if you ever come back

i’ve made a lot of superficial friends. like i have friends i can go to dinner with but i sit there silently because they all know each other so well that they talk about things i don’t understand, stories i wasn’t there for. i have friends i can depend on to take me out on weekends. people who will text me and be like ‘we’re going — come along’ and i’ll go out with them once a week but never talk to for the rest of the time. but i don’t have friends i can just be like ‘hey, i’ve got to go shopping tomorrow wanna come?’ or a girlfriend i can hang out with a get ready with on party nights. i imagine that might’ve been holly but her phone is broken right now so i have no way of getting in touch with her. i feel like i should be trying more but like… the people i know will include me but they won’t like talk to me. if that makes sense. unno, maybe i’m just being overly worried and paranoid.

so i’ve made a few plans for myself for the next couple of months. turns out poland fell through but i’m not too worried because i’m still going to go no matter what. instead though i’ve made plans to go to dublin for st paddy’s day which will be amazing. however in my attempt to be cheap i sort’ve screwed myself accidentally and i realized that my friends only have our hostel room for the 17-18 and i made my travel plans 16-20 sooo i had to book a legit hotel which was a tad pricey (40 quid) for the 16th because legit EVERYTHING was booked (damnit) and then i got a hostel for 8 quid for the 19th and they have a free shuttle bus to the airport. but either way i’m going to be celebrating st patrick’s in true irish style. other plans i’ve made include: - possible york trip on saturday? - might be going to see chelsea play everton on february 11 if i have the money for it - angus thongs and even more snogging musical on feb 13 - stratford-upon-avon on feb 18 - ghosthunting in nottingham (yes as in robin hood) feb 24 - london with holly for her brother’s birthday (end of feb) - there’s a trip to cardiff mar 2 i might go on - i’m seeing florence + the machine on mar 6 - dublin for mar 16-20 and then i’m off for a month for easter. i don’t know what i’m going to do. i’ve really got to try and get a job but it’s hard because everything i’ve looked at they expect you to stay on for next year too so they obviously won’t hire me. maybe i’ll see if i can get a job at the grocery store or the coffee shop, i’ll have to suck it up but if i want to travel come jun-july-aug(?) i need the money because what i have saved right now is only enough for residence.

and i’m really sorry so i’m going to spend the next however long it takes catching everyone up on what i’ve been doing. last we spoke it was my birthday and i was going out to the club with my flatmates… so i went to this club mission which was packed. i’ve never seen so many people in one club ever. it was like they were trying to deliberately push their fire limit and/or surpass it because i think they did. i did red bull/vodkas all night long because that’s what the boys were buying me. i ended up losing my friends like immediately into the club but met this guy george who ended up wandering around with me looking for people until i found ben and toto, two guys from res, and spent the night with them. eventually i managed to find holly and frankie, who are two girls i’ve made friends with, and then we lost frankie so holly and i spent the rest of the night together until she wanted to go to her boyfriends so i went back to res with some other international students. i didn’t spend a lot of time dancing because well, i was spending so much time looking for people and wandering around. i guess that’s the downside to having so many people there. could’ve been funner but it wasn’t a huge bust. the next day i met tom my mentor who showed me around leeds uni. we made plans to go to fruity which is the school club, he had already bought us tickets. oh, when i say us he had another mentee which is this girl michelle who is also from waterloo and lives in my residence complex. my residence consists of about 10 buildings i think and each individual building is a ‘house’ with like 75 people in it. anyways so we made plans to remeet for fruity at ten at the terrace which is the school bar, or one of them. according to tom this is where people go to have pints before class - because that’s acceptable here apparently. anyways so i met up with my mum afterwards, can’t quite remember what we did but chances are we went into city center and shopped. afterwards we came back to my dorm and i got ready. so i was supposed to meet tom in the terrace at 10 so i got there and i wanted to drop off my coat - well, as it turns out you can’t go out once you go into the club and coat check is in the club. so i had to text tom to tell him to find me because i was stuck in the club. i ended up meeting up with michelle and was introduced to these other canadians - matt, evan, candice, chuck and some other asian whose name i can’t remember but he goes to waterloo (i’m terrible i know). we all hung out and did some