But it's so prettyyyyyy. I felt like I was in a snowglobe! Hehe. (:
11/29/10
Edinburgh + Snow = womg so pretty~~!!! :DD
11/14/10
Tea Tiiiiiiiiiiimeeeee :D
When you try to think of things people do that are super British, posh tea parties with tiered platters, scones, and cupcakes probably comes up at least once. As I'm sure you all know, I'm a huge fatty. Like huge. Like ohmygodyouresoobeseyourejustspillingallovertheplace. So obviously, the idea of having afternoon tea with DESSERTS LIKE CUPCAKES AND TARTS intrigued me. a lot. Also it just *sounds* classy to have afternoon tea, and I love to make myself think I'm classy. :D A few weekends ago, my friend and I spontaneously decided to finally make this happen- we already had a place in mind for a while. It was a bright sunny Sunday morning- perfect for a tea party! (: We got the afternoon tea for two and sat ourselves outside. We were considering dressing up all classy before, but in the end couldn't be bothered to do it. It's okay- it was still delicious, and the tableware was so cute! :D
strawberries and cream tea :D so fruityyy (just like you.) hahaha :D
yummmmmmm :DD feeling classy! because i am.
Scones, tiny cupcakes and tarts, and sandwiches all washed down with tea. Needless to say it was a very satisfying and filling brunch. Part of me thought this afternoon tea thing would be just a one time thing for me since it was a liiiittle pricey. I really should have known better. This week I had a huge french macaron craving, triggered by this week's episode of a certain tv show I won't mention the name of (I'm a little ashamed). I ended up dragging one of my friends with me to this cafe for tea and macarons.
why are all the plates always so pretty!? i wish i could take it home with me.
It was... mmmmm..... delicious. And just what I needed to unwind from a week spent mostly working on final assignments. :D The macarons of course weren't as good as the ones we got in Lyon, but it still kicked the craving. Even better, the almond tea I got was delicious. It reminded me of almond milk tea, which I've been supersuper craving from Half&Half all semester.
almond tea! (+ a really yummy biscuit on the side)
I'm planning on going with my friend to get tea sometime this week at a place more nearby. Next weekend we're going to try to go back to Cuthbert's (the macaron place) to have high tea for two, with the tiered plates and everything. We sadly didn't find out about this option till *after* we ordered. I think this is the start of a new addiction... D: I seriously don't know how I'm not diabetic yet. Aghhh.
11/4/10
Absolute Rubbish
I'm sorry but the University of Edinburgh is such.... bullshit. :| The city and the experience is fine, wonderful, but I am not a fan at all of the uni itself. I really hate this school. -_____-
1. how can you trust anyone when your DoS completely misinforms you about one of your classes, resulting in you missing lecture for the first six weeks and being completely unaware that the final assignment worth your entire grade has been out this ENTIRE time
2. Hudson Beare classrooms #4-8 are in hudson beare, but hudson beare classroom #3 is in Sanderson. How does this even make sense?
3. These fluid mechanics 2 labs are such a waste of time. You don't learn anything but it takes hours because of repetitive tedious bullshit calculations.
4. No one tells you anything. Ever.
maybe I just hate big schools in general. Nothing makes sense here though. I'm so fed up with it. :|
1. how can you trust anyone when your DoS completely misinforms you about one of your classes, resulting in you missing lecture for the first six weeks and being completely unaware that the final assignment worth your entire grade has been out this ENTIRE time
2. Hudson Beare classrooms #4-8 are in hudson beare, but hudson beare classroom #3 is in Sanderson. How does this even make sense?
3. These fluid mechanics 2 labs are such a waste of time. You don't learn anything but it takes hours because of repetitive tedious bullshit calculations.
4. No one tells you anything. Ever.
maybe I just hate big schools in general. Nothing makes sense here though. I'm so fed up with it. :|
11/3/10
10/26/10
THE Weekend.
I think in everyone's life there are a couple events that you'll just never forget in your life, ever. They make such a deep impression on you, it's just impossible to erase, even if you want to. This was definitely one of those moments. This is always going to be THAT weekend. I still can't believe it happened, because if you told me about this, I just wouldn't believe you. It sounds too ridiculous.
So I planned a trip to Lyon with Thimal (my friend from Tech who's also at Edinburgh Uni with me.) We were going to stay with my high school friend Jonathan who was studying abroad there and his host family from Wednesday to Friday. Then on saturday they were going to Switzerland for a week vacation, so Thimal and I just reserved a hotel for Saturday night and planned to leave Lyon early Sunday morning by the TGV train to Brussels, Belgium, spend a couple hours there then take a plane from the Brussels airport to London, then connect from London to Edinburgh and be back by Sunday night. I won't really comment on Lyon- it's one of my favorite cities in the world now and not even what happened after we left will change that. The days we spent in Lyon were freaking awesome- I felt like this was where I should've studied abroad- not Edinburgh. Anyway. Because Jonathan was leaving on Saturday morning, Thimal suggested a spontaneous day trip to Geneva, Switzerland by TGV train on that Saturday... and I figured sure why not. We really shouldn't have because of the huge strike going on right now in France, screwing over public transportation everywhere. Ironically Thimal got an email from Lauren Stolper our study abroad advisor from Tech telling him it was best not to go to France right now because public transport's a mess. It was kind of too late by then though since we were already in Lyon.
