Oh The Places We’ll Go

I’ve gone 2 days without soda.  Very very cold outside today.

It’s times like this that… I could really go for a Coke.

My birthday is next Thursday and the preparations are already underway.  Most likely my birthday will be a bit of pub golfing (drinking games at 18 different pubs along the subway), which will inevitably bring hysterical drunkenness and dancing in the street.  I’ve started mapping out the 18 pubs we’re going to be stopping at on my birthday, thanks to the angels who created this website completely dedicated to pub crawling the underground here in Glasgow.  Nifty.

We went to Curlers the other night, which is the bar down the hill from my apartment building, and ran into a guy in a full on pig costume going around taking pictures with people.  And I got a picture, of course.  Wouldn’t you?  How often do you go into perfectly good bars seeing grown men dressed up as farm animals?  

My 2 essays are due next week and I have done absolutely nothing to prepare to write, research or anything for them.  I’ve got a few days to get those going and polished but I have to be pretty focused until next Wednesday in order to get them done and up to the standard that they need to be.  I think I’m especially nervous because I’ll be writing for British professors and I’m unsure as to whether or not my writing will be ‘up to snuff’ since I’ve never been judged on a level other than American writing, so it should be interesting.  Hopefully they don’t pick up my paper and laugh, calling me a stupid American and saying that I have no idea what I’m doing.  Let’s hope I’m not that terrible!

After I finish my next can of Coke, the last from a box that I purchased on Saturday, I’m going on a soft drink fast.  No soft drinks for as long as I can make it.  I’m going to try as hard as humanly possible, but I have a feeling it’s going to be terrible.  I don’t think I can emphasize to people enough how MUCH soda I drink.  It’s some ridiculous amount- at least 4 cans a day.  Pretty terrible when you think about it.  I mean, at least I’m addicted to something like soft drinks and not something worse (like cocaine or something), but that doesn’t mean it’s not bad for me.  Save my teeth while they’re still there, right?  And at least I don’t like alcoholic mixed drinks with any kind of soda in them.  Other than my Long Island Iced Teas, of course.  But even then, it’s 90% alcohol and a splash of Coke for coloring.  The good ones are made that way, at least.

I’ve been on a movie spree the last few days.  I’ve become a pro at finding any movie imaginable online to watch with everyone in the flat.  Illegal, it may be, but free… and for a poor college student that’s all I really care about.  I watched “Wanted” with Angelina Jolie yesterday and it blew me away, I thought it was absolutely fantastic.  That’s a buyer, right there.  Plus it doesn’t hurt that the wonderful James McAvoy is in the film, and he’s Scottish and beautiful so there’s TWO pretty people to look at the WHOLE time!  Haha.  Watched “The Notebook” today against my wishes.  I’m not good with sappy crying movies so the end was a little awkward, everyone else crying but me.  I guess I just have a heart of stone.  

Tomorrow I have to go to the library, force myself to read, and seriously research for my 2 papers due next week… or else I’m going to be in the weeds!  Procrastination will be the death of me one of these days, I’m sure of it.

-Catherine

So I’ve been stealing a lot of stuff lately.  Everything’s very innocent, of course.  It’s not like I’m out there busting a cap on someone and stealing their car.  Just harmless stuff.  So far the tally is 2 drink menus, one from Curlers and one from Buddha, and an entire jug that was left outside of Curlers the other night.  It’s a pretty good sized jug and probably fits a good number of beers inside of it, but I have to clean it before I use it.  The girls are convinced it has been peed in and thus, is unacceptable to drink out of until it is thoroughly rinsed.  Agreed.

Classes are going fine.  Lectures are for the most part boring, but they aren’t really supposed to be exciting when you’re hearing someone drone on about the different types of satire that existed when Swift was writing Gulliver’s Travels over 300 years ago.  Tutorials are even worse since I hate being put on the spot and I feel like I don’t know nearly as much as everyone else does since they’ve been studying the same books for years and years, whereas I’ve never read half of the books that people here have read.  For being an English major I really haven’t read all that many books.  More than the average American, sure, but not to the extent that people out here do.  They read a lot more of the classic novels; we tend to stick to the traditional American novel.  Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, etc.  

