2011 Part 2 (Everything Else)

The other half of 2011 was pretty decent too.



-This summer, I took a break from cashiering then doing nothing to hang out with my friend who came to visit America. This picture was taken in Boston, by the harbor, after being caught in a sudden rainstorm. In my life, instances such as this are normal.











-Later in the summer, my friend Greg also visited America, so a few of us met up and hung out for a bit. Which meant a few of us ended up in onesies. Obviously.











-I absolutely love my suite at school, which is dubbed "The Flat" because my roommates and I all met and lived in London last semester. We had a spread of various soaps available in the bathroom, and it was decorated extensively for Christmas. We had our tree set up in late October, so initially we decorated it for Halloween before switching for Christmas. It was the perfect atmosphere for the "fake Christmas" I celebrated with my friends.







-On my birthday, I went apple picking with my roommates. Along with the apples, we also picked up pumpkins, and I carved my first jack-o-lantern ever a few weeks later.









-This semester, I took a Latin American history course, and have never been so bored in a class in my entire life. The silver lining to this is I drew some truly great Doctor Who and Harry Potter-inspired doodles in my notebook.











-After going to see my friend from middle school in a hockey game, some of us decided it would be fun to go ice skating. Even though it had been a while since I had skated and my legs were sore the next day, I did not actually fall. So, you know, success.









-In October, we had a massive snowstorm. Pretty much the rest of the entire state went without power for the next week, but on campus we were totally fine, even though the storm did cancel a scavenger hunt I had been planning for a group of us. You win some, you lose some.








-A few weeks ago, one of my roommates had to take the GRE because she is the smartest of all the people, and I drove her to the site with a few friends. Instead of driving there and back and there and back, we stayed down there and adventured. We came across a trail white driving through rural areas looking in vain for stores, then tried to find a waterfall that didn't seem to exist.








Overall, a pretty great year, I'd say.

2011 Part 1 (London)

I realized yesterday that today is the last day of 2011. I figured I should probably write about the year. It was pretty good. I quickly realized I would need to break the year up into two parts- PARTS PARTY. So here I go reminisce about the first half of the year and London.



-At least once, occasionally multiple times a week (sometimes a day) I ate or hung out in the Wetherspoons chain of pubs. For each meal, I ordered a veggie burger and pint meal, and it was the best thing. Both the food and the company I went there with made each visit fantastic.

Note: the picture to the left is from my last burger there, which incidentally was the worst one I had, because, as you can tell, they burned it. Jerks.









-In the middle of the semester, Emily and I got permission to leave class early to attend a play that Young Adult author Maureen Johnsen tweeted about. I had never read any of her books, but I was still a fan. (I have since read some of her work, and it is exemplary.) As we were sitting in the audience before the show, Emily asked me if I saw her yet, and I said, "Oh she's at the end of our row holy crap... oh she's walking toward us..." and then Maureen Johnsen proceeded to sit down right next to us. Our tickets just happened to be right next to each other. And then we took pictures in awful lighting and thoroughly enjoy the play.




-I was in a great deal of Dailybooth pictures this year, despite not actually having an account on the site myself. At one point I even attended a gathering of Dailybooth users and then felt very out of place.











-This was taken in a tube station, where I spent a quite large amount of time. I'm sitting on the statue of some guy who was an important train engineer or something. I never noticed before, but the guy in the background of this is slightly hilarious. In his defense, I'm sure we looked quite odd.










Ok, this is going to take forever. New plan.





-Belgium, Scotland, France, across England. Having the ability and opportunity to travel so much was an incredible and unique experience I will never forget.












- The European friends I made while living in London made my time there so much more special.

Also, one person is stopping that from being "British friends." Geez, Austria just ruins everything, am I right?










-The friends from my own group and school I made in London are still a huge part of my life. After bonding in the UK, they are still some of the best friends I have ever had.

