Bye!

Today uni begins .... scary times, Liam has just woken up and informed me his watch has a 7'oclock on it that he wasnt aware of before, Alec is unsurprisingly still in bed, nobody knows what has happened to Barry and im sitting in my room on the internet waiting for Kayleigh to come round for breakfast, ah good times. Unfortunately it gets completely terrifying soon, all my modules are ridiculously hard, i have a seminar, 2 vivas, 3 'pick your own' essays (lets face it they're term papers), 1 project complete with full paper write up (thesis) and lab work, 3 three hour unseen exams, .... oh and of course the classes! and as if that wasnt enough to keep me busy im adding working with the studyabroad people, voluntary work (both with Nightline, the Union and Timebank) and finding a church .... eurgh its gonna be a stressful year, im going to say 'bye' now just incase i dont have time to blog again until Christmas!

You learn something new every day

Here are some random things i thought everyone would be interested to read (or not) ....

- The semester starts on monday but we dont start classes until the 6th of October
- I am working 18 hours this weekend
- I lost half a stone since i moved to uni
- However much i dont like sharing a room i feel safer when i do and consequently have much fewer sleepless nights.
- Waffles and syrup in England .... not good
- Also deep fried mars bar - not good!
- It was the bus drivers last day so he only charged me £1.50
- I felt like i knew that was going to happen
- I have £7.70 in my pocket .... actually make that £7.71
- Sperm whales are so called because sailors thought the wax stuff (spermaceti) on the head cavities of the whales was actually sperm, and that same stuff is used in many cosmetics (gross huh?)

Still waiting on the router

So apparently i am the only person on our street crazy enough to open the door at 9am to the jehovahs witnesses, we've chatted twice now in about 2 weeks. I was told everybody else on the street was out (which i know isnt true because i just saw them all hiding) and have hence been invited round for coffee .... the guys were upstairs laughing, they said im too kind. I think though it might be that im just too stupid, both times i assumed it was FedEx with our wireless router. The tricky thing is i really want to be able to question them on their theology instead of them questioning me on mine but its 9am! I think they do that on purpose, and to be fair it hasnt been an awfully busy week so discussing God with some new people isnt such a horrific thought. This weekend however instead of going to stay at Amy's as planned ive been asked to work, which is much welcomed because im hoping for a quiet time of just me in the shop reading genetics papers and getting paid to do so, and it will stop me staying around here partying at the Font or worrying about Uni starting, so i figure God worked things out this way for my own good, yay for that!

England mourns

We just took Bryan and Misty to the airport (Kayleigh and I) and i cried on the way home, i miss them already, luckily i have a fantastic friend like Kayleigh to buy me cake and milkshake to make me feel better. I think i can safely say everybody had a fantastic time because Bryan and Misty are so wonderful and because England is also pretty fantastic. We didnt have any rain the whole time they were visiting (Misty was a little sad about this because she had a umbrella all prepared) which is very unusual for England and sure enough at 2.45pm (their plane was supposed to depart at 2.25) it started to rain and it hasnt stopped yet, they surely did bring the weather with them and unfortunately took it back too .... It seemed to me like even England was sad that they left.

A quick hello

This weekend Bryan and Misty have come to visit, we are having a totally fantastic time, that said i dont have much time to blog because we are all having too much fun so this is just to say

'Hi!'

Why boys don't do washing up and girls aren't keen on woodlice

This year i am living in a house with 3 guys, apparently i am crazy. There are only three of us here at the moment (Barry plans to move in on the 22nd) and things have gotten a little bit gross. The downside of living with boys it seems is that they never do the washing up, it doesnt even seem to cross their minds to do it, even when there are no cups .... they just make do, what a wonderful existence it must be, sitting in your jammies all day shooting bad guys on the PS3, dehydrating rather than washing up a cup. It doesnt really bother me because its pretty much like that at home, im the only one who seems to care if things grow mold. So things pretty much go like this, i wake up 5 hours before everyone else (its lovely and quiet until 1pm), go around closing all the windows (because its blooming cold outside but none of us wants to pay for the heating so we wear big jumpers instead, however someone keeps leaving all the windows open .....) and then go to get breakfast and have to search for a plate even though im sure i washed up everything i used last night, there are various things growing mold that dont belong to me that i poke at with a stick from time to time to check they aren't dangerous yet. Strange thing is though if you say to the guys 'ewww this is gross!!! go do your washing up will you' they go 'what? oh *shrug* okay sure' and get right onto it .... its like they dont care about doing it they just didnt think of it. I dont get that. Its like laundry and showers, i've used the washing machine a couple of times since i started living here but im pretty sure i'm the only one and i have suspicions im the only one who takes a shower longer than 50 seconds. So im thinking that when we said 'boys are smelly' when we were 5 we were actually right. However there are some upsides of living with guys, if you find one of those sneaky woodlice that somehow seem to keep getting into our house, even though the front door is locked, and you squeal 'ahhh! woodlice!!' someone normally laughs and puts it outside, unless their feeling mean and then they try and throw it in your jelly. They're also not too bad at opening jars ....