There’s a concert out here this Saturday for Jenny Lewis, who is the lead singer for this band I really like back home, Rilo Kiley.  They’re an indie band that no one has ever heard of, but I still love them.  Molly, Erica and I are all going to see her so that’s the only really big plan for this weekend.  Drinking, surely but other than that nothing too exciting.  

I’ve got to get writing my 2 papers due on the 31st for my 2 classes this semester since I have a feeling they are going to take a lot of reading, research and effort to get going and get through before they’re at the level that I’m going to want them to be at.  I definitely can’t put them off until the last minute since they’re worth so much of my grade and I don’t think I could bear with the idea of turning in something I didn’t feel confident with.  I haven’t written an actual essay in a while either, so it’s going to be interesting getting back into the writing groove but it has to be done.

Phillies need 1 more win to get to the World Series and the Rays are up on the Sox in the AL.  Life is good in baseball.  49ers lost this weekend, but Sharks are starting off the season well.  Warriors are in China right now, will be watching them tomorrow afternoon live from Beijing!

I’ve been a very productive girl the last few days.  It’s quite the anomaly, actually, when I am being a productive person.  Most of the time I can’t really be bothered to do anything other than lift my arm, open a can of Coke, and click to watch the next Youtube video.  Productiveness comes in very small spurts, and when it happens… it happens all at once.

I’ve finally got my ticket to go to Greece for Christmas.  A lot of you may be wondering, “why the fuck are you going to Greece for Christmas?”, which my answer to is… why not?  What else am I going to do?  While everyone else is at home drinking and watching American Football (not that I won’t be missing that deep down inside), I’ll be drinking and eating in Athens at the Acropolis trying to pick up cute boys who I can’t understand.  I don’t know a lick of Greek so I’m thinking that may be a wee bit difficult but we’ll see how it goes.  Maybe they speak English there, yeah?  Or maybe I’m just fucked.

I’ve also got a ticket to go to a rugby match in Edinburgh next month, which should be a good time.  I don’t understand any of the rules or regulations regarding rugby so this “sporting event” will likely turn into beer after beer starting at 2 in the afternoon and ending when and where I pass out.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be England vs. South Africa, so I’m assuming I’ll be cheering for England but I honestly couldn’t tell you a single person who plays for the team.  Is rugby really even that big out here anyway?  I think more people are into football, personally, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate good looking guys tackling each other for hours on end while I drunkenly watch.

In February I scored some tickets to see Russell Brand here in Glasgow.  He’s not really big out in the states yet, but he’s absolutely hilarious and legendary here in the UK.  I guess he’s pretty famous; he’s in all the tabloids and stuff like that.  Quite the womanizer, shagger of the year, etc.  It should be a good time.  I love stand up comedy and watch way too much of it, but haven’t ever seen a show in person so I’m excited about it.  Plus I’m going with the girls so that should be good too.

I haven’t been able to watch a lot of the American TV that I have been keeping up with since the late nights and 5am bedtimes are starting to take their toll.  I was able to watch the VP Debate on Youtube since MSNBC posts them on there after the debates are over.  I thought Obama did a great job, but the town hall setup?  Whoever came up with this one needs to be fired as soon as possible.  How awkward did that whole thing seem?  It was kind of like, normally I’d avoid the moderator’s questions… but now that you’re asking them I guess I’m just going to ignore you. 

Baseball baseball baseball.  Dodgers vs. Phillies in the NLCS.  My life is over as I know it.  I’m going with the Phillies on this one since obviously I can’t cheer for the Dodgers.  I’m going with the RAYS over the Sox for the ALCS.  If the Rays make it to the World Series I’m going Rays all the way.  If it’s the Sox vs. the Phillies, I’m all about the Phillies.  And if it’s the Dodgers vs. the Sox (an obvious worst case scenario), the Sox had better get their 2-peat since I don’t think I could stand watching Joe Torre and those damn Dodgers lifting up the trophy.  I think a little piece of me would die inside if that happened.