Anyway... so Saturday morning, Thimal & I dropped off our duffel bags in the hotel we booked and then took the train to Geneva. You have to make a stop at Bellegarde at the edge of the border of France, and then transfer... but when we got to the Bellegarde Station, which is like in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't a train going to Geneva. Turns out we were supposed to take a coach into Geneva. There were tons and tons of people waiting to go at the stop... and three buses that showed up maybe half an hour after we got there... but me and Thimal and a bunch of Eastern European teenagers couldn't make it onto any of them b/c they were too full. After waiting some more, another bus came to take us to Geneva. You'd think that as a bus driver on the border of France, you'd know your way into main cities, but no. This bus driver did not know how to get to Geneva. The teenagers were showing him google maps on their phones, he was asking people in the next lane through the window, he even parked the bus and ran into a gas station to get directions. wtf. Somehow though, we made it to Geneva. Wandered around for a while sight seeing and stuff. It is a nice city... and I got swiss chocolate, which was delicious. When we went to the train station at night though, we went to the platform for Lyon... but no one was there. Neither was the train. ... so we thought maybe we went to the wrong platform. Asked someone at the station where the train to Lyon was and found out... turns out suprimme in french means cancelled, which was what it said on the board. I forgot that word. In fact, there were NO trains going to Lyon for the rest of the night because of the strikes going on in France. Yeah. We were stranded in Geneva. We considered taking a taxi back to Lyon, but after asking the taxi driver and finding it'd cost over 500 euros, we ended up just staying in a hotel across from the train station for the night. Neither of us could believe this actually just happened. Luckily the hotel let us borrow a small netbook in the lobby so we looked up the next trains to lyon and tried figuring out how we would be able to still catch a train to Brussels to still make our flight back to Edinburgh. That was Friday night.
Saturday morning, we were thankfully able to get out of Switzerland and back to Lyon, but we definitely still had no time to rest or anything. I waited at the ticket office at the train station so I could find out whether or not we could use our old train tickets to go to Brussels without paying more because of the strike and Thimal took the metro to go back to the hotel we had reserved, get our bags, try to see if we could get refunded since we never made it to the hotel and came back. After a lot of waiting, I found out we could use our tickets without paying more, and Thimal got back in time for the 1pm train to Paris,where we'd then take a train from Paris to Brussels. When we got to Paris though, there were no trains that went to Brussels. I asked a security person and it turns out that you had to go to another train station to go to Brussels... but because he was speaking in French, I couldn't remember what station he said, and there's like 5 different paris train stations. So we just took the metro to the one listed on our original train ticket to brussels. The metro took us like half an hour, and the station was located right next to Disney Paris, which sort of made everything less bad since... well it's freaking Disneyland. The weird thing is that when we tried to insert our metro ticket into the gate thing to leave the metro area, it wouldn't accept the ticket... but luckily I found a gate that was broken/open so we just snuck through there. We looked at the listings for the next trains to Brussels... but even if we took them there was no way we'd get to the airport in time for our flight... so we thought maybe we could take the London train at 7pm instead so we could at least make it to the connection from London to Edinburgh. We talked to the ticket office asking if we could do this but because the London train was Eurostar, not TGV, we wouldnt have been able to use our tickets. Also the train was fully booked. Not caring though we decided we would just sneak onto the train anyway since no one's been checking our tickets at this point anyway whenever we were on the train. With like 2 or 3 hours to kill we went to Disney Village, the equivalent of Downtown Disney, for a little, then went back to the station and waited. And waited. But for some reason the platform # for the london train wouldn't show up even 10 minutes before. When it finally did, we tried going down to the platform but there were only two escalators leading down, and they were both going up. ... i don't know when, but a few minutes later, probably 5 minutes after the scheduled time of departure, the escalators were going down again, but when we went down there and asked some other people, it turns out that the london train just left. And now both escalators were only going down. .... so following my first instinct, we both ran up the down escalator. It was a really freaking long escalator too. And when we got to the top I totally just tripped where the steps are level and started going down it again, but quickly managed to get up and get out. And so.. we decided... to take the ticket office's advice and go to La Gare du Nord, where there were more trains to London. Of course, the metro gates *had* to give us more trouble so even though we bought another ticket to get through, they wouldn't work. The broken gate wasn't open anymore... but I saw these people going through the gate for disabled people and rushed through after them. Thimal didn't react quickly enough and got caught in the gates... and I freaked out wondering what would happen if we got separated, but he just completely pushed the gates back open and got out. The metro took like... I want to say 40 minutes before we got the closest stop to the train station and took a cab to La Gare du Nord. It was around 9pm by this time. Thimal talked to the information booth (in English) because by now I was too tired of everything to be bothered stumbling through broken french to communicate with people. The guy at the booth was so incredibly nice and helpful. Oh, and before all of this at some point that day, Thimal and I talked about how ridiculous this trip had been to that point- we went through so many modes of transportation, all we had to do now was swim or take like... a freaking boat. I laughed and said that was impossible. The guy at the info booth told us our best best to get back to the UK was to take a TGV train (no extra cost thank god) to Calais on the tip of France, and take a ferry across the English Channel to Dover. Yep. Turns out we really were taking a boat during this.... adventure. Unfortunately the next train to Calais wasn't till 10am the next day.
