'Homesick' for uni...

After spending 9 months living away from home in halls, coming back 'home' has felt seriously strange. It looks like my house, but it's not my house anymore. I'm as good as gone in the eyes of my mother, so imagine her surprise to have to put up with me again for 3 months before I inevitably have to go back to Winchester. It's been a complete shock to the system, having to fit back into my family home after having so long of my own freedom, and there's an awful lot I miss about being in Winchester. There's certainly a lot I love about being home though, but that's a whole other post.

So what is it about uni I'm missing so much?

1. My friends - Okay, sorry for sounding really lame here, but I miss all my friends so much. Being back home has made it pretty obvious who really matters, because only a few friends here have bothered to get back in touch and arranged to meet up again. Everyone else has moved on,so it just shows who truly are good friends. It gets pretty sad when you start counting the people you work with as being among your closest friends... 
   
2. Drinking - The downside of having no friends in Weymouth? No one to go drinking with. I'm certainly not going to go and sit in a pub by myself, nor am I sad enough yet to sit and drink in my room. Without running the risk of sounding like a massive alcoholic (but if you've read some of my previous posts, you probably have already concluded that I am), I do enjoy going out and having a drink and a laugh. Here, my Saturday nights consist of napping after work, and watching Game Of Thrones. Definitely missing my social life. 
   
3. Random walks - This is a strange one, but I miss being able to go out for a random walk alone or with friends in the middle of the night. For one, I have no one to go with here, and I also don't think my mother would be too thrilled about me just going out at 1am for a stroll. Weymouth isn't exactly rough, but I'm sure she'd be convinced I'd get kidnapped and forced into an arranged marriage or something completely ridiculous. I just miss the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want, without having to explain or justify it to my mother. 
   
4. Never being alone - At home, often I find I'm the only person in my house. With having barely any friends to meet up with, or being too tired after work to go out with, I find I'm stuck in my house, on my own, with nothing but Netflix, my dog and my own thoughts for company.At uni, there's always someone around to go and hang out with, even if you're both just scrolling through your phones, or cooking. You're never alone, there's always someone to have a laugh or a chat with whatever time of day. 
   
5. Lie-ins and laziness - With having to go to work, and only getting a few days off, I feel as if my rare days to myself shouldn't be wasted. So I'm finding that I'm getting up at a decent time and actually doing things. Gone are the days I used to predominantly spend in bed watching FRIENDS, and I miss them. I can't get away with lying-in and doing nothing anymore.  
   
6. Always having something to do - There's always people around, or work to be done, or parties and nights out to be had. There is literally always something to do, so you are never bored. I've never been so bored in my whole life this summer, I have to schedule these things around my jobs, and then I'm too tired, and whenever I'm free, there's never anything to do. At uni, go out on a Wednesday night and it's amazing. Here, go out on a Wednesday and it's atrocious. But unfortunately for me, my days off never seem to coincide with the weekend, so I never get the chance to go out. I miss being able to do whatever, whenever, because at uni you're surrounded by so many other people who are doing whatever they like whenever as well. 
   
7. Lectures - I genuinely miss lectures and my course. I really enjoy my subject, and it feels weird not sitting through 3 hours of someone attempting to teach me something. I feel like without learning at the moment, my brain is dying from all the TV I'm watching to fill my spare time. Definitely need to read more. 
   
8. How close everything is - Last year, my flat was about 3 minutes away from all of my lecture rooms, which was awesome. I had, quite possibly, the worlds shortest commute, which was great because for lazy little me, it meant more time in bed. If you wanted to go into town, no problem, it was probably only a 10 minute walk, which was always really nice especially if you went with friends so you could chat along the way. At home, I don't live that far away from town, but it's certainly a much longer walk, and I have to leave my house a good 45 minutes before I'm needed in work. Not fun. It means less sleep. I hate having to fork out for bus fare to get everywhere quicker and easier. Living on a campus where everything is within reach suits my laziness just fine. 
   

I miss so much about being at uni, but it won't be long until I'm back in September and missing home all over again. It's definitely really strange getting used to having 'homes' in two different places, and having to split your time and affections between them both. But I guess, now that I've been at uni for a year, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Much love ♥

July addictions...

Last month I made a post all about what I was currently addicted to, so I thought it was time for a bit of an update. As expected, I haven't been able to listen to 'Fancy' by Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX in a long time, it's started to slowly drive me to the brink of insanity. I've also somehow managed to fill my RuPaul quota for a good while. Don't get me wrong, I'm always going to love that show, but there's only so much fabulousness you can take at a time. I'm trying to save it for winter when everything is dull and grey, and I need some serious sass with a vast amount of glitter in my life.

