Clam and Get It!

For a shorter week than normal (President's Day was on Monday so a day off to celebrate the birth of George Washington) the weekend has been a very long time coming. This week was a tough one for me for many reasons  be it work, annoying people, health and just general hormones. Facebook and Skype has been greatly appreciated this week as it is the best place to rant and rave to those people unlucky enough to be the ones you can dump your  baggage onto! Thank god for modern technology. I hate having a bad week while on the year abroad, it feels like a waste of time. But as one friend put it, doesn't matter where you are in the world, there are still going to be crappy days!

Pancake Day- definitely not a crappy day! For starters, pancakes are pretty much the best thing ever. They are the perfect vehicle for both sweet and savoury foods and we used them to their full potential on Tuesday. My roommate had a box of Bisquick ready made pancake mix where you just add water. I firmly put my foot down and said that there was no way I was making pancakes with that....it has to be done the proper way! Mine were better. We had the usual lemon and sugar ones, then we had blueberry and chocolate, cheese, sausage, bacon concoctions, nutella, peanut butter, the list is endless. We even had chicken ravioli ones where a ravioli was cooked into the batter (they were not nice).

Friday was a particularly crappy day but an improv comedy show at one of the theatre's on campus definitely put a smile on my face. Usually i'm not a fan of improv shows, there is too much room for error and extreme embarrassment on both the performer's and the audience's side. It is like watching live X Factor auditions in physical pain because of how shockingly awful they are! However there was hardly any of this (besides a few awkward moments from this one girl which both me and my friend inwardly cringed whenever she stepped forward to perform) The theatre is called 'The Barn' basically because it is a converted old barn! It is a lovely space and I kept thinking of my playwright friend at home who I could totally see doing something here!

That night some friends called us to come downtown to the bars but this time, my fake/real ID doesn't work. The bouncer on the door of this really seedy looking place was like "You know, I have never seen this before. I'm not saying that you made it at home, but you could have made it at home. It's just it's a Friday night you know..." I don't know what is so special about a Friday night but to him that was the deciding factor. I really wanted/needed a drink as well! We ended up across the street at a diner called The Saturn Cafe. It wasn't until we were inside that I was told that it was owned and run by a lesbian couple and that they only employee homosexuals to work there. Then it was obvious!  Not just that but in true Santa Cruz style, it was a vegetarian/vegan diner! I opted for the soy vanilla ice-cream which the guy was very sweet and brought free re-fills! Ice-cream is the perfect cure for anything.

Saturday was the annual Clam Chowder Cook Off at the boardwalk which was YUMMY! You pay $9 to get a tasting bowl and spoon and lots of companies and individuals had set up stands along the boardwalk, in amongst the rides and corn dog huts, where you give them a ticket and they ladel in a steaming hot pile of delicious, creamy, wholesome chowder which you slurp merrily away at with some saltine crackers or sourdough bread! You only get to sample 5 but they were all pretty damn good. Some of the teams had brilliant names; Clamma Lamma Ding Dongs, Four Men and a Clam, The Drunken Clam, We Clam Do It etc etc. My personal favourite:

The weather has been gorgeous this week. We even had a class outside on Wednesday because it was so friggin hot! I got sunburnt. Nos surprises there. It isn't supposed to last but it has been great having the sun shining, it makes it harder to be in a bad mood!

To Hugo, With Love

Valentine's Day. Usually, it is pretty depressing. You feel like you are caught in a catch 22 position...feeling depressed on the day, but then hating that you feel depressed because you shouldn't (as a supposedly independent woman!)  so then feeling even more depressed! However, this year felt a little different. There is something about the sun-shining and being nice and warm, compared to the dreary, cold, rainy February in England, that takes the edge off of it for sure! Coupled with my amazing roommate leaving a bunch of 'Happy Valentine's Day' notes around the apartment for me to find, aannddd a big bowl of homemade chocolates and biscuits and chocolate covered strawberries by my bed! (I was allowed to eat them now after the day before her subtly hinting that I couldn't) Needless to say, for the next 2 days I didn't eat any real food and just snacked on peanut butter cups! Not the healthiest thing to do but you gotta do it on Valentine's Day! A movie night with the girls was also pretty fun...Matt Damon, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, i'll let you decide what movie we watched.

It was another one of my friend's birthdays this week so off to sushi we went! God I love sushi. I'm going to miss how easy it is to get it and the relative cheapness of it compared to Yo Shushi! where you can easily spend 30quid (can't find the pounds sign on my new computer!) at lunch time. Believe me, me and my best friend have done this before. This restaurant we went to is very well known among students as it is the closest to campus and very eclectically decorated! There are polaroids of past customers plastering the walls, surfboards and random butterflies and flowers hanging from the ceiling and do such wraps like the As$hole. We also made a bbiigg chocolate cake for her which I managed to spatter with my blood when I was grating chocolate on the top and managed to grate my fingers instead. Oh well, extra iron I guess.

 On Wednesday me and some friends from my spanish class went to a Tango class downtown! Our teacher said that if we went 3 times then she would give us extra credit, a lot of extra credit, and seeing how i'm hovering in the C+/B- category at the moment I thought I should better get my dancing shoes on and show up! Don't you love the American system of 'extra credit'! This class was pretty funny, me and my friend were pared up and both as bad as each other so just stomped round the room while other couples glided passionately around us. We were stopped a number of times by the teachers to give us some tips, but in the end they just let us do our thing! At one point though the guy teacher grabbed each of us individually and twirled us around which was much better, I felt like I was born with a right and left foot this time. He even said that I was very sensitive to his 'touch' and would make a great dancer. I'm still deciding how much sarcasm was in that statement. I guess I will find out on Wednesday. And the Wednesday after that until I get this extra credit grade!