shots together when matt and i started talking. we ended up chilling in the hallway between clubs. the way fruity is set up is that it’s one massive club but there’s like 4 separate ‘rooms’ in it that play different music. i suppose this is the way normal clubs are and not like… phils. anyways so we were in the hallway chilling and like halfway through our conversation matt was all like ‘can i see you again? i really like you.’ and saying things like that. it was flattering albeit rather sudden (it had been 40 minutes!) he was talking about long-term stuff and i was like 8| i’ve been in the country for like 5 days, calm down. i was sort’ve saved when tom showed up and introduced me to will and gaz who are his flatmates. matt slipped off to get a drink and tom offered to buy me a drink upstairs so i went with him and i met tom, his other flatmate. we all were doing jagerbombs, i never paid for one because the boys insisted on paying for mine and i couldn’t buy a round once. we went to dance afterward which was hilarious. i love that british boys aren’t ashamed to dance here. they were just going to town and i mean more than just like… standing there and swaying like boys do at home. they were like jokingly grinding and dancing with each other. they’re a lot more comfortable with themselves here than boys at home are which is nice. plus it was great to just ‘have a laugh’ and ‘take the piss’ out of everything <—- i’m becoming british! i spent most of the night talking to tom and his flatmates, laughing and joking it was brilliant. eventually though tom disappeared and i was left with tom, his flatmate, and gaz. we were joined by candice who had lost the others and we went out for a smoke when michelle joined us, i think she lost the others too. we all stood outside and the boys tried to teach us how to talk in a proper british accent instead of the butchered americanized one we do here. tom and i got talking about movies/music/comedians and i brought up russell peters and he suggested we go back to his house to watch it because gaz hadn’t seen it. so they finished their fag (!!) and we were going to get one more shot but the bars were closed so we decided to leave and go to escobar. turns out tom is banned from escobar for reasons no one knew… so we ended up back at his house where will and ben (one of tom’s friends) were chilling having left fruity. we all sat around talking until tom asked if i was going to bed with him. so i went. THE NEXT MORNING… turns out michelle and candice hadn’t left which was super awkward because i just assumed they’d figure out i wasn’t coming down and get a taxi. apparently not. so they had slept on the couch and i felt so terrible for that because i can’t imagine being cramped on the couch is all that comfortable. i hadn’t gotten any sleep because tom and i had, legit, talked so much. we kept trying to sleep but i was too wired still from the booze and my mind was just running like mad so sleep just wasn’t happening. i got a cab with michelle back to res to find my mum awake and probably not too pleased about me spending the night out. i had a lot of fun so i tried not too feel too bad but i still felt bad for so many things - the girls on the couch, running out on tom when he asked me to stay, mum worrying and not getting any sleep… but when i got there mum didn’t say anything but told me to sleep… which of course i felt bad about too because it was her last full day there and we were supposed to do a ton of stuff. i woke up like two hours later and we got ready to go out. while we were putting on our makeup/doing hair i had my ipod going and slipping through my fingers started playing and we had this moment of ‘oh shit this applies so much’ and i unno that’s when it sort’ve hit me my mum would be leaving the next day. i know i’m like an adult now but she’s my best mate and it’s hard for me not having her here. most especially with the time difference, i think of things to tell her and then realize it’s like not even morning there so i can’t just email her and expect a reply. i can’t skype her until like 10 and by then i’m exhausted so i’m miserable and… it’s hard for now but we’re working on it. anyways so then we spent the day out, went to see W.E which i really enjoyed but i don’t think she liked and we had dinner and came back here. it wasn’t as fun-filled as i’m sure she had hoped for and i feel bad for that but at least i spent some time with my mummy before she left. the next day we had to get up and go to the train station, we both cried, it was hard. i needed to make myself ‘feel normal’ so i went to the movies by myself and saw shame because i had wanted to. sure enough it took my mind off everything and i wasn’t feeling too bad anymore. the next day was the first day of school which was… interesting. i had to change my modules and here apparently you can’t do anything online you have to go to the school thats offering the class have them approve you then go to the school you’re dropping the class from to have that approved and then you have to take it to your parent school because they’re the one who makes the final change online. it was super complicated, i had no idea where i was going and there was a random torrential downpour for like an hour. this happens a lot here - the sky will open up and rain like mad and then just stop. it’s annoying because it leaves you cold to the bone for the rest of the day. anyways i finally managed to find the school i wanted to take the course in (forensic psychology) and got to english to drop british new wave cinema and the professor there who needed to sign off for me goes ‘oh i have a birthday party can you come back in an hour?’ …it’s 2 in the afternoon. well, i didn’t cos i had class at 3. which i walked into like the class before like a stupid frosh which was GREAT. not. apparently no one comes before the class is started, everyone comes right at the time. anyways i sat there for 30 minutes, no one showed up apparently the class was cancelled though i had double checked the room was booked for my class and it was so that was awesome. i ended up waiting around because my next class was in that room anyways so there was no point in leaving. i finished up my classes and met up with my mentor tom for a pint at the pub. we chatted for an hour and then i went back to my room and spent the night in. tuesday i texted matt the guy i met on friday and he asked if i wanted to go out to the eldon for international night. we ended up going out to the pub for fish and chips and then went back to his res to chill. he apparently was pissed at me when he found out i had gone back to tom’s with him on friday and had contemplated not answering my text that day because of it… cool story bro. anyways, we met up with candice and went to remy’s to predrink. i got to meet chloe and paige who are these girls from western who have been here since september and we clicked so well right away chloe has invited me on all her trips abroad to europe so we’ll be going to poland next month and dublin in march and perhaps morocco if i have the money for it. we all went out to the eldon after predrinking and i got to meet this cool guy named alex from germany for an hour and then i met a bunch of brits. we decided we were going to see the artist next week so that should be fun. wednesday was recovery day, i didn’t do anything but stay in my room like the antisocial freak i am. thursday was australia day so i went to class and rushed home to change into my bathing suit and then went to walkabout which is an australian bar in city centre. i spent the night with chloe and a bunch of her flatmates which was awesome. got utterly pissed, there was a bouncy castle IN THE PUB. it was amazing and i’ll probably never see something like that again. after 8 hours of straight drinking i headed home and crashed because i had to be up at 8 am. friday i got up and dragged myself to my tutorial which was a bit hard to say the least. but the tutorial was interesting, too bad i hadn’t done the homework for it haha. good at bs though so i don’t think she knew. i went to the library with holly and did some school work and went back to the rezzie where she made me a ‘proper british tea’. haha she also invited me to her house end of feb/beginning of march for her brother’s birthday and said she’d show me around london like a proper londoner which would be nice. hung out for a bit and then got ready. i went out to tom’s to predrink where i was made fun of at every turn for having hooked up with their flatmate, apparently this is common knowledge whom they tell everyone - good to know *embarrassed face*. i played fifa with tom, got my ass handed to me at 9-0 which was horrible so i need to practice and go back to kick his ass later. we went out to his friend’s house. we played mario kart which again, my ass was kicked (seriously i shouldn’t be this rusty with video games but frankly i can’t remember the last time i played). we then went to the old bar at the union to predrink. all chatted before heading off to halo for the dancing. i was fairly drunk by then so it was a bit of a messy night. retrospectively there’s nothing really to be ashamed of i just broke some of my own personal rules which is a bugger. finally went back to rez at 3 though which was awful because i had to be up at 8 for liverpool this morning. liverpool is beautiful, if you ever get the chance to go do it because it’s a wonderful city. i just wish i had had more time to be there because i hardly did anything that i wanted to. we did the beatles story museum and a city tour bus and then the liverpool museum but that was it. i was going around with this guy chris from uganda who was really nice. we made plans to go back to liverpool so i can see the chelsea v everton game and do more stuff in liverpool so hopefully that all falls together which would be nice. so far i’m having a ton of fun and exceeding my own expectations for socialness. i’m surprised i’ve been able to keep up this much because usually i have to take a break and end up getting anti-social for like a full week but iunno, something about this atmosphere actually makes me wanna go out and do stuff.