So what am I spamming my life with now? Well let me tell you...

Charli XCX - I have my prior obsession with 'Fancy' to thank for this one. I decided to find more music by Miss XCX on Spotify, which resulted in me actually buying her album and all her songs. It's pretty much all I've been listening to since I got back from Gran Canaria, I can't help it, her songs are so catchy and summery and make me want to get off my arse and dance around a bit. They also make me feel a bit sassy, which is definitely not a bad thing. My favourite songs of hers so far would have to be Nuclear Seasons, Take My Hand, and So Far Away. Catchy as. 

Game of Thrones - I literally don't even know where to begin with this obsession. To say it's taken over my life is a complete understatement. I am in love. I think the only way I can convey just how much this show has dominated the last month of my life would be to dedicate a whole post to it, which I will do once I've finally watched the last season. (No spoilers please, although thanks to Tumblr, I have pretty much got the gist of what happens.) I have a ridiculous crush on Jon Snow, and the guy who plays Robb Stark, and I wish I was as fierce as Daenerys Targaryen or headstrong as Arya Stark. I would happily live in Game of Thrones, but I would be pretty worried that I'd get killed off pretty gruesomely, which seems to happen to any character I form any kind of attachment to. 

Baby Lips - Okay, so I've been a huge fan of this Maybelline product since Emily introduced it to me many months ago, but at the moment in this weather, I've been using it more than ever. My favourite are the Cherry and Pink Punch, which moisturise your lips, and give a nice hint of colour without the commitment such as with lipstick. 

Sorry for a short-ish post, but that's about all I've had time for in the last month. Between going to Gran Canaria and working, Game of Thrones has pretty much taken up the remainder of my time. I recommend you all watch it now, it's a bit gory but it's absolutely brilliant. I guarantee you'll be hooked.

Much love ♥

Does this make me old?

Recently I've found that I've been making excuses for myself by blaming my age. I'm not that old, I mean I am 19, and as I like to say, old enough to know better, but young enough to get away with it; but I do feel like I'm at an awkward stage in my life where I'm too old to understand the obsession of loom-bands, but too young to get my free bus pass. I must warn you that this post will seem like I'm ranting a lot, and will probably make me seem incredibly old. So this in mind, I want to post about how I'm starting to notice my teenage years drifting away from me, and why I can't get my head around teenagers today.

I can't runaway from the fact that my time as a teenager is quickly running out on me, I'm rapidly approaching my 20th birthday, and I'm not sure if I'm entirely thrilled about it. I enjoy using my youth as an excuse for doing stupid things, when I do know better. 20, to me, signals the official start of becoming an adult, which means a whole load of commitments and dull things like filing taxes and mortgages. I'm quite happy currently floating through life with no real responsibilities, apart from making sure I can cover my rent at Uni, and that I have enough money for food. Sounds pretty selfish, but I enjoy only having myself to worry about, and now that I'm older I enjoy the freedom I have now that my parents just let me get on with it, so in that respect I'm totally not begging for my younger teenage days back. Being 15 once was enough for me. I'd quite happily stick at 19 thank you very much, it's definitely an age which suits me just fine. 

Boybands. What is this obsession? I was talking to one of the 16-year-old girls I was working with about why on earth there are so many boybands around at the moment. I just can't get my head around the fact that when a boyband is playing on the radio, it's not always One Direction. Do we really need more boybands in our lives? Where did this demand for them come from? I will never understand who "The Vamps", "Rixton" or " 5 Seconds Of Summer" are, and what the difference between them are. I can barely just about get my head around the whole One Direction craze. A similar discussion I was having with the girls at work, was about downloading music. I was shocked when they didn't know what Limewire was, and then I nearly fell over when I discovered they weren't part of the generation that spent every night on MSN, and that they never even had MSN! When I was 14, every single person I knew was on my MSN list, whether you spoke to them or not. It was the only way to communicate. Nowadays, it's all this kik business, or whatever people use. Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer texting and facebook messaging. 

(Okay, so I know this gif isn't completely relevant, but I didn't really want pictures of One Direction on my blog, and I think we can all agree that the idea of Nick Fury starting an Avengers boyband is way funnier.)

