that happened in Viet Nam or something where the floor shook and stuff, which was kind of cool. And it was so cool in the life section because we signed up for this "Behind the scenes" tour, which took us into the museum's labs! Did you know that they actually ship specimens in the mail? Like, they have thousands of those jars with dead species and formaldehyde. So, if I was at home in Canada and I couldn't make the trip to study a specimen in London, they they vacuum seal it and bubble wrap it and mail it to me!! And...when someone brings in a specimen where they only want the bones, instead of scraping the bones clean themselves they have buckets of bugs that eat everything but the bones...so they go into every tiny whole and suck it out. So after a couple of days the skeleton is all clean! It's crazy! And the best part was the "Tank Room". This was were they kept the really big jars of animals... they had jars that held small sharks or anything else that size. Most of the jars were about 1m-1.5m high. They even had what they thought was the link between fish and on-land animals because it still had the fins but it had appendages as well. It looked like an oversized tadpole that was still morphing. And they had original specimens that Darwin took on his journeys!! And I know that it's a really dorky thing to get excited about, but that's a pretty significant part of history right there...and also in the Tank Room were...the Tanks. Obviously, you're not going to fit something like a bear in one of those jars, because they just don't make them big enough. So, they have huge vats of solution that bigger animals just float around in. Some tanks have 4 or 5 specimens in them and they're just tagged for identification. So if someone wants to study one, they have to fish them out. Unfortunately we didn't get to look inside the tanks, cuz it would've been sweet to see all the dead things floating around...haha. We had to wear labcoats on the tour, so this is us:

We also did some shopping while we were there...or rather, more looking at stuff in the shops. We went to Harrods, and obviously when they're selling clocks in there for 10000 pounds I'm not really gonna be in the mood too buy much. But it's a huge store. It was insane because it was right before Christmas. They had multiple Santas there. It was like a corridor with 10 rooms and there was a Santa in each room, but the kids wouldn't see people going into the other rooms, so it wasn't like they could tell there were multiple Santas. But the line was 2 hours long!! I couldn't imagine keeping my kid occupied that long! And then in the toy section they had this almost life-size Lego triceratops!

We went to Portobello Road market too. If you've seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks you'll know what I'm talking about. Basically, it's just a bunch antiques, but it's such a huge market...I don't know how long it went down the street but we stopped after about an hour cuz it just kept going.

Covent Garden was another shopping place, which in My Fair Lady is where Eliza Doolittle sells her flowers. We weren't there for long though...but I'd heard of a "Canadian Store" near Covent Garden, so we went there and they sold Moosehead and Sleemans and they had Oreos and maple syrup and Mr.Noodles and other stuff like that...and I really wanted to buy a bag of Oreos, but it cost 4.25 pounds ($8.50)! So I figured I'd wait til I got home...
And then right near this store was The Maple Leaf Pub. It served normal English pub food but then had poutine and tortiere and stuff...and pancakes with maple syrup...and Canadian beer! So we ate there. And apparently they show Hockey Night in Canada there on Sundays but unfortunately we were there on the Monday, so we missed it.

And in more news relating to movies, when we were on the Tower Bridge, Tom discovered the James Bond door. In the latest film, Die Another Day, there's a part when James Bond goes to meet M in a deserted underground station, and he has to go through this door on the Tower Bridge to get to it.

And...we went to King's Cross Station! It was so funny cuz we kept telling Tom we had to go there but he's not into Harry Potter...so he was kind of out of the loop about the whole thing. But it was exciting in a really dorky way. They even had a photo-op Platform 9 3/4 there...so we took pictures:


We were kind of stuck for things to do at night. We tried to get rush tickets for a West End show...but there weren't really any shows available that we wanted to see. One night we went to see Flightplan at a cinema in the West End. And so we were in the cinema, and then I left to go to the washroom before previews started and there's a girl outside the door giving out free samples of Disaronno amaretto! It was great! They'd never do that in Canada!! So we watched Flightplan, sipping our amaretto. One of the other cinemas in the area had a huge Triwizard Cup on top of it from the 4th Harry Potter movie, so of course I was a dork and took a picture of it. It was so big though!
One night we went to this stand-up comedy night...but it was just really bad so we left part-way through and went back to the hostel to play euchre.

I think that pretty much sums up the trip though. It ended up being a really fun weekend despite the beginning of it...