i turned 21 today. twenty-one. legal everywhere now which is awesome. it just doesn’t feel like my birthday. i guess it’s cos i’m away from home, i’ve been out of touch with every single one of my friends and i’m in a different time zone from everyone. but it’s still my birthday. the last couple of days i’ve been settling in at leeds. on tuesday we got to the hotel and just stayed in. watched a movie and went to bed. nothing exciting. yesterday we moved into dorms which was a bit crazy but i met two other girls on an exchange. one from texas and one from arizona. there’s a lot of southerns here so everyones all like ‘it’s friggin’ cold’ and i’m like ‘loooool it’s april weather!’ soo yeah. we went into the uni yesterday which is massive. i’m going to get so lost you have no idea. i’m going to be that kid i just know it. we did this quick intro thing which was stupid cos it just reiterated everything i already knew about this exchange program. i guess it was helpful to anyone who didn’t read all the spam they’ve been sending us for weeks. after that we ended up wandering down into the city center where all the shopping is. finally got to a primark which was cool cos it was super cheap everything and cute fashionable clothes. definitely where i’ll be going for everything cos it’s in my price range. after that we wandered back to res and walked around here to explore. there’s a bar here but it’s only open until 11 so that’s a bit lame. we ordered pizza and they delivered right to my building which is cool cos i live in a complex of residences where there’s like 12 different buildings but we’re all in ‘bodington hall’. while waiting for the pizza i met a bunch of boys down in the commons who were playing fifa on xbox and learned that i happen to be in the 1st year rez. yay me. but apparently they’ve stuck other exchange students here. i guess it’s less of a case of putting us with people our age than putting us with british kids. they were all really nice though. when they found out it was my birthday (tomorrow) today they were like ‘oh we’re going out to mission (i guess this is a club)! you should come along and we’ll all celebrate with you!’ so i think i’m going out tonight for my birthday. i feel bad though because now i have plans tonight and tomorrow and they don’t include my mum. she’s starting to realize that maybe she should’ve come until friday instead of monday because i don’t really need her. which isn’t so much the case, i don’t mind that she’s here and i like spending my days with her but i feel bad cos i do still want to go out because i know how crucial the first few weeks in res are. they establish your relationships and if i end up ditching everyone right away well i’m not going to be invited to go out anymore now am i? she says she understands but i can’t help but thing that underneath it all she’s a bit upset. if only clubbing was her thing, i wouldn’t care if she came along i just know she’d hate it.