....
We already spent a lot staying in a hotel the night before, so you know what we did? We stayed up. All night. At the train station. We were actually being like hobos in a train station in Paris. There were real hobos there too. After a couple hours of heart to heart talking, it was getting really cold so we went looking for somewhere warmer and ended up going downstairs and just.... sitting on the floor, just waiting. We played stupid paper golf games, talked, and at one point there was an announcement asking everyone to leave the station because they would be cleaning, so we were also trying to figure out what we'd do if we actually got kicked out, and on top of all of that, still trying to process everything that's happened so far. Too ridiculous. Luckily we didn't get kicked out. The janitor did come down to put something away, but he just sort of looked at us & said bonjour, put stuff away in the closet, and left. He's probably seen it all. He's seen people like us, in messed up situations like this. I ended up making paper stars from the sheet of paper we played golf with and we hid them around that room. It was like our freaking home/sanctuary for the night, so it was like a way of "commemorating" it. I think. At around 5am we figured it'd be safe enough to go back upstairs without risking being caught... and we found heaters around the station. omg. So much love for warm heaters... I felt like I could just stay there forever. We met a Pakistani guy who just had a 2 month holiday in Spain, during which time he got thrown in jail for 3 days for punching a guy who was swearing at him. Turns out he was also thrown in jail a couple times in London before too. Other than that though he seemed like a pretty nice and friendly guy. He was also going to Calais, but earlier at 7am. It was an indirect train though, and I just didn't want to take any more risks, so we just waited till the 10am train anyway. While sitting by the heater and waiting, the police randomly went up the Thimal and asked to see his ID, he's guessing because the police officer was staring him down and so he just stared back at him. I don't know what I would've done if he actually got hauled away or something. I looked at the other police officer with him straight in the eye wondering if I had to show my passport too, but he didn't do anything. Thankfully after looking at his passport though they just left.
At 10, the train to Calais arrived, and we sat down ready to pass the fuck out after such a long horrendous night. But constantly people were going over to us because apparently we were sitting in their seats. Turns out that train had reserved seating, and I guess it was also overbooked because tons of people just sat/stood in the spaces between each train compartment. At this point, I wasn't surprised I didn't have a seat. I mean really, nothing at this point could really surprise me. So... I sat in the middle of one of the compartments. Thimal sat on the edge of one and kept getting hit by the door whenever people walked in or out to use the bathroom. I dozed off after the train started moving but when I woke up a few minutes later and looked to my left, he wasn't there anymore and I freaked out a little wondering where he could've gone. After looking that direction a little more though... I realized there were.... two legs sticking out across the hall in the compartment on the other side of the door. He just gave up trying to sleep/sit where he was before and just lied on the ground squished between the wall and the seats and slept. I don't really blame him. After the first stop most of the people got off though so we were able to actually sit properly for the rest of the way to Calais.
Calais, I've decided, is a very nice place. Pedestrians have right of way, it's surprising. Also right when we got off the train Thimal realized he forgot his Lyon flag in the train so he had to run back to where our cab was and tried to get back in to retrieve it. While I waited for him and watched our stuff, one of the people working inside the train popped his head out and talked to me, I guess cause he was wondeirng why I was just standing there. I told him my friend forgot a ... thing on the train. I forgot the word for flag... but he was so nice he said if he found out he would give it to him, which a few minutes later, they did. The next step now was to find the ferry to Dover. I overheard a family speaking English as we walked outside so I immediately asked them if they knew where it was, and luckily they'd just came from there. Yayy random Australian tourists! We got to the ticket station for the ferry and bought tickets... turns out we just barely missed the Ferry though, so we had to wait another half hour for the next one. The ferry was like.. a freaking cruiseliner or something. I was expecting some ghetto ferry with minimal amenities, but this ferry had restaurants, lots of posh looking sitting areas and even a customs store and slot machines and video game machines. Yeah. We went from bumming it up in a parisian train station to sitting in leather seats on a ferry across the English Channel in one day.
