Oh The Places We’ll Go

This is an obviously delayed post, but I made up for the lateness with all the postings I’ve been doing today- swear!  If you look below this post you can see one dedicated with a picture gallery to the Pub Golf extravaganza on my birthday and there’s even some pictures below that from my trip to the amusement park down in Kilmarnock.

Since the beginning of November, my last post, I haven’t done much traveling other than this last weekend, but more relaxing than anything else.  We had our reading and writing week during my birthday, during which I got nothing done, and then afterwards I had to settle down and work on my paper for GC 14, Renaissance Literature.  I turned that in during the first week of November and am doing my GC 15 one this week before I go to Barcelona.  I didn’t really do much the weekend of the 7th simply because I wasn’t in the mood for going out and was feeling unlike myself.  I was really tired, in a somber mood for no reason in particular and just wanted to stay in.

School is getting more and more stressful as it approaches December since that’s when all of my big deadlines are.  I have presentations in both of my tutorials within the next couple weeks before December and that means a LOT of reading and research before giving them.  Not to mention that I still need to do my GC 15 essay (YIKES!) before December 1st (that’s the deadline I’m giving myself) and working on the 2 essays that I have to turn in before December 10th, which is the end of the term.  December is going to be really stressful but I know it’ll all work out for the better with everything.  After December 10th my life will be FREE and happy, waiting to go to Athens and celebrate Christmas and everything.

Other than school I’ve been hanging out a lot with my housemates and just relaxing.  We’re a close bunch and hang out a lot so I’m happy I live where I do.  We watch a lot of Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy and random movies together.  Lately we’ve watched Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2 and Forrest Gump!  Great movie.  I think Nicola was finally satisfied hearing a real Southern voice since she’s been saying “I love you Jenny” like how she thinks Forrest Gump talks for the last month!  Haha.  She’s Irish so her I’m-Irish-trying-to-be-Southern accent is absolutely hilarious.  She says lots of things like “What’s the crack” (What’s up) or “Gluck!” (Good luck).  All of her fake Southern accents make her sound like this constipated old man with a really deep voice.  Haha.

I’m happy I’m still able to keep up with my California TV shows, especially my sports.  I haven’t watched much since baseball and the World Series, but was lucky enough to see some of the Warriors game against the Clippers the other day.  I miss basketball a lot and the times are always bad that it’s on, but I’ve been listening to the interviews on KNBR that the Razor and Mr. T do with Don Nelson and the players and everything, so I don’t feel as outside of it as I thought I would.  One thing I do miss is ESPN since I obviously can’t watch it out here.  Constant sports updates 24 hours a day?  You don’t know what great things you’ve got until they’re gone!

I got a good dose of European sport this last weekend at a rugby match I went to with the Californians and the locals.  I woke up at around 7:30 and left my flat at 8:45 to meet up with Erica, my friend from UCSB, and the other Californians to go to Harriet’s flat, a girl who studied abroad from Glasgow at UCSB last year.  She’s from London and is a big rugby fan, so she’s the one who got us the tickets.  We hitched a cab to the train station and then got on the next train up to Edinburgh, which is about 30 minutes way on the train and really cheap.  The girls all painted their nails the Scotland Flag, minus Claire who is half South Africa and was all Springboks’d out, South African flag on her nails and all.

Once we got to the stop right before the city, we hung out and painted each others faces with the different country flags before grabbing some fish and chips and heading to Murrayfield, where the Scotland national team plays.  They sell hotdogs at the parks here, which I thought was really strange since it’s such a baseball food.  Weirdos!  There were lots of people there all decked out in the Scotland flag with weird hats with the Loch Ness monster going through them.  Lots of Scotland scarves, hats, light up things, etc.  Our seats were insanely close to the pitch, which was fun with our hour to spare since we got to see all the guys warming up before the game.  Let’s just say rugby players are very very in shape.. and we got to see them up close and personal.  Stretching.  Bending over. In really tight spandex.  It was like Christmas… but with boys.  So much better.

The game started at 2:30 (or half 2 as they would say here), and Scotland was off to a good start.  I don’t understand the rules much for rugby, but I know that you score a try, which is like a touchdown, and can also score by kicking through the fieldgoal post type thingy.  Kinda like football… but moves a lot faster.  Scotland was up 10-0 early but the World Cup Champion South Africans came back and ended up winning by 4.  Since Scotland is not very highly ranked it was a big deal they almost won the game, but disappointing that they gave up the lead and lost.  Good game though and lots of fun!  I’ve been missing sport so watching something in person was absolutely amazing!

After the game the entire stadium emptied out and walked into town (Edinburgh) to have a post game drink.  We all got a beer at a pub and watched Ireland lose to the All Blacks and the beautiful Dan Carter, who plays for New Zealand.  After we got a snack and a beer, I headed back to Glasgow to relax and catch up on some sleep on the train while the others stayed behind to party the night away.  After seeing a game in person, rugby is a fantastic sport!  I’m going to try and go to another game soon- likely the Glasgow Warriors and the Edinburgh team in January.  Should be amazing!

Other than rugby, I finally got around to playing beer pong with Liam, the Cockney Londoner with the cool accent, Elizabeth and 2 of the Americans.  The red cups Mom sent from home worked a lot better than the crap cups they have here, and we played a good number of games before we were all too drunk to carry on.  Beer pong was a great success this time around- Thankfully!  I think we’ll be playing a lot more often now that people know what they’re doing and not just chucking the ping pong ball around.

