SLACK: Installment Four

Gosh, I'm really crap at this whole thing.

Wednesday 19/1/11: We discovered Somerfield! A supermarket that's cheap but unfortunately the people are a bit rude. :( Also, no classes on Wednesday! So it was lovely to do nothing all day!

Thursday 20/1/11:

Our plan was to go to a club called Arcadia, and I got all dressed up so lovely with beautiful heels. BUT Arcadia decided to be closed, so when we got there we had to turn right back around. [Club:1 Me:0] Instead we went to The Volunteer.

Friday 21/1/11: Lindsey, Lindsey, Caroline, and I took a nice adventure. We saw Big Ben,

Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and The

London Eye. They were all so lovely! Also, the WiFi went down, this was day one of four. You can probably imagine how frantic everybody was!

Saturday 22/1/11: We went to Bath and saw where all the Romans bathed back in their day. The museum was alright, but wicked redundant, and after about twenty minutes we all just wanted to get out of there. Bath itself is very lovely though. We had amazing pizza, ate gelato, watched a man juggle fire and use a unicycle with an eight year old on his shoulders, and took loads of pictures.

We were also apparently close to Bristol (where Skins is filmed), I was able to get a picture of th

e road sign

(!!!). Later that night, once we got back of course, Lindsey, Nick, Colleen, and I thought it'd be nice to go to Heaven. So we pre-gamed, which was lovely, and then we set off! I must say Colleen is extremely funny when she's drunk! Anyway, we got to Heaven but it was so busy that they ended up making it priority only and kicked us out of the line :( [Club:2 Me:0]. So then we tried another club, but we didn't want to pay the ten pounds, and to be perfectly honest we were a bit under-dressed compared to the people in the queue, [Club: 3 Me:0]. So we tried the third club and queued up, but again it was priority only, they didn't kick us out of the queue though so we waited. The bad thing was that Lindsey and I needed to pee really bad, and the it would be awhile until we would be able to go inside. Nick had met up with an old pal, so us three girls decided to just go back home. By the time we would have been able to go inside we would have only had two hours and it just wasn't worth the money [Club:4 Me:0]. So we walked to the bus stop, but our bus didn't stop for us. It didn't stop, not once, not twice, but three times. By this time our bladder was killing us, so we popped into Burger King, used their toilet, and headed off walking. Colleen had sobered up by now and turned on her "mom" mode. She asked for directions left and right. After a half hour of walking Lindsey and I noticed something we recognized from our adventure with Martin (see Installment Three) on Tuesday and knew we going the right way. Another half hour later we finally got back to school! It took us an hour to get back but we'll never forget that night. Three girls walking around at 1-2 o'clock in the morning without jackets, and with no way of knowing how to get back to school is quite a story, but I am so proud of ourselves! And now we know our way back like the back of our hand.

Sunday 23/1/11: We played Monopoly (the exciting lives we lead....) Lindsey M. won. Booooo.

Well I finally finished that damn week in review!

This week I:

• learned how to play Tourette's
• booked my ticket for Paris
• got sick
• excelled in Philosophy (or at least got better at it)
• discovered the Foodler of London; it's called Just Eat
• watched Blow, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Black Swan, Gypsy, and the new season premier of Skins
• discovered how rude some of the students here are
• got the WiFi back (!!!)
• discovered the Dance Studio here
• talked to my parents a few times
• uploaded all the pictures on Facebook (so go check them out!)

Ugh, that's all for now. Will have more as soon I have more to talk about bahahah.

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx

SLACK: Installment Three

Sorry if some of this sounds like utter shit, my cold's getting worse and I'm on the verge of passing out. Also on that note--pictures will be on Facebook sometime between tonight and tomorrow (I'm leaning more towards tomorrow) so keep an eye out! Here's a preview!