I don’t mind airplanes. I just don’t like 6 hour flights that transcend time zones and give me 6 hours to sleep. They fed us dinner, snack and breakfast because those were technically the meals we did in the air but that took out of the sleeping time so needless to say we were friggin’ jet lagged when we landed into Gatwick, which is 30 minutes from London. We took a bus from there which was cool cos we got to see the countryside from the train and by countryside it was like going along the lakeshore go train into Toronto. We got into Victoria statie and moving my bags (I packed wayyyy too much) from the station to the tube was retarded. 50 pounds up and down stairs? Not fun. Only one guy offered to help me and that was probably cos I was in his way. Finally we got to the hotel though - we stayed at the Maranton House Hotel in Earl’s Court, Kensington, London - and found out we were on the top floor (it’s like they knew we had stupidly heavy bags) and had to haul them up 66 stairs (mum counted because ‘she was dying to know’) After that we set out right away with the sightseeing, not wanting to miss a moment even if we were tired. We ended up at the Earl’s Court Pub where I tried John Smith’s Ale under someone’s advisement back home. We had some mixed pub food tray since we were starving and ended up back at the hotel to get something only to fall asleep - oops! When we woke up we went to Piccadilly Circus and wandered around looking at everything. We managed to get tickets to Broadway and headed off to see The Wizard of Oz. It was really good but now that I’m an adult I realize how campy the story is. Mum and I both had trouble not falling asleep during the play and managed to get through it somehow. When we left we ended up back at the hotel and crashing for the night. Not a super productive day but it was fun to wander Piccadilly and see a play. The next morning we got up and had breakfast while walking to Stamford Bridge London Stadium where Chelsea (my football team!) play. Mum got us stadium tour tickets for my birthday and I bought myself a team shirt. Almost considered getting a Lampard shirt but for 30 extra pounds I decided it wasn’t worth it. It was really cool to get to walk around the stadium even if it wasn’t for a game (tickets are around 150 each, ouch. So I’ll have to find another way to get to a game while I’m here). After that we left and went to this mall for a bit where we wandered around and then went to the grocery store. Mum loved walking around there and found tons of cool stuff. She practically wanted to buy the store and take it home with her haha. After that we got back on the tube and ended up at Westminster where mum wanted to try and get into the abbey. When we got there we were so tired we didn’t realize we were looking at Big Ben until like a half hour later. We were too late to get into the Abbey though, which mum was disappointed about I really didn’t mind too much I mostly wanted us to get in cos we had done Chelsea for me that day. We wandered over to the London Eye only to find out it was closed so then we walked around the Waterloo Pier for a while before hoping onto the tube again and going off to find somewhere to eat. We went to the Aberdeen Steak House restaurant which was retardedly expensive and not so worth it but it was a filling meal which was good because we were averaging eating once everywhere 10 hours or so. Afterwards we ended up back at Leicester Square in Piccadilly and went to see The Rum Diary at the movie theatre. It was cool how they do it, you buy your ticket and then pick your seat. It’s like going to one of those premium theatres back home where you can have alcohol in the theatre. Really small with like 30 seats and it was awesome. Even if the movie wasn’t. Awesome cast, confusing movie. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and crashed again. The next morning we got up and went out to The Tower of London bright and early. We ended up spending 3 hours there wandering around and looking at everything. We got to see where Anne Boleyn was kept and the changing of the guard. Plus we saw some of the royal crowns which was cool. The oldest they had was 1650 ish which is sick that they’ve kept it so intact. After that we left and had drinks outside of the London Bridge. We decided to try Westminster Abbey again and took the tube back but it was already closed (closed at 3:30pm, how stupid) so then we decided to go to Buckingham Palace and both thought that it was close enough we could walk. Retrospectively, yes… it was close, but we’d been walking all day so we were in pain by the time we got there. Once there it wasn’t nearly as impressive as you’d think it would be so we decided together to grab a double decker and go to Harrod’s. It was only like 6:30 and we killed two hours looking around there and ended up buying a lot of food - good food, tasty amazing food - and went back to the hotel where we had a mini feast on the bed. I ended up falling asleep at 10 - I was exhausted even though mum had wanted to go to a pub for the night. This morning we got up and packed up everything right away. The hotel was nice enough to let us leave our bags there before we hopped on the tube to go to Richmond where we caught a bus that took an hour to get us to Hampton Court Palace. I had a nerdgasm all over the place the entire time because it was amazingly wicked. We had sorted out that I had 2 hours to see everything and that was cutting it close. By the time we were done we had an hour and 45 minutes to get to the bus station to catch our bus to Leeds. It was a lot of running with 50 pounds of bags and snippy remarks between mum and I but we managed to make it - with one minute to spare. The bus ride was 4 and a half hours long and I slept for a lot of it. Apparently this jetlag thing is still getting to me, hopefully I’ll get myself into a schedule soon. We got to Leeds and managed to get to the hotel - with a lift yay! And had dinner in the in-dining of the hotel. We decided to spend the night in so we got Real Steel on the tv and I came on to blog our so-far adventures. It’s wicked cool here and I think I’m going to love it but I haven’t explored Leeds at all yet so I can’t say for sure. I nearly die every time I hear a British accent though so I’ll probably combust before I get home in 6 months. That’s it for now, I’ll post some photos following this.