Throughout this entire time since we got to Paris and decided we'd just go to London instead of Belgium, we'd been keeping in contact with our friends who were studying abroad at UCL asking if we could just crash with them on Monday night. Thimal's phone died so we just relied on my phone... which crappy as it is, luckily has an amazing battery life. When we got to Dover we bought euroline tickets that would take us to victoria station in London in a few minutes, and then from victoria to edinburgh at 9am the next day. So... we took the tube to King's Cross Station to meet up with Larissa and Sam. I have no idea how, but somehow while trying to meet up with them in front of the station, I just looked to the right while calling Larissa and saw her right in front of me on the phone with Sam. We waiting a little longer for Sam to find the three of us, then went to his place and dropped off our stuff. Thimal and I finally got to brush our teeth after like freaking... two nights. Don't judge me. I was so over caring about hygiene during this time and I don't care at all what you think of me for it. Anyway then we went to Subway to get food. Apparently Larissa & Sam heard that Bruno Mars & Travie McCoy were going to be at an afterparty at a club called Fabric later that night. I really figured I needed a happy ending to this long miserable ordeal, so we bought tickets from someone in his halls to go to it. We went back to his halls first for a little and they drank. Larissa & Thimal were probably only like... tipsy at most but Sam was pretty drunk. So one journey through the tube later, I was in a random part of London, the only person completely sober, trying to find this club. We got a little bit lost but there were a lot of maps around too so we eventually made our way to Fabric. It was ridiculous inside. Bruno Mars & Travie weren't going to show up till 12:30, which was in like an hour and a half or something so we just danced for a while and enjoyed ourselves. It started getting really crowded though so we got off the dance floor and wandered around a little for fresh air. We went to a really empty part of the club blaring house music and stayed until midnight when we figured we should go back to the main area to see Bruno Mars. It was even MORE crowded than before though. Like... it was so crowded I literally could NOT move because I just kept getting pushed and shoved everywhere and there was nothing we could do about it. Somehow we managed to escape... and tried to get back in through the side. I really think now I have the worst luck in the world. As we tried getting back in, I felt something wet splash onto my hair. I wasn't sure if it was someone's drink though or... ... something else. Freaking out completely, we tried getting back out again, and everyone in that general area started freaking out too. It definitely wasn't alcohol that got on me, but I still didn't want to believe it. We lost Larissa, so Thimal went back to find her and Sam took me to the bathroom where I frantically tried to clean the right side of my hair and not think at all about what it could be. You'd think that being puked on after everything I've been through, I'd just lose it finally and start crying, but I was just pissed. I wanted to cry, but I also just completely let it go. Everything was going so terribly already, part of me wasn't surprised at all that someone fucking threw up on me. I swear if anything else happened while we were at the club to me I probably would've punched someone, I was so upset. Part of me really just wanted to get hit by a car and just die. I give up on life. You win. I quit. We sort of tried going back into the dance floor one last time when we couldn't find Larissa and Sam, but after a little more pushing and shoving we both gave up. The DJ was constantly yelling at the crowd that Bruno Mars wouldn't show up if everyone kept pushing and shoving and I just decided that this was clearly not meant to be. We weren't going to see Bruno Mars. We found Thimal & Larissa and just cabbed back to Sam's where I washed my hair again in the sink with soap. I really couldn't be bothered to shower or change. (Seriously don't care if you judge me. I know it sounds so gross of me but I couldn't be bothered at all. I really just wanted to go back to Edinburgh.) Larissa went home and Sam was so nice he let me have his bed while he and Thimal slept on the floor. We had to wake up at 7 to make it to have enough time for breakfast and make it to the bus on time though so it wasn't really that much sleep. The day was so long though, any sleep I could get was well appreciated.
The next day went surprisingly smoothly. Got the bus just barely on time and had to sit in the back with this old guy, who turned out to be very nice/interesting. He also gave us candy. After accepting candy from him the first time, I remembered when I was first leaving for Lyon and Shela told me not to take candy from strangers or accept drinks from sketchy guys. Of course I laughed it off and told her not to worry about it, because really what are the chances? Haha. I did both, turns out. Sorry Shela. (The drink part wasn't that bad though, it was still in Lyon at a club we went to. I just took half a shot of something that just tasted like grapefruit juice. In retrospect that was probably a terribly unsafe idea but... it's okay because I'm fine. And I was still with jonathan and his friends... although they were all really drunk.) Yeah. Other than that... not much happened all of today/Tuesday. Thank god. Being in the back of the bus kind of sucked because it was stuffy and the bathroom was right next to me... I bought a magazine at a rest stop that that cashier totally judged me for because it was the "man issue" of cosmo ,but i really needed something to occupy my time so i didn't care. Reading that for a couple hours probably didn't help me very much though on top of the stuffiness and portapotty smell in terms of making sure I didn't somehow get motion sickness for the second time in my life and vomit. I didn't vomit though. So glad. I wouldn't be surprised if I did, but I'm also glad I didn't.
Finally, FINALLY FINALLY at around 7pm, we got to Edinburgh. Sweet, sweet Edinburgh. Seriously I don't think I've ever been so happy to be here in my life. It was so surreal to be back in a city where I actually KNEW where the heck I was. We just spent the whole walk back taking it in... letting it set in that this stupid crazy ridiculously unbelievable adventure was over.
Seriously, maybe a while from now I'll be back to normal but right now, I don't think anything will ever upset me anymore. Thimal and I were joking about the terrible things that could happen between the bus ride and getting back to Kincaid's Court, and one of my theories was that the lift would be broken in my block, and when I took my shower the water would go cold (which happens randomly but not SUPER often.... but enough that I'm usually pretty wary in the shower), and while showering, the fire alarm would go off. Sure enough, the lift was out of order, and my shower went cold 5 minutes after I stepped in. Did it bother me though? Nope. Every problem seems so small now. It just doesn't upset me anymore. Proud to say I didn't once shed a single tear this entire trip. I guess in that way, these last 82 hours proved I'm probably stronger than I gave myself credit for. I'm also willing to believe anything is possible now. (Or at least... anything bad is, anyway.) Seriously though, I'm never doing that again.