I found out the other day that I don’t have to take exams in May, so I’m done here in Scotland after I turn in my essays for second semester on March 10th.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself here in Scotland.  I’m obviously not going to go home since, honestly, I’d rather stab my eyes out with a No. 2 pencil than spend April until September in Rocklin.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I think I’ll probably do what I was going to do (backpack around Europe in countries I haven’t seen yet), and then work here in Glasgow for as much as my visa will permit before heading back to the states in June to see Alicia graduate from Rocklin High.  I figure if I end up staying until June (since I have to pay rent until then anyway) and get a little job, I’m most definitely going to go on a trip to Cairo like I want to so that I can see a damn pyramid!  That would cap this whole experience off for me.  Italy, France, Spain, England, Scotland, Greece, Germany, Estonia, The Netherlands, and EGYPT?  I’d be satisfied with that kind of a travel resume, wouldn’t you?

I’m unprepared, yet again, for my tutorial on Reformation literature, but at least I somewhat read Book 4 of Gulliver’s Travels by Swift and read “A Modest Proposal”.  He’s all about the satire, bla bla bla, Go Ireland.  I’ve got it.

Now all I need is a can of that delicious beverage they like to call Coca Cola and I’ll be satisfied….

-Catherine

I’m done.  I have finally sifted through, and cropped, all of the photos from backpacking and they are organized and ready to be seen online!  I erased everything from my flickr account before and re-uploaded everything after I edited them in iPhoto so that it would be easier and they’d be ready to be sorted once they were online.  It just made it a lot easier that way.

Anyways, to look at them go to flickr.com/photos/cat1brad/collections

All of the photos are organized by place and country, so if you want to see the pictures from Old Trafford just click on the “Great Britain Backpacking” collection and the Old Trafford set will be in there.  Pretty self explanitory and well organized, or at least I think so.

I hope everyone gets to have a look at everything and see what I’ve been working on.

Oh, and read the blog below if you haven’t read it yet.  That’s what I’ve been up to recently, if you wanna know!

-Catherine

I’m finally ready to get back into the game.  The traveling game, I mean.  I took a good amount of recovery time, a few weeks to give my brain a break before getting back into all of the old stuff that I need to do post-summer backpacking extravaganza, and now uploading pictures is in full force.  I’ve got all of them rotated and ready to go with a fresh, new website to go.  Now all I’ve got to do is get them all online!  I’m actually in the middle of uploading a lot of them, but it’ll take a while since there’s, well, hundreds of them and they each take time to get online.  However, I’ll let everyone know when they’re online as soon as they are since I want everyone to see everything that happened while we were backpacking.

Getting my party on with the Giants jersey

Now, on to Glasgow.  This weekend was my Beer Pong 101 class for the UK natives.  Now, to give a little background info, beer pong is a big deal back home.  9 red cups on each side of a table, throw a ping pong ball in the opposing team’s cups and get rid of their cups first.  Victory.  Easy enough, yes?  Apparently, English people don’t have the cool red cups over here, so I was stuck using crappy flimsy cups in my instructing.  They didn’t work out very well, so beer pong was kind of a bust, but the night turned from crappy beer pong to excellent Kings Cup playing!  Yes, King’s Cup.

... disgusting

Get a stack of cards, circle them around a big cup and make up a rule for every card.  2 is a bathroom pass, a 3 is everyone has to raise their hands in the air, 4 is touch your chin with your thumb.  The penalty for doing whatever the task is wrong, or last: drink all of your drink.  It’s called King’s cup since anytime someone gets a King, they have to fill up 1/4 of the BIG King’s Cup in the middle of the table with whatever they’re drinking.  Thus, if everyone is drinking something else, the cup in the middle can be…. a monstrous concoction.  After nearly all the cards were gone, it was time for me to pick my card and, of course, who got the 4th and final King?  Me.

I had the pleasure of drinking 1/2 a cup of beer mixed with rum and juice, and vodka and coke.  Yum?  I held my nose and took it all in.  King’s Cup and Beer Pong moved into the living room, which turned from King’s Cup round 2 to dance party, spin the bottle, and god knows what else.  I got to play DJ, which basically meant everyone got to make fun of my “weird American music” which is apparently “bollocks” since I don’t listen to strange electronic British indie music.  Think any kind of music you could possibly imagine with some kind of backbeat put on to it.  Terrible.  Everything sounds like it belongs in a disco and guess what folks.  I don’t disco.  After DJ’ing and trying (unsuccessfully) to get people to stop doing things they’d regret later (and did), I headed to bed.  The festivities ended at 5 in the morning, and everyone passed out in their beds.