I’m adding my rugby gallery to the end of this post so everyone can see some pictures from the game.  If you click on the photos, the caption will give you a description of what’s going on in the picture.

Hope things are good back in California- leave some comments to keep me up to date on life and everything!

-Catherine

Here’s some long delayed photos from my birthday.  You can click on the photos and look at the gallery with the captions and everything.  If you want the full scoop, there’s a whole description of the night a couple posts down.  Also look at the amusement park photos below!

I figured I haven’t posted some photos of my adventures in a while so I’d give you guys some photos of random adventures.  Here are the ones from going to the amusement park in Kilmarnock with the ladies on a very very rainy day making for an interesting roller coaster riding experience.

Yes, I am aware that it has been over a week since I have last posted.  So sue me.  It has been a busy, crazy, wonderful, confusing, all of the above kind of week.  

I am officially 20 years old, which to people here means “I’m getting old”.  The only girl older than me that I live with is my roommate Laura, who turns 21 in the beginning of next year.  Everyone else is 18, and not being a teenager makes me old.  Before you know it I’ll be spouting wrinkles out of my face, my limbs will give, I’ll need a hip replacement, and I’ll just wear pajamas all day.

My birthday festivities were absolutely amazing.  I’ve had good birthdays before, but my birthday this year was far and wide one of the best birthdays of my life.  My parents managed to send me some gifts so it was like it wasn’t all that different from any other year.  Back in Santa Barbara I’d get a few cards and some little things from my parents.  I had thought I’d start feeling homesick around my birthday, but after I realized it’s just about the same as it would be in California, the feeling went away.  The girls in my flat and the Americans gave me a little surprise birthday party at midnight of the 29th/30th complete with cake, ice cream (mind you, it’s almost snowing outside), and a blow-up doll we dubbed William Wallace.  I wasn’t expecting anything so I was geniunely shocked they put so much effort into making my birthday all festive and fun for me.  I opened my parents gifts they gave me during my mini party: an Obama t-shirt and Obama bobblehead.  A little awkward opening them since 2 of the Americans are Republicans, but I was excited so I don’t think it really mattered much.

My actual birthday was… epic.  No exaggeration.  I had been planning on doing Pub Golf for about a month before my birthday had even come up in conversation after doing our last pub crawl.  Pub Golf essentially requires all participants to dress up like golfers and go around to 9 holes (pubs) and drink different drinks in a certain number of pars (gulps), aiming for the lowest score to “win”.  I had organized the whole thing: all the different Underground stops we were doing, the rules, the addresses of the pubs, the pars for all the drinks, and the drink progression.  We left the flat around 6:30 and headed down to Curlers for our first drink: Jaegerbombs.  I managed to round up 10 people for pub golfing, a good showing if I say so myself, so ordering 10 Jaegerbombs got me a strange stare but as we got drunker and stopped caring as much people were staring, all the insecurity about it faded away.

Jaegerbomb consumed, we hopped on the Underground, unable to lean or sit down while the train was moving (per pub golfing rules), swaying back and forth with the train until it got to the next stop.  One tequila shot, pint of Guinness, bottle of Corona, vodka lemonade, sambuca, white wine, blue girlie drink, and apple sour shot later, we landed on Buchanan Street properly drunk out of our minds, William Wallace in tow decked out in my Giants jersey.  Megan puked on the street.  We were refused from Waxy O’Connor’s (the 9th hole).  And I fell onto the street on Buchanan.  Twice.  Bruises to prove it.  To end the evening, and complete the course, we descended on Bar Buddha, who carry the most delicious strawberry cosmopolitans, and from there the rest of the night gets a bit fuzzy.  I spilled over half of my cosmo, somehow got someone to buy me another one, comforted a drunk girl in the bathroom, and took a cab home, falling asleep in my bed with all my clothes on.  I spottily remember the getting home part of the story, and still have no idea why I just up and left Buddha in the middle of the night.  It’s a mystery.

After the recovery, I stayed in and watched my first Warriors game of the season instead of tramping around for Halloween.  I’m pretty optimistic about the squad this year.  Nellie always does a good job with the team, and I feel like we’ve gotten bigger (height wise, of course), so the rebounding has gotten a lot better.  Still miss Baron Davis but the new guys have stepped up pretty well so far.  We’ve still got swagger and attitude, and that’ll do us well this season.  I’m amazed Matt Barnes is doing so well out in Phoenix.  He’s starting for them and scored something like 21 points last night, +18 differential.  Crazy.  Happy for him, though… Barnes was a good guy for Golden State just like Baron Davis.  No hate there.

It’s going to be a long day or two for me since I’ve slacked on my papers and have to get down and dirty with them.  It’ll be like studying for midterms: very very little sleep and pounding tons of information into your brain at once in a very short amount of time.  Luckily I did a good job today and have a focused topic for my paper (and an interesting one at that), so it shouldn’t be too painful tomorrow afternoon sitting down and just doing it.  

I’m going to post all of the pub golfing pictures to my flickr account so you can click over there if you want to oogle at the ridiculousness that was my birthday.

Hope things are well back in the States!

-Catherine