I'm also never going to Switzerland, or France when there's a strike, again. Ever.
So I planned a trip to Lyon with Thimal (my friend from Tech who's also at Edinburgh Uni with me.) We were going to stay with my high school friend Jonathan who was studying abroad there and his host family from Wednesday to Friday. Then on saturday they were going to Switzerland for a week vacation, so Thimal and I just reserved a hotel for Saturday night and planned to leave Lyon early Sunday morning by the TGV train to Brussels, Belgium, spend a couple hours there then take a plane from the Brussels airport to London, then connect from London to Edinburgh and be back by Sunday night. I won't really comment on Lyon- it's one of my favorite cities in the world now and not even what happened after we left will change that. The days we spent in Lyon were freaking awesome- I felt like this was where I should've studied abroad- not Edinburgh. Anyway. Because Jonathan was leaving on Saturday morning, Thimal suggested a spontaneous day trip to Geneva, Switzerland by TGV train on that Saturday... and I figured sure why not. We really shouldn't have because of the huge strike going on right now in France, screwing over public transportation everywhere. Ironically Thimal got an email from Lauren Stolper our study abroad advisor from Tech telling him it was best not to go to France right now because public transport's a mess. It was kind of too late by then though since we were already in Lyon.
Anyway... so Saturday morning, Thimal & I dropped off our duffel bags in the hotel we booked and then took the train to Geneva. You have to make a stop at Bellegarde at the edge of the border of France, and then transfer... but when we got to the Bellegarde Station, which is like in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't a train going to Geneva. Turns out we were supposed to take a coach into Geneva. There were tons and tons of people waiting to go at the stop... and three buses that showed up maybe half an hour after we got there... but me and Thimal and a bunch of Eastern European teenagers couldn't make it onto any of them b/c they were too full. After waiting some more, another bus came to take us to Geneva. You'd think that as a bus driver on the border of France, you'd know your way into main cities, but no. This bus driver did not know how to get to Geneva. The teenagers were showing him google maps on their phones, he was asking people in the next lane through the window, he even parked the bus and ran into a gas station to get directions. wtf. Somehow though, we made it to Geneva. Wandered around for a while sight seeing and stuff. It is a nice city... and I got swiss chocolate, which was delicious. When we went to the train station at night though, we went to the platform for Lyon... but no one was there. Neither was the train. ... so we thought maybe we went to the wrong platform. Asked someone at the station where the train to Lyon was and found out... turns out suprimme in french means cancelled, which was what it said on the board. I forgot that word. In fact, there were NO trains going to Lyon for the rest of the night because of the strikes going on in France. Yeah. We were stranded in Geneva. We considered taking a taxi back to Lyon, but after asking the taxi driver and finding it'd cost over 500 euros, we ended up just staying in a hotel across from the train station for the night. Neither of us could believe this actually just happened. Luckily the hotel let us borrow a small netbook in the lobby so we looked up the next trains to lyon and tried figuring out how we would be able to still catch a train to Brussels to still make our flight back to Edinburgh. That was Friday night.
Saturday morning, we were thankfully able to get out of Switzerland and back to Lyon, but we definitely still had no time to rest or anything. I waited at the ticket office at the train station so I could find out whether or not we could use our old train tickets to go to Brussels without paying more because of the strike and Thimal took the metro to go back to the hotel we had reserved, get our bags, try to see if we could get refunded since we never made it to the hotel and came back. After a lot of waiting, I found out we could use our tickets without paying more, and Thimal got back in time for the 1pm train to Paris,where we'd then take a train from Paris to Brussels. When we got to Paris though, there were no trains that went to Brussels. I asked a security person and it turns out that you had to go to another train station to go to Brussels... but because he was speaking in French, I couldn't remember what station he said, and there's like 5 different paris train stations. So we just took the metro to the one listed on our original train ticket to brussels. The metro took us like half an hour, and the station was located right next to Disney Paris, which sort of made everything less bad since... well it's freaking Disneyland. The weird thing is that when we tried to insert our metro ticket into the gate thing to leave the metro area, it wouldn't accept the ticket... but luckily I found a gate that was broken/open so we just snuck through there. We looked at the listings for the next trains to Brussels... but even if we took them there was no way we'd get to the airport in time for our flight... so we thought maybe we could take the London train at 7pm instead so we could at least make it to the connection from London to Edinburgh. We talked to the ticket office asking if we could do this but because the London train was Eurostar, not TGV, we wouldnt have been able to use our tickets. Also the train was fully booked. Not caring though we decided we would just sneak onto the train anyway since no one's been checking our tickets at this point anyway whenever we were on the train. With like 2 or 3 hours to kill we went to Disney Village, the equivalent of Downtown Disney, for a little, then went back to the station and waited. And waited. But for some reason the platform # for the london train