Cool Stuff I Have aka Consumerism is Awesome

So now I'm back home for winter break, and this means, as it has for a while now, continuing to set up my stuff in my room. My family having just moved, (which has actually been the case for about three years now- three houses in three years will do that) I need to assemble and display my things in the best way possible. This task is very important because you see, I have some really cool stuff. For example:
-I have a plush keychain of Winnie the Pooh in a panda costume. If you're thinking to yourself, "Holy shit that's the cutest thing that's ever fricking existed," you're totally right.
-When I toured Italy with my high school band a few years back, I bought a (probably overpriced) little painting of the Duomo on a street in Florence because I thought that was a chic, international thing to do.
-Over this past spring break in France, I bought a replica army cricket in Normandy- these were used by troops during the invasion to tell if they had fellow countrymen nearby. It was only two Euros and probably only took fifty cents to make but I couldn't even care less.
-I collect vintage books. I have old copies of Shakespeare, Thoreau, and others. Oh yeah guys, you're dealing with a real scholar here. But ask me if I've read any of them? SHUT UP.
-My freshman year of college I stole a poster from my dorm hall because it had a picture of Harry Potter on it. It was advertising a really dumb event on campus, and I at least waited until after the event had passed to swipe it from the floor below mine.
-I bought an eraser from the Globe that has the Macbeth quote, "Out damned spot! Out I say!" (GET IT?!?) It was supposed to be for my sister, but whatever. It's now hanging out by my plays. See? Everything has a place.
-I also collect rocks from cool places. I have some from Omaha beach, Versailles, and Hastings and Brighton in England. These are all together in a plastic cup that once held two Euro, 12% white wine from a French convenience store that caused me to almost flash my friends in our hostel room. My friend asked about the tag on my shirt when I was really in no right state to check it.
-Among some frankly slightly creepy looking ceramic cats, I have a crystal dog and matching bone. These all came from my grandparents house, and I have clear memories of being little and told repeatedly to keep away from the dog because it was fragile and God help us all if the bone went missing. In fact, to this day I have never taken the dog out of his clear plastic protective box. Maybe some day.
-I have an entire shelf dedicated to Harry Potter, which includes all 7 books, the Beetle the Bard book, two books of literary analysis, a plastic wand, a postcard from the Wizarding World, my signed movie cover, and a stuffed owl that is not supposed to Hedwig, but totally is Hedwig.
-I am a fan of bulletin boards. In my room, I have two separate ones, both completely full. They contain everything from my lanyard from visiting the BBC, to my prom ticket, to a birthday card from 2010, to a ticket to Lincoln's presidential museum in Illinios, to a pin of the American and German flags I got on my last day of German class.
-By my Twilight books, I have a heart-shaped paper weight that was made in Volterra because... I went through a phase.
-I also collect souveneir shot glasses because I'm THAT person. I have ones from New Hampshire, San Antonio, Cancun, Virginia, and my university. These are most definitely going to be a worthwhile investment and be worth loads of money one day.
-Hanging off my lamp, I have a YouTube drawstring bag that a friend got me at Summer in the City and I haven't used it yet but it sure looks great hanging off my lamp.

One thing that is noticably missing from my room is a view of snow out the window. But that topic will be covered.... NEXT TIME on SARA TYPES WORDS.

Twitter Stats

I'm fairly obsessed with Twitter. Since my friend Emily set up an account for me last Winter, I have grown more and more attached. So after 657 tweets, I decided to count the number of tweets I create that share common themes. You know, for fun. Like a normal person.
I'm also not going to comment on how I'm discussing Twitter on Blogspot, and posting it to Facebook. Now if only someone would make a Youtube video about it, that would be the ultimate social media combination. What a boring video that would be, though.
So here are the major themes in my life right now:

"I need sleep" 3
casual conversations with friends from a country across an ocean from myself- 105
casual conversations with friends from the country where I am residing at the time, when I am too tired or lazy to just go get my phone to text them- 129
Referring to my favorite pub or the drink I purchase there- 18
clever responses to other people's tweets- 14
Schoolwork is hard- 12
I'm really weird- 81
Class. GROSS.- 10
Me just being clever or commenting on life in general- 126
EVERYTHING IS AWFUL- 31
I was on ESPN- 2
EVERYTHING IS GREAT- 29
my school makes life and parking difficult- 9
retweeting Tyler Oakley or people saying interesting things in more eloquent ways than I could- 11
Doctor Who is the best thing- 12
Attempting to interact with famous people by @ replying them- 12
London is my first and only true love- 20
I'm seeing famous people today- 2
Harry Potter- 10
when I was trying to make "historical pop songs"a thing- 5
when I referred to myself as a hermit because I was embarrassed about last night's events- 4
Emily took over-3

I'm sure some kind of anthropological study could be done on the reasons and motivations for my compulsion to tweet these things.
I mean, it could be. It won't though.