Feliz Navidad!

The 'Feliz Navidad' song has been stuck in my head for the best part of 2 weeks now. I had never heard it until this year which may be why my subconscious has been paying special attention to it. Let's face it, the words to 'Last Christmas' or 'Jingle Bells' are part of our genetic make-up and require little brain cell power to listen to. This new song, for starters, is half in Spanish which caught my attention, coupled with a catchy, bouncy, mexican-esque tune, you have yourself a winning Christmas song. I even wake up with the chorus on a loop, going round, and round, and round...."Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad, I wanna wish you a Mmerryy Christmas". Therefore it seemed like an appropriate title for this blog post. Ok on to the more interesting stuff.

Spending time with the family, when you thought it would be a year again until you saw them, has been really nice. Our days have been spent going to coffee shops and restaurants, walking (when my knee lets me), Christmas cookie baking, the occasional gym session and a lot of Christmas shopping! The nights are passed with competitive games of Stop the Bus, Apples to Apples and our personal favourite, Bananagrams (think a better version of scrabble), where not a night goes past without the excited shouts of "BANANAS" and "PEEL" and the desperate cries of "No, i'm telling you 'shibzing' is a word!" My brother-in-laws parents came up from Portland to visit for a couple of days and brought with them a game that incorporated a hilarious round of charades...

In my mind if you don't do a full on proper Christmas, there is no point. Guess who started the petition for a real Christmas tree and saw the 4 'kids' going to a couple of different  stalls around town to pick the best one, tie it to the roof of the car and drive ssllloowwwlly home? One thing that I did let slide was the fact that we didn't have a fairy for the tree, but I was quite taken with our gnome. He sat on our tiny, fake tree, while the rocking horse sat on the main event.

On Christmas eve a few of us went on the West Seattle Christmas Light tour which involved a map with the locations of people houses who had taken my idea of a big Christmas to the extreme, a car, a camera, and in some cases sunglasses to protect the eyes from a visual onslaught. The first few got the response of "Look a life-size santa riding a polar bear, aww that's nice", and one flashing light display on a house that instructed you to tune your car radio to a specific station and the lights flashed along in time to the music. However one in particular quite literally outshone all the others combined! There were so many people clustered around it, taking photos, pointing and 'wowing' at various parts of the creation, that you couldn't miss it. The house glowed. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see it from space. I overheard the son of the owner of the house saying it took 6 people over 100 hours to set it all up. Again, feeling more and more like my dad, the only question I wanted to ask was "How much is your electricity bill?!" This tour only served to remind me that I am in America.  The same display in England would have been scoffed at, grumbled at, maybe the local council would have received a few complaints about light pollution or something. But here was a family just embracing the Christmas spirit (maybe a bit too excessively) for others to enjoy.

Christmas day brought lots of shredded wrapping paper and lots of food as one might expect. I videoed my mums reaction as she opened up her kindle and debated putting it on here. I won't but there were a few tears! One of my favourite gifts was from my aunty, who had knitted me a little killer whale! I thought it was so sweet! A lot of clothes were received by the boys and we all got pictures of them modelling them. It was a chance to show their feminine side. Or their Hugo Boss catalog posing side. All in all, a great Christmas:)

I have another 10 days until I fly back to California and in that time we have a wedding and New Year's. There should be some work being done at some point. But i'll wait until 2012 I think!

From the richest, to the tastiest, to the happiest places on earth

I have been putting off writing this post as so much has happened since I last updated!
I'm not sure whether to write pages and pages, because I probably could, or just quickly summarise the events...perhaps a bit of both.

Hardcore studying coupled with illness made finals week anything but fun. I was ready to leave by the time the week was over, I love Santa Cruz, but I needed a break! Before flying to my sister and brother-in-law's home in Seattle, I flew down to Orange County to stay with a friend. First I should describe my journey from UCSC to the airport. Looking back on it, I am annoyed with myself for doing it this way. There is a website called 'Zimride' where you post the journey you want to take (in my case UCSC to San Jose airport on Dec 10th) and anyone driving that way will post how many seats they have in their car and how much they want you to pay. I could've taken a number of buses to get to the airport but with 2 suitcases and not feeling 100% I thought I would do it this way. I found a guy who was going past the airport and onto Oakland so I 'booked a seat' in his car. I spoke to him on the phone and he sounded a little weird but I had seen his facebook page and he seemed better than some other options. I barely slept that night because I was worrying he was going to be a rapist of murderer! He turned up in an old beaten up, smelly, messy car with a bag of weed on the dashboard. After a bit of struggle getting my suitcases into his car amongst the duvets, walking boots and other random items, and against my better judgement, I got into his car. I spent the whole journey completely on edge. He was giving me his life story and telling me how his sister is a manic depressive, his mum is ill etc, I nodded and awwed in the right places. When he told me he was actually not going to Oakland as he never told his mum he was going to visit and just going to drop me off and turn back that is when I started to panic! I was starting to feel like I was about to live a real life episode of CSI. It all turned out fine though. It is amazing how your mind will work overtime! I am well aware that I shouldn't have gotten in the car if I didn't feel comfortable. Next time I won't!

I had a great 5 days in the OC! My friend lives in a really nice gated community with views over Irvine. On the first day we went down to Crystal Cove and Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach was not how I imagined it at all. I thought it was going to be a really big area, really touristy and a bit scabby to be honest. It was actually pretty small, really cute with little boutiques and art galleries, and not scabby at all:) We also went to a restaurant called 'The Boiling Crab' where they give you bibs, you order seafood by the lb and it is brought to you in a bag with a sauce and you just sit there and dig in with your hands! It was delicious!