wouldn't show up even 10 minutes before. When it finally did, we tried going down to the platform but there were only two escalators leading down, and they were both going up. ... i don't know when, but a few minutes later, probably 5 minutes after the scheduled time of departure, the escalators were going down again, but when we went down there and asked some other people, it turns out that the london train just left. And now both escalators were only going down. .... so following my first instinct, we both ran up the down escalator. It was a really freaking long escalator too. And when we got to the top I totally just tripped where the steps are level and started going down it again, but quickly managed to get up and get out. And so.. we decided... to take the ticket office's advice and go to La Gare du Nord, where there were more trains to London. Of course, the metro gates *had* to give us more trouble so even though we bought another ticket to get through, they wouldn't work. The broken gate wasn't open anymore... but I saw these people going through the gate for disabled people and rushed through after them. Thimal didn't react quickly enough and got caught in the gates... and I freaked out wondering what would happen if we got separated, but he just completely pushed the gates back open and got out. The metro took like... I want to say 40 minutes before we got the closest stop to the train station and took a cab to La Gare du Nord. It was around 9pm by this time. Thimal talked to the information booth (in English) because by now I was too tired of everything to be bothered stumbling through broken french to communicate with people. The guy at the booth was so incredibly nice and helpful. Oh, and before all of this at some point that day, Thimal and I talked about how ridiculous this trip had been to that point- we went through so many modes of transportation, all we had to do now was swim or take like... a freaking boat. I laughed and said that was impossible. The guy at the info booth told us our best best to get back to the UK was to take a TGV train (no extra cost thank god) to Calais on the tip of France, and take a ferry across the English Channel to Dover. Yep. Turns out we really were taking a boat during this.... adventure. Unfortunately the next train to Calais wasn't till 10am the next day.
....
We already spent a lot staying in a hotel the night before, so you know what we did? We stayed up. All night. At the train station. We were actually being like hobos in a train station in Paris. There were real hobos there too. After a couple hours of heart to heart talking, it was getting really cold so we went looking for somewhere warmer and ended up going downstairs and just.... sitting on the floor, just waiting. We played stupid paper golf games, talked, and at one point there was an announcement asking everyone to leave the station because they would be cleaning, so we were also trying to figure out what we'd do if we actually got kicked out, and on top of all of that, still trying to process everything that's happened so far. Too ridiculous. Luckily we didn't get kicked out. The janitor did come down to put something away, but he just sort of looked at us & said bonjour, put stuff away in the closet, and left. He's probably seen it all. He's seen people like us, in messed up situations like this. I ended up making paper stars from the sheet of paper we played golf with and we hid them around that room. It was like our freaking home/sanctuary for the night, so it was like a way of "commemorating" it. I think. At around 5am we figured it'd be safe enough to go back upstairs without risking being caught... and we found heaters around the station. omg. So much love for warm heaters... I felt like I could just stay there forever. We met a Pakistani guy who just had a 2 month holiday in Spain, during which time he got thrown in jail for 3 days for punching a guy who was swearing at him. Turns out he was also thrown in jail a couple times in London before too. Other than that though he seemed like a pretty nice and friendly guy. He was also going to Calais, but earlier at 7am. It was an indirect train though, and I just didn't want to take any more risks, so we just waited till the 10am train anyway. While sitting by the heater and waiting, the police randomly went up the Thimal and asked to see his ID, he's guessing because the police officer was staring him down and so he just stared back at him. I don't know what I would've done if he actually got hauled away or something. I looked at the other police officer with him straight in the eye wondering if I had to show my passport too, but he didn't do anything. Thankfully after looking at his passport though they just left.
At 10, the train to Calais arrived, and we sat down ready to pass the fuck out after such a long horrendous night. But constantly people were going over to us because apparently we were sitting in their seats. Turns out that train had reserved seating, and I guess it was also overbooked because tons of people just sat/stood in the spaces between each train compartment. At this point, I wasn't surprised I didn't have a seat. I mean really, nothing at this point could really surprise me. So... I sat in the middle of one of the compartments. Thimal sat on the edge of one and kept getting hit by the door whenever people walked in or out to use the bathroom. I dozed off after the train started moving but when I woke up a few minutes later and looked to my left, he wasn't there anymore and I freaked out a little wondering where he could've gone. After looking that direction a little more though... I realized there were.... two legs sticking out across the hall in the compartment on the other side of the door. He just gave up trying to sleep/sit where he was before and just lied on the ground squished between the wall and the seats and slept. I don't really blame him. After the first stop most of the people got off though so we were able to actually sit properly for the rest of the way to Calais.