Last night a big group of us went and saw Hugo in 3D at the cinema. A really sweet film, even if the story line was a bit weak and took a long time to get into it. One thing I will just say is I like how Jude Law is one of the top stars credited and yet in a 2hr film he appears for all of 3 minutes! Not a fan.
Ok well, now I have to go work on my Disney 'Imagineering' project which involves designing a ride/attraction and all the details and costumes and merchandise for this said ride. I am back in Year 7 obviously. But this time, it is actually worth something aaannnddd I think my creative levels since then have plummeted, and they were hardly there to start with. I'm picturing tears and tantrums in my future when my Grandmother Willow tree won't stay upright.
I will leave you with my favourite accordion man downtown in his new costume.... and a small plug for my other blog if anyone is interested in food/exercise; http://justsogoodateating.blogspot.com/

Half full or half empty?

I am officially half way through this year abroad! I have completed one term and a half, and I have one and a half more to go! That is so scary. It is going way too quickly. There is still so much more that I want to do here and now I feel like I am running out of time, like a year isn't long enough. Half full....I can't wait to see my friends and family. Half empty.....leaving is going to suck. I love it here! If only there was a way of combining the two. If I had infinite amounts of money, or won the lottery, I would happily pay for people to come out here! What is the going tuition for international students at UCSC? About $40,000 a year. Hmmm, maybe I will need to win the lottery and marry rich.Speaking of needing to be rich, you have to be to get the everyday items that you would do in England. Look what I found at a deli in San Jose:

Had a lovely day yesterday with one of my friends. It was her birthday on Friday and so yesterday we decided to go on a BBBIIIGGG shopping trip to San Jose, which is the nearest city to Santa Cruz that has decent malls. We shopped till we dropped. Quite literally. When we arrived we went and had a gorgeous lunch at this New York/Italian restaurant where we gorged ourselves on calamari, soup and complimentary fried, cheese stuffed ravioli! Yum. Then when our stomachs were bursting we hit 3 different malls. One was the really uber posh one where every single shop was completely over our price limit; Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Swarowski etc etc. Then the other two were where we stocked up. I am normally a really bad shopper. I bargain hunt and buy things because they are cheap, not necessarily because I like them. But this time I was so desperate for new clothes that I didn't hesitate to flash the credit card (my British one though because that way I can forget about it for now and it looks like a smaller amount of money in pounds!) and pick up jeans, trousers, multiple tops, jackets etc. The only thing I didn't find were boots. Though we did find a transvestite doing a make-up show in the middle of the mall:

Stupidly we decided to go grocery shopping afterwards which meant that trying to lug many many bags up the hill from the car back home was a near impossible task and took forever. And to make things worse the salad left over from the restaurant which I had stuffed inside another bag, leaked all over my new clothes. I was not impressed.

It was another one of my friends birthdays' this week, my roommates boyfriend, and as he grew up in Germany for a number of years, we went to this really cute German tavern place for dinner the other night. It was this little wooden cabin with all German statues and memorabilia plastering the walls. Even the waitresses were dressed in traditional German clothes and the waiters in laderhousen. (Spell check doesn't like this word...it want's to change it to 'slanderous' or 'slaughterhouse', sorry Germany). Again we feasted on traditional food, from weinerschnitzel to goulash to apple strudel. The guys enjoyed the beer and various flavours of schnapps including honey and raspberry!

Well I think that is it for this week. I have a Disney paper to write today, all about the representation of women in Disney films! Any excuse to watch 101 Dalmations aye? Oh I shall leave you with something that cracked me up. The other night the guys who we share a kitchen and bathroom with had a party, which of course involved beer pong. I got up in the morning to find that although they like to party, they are still UCSC students and therefore are concerned for the environment and recycling etc!

Finally a Banana Slug!!

It has taken almost 5 months but I have finally spied my first banana slug!!
Walking back in the afternoon to return some stupid Spanish movie to the library I saw something long and yellow from the corner of my eye and low and behold, this time it was not a small banana, it was a banana slug, the mascot of UCSC! I got very snap happy so here are a few photos that I took:

As you can see, they are pretty cute, well cuter than a regular grey slimy slug. However I did not partake in the tradition of kissing a banana slug...that just seemed wrong on so many levels.
It has been a week of wildlife actually. It is not everyday that you have to keep a look out for mountain lions as you walk to and from the library or around campus! I proper freaked myself out when walking back from the library at about 9pm, in the dark, down a uninhabited path. I definitely saw some eyes stalking me. And then a friend told me she saw a mountain lion cub not too far away! Half of me wants to see one and the other half of me doesn't! Apparently some more were spotted near my apartment and another one who was 'stalking some hikers'. Perhaps I will buy myself some pepper spray or something. I also know EXACTLY what to do if I do come across one...we got sent an information sheet just in case!

Friday night, me and some friends went down to the Boardwalk where there is this big arcade, bowling and laser quest (they call it laser tag here). I have not played laser quest in like 8 years and my competitive side certainly got the better of me, which it has been doing all week.! I love that adrenaline rush of stalking someone with a gun in a smoky, dimly lit, obstacle filled arena...maybe I should join the army?

After a few games of DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution) which we epically failed on after being cocky and choosing a higher level than our co-ordination abilities allowed, we headed out with our winnings- some plastic heart rings, shot glasses for the guys and a plastic frog.
Not much else to report on. I hear England, and indeed the rest of Europe is experiencing some chilly weather?;) Once again, I love California.

Ok, off to prepare for the SUPERBOWL! I think some chicken wings may be in order....