Another problem I've found, is that I find myself wanting to mother teenage girls who can't wear make-up properly, or wear those shorts that make their arse-cheeks hang out the bottom. What's with this? Why is it that you can walk around these days and see teenage girls around the age of 14 wearing a full face of make-up, hair extensions, and crop tops with leggings. Half of them could pass for my age, which makes me feel like I should be putting a whole lot more effort in with my appearance than I do. And how on earth do their parents let them walk around like that? I know for a fact if I'd gone out like that I would've been told to go upstairs and change before I could leave the house. I have to stop myself from going over to these young girls, and telling them to stop rushing to grow up, and that they look bloody ridiculous. It's such a shame that society stops teenage girls from enjoying their youth so much, and puts all this pressure on them to be perfect. When I started secondary school, I never styled my hair, wore make-up, and lived in tshirts and tracky bottoms. Today, I see Year 7's going to school with perfect eyeliner (please teach me how to do that), short skirts, and immaculate hair. The time difference between all this happening is probably no more than 5 years, which goes to show how quickly our society is moving.

From now on, I'm trying to stop myself from saying to the girls I work with "when I was your age", or "back in my time", because I'm not that old yet. It's just funny what difference a few years makes. I'm not saying teenagers today are stupid or anything like that, just that the way they grew up is completely different to me, and I can't seem to work out how so much change has happened in such little time.

Rant over.

 Much love ♥

Sun, sea... and drowning? Part two...

On Sunday I posted the first half of my tales from my first holiday without my parents, and it's safe to say that it was certainly a crazy week away! I've already covered being cursed by African women, breaking the hotel door, fabulous drag queens and our encounters with Steve the Conman. You'd probably expect that the rest of the week would be tame in comparison, but I can ensure you, it got a whole load weirder.

Wednesday morning rolled around, signalling two things. One, we were half way through our holiday and two, it was finally the day to go to the water-park, Aqualand. I was really looking forwards to going, it had been the only thing we all agreed on wanting to do, and we'd been planning this day since we booked the holiday. But for me, fate would have it that I wasn't feeling well at all, and was definitely not in any fit state to go throwing myself down any water slides. The others all went without me, and I spent half the day moping around my room and being sick (lovely), before I decided I was well enough and not going to waste my day. I dragged myself out for a walk around the area, and wound up sitting on a bench opposite the beach for a few hours, calling home, writing, and reading Breakfast At Tiffany's. I made a few friends on my adventures, such as an old British couple from Kent who came and sat with me for a while; and a really beautiful Spanish policeman who was on duty, but came over for a chat. Lucky me. It very nearly made up for missing Aqualand, very nearly.

 (Shameless selfie, and the bench I spent many happy hours on)                

Determined not to spent another night in Sparkles, as a group we decided to go and play Crazy Golf. A few years ago, I got a hole-in-one once at the Pirate Mini-Golf in Weymouth, and I never fail to bring it up every time I play Crazy Golf. It pretty much qualifies me to be a professional. Fact. It was absolutely hilarious, and I somehow managed to come a respectable 3rd which I was pretty chuffed with. It was nice to have a chilled night out, having a laugh and not drinking. 

Thursday was a pretty action packed day for us, as 4 of us had booked to go on an activity day. We spent our morning banana-boating, jet skiing and being dragged behind a jet ski on a giant inflatable donut. It was awesome, even though I was absolutely petrified of Sophie's driving skills on the jet ski, convinced I was gonna fall off the back into the depths of the sea. And as for being dragged on the donut, it was completely hilarious! Sophie managed to get flipped through the air and land on poor Natalie and Lisa, which may not have been so funny for them, but I found it hysterical. It was not as funny as at the end of the morning however, when the instructor drove us back to shore on a jet ski, and made us jump off into the shallows onto the beach. I did it rather disgracefully, showing beach-goers far too much of my arse, but Sophie, who was being cocky, thought she would show off and jump onto the beach elegantly, but in fact slipped and face-planted into the sea. Definitely a You've Been Framed moment.

 

The main activity I was looking forwards to though, was parasailing. It looked like so much fun, and I'd always wanted to try it, but things went a little bit pair-shaped. To begin with, one of the clips holding me to the parasail wasn't closed, so I was on the verge of only being attached by one clip, but this was the least of my problems. There Lisa and I were, happily flying along behind the boat, when we notice the rope getting slack and floating on top of the water. That's when we started going down. Lisa was panicking, I didn't clock onto the situation at all, completely oblivious about what was about to happen. We ended up being dragged along behind the boat underwater, for about 20 seconds, before the idiots 'supervising' realised we weren't in the sky anymore. Lisa luckily bobbed back up above the water and was able to breathe. Me? Nope, I was being pushed down, trapped beneath the bar I was attached to, unable to breathe. I'm not exaggerating, but I genuinely couldn't breathe, and was panicking that I wasn't going to resurface again. According to Sophie and Natalie who were on the boat, the two men in charge weren't watching us at all, and only saw what had happened when everyone else on the boat started screaming and panicking about us.

