When keeping it real goes wrong

So here we are, the last day of February.  My time in London with work and classes is more than half way over.  This past week most of us had midterms, as much as it sucked to be doing school work, it felt kind of nice.  Once again I cant begin to recall all of the events from the past week and a half or so that I havent written, so I suppose that I’ll highlight some key points.  

I’ve been pretty busy at work.  The most recent project that I’ve completed is  an Afghan narco-trafficking brief for Nick.  I found some pretty interesting things out.

I was pretty committed to finishing this blogpost on the train to Norwich, but I’ve just started to watch 500 days of summer on my laptop, and I guess im gonna have to get back to this....

Actually, what the hell, this is dumb, why am I staring at my laptop right now......surely I would rather to look out of the window and fall asleep.  So I shallllll

But maybe you’re wondering where I was going on this past fine long weekend of mine, and the answer is to Norwich to visit my beloved Lisa Packard.  Just a bag of clothes, Uno and a bottle of barardi withme.  Surefire good weekend, lets gooo!!!   (500 days of summer is pretty good though, though it makes me want a man in a sweatervest dress shirt and tie in the worst way,  def gonna finish it sometimes--maybe on the way home Sunday night!!)  I would bet thats when I’ll finish this blogpost as well :)

Update: its after midnight on monday, I've been trying to update this blog for like 2 hours, but then i got addicted to a facebook game called cupcake corner.  I'm not even one of those farmville lame-0s that loves facebook apps; but I have a soft spot for baking---and this game is AWESOME (you wanna be my neighbor??) Im gonna get to level 200 tonight....

So my weekend with Lisa was great, it was awesome to get out of the city and be on a college campus again!  The UEA campus is lovely, as are Lisa's flatmates and friends.  Lisa met me at the train station when I arrived and we grabbed some lunch and a brew at a pub nearby.  Then, we bussed back to her campus.  We chilled around, videochatted peeps and all around caught up.  We made a lovely little dinner and decided to have a chill night.  We watched a few episodes of "an idiot abroad"--super funny, I would def recommend.  I slept ALOT friday night, and saturday we went into town and did some shopping with Lisa's friend, Kelsey.  She is super cute and from Australia.  I bought a two finger bird ring, its sickkk, and a few other things.  Saturday night Lisa and I decided to get a little crazy--and we fully fulfilled that decision.  We went to a good old fashioned house party--it was lovely.  Sunday was a gorgeous day in Norwich.  Lisa's campus is right on a lil lake, and I went for a run around it-- it was sunny and fabulous.  For the rest of the day we kind of chilled, until I had to catch my bus at 730.  The bus ride was fiinnne, got in a little before 11, only to find a freezing flat with no working heat or hot water. Lovely.

Lisa and I <3

I understand that the quality of this writing is worse than usual, but keep in mind that my mind is mostly paying attention to my bakery right now.....I really cant be bothered to pay attention to this at all....

Some other points over the past couple of weeks are this:

+I have been removed from the Clark study abroad website.  Rather, my blog has....apparently it was begining to focus more on my 'social life' than my 'international experience', so they took it down.  But really, how many times can I blog that I saw Big Ben yesterday?  What is life if you dont focus on your social life at all; it clearly interests at least the 11 or so formal followers that I have, and the many that I know are informal. I guess thats what happens when you keep it real...

+I've found my favorite cocktail bar in Camdentown.  Its called Bar Fifty FIve and boasts an extensive menu of 195 or so fancy cocktails.  Its quite pricey (about 7.50 a drink) but happy hour means buy one get on free-which I can certainly afford from time to time.

+Last week I had two papers due, one in British Politics and the other in Modern Art in London.  I wrote the pol one on the pros and cons of the UK having a codified constitution, and the art one on one of the works of Matisse.  I actually kind of enjoyed writing the art one.  Either way it felt good to be doing school work again...

+I've been here for less than 3 months and im on my 3rd jar of nutella (its half gone actually)

+I was going to blog about my updated life plan that I dont actually really have.....but I dont feel like it. 

