congrats to everyone in the UK who got into uni today!
the rest of your life’s just beginning, and it’s going to be amazing ♥
all packed up!
after exactly six weeks of rock-licking, camping, fossil-hunting, tinned food, drunken nights, weird insects, amazing scenery, french chavs and “r-r-radio flaixbac!”, we’re finally going home to blighty in the morning!
i promise i’ll try to bring the sunshine back with me ♥
this time next week i’ll be in the south of france
soaking up the evening sunshine with the geology crew and a few beers, having set up our huge tents & had an explore around the sweet little town
cannot waait! ♥
every student-rented property around here comes with so much random tat in the garden
seriously, our house came with a mangled pub umbrella, a tyre, a broken table, a wheelbarrow and a ladder (through the window of the shed). it must be our landlord’s old stuff, or just things that have been thrown over the walls - other peoples’ gardens are even more of a scrapyard! i propose we use this to our advantage, form teams, club all our garden-tat together, and hold a student-edition scrapheap challenge in the park. let’s do this, cardiff!
he vuelto!
THAT’S RIGHT, MY LITTLE FRIENDS
i’m back from two tentacle-tastic weeks in spain - climbing mountains, cleaning pubs out of ceverza & sidra, and gorging ourselves on octopus and chorizo! luarca was a lavely fishing town in which we perfected the art of cider-pouring (you have to do it from a height into the glass to make it fizzy), swam in the river that runs through the town (much to the amusement of the locals), and sang some epic karaoke in the bar on the last night. the hotel was sweet but the food they provided wasn’t too great - pure carbs every evening really doesn’t do you any good! all we had was chips-and-battered-questionable-meat for a week - so on the last night we had a gander around the local restaurants and ended up having a lavish meal of ox steak and vegetables, which was essentially the best thing in the world. in the daytimes we carried out various tasks along the coast, making friends with lizards & feral cats, checking out a bunch of sweet folds and sketching like pros. aw yiss.
the second week was even better; the hostel in cistierna was gorgeous, with plush rooms and incredible views of the mountains! we spent the daytimes producing a geological map of the peaks and valleys, through wind, rain, sun, snow, hail and lightning storms - and spent the evenings chilling out with a few beers and mucho banter in the bar before bed. each day in the mountains we were followed around by a huge labrador-bear-dog called gunther, and found some amazing limestone caves to have lunch in when it rained. the food at the hostel was so much better - a buffet set-up, with choices of soups, pasta with sauces, stews, vegetables, calamari and the most delicious chips. the best part was definitely getting to know even more people on my course a lot better; everyone’s just hilarious! in all, hard work but great fun. me gusta ♥
my silly little digital camera decided it wasn’t going to work half the time so i don’t have a lot of photos, but i’ll pop the ones i’ve managed to scavenge in another post!
got wifi!
which is pronounced “weefee” here, amazing. this hostel is GORGEOUS - we’ve got the big room at the back with a view of the mountains, big comfy beds and the lushest ensuite! it’ll be so nice to come back to this plushness after every single day up in the rainy, snowy mountains. this week in luarca was absolutely brilliant and hilarious - free wine with every meal, becoming pros at pouring the local cider and an epic last night with delicious ox steak, loud karaoke with the locals and copious ceverza. just the most wonderful place! this next week’s going to be really tough, but we’ll still find a way to have funtimes. viva españa! ♥
smokin’
after today’s lavely fieldtrip left everyone in the mood for summer, my friend organised an amazing impromptu barbeque in his garden with home-made burgers, kebabs, sausages & bacon butties! it’s still really chilly here in cardiff - only about 7°C (45°F) at best in the evenings - but there’s nothing like sitting round a hot, crackling barbie with a bottle of cider and lots of friends! everything smells of smoke now, haha - so worth it! ♥
the dinosaur hunters
i could write an absolutely massively nerdy & detailed account of my dorset fieldtrip, and maybe i will on my student blog - but essentially, it was pure jurassic brilliance! i won’t bore you with the geological details - none of us would ever have imagined we’d reach the “rocks are saweeet!” stage, but we have (we can’t help it; thrusting, intrusive dykes and slaty cleavage gets us pretty hard) - but we basically mapped and sketched like pros, found some very sexy fossils and got fairly smished on the last night in the dinosaur-themed bar. i love that my course is so sociable - it was great to get to know a load more of my coursemates, and just chill on the beaches together in the sun at lunchtime with ice creams & chippy chips. despite the seven a.m. starts, all-day walking (often up massive hills - my legs, they are made of steeel!) and very unflattering all-weather clothing, it was bare hilare and thoroughly banterous - especially watching our lecturers get completely smashed on rounds of shots because they are total lads. next week: cornwall! ♥
off to an amazing start!
it’s only three days into second year and we’re already loving life 2k11. we’ve already been out a couple of nights and had a lush pub crawl on sunday night; many more to come! it’s actually brilliant living in a proper housing district because the pubs aren’t full of freshers (goodness, we feel old already), and there are so many more older students to meet. our house is utterly lush (i’ll get some piccies up of the rest of it when we’ve been to ikea and decorated it more), and my room.. well, see for yourself! i LOVE it, it’s so cosy and homely. ♥
we’re getting a tellybox soon so we can all cwtch up on the sofas and watch our favourite shows, and i think my housemate is cooking us all paella tonight which will be scrummy yumboes. we’ve got a caveman-themed party to go to later which could be absolutely hilarious! bring on the rest of the year, cardiff.
to follow/catch up on my uni antics and student tricks & tips, follow my diary of a fresher!
just played the most wonderful prank on our flatmates
two of them went out and left their doors unlocked.. big mistake! we completely swapped their entire rooms around - mattresses, bedding, clothes, shelf contents, everything that was on the floor, decorations - and it’s absolutely stellar! the best part is that one’s a guy and one’s a girl, so they’re completely & utterly different now. i am definitely locking my room religiously from now on to avoid any revenge-attacks, haha! top-notch student life. ♥
as colossal drunken roars fill the air
my flatmates and i snuggle down for a movie instead, haha! we’re all so tired, so while everyone else is off to hit the clubs we’re brewing the hot chocolate. best ♥
studybossing!
study∙boss (v.): to study like an absolute pro for an extended length of time so as to completely and utterly destroy an impending exam with the incredible wealth of knowledge that results.
yesterday’s studybossing sesh in the twenty-four hour library (which ended at half three in the morning, crikey basoomas) did turn into a late-night magician and fraping class, though. ali kept doing tricks with pennies, and molly’s facebook URL got changed to “legsopen24.7”, which she can never change back, ahahaha. nevertheless, i’m still going to hopefully own this exam. fingers crossed! ♥
it’s nice to know the PhD students are just as immature as we are
they still giggle at the phrases “gneiss cleavage” and “intrusive dykes” as much as we do. to quote one of them on facebook just now: “i do love a good intrusive dyke, but i really don’t miss revising them.. prefer to just casually dip in and out…”
cheeky!
so the boys have started keeping a wank-log on the kitchen noticeboard
it’s called “the masturbation station”, and each entry is defined by categories like “clean-up required”, “quality of the porn”, “location” and “intensity”.
this is following on from last semester’s “poo chronicles”, which i’m not even going to go into because i’m about to make dinner, haha. looove my weird & wonderful flatmates. ♥