Drowning aside, I did have a really good time. You can be assured that Lisa and I gave the instructors a piece of our minds when we got back on the boat, but we didn't get anything by means of apology. Nevertheless, I guess it's a good story to tell the grandchildren one day, plus I did get the chance to Jet Ski.

On Friday, Lisa, Natalie and I planned to do something much tamer by booking a dolphin and whale watching boat trip, whilst Sophie and Hannah recovered from the night out they had had the night before after we had left them in Sparkles (the drag bar). It was a three hour trip, where we got to see dolphins in the wild, and there were loads of them! I'd only ever seen dolphins in the wild once before, in Florida when I was 7, so it was great to be able to see it again. I wasn't able to get any decent pictures of the dolphins though, trying to get a shot of dolphins when they're quickly jumping through the air was too much of a test for my poor photography skills! Then we all got the opportunity to jump off the boat into the sea for a spot of swimming, which Lisa did!

Our last night was spent finishing up the last of our tacky present buying, and having a bit of a final wonder around the area. Sophie and Hannah decided to go on one last night out, and didn't make it back until half an hour before the coach was coming at 3.55am to take us back to the airport. You'd think by now the drama would've all been over, right? Nope. The week had one last surprise for us.

We arrived at the airport and realised that everyone else had their boarding passes in hand. We were unable to print them before we went on holiday, and hadn't been able to since we got to Gran Canaria, so we felt assured that we would be able to get them at the airport, no problems. I mean, some people don't get access to the internet, let alone a printer, when they go abroad, and they must have something put in place to accommodate this. But nope. We were told that with no printed boarding passes, we were not going home. We were sent to the 'only' printer in the airport, and after I put in the last of my change, we discovered that it wasn't even working to begin with. Great. In a last ditch panic, we ran to the Ryanair desk to find out what we could do. They told us that there was a way we could make our flight (yay!)... by paying €70 EACH for them to print out our boarding passes for us (oh... not so yay). So bear in mind that as there were 5 of us, Ryanair managed to squeeze €350 out of us. Ouch. 

So cue a last minute mad rush, where we had to queue up again for the main desk, to get a receipt of our flight (where they already had all our details and everything, so why did we need a piece of paper with it all on? Ridiculous), and then run to another desk to pay a stupid amount of money, before legging it back to the first desk again to finally check in our bags. Seems like a rush? By this point we had 5 minutes before check-in closed, which wouldn't have been such a problem if the woman serving us wasn't working at a snails pace. When we politely told her to speed up because we'd just paid all this money and might not even make it anyway, she told us she wouldn't serve us if we were rude, and went even slower. The check-in closed, but she kept going, and finally 10 minutes later, our bags were off. Now we only had 25 minutes until our plane was due to leave, and we still had to get across the airport and find our gate.

Shoes off, we ran through Las Palmas airport, dashed through security, and made it to the gate just as it was about to close. Because we were the last to check-in, we were all scattered around the plane, and were all in for a long flight home. I made friends with the Bristol family I was sat with, who found my holiday tales hilarious, and too were enraged about the cheek of Ryanair's extra charges. When we finally landed in Bristol, we were absolutely delighted to find that our bags had also made the flight, and we were relieved that we had actually made it.

(View from the plane, you can see Weymouth and Portland in the distance)

So there you have it. One action-packed, stress-filled week away. I have never come back from a holiday before, and felt like I needed to book another one to recover. The moral of the story, never fly with Ryanair, they will try and get as much money as they can out of you, whether you can afford it or not. Also, you will probably drown if you attempt to do any watersports. That taught me for trying to be active. Lesson learnt, it's much safer to be a coach-potato.  But hey, I did see some dolphins! Plus, I do have loads of stories to tell from my week away, and for both good and bad reasons, it was certainly unforgettable.

Until next time...

Much love ♥

Sun, Sea... and drag queens? Part one...

Hi everyone! Sorry for my absence, but yesterday I got back from a fantastic week away in Gran Canaria, and I can honestly say I've had a really good time. I can also say it's been a bit of a learning curve for me, but despite a few bumps along the week, it's been an overall really great experience. Luckily I had 4 lovely ladies, Lisa, Sophie, Natalie and Hannah, to experience it all with. 

We got up at the crack of dawn to make our way to Bristol Airport, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, where we met up with Hannah and settled down for our 4 hour flight. So far so good. We managed to find our transfer and eventually wound up at our hotel. It was pretty impressive how we managed to get there, and our hotel was lush! I think we were all slightly expecting something as bad as in the Inbetweeners Movie. Our hotel had two pools, and the rooms were ridiculously massive! 