LA was just a whirlwind. We managed to fit in A LOT! It is about an hour drive from my friends house in Irvine. We hit Rodeo Drive first and gawked at all the expensive, posh shops that we couldn't even afford to breathe the air in! I mean, a dress made exclusively of diamonds, really? The funniest thing was that we had barely been in LA for 5 minutes when I was stopped by a woman wanting me to be a hair model! Apparently it would be the best haircut I had ever had, I politely declined after hearing it was going to take 2 hours and I thought that they would probably cut my hair like Emma Watson or something else as equally as ridiculous (don't get me wrong, she rocks short hair, but NOT me!). We also went to The Grove, a famous shopping mall, and saw Mario Lopez doing some filming!

We also hit the Walk of Fame and the Chinese theatre. It was really cool seeing all the stars on the floor and the handprints of celebs in the cement. Hugh Jackman has MASSIVE feet by the way...;) We also went up to Unviersal City Walk which is all the shops outside of Universal Studios. It got me all excited for Disneyland the following day!

Before we left we headed up to the Griffith Observatory to get the view of the whole of LA and the Hollywood sign. It was pretty dark by this time so the picture's of the sign aren't great but seeing LA all lit up was just beautiful, even if it was a bit cold!

Disneyland....I don't know what to say. I felt like a little kid. Well, almost. It made me look forward to taking my own children and seeing their faces light up when Belle glides down the street:) I had my picture taken with Woody, Mickey and Minnie and the parade and firework show was just MAGICAL! We were there for close to 13hours. 13 hours of Disney magic! I could write a whole other blog post on Disneyland and all the rides, and the food, and the experience but this I will keep to tell people:)/ I can't be bothered to type it all out! I took a few videos....

I was sad to leave the OC. I had eaten a lot of good food, including Korean food which my friends family thought was so funny that I liked! But I was really looking forward to getting up to Seattle and starting the Christmas celebrations! After a round-the-houses flight which included a trip to Las Vegas (the airport is right next to the strip so I got to see the pyramid, the hotels and the Sphinx etc), I arrived in Seattle pretty tired after a crazy week. I greet my sister at the baggage claim, she says "I have a surprise for you", I feel a tap on the shoulder, turn round and my parents are standing there! SURPRISE! I was in complete shock, i just burst into tears (of course!) and was also aware of my dad with his camera though thankfully he didn't manage to get any good photos of my face! I had been downhearted that whenever I had spoken to them they were not enthusiastic about coming out to visit at some point but it was all a lie! They had this planned for 6 weeks! My sister didn't know they were coming either! It was all my brother-in-laws doing....isn't he so sweet! After re-starting my heart, and dried my tears, we got in the car and drove home. We opened the door to the apartment and sitting there is my brother!!! He had lied to me too and my parents and my sister! He had said he wasn't coming and then turned up at the doorstep a few days before me! So it is going to be a nice family Christmas in Seattle:)

'Fall'en in love with my new camera!

Study break...go out and take photos!
Autumn/ Fall is just beautiful here and as it is my favourite season, I wanted to share with you some pretty fall colours! Sorry for being all artsy.
I will go back to my essay on environmentalists and leisure and labour in the wilderness soon. Now doesn't that sound like fun?

"DENNIS QUAID IS HERE!"

Short but sweet i'm afraid because a) I have so much work to do and b) nothing much has happened!

Finally got back to Santa Cruz from Sacramento after a bit of a car accident on the way! Everyone was a bit shaken but we carried on while blasting Adele as the two other passengers had only ever heard Rolling in the Deep and Someone Like You which I thought was an outrage and immediately plugged in my ipod.

The week of presentations and spanish exams and papers was hell but it went pretty quickly so i'm grateful for that. Only one more week to go and then I will be in Disneyland! YAY! I cannot wait to hug Mickey Mouse.
I just want to take a moment and recognise just how painful and awkward it is to watch someone crash and burn while giving a presentation to the class. It is like watching the early X Factor auditions but you can't turn them off, or leave the room! There was only really 1 or 2 people that this happened to but those 7 minutes were the longest 7 minutes ever. I could feel myself going red for them! It is almost as bad as the video of the new TLC programme (that a group of us are going to attempt to watch tonight) 'The Virgin Diaries' where a couple share their first kiss EVER on their wedding day. Not kiss, face sucking/tongue ingesting more like. I urge you to go watch it on youtube, but not while eating. I'm not sure how much we will be able to watch tonight!

Took me ages to find a chocolate advent calendar in Santa Cruz. They just don't seem to be the thing to do round here at Christmas. I was getting so desperate that I even begged a shop owner to re-open so that I could buy one! She did as well! It isn't dairy milk chocolate, but it isn't bad. It's not Hershey's! Staying on the Christmas theme, check out the gingerbread house we made while listening to Christmas music. Well not made, constructed from a box!

Apart from that, have just been working and revising etc:( Oh and re-watching all of Ellen's pranks on youtube. It's amazing what you can find to do when there is plenty of other things to be doing! May not be blogging next Sunday, but I will tell you all my tales from SoCal soon.
I leave you with a picture of a friendly neighbourhood raccoon who likes to sit on the fence or in the garbage bins just outside our apartment.