This week i'll be receiving all of the Clark Peer Advisor apps to review; part of my job description as an Orientation Coordinator for next year.  There are over 100 with references, so itll be an extensive little job.... I hope for a fun week!

*15 days till my half birthday

*2.5 months until im home

So I suppose thats about it for now

<3

The view from Lisa's lakeside flat :)

Be creative and think of your own title for this blog post!

Well, I suppose its been awhile.  I also suppose I should give a brief overview of the past few weeks that I've been M.I.A. but I dont think im going to do that; ill leave that to your imagination along with the title of this post. A few general trends might be that all of us in the LIP program have decided to stop going to ridiculously overpriced tourist bars,such as Oniells.(even though we have alot of fun at them, but really, we could have fun anywhere.

Also, my pay as you go vodafone kind of sucks; and by that I mean that I am topping up far too often.  Work is good, fun times all around.  Becks left for India last week which is very sad!  Tonight is glyn's going away get together which I hope I make it to.  I've been working on an afghanistan brief on narco poppy trafficking and defense; i had a great breakthrough with it yesterday!!  

This past weekend I met up with my dad, daniela and family in Turino, which was a much needed change of scenery.  I ate an absolute ton of food; which was apparently much needed.  My dad was telling me that I looked much thinner ;/  I met lots of new little baby cousins as well!  Italian babies are really the cutest babies on earth.  Even when they CRY they're cute!!  My great aunts house had a great view of the mountains

                                           Coors Light, anyone?

The countryside was so beautifully.  It looked like the houses had arbitrarily fallen from the sky and nestled themselves into the hills.  The rental car that they had before was a real cute sporty one, but unfortunately my father put gas in its diesel engine, so their car was replaced with a Volkswagen mini van (with a huge DIESEL sticker on the gas tank.  Filippo looked pretty baller though, even driving a mini van.

We visited my cousin gianni's bar quite a bit--what fun times.  The pastries there were sooooo delicious, and I also developed a short term espresso addiction.  I tried the house cocktail around 1130 am on saturday; it had wine, gin and juices--delicious.  The weather was good in the 60s all weekend--and SUNNY!!!!  Thats enough to lift anyones spirits!  Also, my italian command was MUCH better than I had remembered--which was awesome.  Of course everyone tried to accommodate my english speaking sister and I. For example:

The daughters of a family friend of my cousin Teresa made a menu of what we were eating on saturday night.  (of course we would have known what they meant if they put aranchini instead of rice balls, and antipasti instead of cold cuts and cheese---but what little cuties)  Sunday we caught a little bit of a local highschool futball team's game (my dads friends son or something...)  And had a fabulous lunch--then we went into the city. Turino is really beautiful, but by the time we made it there, since it was sunday, most of the shops were closed.  But i made it to italy and back for the weekend without spending ANY money (other than my train ticket to the stansted airport, and the 30 cents i had to pay to use the bathroom at the Liverpool street train station, eyeroll)  

We had dinner at a friend of my fathers, who told me to come and stay at his house anytime (he made a point to show me the inside of my house, or else I would 'go back to America and never see it')  It was a gorgeous flat, with handmade woodwork and big brick arch doorways. I had two gelatos in one hour that day.  And i dont even feel badly about it!  The first was an incredible amaretto gelato, with crushed almonds in it--the texture was to die for.  We got it at a super fancy gelateria; where the man working behind the counter took about 45 seconds to scoop and swirl the gelato into the cone perfectly. (plus he was wearing a tux shirt and bowtie)  The second ice cream that I had was lemon ice.  My flight and commute back home was fine; though i didnt get in till about 2 am.  Soon after I saw that my beloved Steelers had lost the superbowl.  Sadness 

monday I had work and class followed by a kick ass work out and chill timmmee.  Tuesday was the same, but reversed (class then work) followed by kick ass work out part two.  More excitingly Caitlyn, Alex and I booked a trip to Barcelona for the last weekend of March!!!!!  AND KOOKIE is CRAZY and booked a flight to london the day before Barcelona, so shes coming with us there too!!  Shits gonna be off the hook.  As far as this upcoming long weekend, I have nothing planned; still havent booked by trip to the Netherlands either....and also wishing I had a big more money....