Our first obstacle of the week was being greeted by Steve the Conman. We all believed he worked for our hotel and he managed to persuade us to part with €20 for a ticket which gave us free entry to all the nights out. At first this seemed great, but as soon as we got into the hotel and spoke to the receptionist, we realised it was probably too good to be true. We ran back out and forced him to give us his mobile number, saying that if he didn't show up the next night, we would cut his testicles off and make them into chowder. Reluctantly, he agreed. 

Feeling a little bit better about the situation, we finally went and checked into our hotel. Our hotel was all you can eat, and all you can drink. I can assure you that this was abused to the maximum. Our first night was spent trying all the drinks and jumping up and down on our beds (I do NOT recommend a vodka slushie, it tasted awful.) One of the hardest things to get used to since I've come home is not being able to go and get food whenever I want it. The buffet was amazing, it had so much choice, and you could have as much or as little as you wanted. There were several nights where I had two plates of food followed by a huge bowl of ice cream. Why not, when in Gran Canaria...

Lisa and I, who were sharing a room, managed to end up with the most temperamental door in the history of doors. When we first checked in, we spent a good 20 minutes trying to get into our room. No luck. We had to go back up to reception, who explained that our key-cards had been wiped! The next morning, we went to put our "Do Not Disturb" sign up, and somehow managed to snap it in our lock! I've never in my life seen anyone else manage to go something like that, but luckily after much struggling with tweezers, we got the piece of plastic out. Stupid door. 

The second day was spent in the pool and sunbathing, and being burnt to a crisp. Probably not the best way to start your holiday, and I was constantly applying sun cream! It just goes to show how hot and how strong the sun was there. Evening came, and it was time to see if Steve the Conman would show up, and to our surprise, he did! We followed a train of people walking to the Kasbah centre for the night, which was completely terrible. We all got stamped with playboy stamps, trashy! The drinks weren't exactly as cheap as I'd hoped, and I literally had shots forced upon me. Plus there was literally only one girl dancing, and it was just embarrassing to watch. It looked like she was auditioning for a music video. Lisa and I left early and wound up back at our hotel watching the karaoke around the pool, which was far more entertaining. I'd much rather spend my night watching two welsh girls butchering "Living On A Prayer" than being forced to drink expensive drinks. 

Monday came, and we decided to give the pool a break and hit the shops. I've come to the conclusion that you can go anywhere in the world and find the same rubbish in the gift shops, but I'll admit, I do love it. We spent ages trying to find the tackiest fridge magnet we could find, which was won by a cartoon camel driving a sports car (????), and buying some awful souvenirs for people back home. 

Defeated by the shops, we decided to hit a bar that night, and found ourselves in Sparkles. Sparkles is the best drag bar I've ever been in (okay so it's the first one I've been in, but it'll take a lot to top it), and the drinks were so good and so cheap! During happy hour, a huge cocktail pitcher was €13, and this was enough to last me all night. Entry to the bar was free, and you got to watch a different drag show every night. By the end of our holiday, I was in love with the place. We got to know all the drag queens, plus all the bar staff who made the place feel like home every night. I definitely recommend a trip to Sparkles to anyone who finds themselves in Gran Canaria!

The following night was once again spent in Sparkles, with a trip to the beach for Lisa, Natalie and I during the day. The beach was beautiful, and the weather was so hot! On our walk down to the beach, we were approached by two African women, who practically dragged me over to sit on a wall and started braiding my hair. I couldn't escape, I was trapped on the wall by two women who were doing my hair without my permission, fabulous. Whilst I was there, one of the women started tying these bracelets onto all our wrists, saying "peace from Africa", and started doing some strange voodoo chanting. Finished, they then had the cheek to charge Lisa and Natalie €5 each for the bracelets, and me €15 for my hair, plus €5 for my bracelet!! The moral of the story is, don't stop walking for anyone, or you will be cursed by Africa and wind up with half your hair braided.

That's roughly the first half of my week adventures in Gran Canaria, but trust me, it gets much stranger in the second half. Look forwards to reading about my near death experience and how I very nearly didn't even make it home! (No exaggeration here, you'll see next time.)

Much love ♥

Time to fly...

I'm jetting off tomorrow to the sunny Spanish island of Gran Canaria with a few of my friends, and I'm so excited! I've completely over packed, I have 4 bikinis, 5 dresses, 4 pairs of shorts and 12 tops...I'm only there for a week! But hey, a girl has got to have options. 

I'm sorry I haven't been able to ramble on about something to great length, I've just been so busy working and packing, packing and working. I promise though, that when I am back, I will write a huge post all about my adventures abroad, and how I most likely got burnt to a lovely shade of lobster red and drank far too many complimentary cocktails!

Until then..

Much love ♥