Tie-dye is soooo last year

Happy Easter! I hope you are reading this with a slab of chocolate in one hand while the other is scrolling;)

Again, Easter is another holiday that I have very much enjoyed partaking in in America! My roommates mum/mom came down to Santa Cruz with Soxies of course (see Thanksgiving entry) with boxes full of Easter stuff; egg decorating kits, dye, cartons of hard boiled eggs, chocolate, drinks. You see, the tradition in America is not to have those big chocolate eggs that we have in England, but rather you dye and decorate hard boiled eggs, then hide them for an egg hunt. They do eat chocolate but it is mainly just the odd chocolate company who produce small egg shaped versions of their bars. So last night we had great fun dying eggs in multicolours, putting glitter on them, my roommate even made the globe out of one! I am not that creative. I stuck with swirls and faces. One of my friends decided he wanted his to have a mustache. Turned out pretty well!

Woke up on Easter morning and it was like Santa had been. I had a lovely Peter Rabbit bag stuffed with Easter goodies sitting on my desk from my roommate, and a homemade hollow eggs with chocolate inside from another friend waiting outside the door:) Guess whats for breakfast....

Aside from that, this week has just been about settling in to a new term. I have dropped my Asian American class in favour of an Independent Study where basically I just have to read 12-15 books/articles and write a couple of analytical pages on each one. This will give me allll the information I need to write my year abroad dissertation! ha ha take that Warwick. On Wednesday it was my roommates birthday so a big group of us went down to I Love Sushi for a lot of rolls (I had the Jimbo this time) and a lot of Sake. Not a fan if I am honest. It tastes much better cold than hot however it still tastes like a mix between nail varnish remover and paint thinner. We came back to campus, played some drinking games and ate the most gorgeous cake ever that her boyfriend had made from scratch!

Oh and I have nearly finished The Hunger Games trilogy. I have spent many hours either outside on a bench soaking up some sun, or in a coffee shop with a caramel macchiato or a frozen mocha. This was what I spent the majority of yesterday doing:

Ok this has been fairly short! I'm too distracted by the big bag of chocolate in front of my face so excuse me will you.

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/