Meat, Fish, and Baked Goods

I am writing this with a freshly baked hunk of bread in my hand! I woke up this morning to find a note written in the kitchen telling me that 'Breakfast is in the oven' and wollah I open the oven door to find 3 freshly baked, plait loaves! I wasn't that surprised to be honest. My roommate has been making lemon bars and bread for the past few weeks and they are gorgeous! Couple that with the fact that I woke up at 4am and our room smelt like a bakery! Hard to go back to sleep after that.

This week included a Spanish exam (joy), a presentation (double joy) and the deadline for my dissertation plan. I am not looking forward to writing that beast. On Monday three of us went to have dinner at Burger, which, as the name suggests, makes burgers. They are so nice and they all have great names like 'The Snookie' which is a burger patty in between two grilled cheese sandwiches. Or 'The Adam Sandler' which is a sloppy joe! When you give them your order, instead of giving you a wooden spoon with a number on it to take to your table, you get a mugshot of a celebrity. We had Elvis, Macauly Culkin and Jack Nicholson, I think!

Found myself getting a bit emotional and feeling like everything was getting on top of me this week. I'm still waiting to hear back from this camp I want to work at; I NEED SUMMER PLANS! I think I am just going to have to make a decision on what I am doing regardless of whether I have heard or not. Damn Olympics and the resulting high plane tickets! Friday was definitely the lowest point however Aquirefest put a smile on my face that evening. Who doesn't love a good acapella showcase! It is a two night event with Universities from California bringing their acapella groups for a concert. There was of course songs from The Lion King, a staple for any group I have found, but also a Hindi group from UC Berkeley did a remix of Party Rock Anthem half in Hindi and half in English! On the Rocks from University of Oregon were performing on the Saturday night and I was bummed that I would miss them because that is the school my sister went to 10 years ago and we have been listening to their CD's in our family car since then!
Midnight movie on Friday was the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers. Extended edition. Great fun and pretty epic but it didn't finish until 4.30am. Enough said. We did have fresh bread and lemon bars and ice cream (I had found a brand that is 150kcals for a PINT, talk about guilt free. And since it is Santa Cruz, it was organic. Win.) to keep us going.

On Saturday (Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday) me and a friend went to San Jose to go to the Boiling Crab for lunch. We had been to the one in LA (see blogpost from December) and were in love with the seafood by the pound in a bag thing. Their sauce was definitely spicier in San Jose. I got a pound of shrimp and half a pound of sausage in my bag which was a mistake. I'll explain why in a minute.
Me and the roommate, after blasting music and cleaning the apartment, went on another Moonlight kayaking adventure (again, see October blogpost) Saturday evening. It was even better than last time! We say all the seals and sea lions up close, saw baby sea otters, watched the sun set, saw the moon rise which is at it's brightest and biggest at the moment, and had a pod of 6 or so bottlenose dolphins come check us out! We were on the water for a few hours, and at times it was a bit choppy. You may guess where this is going. It is no fun throwing up spicy seafood in the toilets of the supermarket, Trader Joes! Anyway the trip was amazing and just reminded me how much I love the ocean. That is one of the things I am going to miss most I think.

Ok I have to go do some work. I want to get as much done as possible as tomorrow night it is the season finale of Castle and I am pretty sure that I won't be able to function for at least 24 hours after it as the promos look explosive! If you aren't watching it, you should. 

Hello, Hola, Bonjour Finals.

That is it. Winter quarter over. Apart from final exams and stuff, all the classes have finished and all that stands in the way of me and Tennessee are 2 exams and an essay. Which is obviously why I am on here, writing this blog!

My friend from South Carolina/England went back to university on Monday which was sad. We had had a really great time, especially Sunday. It was a gorgeous day so we got up and went down to the Boardwalk by the beach to ride some rides (actually we only went on these sky-ride things as they are so expensive!), play mini-golf, and chill out on the beach, working on our tans. Or in my case, trying to cover up my burns from the day before! We then walked downtown to stock up on all different kinds of nuts from the best shop in the world; Nut Kreations. They deliver anywhere just in case you wanted to go and peruse their website! It is alike a shop of pic-n-mix nuts and dried fruit. I have been in there so many times that the owner knows me personally! We stopped and got some dinner at a diner type place (all organic and natural of course) that provides trivial pursuit cards on each table in case conversation runs dry...we immediately turned it into a competition! I don't want to reveal who won, or who won mini-golf...i'm still bitter. Not even the thought of a deep-fried Oreo would stop me being a sore loser. 

At about 9pm my roommate and the guys came and picked us up and went to Seabright beach to build a bonfire in one of the pits there. It was such a calm and mild night and we just hung round the fire, making smores, playing guitar, and relaxing before the final week began and studying for exams was going to have to take place! All in all, a great end to a lovely visit:)

All that happened during the week was studying, and more studying. Oh and rain, lots and lots of rain. It started on Monday and did not stop once until this morning. When it rains here, you know about it. It sucked because all you wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with a book or a movie but instead you had to bundle up, get out the rain gear and traipse around campus to class. Though I suppose it meant that the sun was not taunting us from the library windows. It also meant that I had to battle the rain to get to a bone specialist appointment in Capitola. I got my roommate to pick me up though, then get frozen yogurt;)

Yesterday I finally got my zipcar account approved! Zipcar is like a car rental service but the cars are already in certain spot on campus (well they have them all over the country) and you reserve a car for a length of time online then  use your card to unlock the car and the keys are already in there. It is pretty expensive, $8 an hour, but is great if you just need to drive to the store or something. It was so liberating driving by myself around Santa Cruz! I definitely felt more like I lived there. Though it was a bit scary. For starters the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car, and the cars are driving on the wrong side of the road! And the overtaking lanes are opposite, and you can turn right on a red light! What is with that? Surely red means STOP. Also, all these cars are automatic, they are go-carts essentially. I kept bashing my hand against the door as I went to use my left hand to change gears. Talk about negative reinforcement through pain. I felt like Pavlov's first attempt before he realised reward was a better way to go. Anyway, after that experience, one of my friends was house-sitting/ cat-sitting for her cousin in San Jose so me and the roommate got in her car and drove to go visit and have a 'study-session'. Yep, hardly any studying got done which is bad seeing as I have an exam tomorrow. Instead we passed the time rolling on the floor with the cats, names Aloha and Ahn-Nyeong (pronounce anyong) which mean hello in Hawaiian and Korean respectively, watching funny clips on youtube, and pretty much everything else. We got back at 3am. So guess what I have to do allll day... 

Oh well, Nashville, Tennessee on Wednesday! I am so unbelievably excited y'all.  

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!