FINAL YEAR

Well it just got confirmed for good that i am going back to uni on the 29th, incase you didnt know i was having problems re-enrolling online (it seems everyone had some kind of a problem, either changing their address or apparently not existing) But now it has been confirmed, i am taking eukaryotic molecular biology(EMB), molecular medicine and biotechnology(MMB), the dreaded thesis project and clinical immunology and microbial pathology(CIMP), this is all that stands between me and a few letters after my name, lets face it im only doing this degree because i want to be Miss Sophie Pinwill BSc (Hons), its quite a lot of time, effort and money for 7 letters really .... kinda seems like i could have got my name changed by depol with the same effect. Anyway now its time to get serious about studying .... i better go get some print credit

A Churchless Sunday

Today was a churchless day, but not in a bad way, if that makes sense. Im currently in between churches, technically ive moved into my new house in Hertfordshire, but i came back to stay at my mums house for a few days so i could help out (and boy has it been a busy week!). So even though i had mentally prepared myself to be at a new church this sunday i was quite happy at the thought of going to Hillsong one last time but that didnt really happen. Let me explain, you may have noticed i've been a little down lately, which sucks but is a part of life, well when this was going on even though i have fantastic friends who are always lovely i didnt really feel like i could rely on anyone for help, people unfortunately let you down, even though they dont normally mean to. Well God doesnt .... (im not an idiot this isnt a new revelation). Anyway i've been asking God to give me opportunities to help people, because i like to help people, it makes me feel happy and perhaps its a good opportunity to show Jesus (?) and i often wonder if my actions are selfish so to be able to do things to help others in an unselfish manner (which in retrospect might be slightly contradictory because helping people makes me feel good ....) Anyway i've been asking for this a lot and i imagine God reacting like my mum does when someone offers to cook dinner, something along the lines of 'SURE!! knock yourself out!' followed by a quick exit from the kitchen, but maybe without the kitchen part .... i cant really imagine God having a kitchen. So basically Gods been throwing a lot of opportunities my way, one of which was clearing out my nans loft, which might not seem like a biggy but there was so much stuff up there and it all had to be shifted so the council can put insulating stuff down to save on her heating bill (which is a good thing because shes not rich and energy prices are going up like crazy), so it was me and my cousin Barry (whos very strong by the way - i on the other hand am not!) covered in dirt and dust but being thanked by my nan for a job well done. So this was this morning/ afternoon and by the time i had got home with some food shopping and lent Eliot my last fiver so he could go out with his friends i realised i was, 1. gonna be late for church and 2. too poor to get the train anyway, so no i didnt get to go to church today but of all possible reasons i think that was a pretty good one.

Who do you think you are?

Today is a better day, it is only 6am so far but im sure it is going to be. For some reason God has awoken me at 6am (which actually is pretty nice because normally im awake all night) and for some reason i have this hilarious story my mum was telling us about our ancestors on my mind so i figured i would share the hilarity, maybe you need a laugh, maybe it would just interest you to see what kind of dormant genes i have residing in me, maybe you have watched all the episodes of Poirot and are looking for something, anything to read - well this can be that something.

