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
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