And there’s still so much to do. My mind hasn’t stopped reeling in 56 hours and everytime I think of one thing it’s prompts another. I haven’t started packing yet - I mean I have stuff gathered but that’s about it. I still have things here I have to deal with like osap and bank info. But then I think about how I have to make sure I have everything to open a bank account there . Ugh, see what I mean? Then I get worried about my hemiting tendencies and how will I make friends there but then I think about my friends in leaving here and… Hakdbdvhskdeigd I need to freeze time so I can take care of everything. I have no more time left when did it come so fast?

i like.. did everything right and then it freaked out and restored the phone and for a minute it was all “OH WE CAN’T DO THAT.” about putting my stuff back on my phone and i was like 8| cos then i would’ve lost ALL my contacts. but now it’s going back and i just am wondering… should i try again?

i haven’t been able to sleep properly for the last two weeks if my memory serves correctly. i’ve had a migraine perpetually because of it and my entire head has constantly been aching, muscles as well. for once in my life it’s not because i’m stressed or something or my mind won’t shut off because i’ve been taking my melatonin almost religiously and i just can’t…. sleep. it’s killing me. so today (or tomorrow i guess) i’m going to stay up and just pull an all-nighter. i hope that by doing this by tomorrow around 7-8 ish my body will just want to die so it’ll crash and i’ll finally sleep for more than 6 hours (yes i know this is some people’s average but i like getting at least 8 and so my body is used to this amount) and my body will sort’ve fall back into routine. i was so good this summer, i was in bed at midnight and up at 8 or 9 and now i’m so messed up. i wanna get back into this pattern for england at the very least because i don’t wanna miss one second of my time over there. i’m just going to add this bout of insomnia to the growing list of medical problems i’ve been having lately to ask the doctor about when i get around to going for an appointment before i leave for england.

so i just paid my tuition for winter term which wasn’t as bad as i had charted it out to be in my head. it was 3,094.76 which is good because i think i paid 6 grand last year but i was in res and that’s why i got shortchanged. but now my savings account only has like 4800 in it and i just converted what res for leeds is going to be which is between 3500-4500 canadian and that’s if i get into my first choice at the cheapest possible rate. i’m hoping that because i’m canadian and they know their pound is worth more than the dollar they’ll take that into account and give me the rate cos honestly? i don’t care if i live in a shithole as long as it’s a cheap shithole. it’s going to be tight next year but i’m going to have like 2000 i think between credit cards to use and overdraft in my savings account which sounds good but everything is so expensive in the uk and i reeeeeeallllllly wanna travel while i’m over there because it’ll be so much cheaper to travel there while i’m living there than coming home and going back again right? obviously i’m going to have to be a lonely planet type tourist and just be stingy as shit which is fine- my mom raised me to be stingy anyways haha… but still, i’m nervous. i really need to get a part-time job for over christmas while i’m off for a month and can work for the whole month and you’d think there’d be more seasonal employment but i’ve applied to like 10 places and no one has called me back. i think i might go back to rogers if they’ll take me just for the month. i mean, i can only hope they will… well, i’ll give it another two weeks and once i’m done school if nothing has called me i’m going to try out rogers and keep my fingers crossed. ugh, not to mention i haven’t gotten a subletter yet for my apartment and i really cannot, obviously, afford to continue to pay for my lease in waterloo. i love living with my friends but i’m seriously regretting signing that lease when i knew there was a good chance i wouldn’t be there for more than four months. fml.

it’s the worse thing in the world.