Let me set the scene, Alice, Eliot, my mum and myself were sitting in the living room watching a programme on the telly called 'who do you think you are?' where famous people look back at their genelogy and find out interesting stuff about their ancestors, Boris Johnson (the new Mayor of London) is related to royalty and last night Ester Rantzen found out she was related to a diamond billionaire. Anyway Alice was asleep on one sofa, mum and i were on the other and Eliot was laying on the floor (later to jump on my legs and almost break them). Once it had finished (and my mum had successfully talked all the way through it) mum asked us what we knew about our ancestors, Eliot and I shrugged and assured her we probably werent related to any famous or rich people. She then went on to tell us some stories about what she had been told about her ancestors. Now we already knew a limited about about dad's side of my family because its a very uncommon name (in fact the only people with the name in the phone book are very closely related to me) and my dads sister had done a bit of research on the family, but apart from a few hilarious rumours flying about i knew nothing about the Roberts side. Aparently my grandads grandparents were from Ireland (to which Eliot and I retorted 'haha we're pikeys!' - when the celebrities look back at their ancestors they always seem to be a little dismayed if their is anything sinister there like a murderer or something, well im pretty sure my family wouldnt care less if our ancestors had got up to anything like that but if you told them they were pikeys that would cause an uproar). She told us that his grandad, a man hilariously called Harry Potter, was a 5 foot 2 bare knuckle fighter, a scary man who liked to drink pretty heavily (well of course he was irish) and his grandmother was found at 70 years old having sex on the kitchen table (possibly not with her husband), apparently she only had one eye or one leg, so now poor Eliot has a very scary image of a one eyed one legged old woman imprinted in his memory. As for my nans side of the family, there is a very old picture of these sisters (i think there were about four of them) and my nan would always say that was the quiet one, and that one ran off with somebody and she was the religious one who didnt have any children. They are a strange looking crew, all with ridiculous looking hair living in the East end of London. So what i can sum up from that side of my family is pretty much all the men drank very heavily and all the women were very scary looking and dominated their husbands (which might explain the drinking) oh and there is the possibility that someone got kicked out of England and taken to Australia somewhere along the line for some misdoings. As to dad's side there is somewhere back there a french woman called Sophie and the rest are all just names after you discount all the people i met in person.

So what does this tell you about where i am coming from you may well be asking? Well probably a motley rabble of crazy people, with crazy hair, drinking and anger problems, where women ruled the house and everyone pitched in to make whatever little money they survived on. We can all be pretty sure they were darn poor but it doesnt seem like they were overly bothered about that and more than anything it looks like they all loved each other very much and were happy with what they were. So really who cares if they werent that smart or there are a few criminal activities going on back there. But there is a strong possibility of a few genetic throw backs that any children i have in the future have to look forward to!

The bad bits

Okay let me apologise before i start and give a kinda warning thing. I'm feeling really crappily low right now so this blog will probably not be the cheeryist you have ever read, therefore if you are currently in a good mood i'd suggest not reading it, i dont want to bum you out as well, thats just mean.

Now if you didnt heed that warning its your own fault if you get bummed out, im renouncing all responsibility. Im sitting in the LRC writing this because we dont have internet connection at the new house yet and probably more because Liams driving me crazy already and we've only been living there a day (and i didnt even stay the night, not because of that, more because of various car related issues) Yesterday was a long day of moving stuff and organising stuff and Liam breaking the door half an hour after we had moved in and discussing things with the landlord and such and i was running on all of about 2 hours sleep, oh and im extremely hormonal at the moment (thats probably the main reason for feeling so low but knowing the reason why you are low rarely helps you feel better it just makes you think 'great but i cant do anything to change that!') so when i finally got 5 seconds to myself (i guess Liam had been doing something important downstairs because he'd been following me around like a lost puppy all day, i really like having the openess in a house for everyone to have their doors open when they're in but when that means there is someone standing at the door all the time talking to you you have to think twice and start keeping it shut - sometimes even locked - all the time.) it all caught up to me and i started to cry. Anyway i texted Hilary because shes normally pretty cheery but that didnt really work, because she is brilliant at doing cheery when you're already high but ... well anyway then Barry came round to see the landlord (even though he isnt moving in until the 22nd) and that was brilliant, it was fun and happy and i guess its just so much better when theres more people around. When the landlord went Barry had to leave and i had to take my mums car back (it was pretty late by the time i got home and my mum was too tired to drive me back so i said id get the bus back in the morning and she was thankful). I think i got even less sleep last night, if any, and i didnt have any of my contact lens stuff with me so i was blind until i got back to the house this morning (it made getting the bus very strange, seriously im very short sighted, thank God for the 610 being a pink bus, because a pink moving blur is much easier to recognise). Anyway its been raining all day (of course its England) and i already have a cold so now sleepings going to be even harder. I realise im just moaning now, im sorry, i know im ungrateful, theres no 'but' here, i have no reason to be, God has been very good to me.

But on the brighter side of things Alice found my passport (it had been in her room .... dont ask me why) which is great because it means i dont have to get a new one but she had just given it to me and i was driving a car full of my belongings past an airport and it took quite a lot of will power not to just get on a plane to somewhere that isnt England (even Scotland looks pretty good right now and you know what i think of Scotland), to be fair im still contemplating it.
Anyway basically what im saying here is im really low, i think i might pack up a small bag and go back to my mums for a couple of days, i have to be there to work this weekend anyway. But im wondering if thats just a step backwards .... i dunno, maybe i should go to the doctors while im there because ive been feeling down a lot recently and thats not normal .....
:(