Yesterday was a pretty fun day.  work was alright, had some drinks Adrian Sanders john and tom.  After talking about his rock show, San francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and whiskey, Adrian took his leave and John Tom and I went to a different bar in Parliament that wasnt so crowded.  We got engaged in long conversations about something or other and I ended up having a few too many drinks than planned and leaving muchhh too late.  I ran home, had a makeshift dinner of naan and hummus, got ready and ran out the door to the movies.  I was taking a tube line that I'm not familiar with, so of course I got lost, missed my stop, had to go back and figure things out.  ::sigh::  

Once I finally arrived to the stop my friend James picked me up.  This was my first time sitting in a passanger seat on the left hand side of a vehicle, and it was as crazy as I thought it would be.  Not only is your mind and body confused because the driver is on your right, but your perception is allll messed up; making you think that you're going to run into things (cars, curbs, trees, buildings, signs) at ever turn.  As a result of my tardiness we had to see the next showing of Black Swan.  We had a drink first......well I had a drink anyway!  I had been wanting to see Black Swan (mostly because of my love for ballet)  I've heard that it was terrifying, disturbing, weird etc and it was all of the above.  It was incredibly dark and morbid, in addition every relationship in the movie was extremely backward and crazy.  Accompanied by the blood, gore, and lesbian sex scenes, it was probably the oddest movie that I have ever seen.  

Today, I havent really done anything substantial.  I've updated my itunes library, organized the files on my laptop, finally updated this blog, watched an episode of fringe.........as soon as I post this I really need to get my butt moving to Parliament for Glyn's going away drinks.  I've also got to pick up something for the potluck upstairs on the way home.....sigh.

Work till 2:30 tomorrow and then i've really got to do some shopping.  I have a growing lists of things i need and shrinking balance in my bank accts....this list includes boots, a bathing suit, skirt/dress, purse, maybe like a necklace.....i need to get some groceries as well, though i've already done that twice this week.....

We were going to go to stonehenge this weeekend, but I think that we're saving it for another time.  I literally have NO plans this weekend, so hopefully i find some!  BIG SHOUTOUT to the Clark MUN team who will be attending the Harvard MUN conference this weekend (without me :(  )  REPRESENT FRANCE'S ASS OFF GUYS--YOU WILL ALL DO AMAZINGLY!!!!   

Valentines day is coming up on monday--I dont even remember the last time I didnt have a valentine for VDAY--luckily my lil flatmates and I have a cute dinner date planned :)

I had made a draft of a blog post last week titled 'roller coaster week pulls into life decision station' reflecting on the terrible anxiety that I had been having about my life plan, what Im doing for the summer, and after Clark.  I think i've for the most part resolved that, so i guess I will share it here.  For the summer I am going to work at Atria's and make money and chill.  Thats it.  And i think that its the best plan.  I'll have to return to Clark at the beginning of Aug for OC things anyway, so I think ill need to take some downtime over the summer (and pay off my inevitable London debt)

IF YOU GO TO CLARK MAKE SURE THAT YOU APPLY TO BE A PEER ADVISOR FOR FALL 2011!  APPS ARE IN YOUR CMAIL NOW :D

As far as Post clark.....actually, i've decided I dont feel like talking about that right now.  

The final thing that I will post about is my Clark living sitch next year --IM LIVING OFF CAMPUS FINALLY!!!!  Im living with Lee, Chaingmi and Tama at 39 charlotte and i'm super excited about it (and my dad has accepted it as well!)

So for now, im chilling in London; but my Italy chapter certainly is not closed yet.  April 24th is Easter, and my exams are finished the 14th of April (my visa expires the 20th) So I believe I will be with all of the Surras in Calabria for Easter time :)

<3

Turino is even nice sideways!