The Xchange: February 2013

Many Thursdays ago, Flat 1.2 + Clement participated in a glow in the dark volleyball tournament. It was less glowy than we thought it would be, but we were glow-painted up and I had my tie dye spandies on. It was a rough display of volleyball but I was happy to be playing again and it was an experience, haha. After that we went to Arena, which I have decided is not a fun place to be. The music is very repetitive when we go out :s Also the DJ kept talking over songs. Ah well!

(I am trying to be Popeye in this picture)

The last week or so I've been going out to intermediate volleyball, which is mildly like training? We do a few drills and scrimmage for an hour or so on Thursday and also have a few games left. We won our game on Sunday :) I'm also going to join the girl's team for practices in the next week coming up, which should be fun!
Last Sunday Catherine, Brandon, Ben and I went to Bath for a day trip. What a beauuuutiful town! We went to a very authentic tea shop for lunch and got quiche and chicken casserole, yum. We walked around, soaking in the beauty for a while. We went to the Roman Baths, which was quite incredible - there is just so much history here it is insane.

I handed in my first history essay this week as well, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm really scared to get anything back through, I feel like they mark a lot harder here. I have a few more to get through (due March 7 and 14th), which is a bit stressful when all I want to do is travel! Hopefully I get just buckle down for a few days and get everything mostly done.
Last night a friend who lives a bit down the road had a party where English people had to dress like international students and vice versa. I wore a ridiculous British flag dress because I didn't feel like being creative. It was a fun night, although I still can't really say I met many British people. It's always fun hanging out with all the international folk though.

On Wednesday I am going to Edinburgh to visit Cat, which I am suuuuper excited about!!! Scotland is supposed to be SO beautiful :) I'm there until Sunday morning, then Bristol for the day while I wait for my bus. Should be super fun! x

Successful first weekend in London! We got in at around 6pm on Friday and experienced opening the door to our hostel room for the first night... super interesting, lemme tell ya. I was picturing a kind of a 1940's hospital room scenario (as in a bunch of beds just lined up?), but we walked into a very small space with four bunkbeds for the eight of us. I was so happy to be travelling with my eight flatmates. I don't think I could have handled sleeping with strangers with just a little weird curtain separating us.

We decided Friday would be a little bit more low key because we just got in and wanted to explore a bit - we made our way to Piccadilly Circus on the tube. The tube is stupid expensive, but we bought day passes and I think it saved us a decent amount of money. Piccadilly circus is incredibly cool - the building are all beautiful and old, but have tv screens and advertisements all over them. I'm surprised I liked the contrast, I feel like that's something that would normally annoy me. We found a little pub after a bit of wandering and grabbed dinner - I had a chicken pot pie and a cider - all delicious.

After reuniting with Ben, who had joined us from France, we explored the city. We saw Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, and about a million beautiful old buildings. I probably saw other monuments but wasn't quite aware what was what. Regardless, everything was beautiful lit up at night. I've seen a thousand pictures of Big Ben, etc. but it's really cool to see it for yourself. There is so much detail in the stonework, it's amazing. There is also about a thousand statues of men on horses - I could name very few of them but I'm sure they were important.

Properly exhausted about walking about for [probably] hours, we retired to our hostel. It's less creepy when you're exhausted.

Saturday morning we had our generous breakfast of corn flakes and white toast, and the most horrific instant coffee known to mankind. But, free is free and it got us through the morning. We made our way to the British museum. The majority of London's museums are free, which I find incredible and awesome. We saw a ton of artefacts from Egypt, Rome, etc. We saw Cleopatra's mummy, and some bodies that were preserved just by the way the sand/elements were even though they were too poor for a proper embalming. Many gorgeous vases, plaques, anything you want. Pretty sure you could spend a week there and not see everything.

For lunch Elena [our mom and tour guide] took us to Camden Market. It was a very large open market with toooons of food, clothes, trinkets, and vintage clothes. Very cool to look around and take it all in! There was a little open cafe with a chandelier over it. There was a wall with horse statues coming out of it?! We also did some shopping on Oxford Street, where there are way too many people with nothing better to do than shop. Four floors of everything. We went to a few until we were all walked out. I met our other Exeter friends at a bar right beside the hostel for dinner and drinks, which was cool. I really like them all, and half of them live across from me but I never see them. Should probably get out of my bubble once in a while.

So we wanted to avoid enormous cover fees (20 pounds in Piccadilly Circus is not okay), so we took a tube down further into London. We went into a place with no cover, but that is because it was an old people bar playing old people music. The boys tried to convince us to stay but thaaaat was not happening. We went back a few blocks and found a place with a not horrible line and cover. It was a cute place, kind of house looking and places to dance or just stand around. DJ was super into his list, watched his chug an entire beer when a song he really liked came on. He played a lot of Missy Elliot which was kiiiiind of awesome! England has it right music wise - I love being able to sing along when I dance, and that's almost exclusively what they play (cheesy 90s, really popular 90s/2000s, songs from a year ago I've heard enough times to know). Anyway we realized it was 3:30 at some point and some people wanted food, so food & hostel & bed.

Sunday was fun rousing the troops, but we managed to get out for 10am check out. We attempted the National gallery, but a few of us did not have the attention span for religious and pastoral art in large volumes. About half of us stayed there while the other half (of which I was a part of) went and had lunch at a lovely little Thai place. I picked out my usual chicken with cashew, Elena and Jess got a great green curry chicken, and Ben and Natalie got a noodley dish then we all just spilt everything. Yuuum. We attempted more museums afterwards. Natural history was the most beautiful building of London, I've decided, and was decently cool inside as well. We didn't want to wait in line for the dinos (there were children everywhere - who were extremely well behaved, by the way) so we moved on to the science museum. We did a short walk through of the science museum and then of course we went shopping again (poor Ben). We popped into a Starbucks and became delirious - Elena completely fell asleep and the rest of us laughed at anything and everything. Also no one could form a sentence, so that was helpful. "We'll go to the thing.... and then the thing... and then the thing." "Okay, yep." We trained home after a bit of relaxing at the hostel and then back into school by Monday morning!

Hostel Room