The sun is shining!

While writing this, I’m sitting outside, having a fag (smoke) and looking at the stars. It's wonderful! For the first time in weeks the weather is actually perfect! It’s possible to sit outside without getting cold and during the day, the sun is shining! And… next week’s prediction is even better!

*Being young in Britain*
Which country is the best country to be young? And which the worst? … Correct! On top of the list is of course The Netherlands and England is the worst. What else do you expect?, you have to pay like £9,000 (which is almost €11.000) a year to go to college! And no, the government doesn't give you any money to help you out (and if they do it’s like £0.99). So when you’ve finished college, you’ll have a debt of (at least if you’re lucky) £30.000. To make it even worse, there are no jobs available after you’re graduated, so… For those in the Netherlands, I would really appreciate it if you would stop complaining!

*I’m leaving this place!*
In my last blog I already mentioned something about a trip that I’m going to make. Every week I’m trying to do a sightseeing trip in Birmingham (or near B’ham). So for example I’m going to see the Stonehenge in a couple of weeks and I’m visiting Stratford next week.
But the trip I’m talking about right now is going to be a something completely different. ‘’So Es, please tell us, what is it that you’re going to do?’’ I’m going to travel around the United Kingdom and Ireland for 4 weeks! I’m going to visit different cities and do some sightseeing there (I should probably consider buying a proper camera instead of using the camera on my phone). I’m planning on leaving the 22nd of April and I won’t be back until the 21st of May.
This is where I’m going:

- 22-24 London
- 25 Cambridge
- 26-27 London
- 27-30 Brighton
- 30-03 Manchester
- 03-07 Liverpool
- 07-10 Glasgow
- 10-13 Edinburgh
- 13-17 Belfast
- 17-21 Dublin

I’m going there by train/bus/plane and I hope I can find some good addresses to couch surf! So if you have friends anywhere in those cities where I might be able to stay, let me know!

*Pub Quiz*
What’s Madonna’s age? What was the Spice Girl’s first album? Neither did I… But after the ‘Big Fat Music Pub Quiz’ I know the answers are 55 and Spice . So I was in a team with the lovely Lauren, Courtney and Ben and we called ourselves ‘Internationals + Ben’. We didn’t do too bad actually and we ended up with the 10th place (from the 13… hmm… Okay, maybe we weren’t that good). But!, we didn’t got the wooden spoon! (Wooden spoon? Apparently, here in England, the losing team gets a wooden spoon. Why?, ‘because you can’t do a thing with it’. (I know I know, I also still think it’s weird)

*Social, Social, Social*
Tommy brought a new game to the Social Café, called ‘Jungle Speed’. It’s like Uno but more aggressive, but this time I didn’t bruise myself haha and… I even won the game a few times! After my great victory, me and some other went outside for a fag when we saw the weirdest Pigeon ever. This Pigeon has like 4 wings, 2 normal wings and 2 on his feet (and no he didn’t use the ones on his feet to fly). According to some students here, this is a normal typical Pigeon but still, me and all the other internationals thought it was so cute! So we named him ‘Happy Feet’!


*I caugh an uncatachable fish*
This time we saw a film produced by Tim Burton, called ‘Big Fish’. I still love this movie, no matter how many times I’ve seen it: ‘’A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.’’ I won’t deny that there were some tears at the end (of both emotion and laughter).

*My way to fame*
“What does it mean to be a man/woman in today’s society?’’ That’s the theme of my drama class, and I have to show my opinion and interpretation in an artful way. I’m going to do this by acting but also by writing a poem. I already started with my poem and I hope the others will like it. Eventually I’ll share it with everyone when I’m performing it in April!

*Black country Museum*
Another lovely trip with my international friends! This time we went to see the Black Country museum. I’m going to start off with some history first: Somewhere at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, Birmingham was an industrialised city where people worked in coal mines and produced metal work. Because of all the smoke that was coming from there, they called it ‘the black country’. Now, this museum shows us how people use to live and work in that time. It was amazing! It kind of reminded me of my own time in re-enactment. We went into an actual mine and it was so scary! It was pitch dark and we had some lights but even with those you could barely see a thing! After that we went to a lecture in 1918 (we borrowed Dr Who’s time machine real quickly). We were thought the alphabet and tables and I really approve with the methods that he used: a stick to hit his pupils with and an eraser to throw at them! I wish I was a teacher back in those days.. (‘’evil laugh’’). So after seeing other bits of the museum, eating the best fish & chips in the world and playing some old games, we took a tour to see the old canals. We went underground (great…more darkness…) and it was beautiful! (Can’t really describe it so just check the pictures).
After that we went to Nando’s and we had some good chicken wings. Me, Matt, Tommy and Courtney decided to try something which is called ‘Chicken wing roulette’, which basically means that there are 3 very hot (and I mean, very hot!!) chicken wings and that if you had one of those, you would basically sprint to the bathroom to get some water (which happened to me, twice!). But it was fun!

*International pancake day*
Last Tuesday was pancake day (the day before Lent), but most of us forgot about it. So, I organised an international pancake day for just the international students. The idea was, that we would all bring pancake recipes from our home country. So we had pancakes from: America, Spain, Romania, Russian, Germany, the Netherlands, England and France. After this meal, I should probably participate on Lent and lose some weight haha!

*Thing I’ve learned this week*
- English breakfast works perfectly for dinner as well
- Pokémon is still awesome after 15 years!
- Laying down in bed half an hour before you should leave for lecture isn’t a good idea…
- Don’t say: ‘’I’m so fucking tired’’ during lecture
- I love the English Patient!
- The two towers from Lord of the Rings were inspired on the two towers from Birmingham! And, according to Tolkien, Birmingham is Mordor!

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/116626563@N07/sets/

Thank you for reading! xx