Calais, I've decided, is a very nice place. Pedestrians have right of way, it's surprising. Also right when we got off the train Thimal realized he forgot his Lyon flag in the train so he had to run back to where our cab was and tried to get back in to retrieve it. While I waited for him and watched our stuff, one of the people working inside the train popped his head out and talked to me, I guess cause he was wondeirng why I was just standing there. I told him my friend forgot a ... thing on the train. I forgot the word for flag... but he was so nice he said if he found out he would give it to him, which a few minutes later, they did. The next step now was to find the ferry to Dover. I overheard a family speaking English as we walked outside so I immediately asked them if they knew where it was, and luckily they'd just came from there. Yayy random Australian tourists! We got to the ticket station for the ferry and bought tickets... turns out we just barely missed the Ferry though, so we had to wait another half hour for the next one. The ferry was like.. a freaking cruiseliner or something. I was expecting some ghetto ferry with minimal amenities, but this ferry had restaurants, lots of posh looking sitting areas and even a customs store and slot machines and video game machines. Yeah. We went from bumming it up in a parisian train station to sitting in leather seats on a ferry across the English Channel in one day.
Throughout this entire time since we got to Paris and decided we'd just go to London instead of Belgium, we'd been keeping in contact with our friends who were studying abroad at UCL asking if we could just crash with them on Monday night. Thimal's phone died so we just relied on my phone... which crappy as it is, luckily has an amazing battery life. When we got to Dover we bought euroline tickets that would take us to victoria station in London in a few minutes, and then from victoria to edinburgh at 9am the next day. So... we took the tube to King's Cross Station to meet up with Larissa and Sam. I have no idea how, but somehow while trying to meet up with them in front of the station, I just looked to the right while calling Larissa and saw her right in front of me on the phone with Sam. We waiting a little longer for Sam to find the three of us, then went to his place and dropped off our stuff. Thimal and I finally got to brush our teeth after like freaking... two nights. Don't judge me. I was so over caring about hygiene during this time and I don't care at all what you think of me for it. Anyway then we went to Subway to get food. Apparently Larissa & Sam heard that Bruno Mars & Travie McCoy were going to be at an afterparty at a club called Fabric later that night. I really figured I needed a happy ending to this long miserable ordeal, so we bought tickets from someone in his halls to go to it. We went back to his halls first for a little and they drank. Larissa & Thimal were probably only like... tipsy at most but Sam was pretty drunk. So one journey through the tube later, I was in a random part of London, the only person completely sober, trying to find this club. We got a little bit lost but there were a lot of maps around too so we eventually made our way to Fabric. It was ridiculous inside. Bruno Mars & Travie weren't going to show up till 12:30, which was in like an hour and a half or something so we just danced for a while and enjoyed ourselves. It started getting really crowded though so we got off the dance floor and wandered around a little for fresh air. We went to a really empty part of the club blaring house music and stayed until midnight when we figured we should go back to the main area to see Bruno Mars. It was even MORE crowded than before though. Like... it was so crowded I literally could NOT move because I just kept getting pushed and shoved everywhere and there was nothing we could do about it. Somehow we managed to escape... and tried to get back in through the side. I really think now I have the worst luck in the world. As we tried getting back in, I felt something wet splash onto my hair. I wasn't sure if it was someone's drink though or... ... something else. Freaking out completely, we tried getting back out again, and everyone in that general area started freaking out too. It definitely wasn't alcohol that got on me, but I still didn't want to believe it. We lost Larissa, so Thimal went back to find her and Sam took me to the bathroom where I frantically tried to clean the right side of my hair and not think at all about what it could be. You'd think that being puked on after everything I've been through, I'd just lose it finally and start crying, but I was just pissed. I wanted to cry, but I also just completely let it go. Everything was going so terribly already, part of me wasn't surprised at all that someone fucking threw up on me. I swear if anything else happened while we were at the club to me I probably would've punched someone, I was so upset. Part of me really just wanted to get hit by a car and just die. I give up on life. You win. I quit. We sort of tried going back into the dance floor one last time when we couldn't find Larissa and Sam, but after a little more pushing and shoving we both gave up. The DJ was constantly yelling at the crowd that Bruno Mars wouldn't show up if everyone kept pushing and shoving and I just decided that this was clearly not meant to be. We weren't going to see Bruno Mars. We found Thimal & Larissa and just cabbed back to Sam's where I washed my hair again in the sink with soap. I really couldn't be bothered to shower or change. (Seriously don't care if you judge me. I know it sounds so gross of me but I couldn't be bothered at all. I really just wanted to go back to Edinburgh.) Larissa went home and Sam was so nice he let me have his bed while he and Thimal slept on the floor. We had to wake up at 7 to make it to have enough time for breakfast and make it to the bus on time though so it wasn't really that much sleep. The day was so long though, any sleep I could get was well appreciated.