Tuesday 18/1/11: Day two of classes started off at 2pm again (I know at this point you really hate me for being to sleep in every day), but my jet lag was still on my shoulder and so I woke up earlier than expected and sat around doing nothing. My first class of the day was Intro to Philosophy, and I can honestly say that I felt completely stupid in that class. I have no idea what happened but it's like hearing everyone else's opinion on the material made me freeze up and go mute. I think I just lost all confidence in my intellectuality, which I've since then I've regained, but it was awful just sitting there thinking, "I have absolutely nothing to contribute on the topic," especially when she put us into groups and we discussed the question, "Can we reconcile God and evil?" Did I mention ten minutes prior to the class I was losing a battle with the classroom door? Ya, it won. Hooray. After one of the most agonizing hour and a half classes I've ever had, I ran out of the maze which we call Tuke, and tried to make it to my next class on time. The reason I bring this up is because they've fairly recently established a new attendance policy where we can miss no more than 20% of our classes and absolutely cannot be late to class. Speaking of being late, I had made it to my next class just on time, Classical Music in London, and one of the first things my professor Sabrina said when class started was, "I don't mind you being a minute early or right on time, but being even a minute late is unacceptable." I'm not sure if this is what they call British dark humour but I don't plan on testing it out. Other than that awful policy, the class was very chill, apparently Sabrina plays the flute or something like that. Oooer and we'll be seeing Swan Lake as one of class assignments! So, earlier that day Lindsey M. and I had decided to not go out that night even though we had no Wednesday class to worry about the next day (ya, I know you hate me just a little bit more) so we expected to do just that--not go out. Bahahah, that lasted about five minutes because then we got invited out to The Volunteer by our friend (more like acquaintance) Martin, who has his good days and his...well, bad days. Well anyway, we got dressed and met them over there and after one beer I was bored and one of the guys who happened to be there, Joe, was very, umm "animated." He rambles a lot when he's been drinking and all I could make out of what he said was "Let's go to The Rocket, I think I know where it is. So finish you're drinks, I have to go pee and we'll go." Only, he said this in under about two seconds. So we did as we were told, and left, only the problem was, Joe didn't really know where he was going nor how far it would take. And after about a half an hour walk, Lindsey and I discreetly ditched them, bought some sandwiches at Tesco's and walked back to our "home sweet home," and I know it may sound like a complete bust of a night, but that 30 minute walk came to be quite helpful on Saturday after our club misadventure. Oops, said too much already, you're just going to have to wait a bit until you hear about that one!

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx

SLACK: Installment Two

Monday 17/1/11: On Monday I had my first two classes. Unfortunately, my first one didn't start until 2pm, so Lindsey M. and I decided to get breakfast (mainly because of the jet lag keeping us up). Lemme tell you, it is some damn good breakfast...well better than some other schools' breakfast, ahem. My first class of the day was Musical Theater in London which consists of watching musicals for homework, listening to them in class, discussing them, and then ultimately seeing around 6-8 musicals in London. It was an O.K. first class--same as always: introduce ourselves, where we come from, favorite musical, blah blah blah. The professor's real nice, he's German and his name is Olaf! He's so funny and blunt about which musicals he doesn't like and he shows us funny singers from musicals doing dumb stuff. The only downside to this class is all the theater majors from certain schools, ahem, taking the class tend to be a bit pretentious when they talk. Oh well, can't win them all can you? After three hours, I wasn't terribly dead after the class...yes I did say three hours but we do get a break halfway through. Then around 5:30pm I had my second class of the day (another three hour class), Scriptwriting. Boy is it a fun class! The professor is completely bonkers and totally reminds me of a crazier version of Jeff Halprin (yes it is possible). His name is Mo and he talks fast and British and moves around a lot! After class, we all went down to The Volunteer, a pub that we frequent probably more than we should. I tried Fruli Strawberry Beer for the first time and seeing as I'm not usually a beer drinker I was pleasantly surprised when I actually liked how it tasted. Mmm. Other things that happened on this day: I finally got my phone (!!!) and we met some nice locals at the pub. It was actually a pretty fun Monday. Mondays being fun? Yep, it's possible.

p.s. Will be writing up the third installment in a bit, just taking a break!

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx

SLACK: Installment One

I am terribly sorry for not ever updating this thing! This first week's just been so busy and time really flies by and before you know it, the internet stops working in your dorm for four days!