I’ve finally gotten a hold of some of the photos from the debachery that I wrote about with the Pub Crawl with the University of Glasgow Tennis Club, since my roommate Laura was tagged in one of the photos on Facebook randomly.  There’s only three photos of the whole night that I’ve found, since none of us girls brought our cameras with us, but I think anyone who has read my story will see how the night got progressively drunker and drunker with every Underground stop.

I’ve booked my first traveling plane ticket since traveling to Europe in the beginning of August.  Guess who’s going back to Barcelona?  Yes, that would be me.  I’m going with all of the California girls since none of them have ever been before, and it’s the kind of city that you need to experience with a bunch of females rather than your brother.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still fun with Thomas.  Hopefully it will be even more fun with the girls with me to oogle at Spanish boys!  I can’t wait.  We’re going to be there at the end of November, so I’m really excited about it.  The Ramblas had better be ready for me, because I’m coming back!  Erica is coming with me and I can’t be more excited.  I know Erica from back home at UCSB and her and I are really good friends, so I’m stoked we’re going to be partying in Barcelona together since she just turned 21 and was sick on her birthday, which is always no good.  Other people coming are Shaun, who is also from UCSB, Megan from UCLA and Jodie is from UCSD.  Molly is Molly, from Rocklin High School just like me, but she’s a genius and goes to Dartmouth and she’s never been to Barcelona either, so it’ll be a good time.  Here’s some pictures of the UC girls (plus Molly) from the first few weeks.

at the QMU with Jodie and Erica

at QMU Cheesy Pop night

erica and i with nicola's bunny ears in the background

Other than going places, I opened up my UK bank account today, so I’m feeling pretty accomplished.  I’m excited I can finally set up paying for my apartment and not have to worry about it anymore.  One more thing off the check list, that’s for sure.  I got my care package today from the states, with tons of goodies including BUTTERED popcorn (which they don’t do here in movie theatres!), hot chocolate stuff, RED CUPS for BEER PONG!, macaroni and cheese, and some boots that I didn’t have before.  I even have my trusty old alarm clock from the states here with me now, so that’s good too!  There’s nothing like waking up to the same old annoying sound from back home, eh?  Nicola, the Irish one, didn’t know what mac and cheese is, so I told her I’d make it for her soon.  I told her it’s an American college food staple.  Just like hot dogs, but no one gets that here either.  Whatever, I don’t care.  I still love them.

I also made guacamole the other day, so I have done a lot in the last few days.  I found avocados and practically died, so I made guac.  Pretty good, I must say for not having the same ingredients that I usually have.  The salsa here is a lot more ketchup-y so that was a bit of a downer.  That and the tortilla chips suck.  Mexicans need to move en masse to Scotland so they can teach these people about delicious food already!  Taco Night is tomorrow night, so I’m making dinner for all the people.  I’ve got ground beef ready, with taco shells and all the toppings.  Now all I need is some tequila to go along with all of my damn limes!  I’ve got like, 10 limes in the fridge and no clue what to do with them.

To finish, my Giants season may be over, but the best part of the year is here: playoffs!  For the next week or so (5 games if they go all 5), I am going to be a HUGE Cubs fan.  You know why?  The DAMN Dodgers are back in the playoffs and my adopted Cubbies had better kick their asses out!  I’m confident in the Cubs, so they’d better bring home the W’s and send Manny and company packing so I don’t have to worry about the Dodgers making it past the first round.  I like the Cubs and the Brewers this year in the NL, especially since I love Prince Fielder and JJ Hardy and I want them to come to my team!  For the AL, I love love the Rays and I hope they make it far in the playoffs.  I can’t in good conscience cheer for the Angels (i’m still bitter), and there’s no way I could stand watching the Red Sox win 3 titles in the last 6 years.  Not necessarily because I hate the team, but moreso because I hate their fans.

I hope everyone enjoys the pictures and gets a good laugh out of them.  I’ll be sure to take more this weekend and get some of my apartment and housemates for everyone to see.

I’m staying up tomorrow to watch the VP Debates with a few people so I can’t wait for that.  I’m going to get no sleep.  Crap.  Oh well, at least Biden vs. Palin should be an entertaining matchup!

Until later…

-Catherine