The Past Week

I'm not sure why but it seems like time absolutely flies here and I hate it. I realized the other day it was exactly two months until I leave. Okay, so two months is a long time. But I'm already hating the idea of leaving. Especially since I start traveling this weekend and am realizing I have a limited number of weekends actually in the country. Tomorrow I head off to Amsterdam. I'm a little nervous to do my first big kid travel around Europe. I've flown from the states to Europe by myself multiple times but never around the continent alone. I also kind of forgot that Amsterdam, unlike London, my little haven of pseudo-English, actually speaks another language. Apparently the ticket machines to buy train tickets when I get there don't have instructions in English, so I had to print off a little instruction sheet of how to buy travel tickets on them. Cute, I know.

The past week a lot has happened I feel like, although I didn't actually do all that much. I've been to two more plays. One of them was this crazy circus-like interpretation of Goethe's Faust and it was pretty awesome. Not everyone in my class liked it, but I thought it was really fun and interesting. Granted I don't know much about Faust so who knows if my opinion has any merit. Then tonight we went to see this play called The Country. In it there was this British woman playing an American and oh my god I wanted to kill myself when she spoke. She did what so many Brits do when doing their best "American" accent and was a total valley girl. At times it fit her character.. but not really. And everything had this mocking, sarcastic quality that literally made her unwatchable. I know that I have a bad British accent, but even the kids who think they have good American accents here put on valley girl voices when doing impressions. It gets old..

Then Saturday I went with Hannah and Tom from my flat, two girls from downstairs, Alex and Amee, and Amee's friend to Portobello Market (yes, again). It was really fun but it's getting cold here so I was freezing my ass off the whole time. I think something happened to my good New England cold tolerance during the boiling summer in Philly, because I'm a pansy when it comes to cold now. I hate it. Despite the cold though we had fun browsing at Portobello, and then headed to Camden Market after. Camden is really cool and "punk artsy." We got there late so the market stalls were closing but it was fun to check out the area. We got food cause they had tons of little shops with Chinese, Indian, even some Mexican where you'd get a bunch of food for £3 so we ate dinner there. It was a fun albeit exhausting day. Then Saturday night was a little, erm, rough so I didn't actually get my act together to do anything on Sunday except wallow in bed and pretend to do homework while actually just streaming football (athde.net and ch131.com have been my saviors tv-wise).

I'm getting used to my Monday schedule of actually having class, although I don't think I'll ever be good at the 9 am class.  Luckily I've got friends in the class so I generally drag myself there and then nap after. Yes, I do realize that some people actually get up at 6 or 7 every single day and go to work, but I'm also guessing they don't stay up till disgusting student hours every night and refuse to give up going out those nights.

Then last night was my flatmate Charlotte's birthday so we made plans to go to Pacha, one of the relatively big clubs. We had people over before and got to get all dressed up so it was really fun. Again, the cold made catching the night bus less than pleasant, but when that's the only complaint I call it a good night. I love the club scene here but I always prefer to go with large groups of people I know 'cause it's just more enjoyable that way. It's definitely fun to go out with all the F-Block (that's my building) kids because it's generally a good big group and everyone's pretty chill. A good time was had by all, although the cleaners who came this morning were not exactly delighted that we had a good time all over our flat before going out.. an interesting relationship is developing between us and them. They hate us, we acknowledge that they have the worst job in the world and their hatred is valid, but think the notes they leave are funny. Best by far was the night that no one else had cleaned their dishes (I don't have dishes, all throwaway plates and cutlery) and the cleaners threatened to throw them out if they weren't cleaned by the next day. A few people hadn't cleaned theirs so Hannah, in a moment of alcohol induced brilliance, tried to hide all the dirty dishes in the oven. We awoke to a loving note-- "Nice try flat F, we will be back in the afternoon for your dirties. You're preventing us from cleaning the oven." Mind you I'm 100% positive they have never once cleaned that oven.

Now I'm having a low key post-theater night watching the Yankees with increasing despair since I was really hoping tonight would be the end for them. As a real member of the facebook generation or whatever you'll call us, I'm wishing I had an extra computer so I could watch the game full screen while also writing this and booking my hostels for my trip to Paris. My need to multitask is mildly frightening. I have to go to bed at a real person time tonight (1?) so I'm trying to use the next hour and a half to actually be productive. I'm hoping I'll have some good stories after my weekend in Amsterdam with Rachel and Aly.