So I'm going to have to do this in a sort of day by day installment type of deal. I'm starting off with last Sunday for now and will be updating sometime tomorrow with last Monday, Tuesday, and possibly Wednesday. I know that completely sucks but the deal is you get pictures of everyday too! Like this one!

If it wasn't nearly 2am right now and if I didn't have SO MUCH to update you guys about, then I would crank it out right now, but alas, I have class in twelve hours...and I'm getting sick. Wah! D:

Sunday 16/1/11: On Sunday after being showed around our dorm and the rest of the campus (which is conveniently connected to our dorm building), I took a nice shower in the common bathroom (can you believe I've never done that before?) which was nice considering the seven hour plane ride and then Lindsey M. took us to get some vital supplies for the first few days. Lemme just say that's it is a bit tricky getting used to crossing the streets over here because you want to look one way and expect a car there but you have to look the opposite way instead. Luckily the streets tell you which way to look when you're crossing, and I always wait for the little green man that tells me when

to walk (unless there are no cars around of course). We discovered this beautiful convenient store called Tesco's which sells sandwiches, snacks, alcohol, etc., for a really cheap price. After a few more relaxing hours in our dorm room, we decided to go out to The Globe, a local pub that's about a little bit less than a ten minute walk from campus. It was a...uh quite a first pub experience. For those of you wondering what I got, Lindsey M. was kind enough to buy me a pint of Guinness, seeing as she got both of us lost on our way to the Carphone Warehouse to get my phone...in the pouring rain...in which we ended up a Tube station away from where we wanted to be and a half hour walk gone to waste (because the place was closed by the time we would have gotten there). Oh! I also made two very nice friends from Pennsylvania: Colleen and Megan!

Again, I apologize for making this so short and very useless but I at least wanted to give you guys something. I'm also quite sorry for all those damn parentheses...I just really like them.

I promise to write tomorrow!

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx

Jet-lagg(ing)

So I've been in London for approximately seven hours. Which means, yes, I did make it here safely.

In the time I've been here I was able to navigate Caroline, Lindsey and myself from Heathrow to Regents via The Tube and then walk from the stop to our dorm. I've never been more proud of my navigational skills. I've also, gotten an Oyster Card (think--Charlie card), printed out my schedule, unpacked, got on the school network, bought some shampoo and food, and made a friend.

Other things I've done since my arrival:

• taken a shower;
• brushed my teeth;
• partly explored;
• called my mom.

I can't get over the fact that I'm finally here; it just all seems so surreal. Even when I'm walking around, it just hasn't hit me yet. I'm super excited to do new fun things and get this semester rolling.

Unfortunately, I am on the verge of passing out. Hopefully I can last another six hours or so before I give in to sleep.

Until then, I'll be exploring some more, getting a mobile, and going to my first pub.

I'll try and do my best on keeping you posted, but no promises are being made. Also, coming soon, there will be pictures up. But until then...

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx

London is Calling

So, hi. This is me. I am Fatima. And you're probably wondering who the hell I am.

Oh wait, you probably already know.

In that case, hi!

So it's Tuesday. And it's 1:41 AM. And I've decided to start up a blog about my impending adventure. I'm leaving the country and if you haven't already said your goodbyes I suggest you do so soon. I'll be leaving Wednesday some time in the evening--oh wait, this means I'll be boarding a plane in two days. And now, I am, sweating bricks.

But dry those eyes honey pie! I'm going to London! And I am über excited. This is has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, a dream which has only grown stronger after Harry Potter, Bloc Party, Skins, etc., and now it's finally happening.

I can't help but get a little sad when I think about it all. I mean, I'm leaving all my friends and family for four months. I'll be missing my parents and my best friend. And what get's me the most is that when I get back some people may have moved on and lost touch with me leading to them leaving my life. I guess I'm just over-thinking this. I'm just really going to miss everyone.

But this is my chance. My shot. My big time adventure to break free and do something new and discover myself. I can't wait, and you can make sure I'm going to make the most out of this opportunity.

I'll be updating this as much and as often as I can with pictures and daily happenings in London, so keep reading! You're with me on this adventure; we're in this together (slightly).

à tout à l'heure!

s'laters!

xx