You Blink And You Miss It

Well, that is it. My time at UCSC has finished. I can't quite believe it actually. In some ways it has just flown by but at the same time I feel like I have been here forever.
My sister has been here since Wednesday which has kept me occupied and not thinking about the fact that I have to leave. But today she went home and when I got back to the apartment to start packing, a wave of melancholy hit me and I have been feeling down ever since! I love UCSC, I love Santa Cruz, I love California, I love America. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to see my friends and family, I have missed them so much and I wish I could have shared this experience with them. However, this year has just reinforced the feeling that I already had before I came here; I want to live here permanently! Now I need to get working on that! I'm not leaving America right away, I have about 3 weeks left so I am going to leave my year abroad epilogue till I actually leave...

Finals were over and done with by 11am on Monday, and I was at the beach with a friend not too long after that! It was gorgeous and sooo relaxing. Just what I needed after all the work that had just been done! In order to get a two day extension on my housing contract I had to do some volunteering on campus so Tuesday saw me picking through recycling bins with the 'Zero Waste' team. Mainly we just stood around in the sun and chatted!

On Wednesday my sister flew down from Seattle to spend a few days seeing the sights of Santa Cruz! It was a great excuse for me to do all the things that I loved one more time before I left. The first thing we did was stop at Burger and get food! Everything involves food I have found. After we gorged ourselves, we did a bit of a walking tour of campus, then went swimming where I was teaching her flip turns, surface dives, and showing off my butterfly (which turns into 'wounded waterbeetle,' as my coach calls it, after about 50 yds!). I have become a real waterbaby since being here and can't wait to get back into it when I am home. If anyone knows of a diving team, as in springboard, not scuba, let me know! That night, my sister got to re-live her undergrad days at the dining hall;)

Thursday I had my final physio appointment, and I got a t-shirt for 'graduating'! Again, going to miss that place and the people. I need to find a PT just like it. The rest of the day included walking on the wharf, checking out the sea lion pups, eating a ton of nuts from Nut Kreations, sushi at I Love Sushi, and a party over at the guys house where we played numerous rounds of flip cup, chandeliers, and then rock band!

Friday was the best day...another kayaking adventure in the Bay. Started the tour by nearly going headfirst into the ocean as I tried to get in. Embarrassing. The sea lions were very active and were leaping around all over the place which was a bit terrifying at times as I was fully prepared for them to leap onto the kayak! Lots of Sea Otters and their pups too:) So unbelievably cute. But then what baby animal isn't? It was a private tour and the woman who took us out was very nice, though when she told us she had three jobs, and we said "Oh but this must be your favourite", completely out of left field she said no, hre job at a sex shop was. Fair enough! Don't quite know how to respond when someone says that! The evening was spent at the beach, playing frisbee, building sand castles, taking photos, and watching the surfers do their thing.

This weekend is graduation weekend so there are a ton of people on campus! So Saturday morning we got up pretty early and headed down to the Arboretum before all the buses got too busy. Plenty of flowers, hummingbirds, lizards, and even a rabbit, kept us occupied for an hour or two, while we quickly fried to a crisp in the 90 degree weather! Air conditioned buses are the greatest invention ever. That, and ice water. My sister went back to Seattle that afternoon and I returned to campus to start the daunting task of trying to fit my life into two suitcases again. I have waaayyy too much stuff. I am holding a yard/garage sale in my bedroom as we speak.

It was a great final week at UCSC. God I am going to miss this place. But for now, onwards and literally upwards to Sacramento for a night on our way to a friends cabin in Lake Tahoe! Then to Seattle, then down to Skamania Lodge for a family reunion weekend with my bro-in-law's family, then back up to Seattle, then home! I'm glad I did the recycling session this week; I feel I need to give back to the environment as my carbon foot print is going to be pretty hefty.

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.

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/