The next day went surprisingly smoothly. Got the bus just barely on time and had to sit in the back with this old guy, who turned out to be very nice/interesting. He also gave us candy. After accepting candy from him the first time, I remembered when I was first leaving for Lyon and Shela told me not to take candy from strangers or accept drinks from sketchy guys. Of course I laughed it off and told her not to worry about it, because really what are the chances? Haha. I did both, turns out. Sorry Shela. (The drink part wasn't that bad though, it was still in Lyon at a club we went to. I just took half a shot of something that just tasted like grapefruit juice. In retrospect that was probably a terribly unsafe idea but... it's okay because I'm fine. And I was still with jonathan and his friends... although they were all really drunk.) Yeah. Other than that... not much happened all of today/Tuesday. Thank god. Being in the back of the bus kind of sucked because it was stuffy and the bathroom was right next to me... I bought a magazine at a rest stop that that cashier totally judged me for because it was the "man issue" of cosmo ,but i really needed something to occupy my time so i didn't care. Reading that for a couple hours probably didn't help me very much though on top of the stuffiness and portapotty smell in terms of making sure I didn't somehow get motion sickness for the second time in my life and vomit. I didn't vomit though. So glad. I wouldn't be surprised if I did, but I'm also glad I didn't.
Finally, FINALLY FINALLY at around 7pm, we got to Edinburgh. Sweet, sweet Edinburgh. Seriously I don't think I've ever been so happy to be here in my life. It was so surreal to be back in a city where I actually KNEW where the heck I was. We just spent the whole walk back taking it in... letting it set in that this stupid crazy ridiculously unbelievable adventure was over.
Seriously, maybe a while from now I'll be back to normal but right now, I don't think anything will ever upset me anymore. Thimal and I were joking about the terrible things that could happen between the bus ride and getting back to Kincaid's Court, and one of my theories was that the lift would be broken in my block, and when I took my shower the water would go cold (which happens randomly but not SUPER often.... but enough that I'm usually pretty wary in the shower), and while showering, the fire alarm would go off. Sure enough, the lift was out of order, and my shower went cold 5 minutes after I stepped in. Did it bother me though? Nope. Every problem seems so small now. It just doesn't upset me anymore. Proud to say I didn't once shed a single tear this entire trip. I guess in that way, these last 82 hours proved I'm probably stronger than I gave myself credit for. I'm also willing to believe anything is possible now. (Or at least... anything bad is, anyway.) Seriously though, I'm never doing that again.
I'm also never going to Switzerland, or France when there's a strike, again. Ever.
10/16/10
This isn't going to be pretty...
Tonight, I made the terrible mistake of trying to follow ME19. The right thing to do would've been to completely pretend it didn't exist and be content with taking Fluids2 here but... ahh it's too late now. Fluids2 has NOTHING on ME19. I feel like a high schooler here or something- the tutor told me to solve a problem involving a trapezoid by splitting it into SHAPES instead of just manning up and finding the centroid of the freaking shape itself (That was probably too specific. I sound like a tool). The other two techers with me and I just laughed at this and shook our heads at how silly it was, and moved on. But no... now that I'm staring at these ME19 lecture slides it feels like I got punched in the face. There's divs and lagrangians flying all over the pages and we're doing basic algebra.
FML
That sounds really weird right? Like really your first reaction should be "sweet! you got the better end of the deal since it's 100x easier for you while your fellow MechE's back home are slaving away at their problem sets!" I would... if ME19 didn't last two terms. When I go back, I have NO idea what's going to happen but it won't be pretty. I'm not going to have anyyyy idea how to do all of this calc based stuff by that time since I've already forgotten most of linear algebra already and my brain's been turning into mush since the start of summer and shows no sign of stopping. The logical solution then of course, is to keep following the me19 lecture slides and at least look at the problem set solutions... but theyre so intimidating. I also have no idea what's going on in over half the slides since theyre mostly equations and very little text. Basically come second term I'll be walking to my own funeral.
tldr-
CALTECHWHYDOYOUHAVETOBESOOHARDOMGWTF. DDDD: -death-
FML
That sounds really weird right? Like really your first reaction should be "sweet! you got the better end of the deal since it's 100x easier for you while your fellow MechE's back home are slaving away at their problem sets!" I would... if ME19 didn't last two terms. When I go back, I have NO idea what's going to happen but it won't be pretty. I'm not going to have anyyyy idea how to do all of this calc based stuff by that time since I've already forgotten most of linear algebra already and my brain's been turning into mush since the start of summer and shows no sign of stopping. The logical solution then of course, is to keep following the me19 lecture slides and at least look at the problem set solutions... but theyre so intimidating. I also have no idea what's going on in over half the slides since theyre mostly equations and very little text. Basically come second term I'll be walking to my own funeral.
tldr-
CALTECHWHYDOYOUHAVETOBESOOHARDOMGWTF. DDDD: -death-
10/9/10
xXx
Something totally random I've noticed- people here really like appending 'x's to the ends of their text messages and IM's. They usually come in three's like this: 'xXx' from girls... or the more common 'xoxo', but sometimes I even get xX. Actually, I've even gotten texts that were like "[actual content here] x" I know x's stand for kisses and o's stand for hugs and stuff.. I just never realized people actually use it outside of like... valentine's day or something, and by people, I really do mean girls AND guys. They both do this x thing. Weird. Hahaha sorry. That was just something that's been on my mind recently. Probably not the most exciting thing ever. :PP
xXx Stephany (bahahaha i'm assimilating!! this feels a bit wrong.)
ps- also i fixed my layout. sorta. and by fix, i mean i took the lazy way out and used blogger's dynamic editor instead of legitimately figuring out what was wrong before. -shot-
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