Tonight I spent my blogging time having a dress up party. By myself. Which, I think is socially acceptable because although I do have friends, I haven't gotten to that deeper level of companionship where an understanding of one's dress-up needs is shared.
Today happens to be the day that, 16 years ago, a wonderful American friend of mine spilled out of her mother in a very slimy fashion. Despite the fact that I am miles away I still opted to celebrate because unless she jumps in a jello pool, that will have been the one and only time she would be so covered in goop. So, I made her a video:
Because I'm 8 hours ahead of her I already know what happens, but I still wish her the very best!
Friday 22 July 2011
Wednesday 20 July 2011
Food and Drinkssss, mate!
I hadn't had the spirit to post a blog in the last two days because I finally came down with a cold case of homesickness. Now I have decided to show you some of the Englandy foods I have around my kitchen! Here is what I found:
PG Tips
You might have heard about the huge deal made over tea around here. I did some research and it turns out that "Every day we [as Englandites] drink 165 million cups of the stuff and each year around 144 thousand tons of tea are imported." It seems that a lot of Brits like their tea really strong. Although my Mum happens to be a full-blood Brit, our family, as the pitiful wimps that we are, still prefers a lighter version of the regular black tea. PG Tips.
This is me, showing you how to insert a teabag into your mug. You might want to practice a few times by making the gestures with your hands before actually trying to do it. I make it look quite easy in this picture. My mug has a little Buddha man along with a few other kings and gods of pleasant things, in hopes that it will be a countering effect on my extreme caffeine rushes.
Lemon Barley Water
(I definitely had a Scottish accent when I said that in my head!)
American Chums: Pay CLOSE ATTENTION. When you arrive in England for the first time, you're going to find yourself needing a drink of water at some point in time. If you're anything like me, once you find an acceptable water source, you will take a sip and immediately spit it out. The water here tastes like CRAP! That is probably why they've invented Barley Water; a soft and tasty addition to assuage the horrid taste of your water.
Ribena <3
This is simpleton me, loving a bottle of Ribena. It's much like the Barley Water, but with a terrific blackcurrant flavour. I have always loved it and will continue loving it throughout the entirety of my life. To sum most things up, I may just have "Ribena :D" carved into my grave when I die. Probably below it, "overdose" will be written.
Digestive Biscuits- also come chocolate coated!
I don't know why I'm frowning here.. these are quite good with tea.
Marmite
I actually do mean to frown here. I used to love it as a child but I think I also ate just as much glue as I did this stuff so I'm not really sure I knew how to taste back then. Mum loves it, and we all think she's weird. It really is one of those things that either you love or you hate... http://www.marmite.com/
FAQ's:
Q: Why do you guys drink so much tea?
A: The real question is HOW can we drink so much tea and the answer is because we're bloody AMAZING!
Q: Is tea all you ever drink?
A: Nah, beer mate! Gotta *hiccup* have them beers...
Q: What is 'Spotted Dick'?
A: Sometimes when you go out partying and really get into things... I jest, I jest! It's a steamed pudding usually consisting of fruit and accommodated by custard.
This is all making me very hungry so I think I'm going to indulge in a midnight snack - S'laters! xxx
Sunday 17 July 2011
Awkward Cow Circle
2:45 PM – I am going to carry out on an adventure to my dear friend Pete’s house. As I was born in England, I’ve known Pete since we were youngins. We would run around naked with underwear on our heads so I think he’ll be cool if I show up covered in mud and with twigs in my hair. My reward is to sit down and play a calming board game with him. I think it's a fairly long walk and I don’t really know the area too well, but my brother, affectionately called “Bobo”, helped me to find a footpath on a map that I will bring with me. Hopefully I will make it.
4:20 PM - I’m at Pete’s house and we’re about to play video games. Psh, board games… this is a teenage boy, dummy!
Later - Aaaand, the adventurer returns! WHAT a trip that was. I did my best not to appear to my town as the weird American that I am. I only walked up and down the road about eleven times before I found the public foot path. I was just starting to feel a sense of relief about my journey. I do this thing when I’m bored and need to pee; I hold it in for as long as possible and then let it all out. Pretty sure that’s what Jesus did to me because the next thing I know, it’s raining like crazy. What happens next is I climb over a stile – if you don’t have a clue as to what that is, here you are:
Stone
Wooden
You use these instead of trying to catapult your body over the stone walls or through the barb-wire fences they have to separate each field.
Once over, I find myself in very close proximity to a herd of cows. The next stile is directly through this herd. Being the bold and fairly crazy person I am, I plodded right for them. Now cows are generally not man-eating creatures, but sometimes they like to appear as if they are.. just for kicks. I soon found myself surrounded by a bunch of smelly cows staring very intently at me. The worst part was that they weren’t even saying anything – going around mooing like normal cows do. The sadness of the situation dawned on me quite quickly: I was trapped in an awkward cow circle. And Jesus was peeing on me. Lovely.
People often complain about crap boyfriends or a ridiculous boss and often wish they had more guidance in life. Well how about a solution to being trapped in a CIRCLE OF COWS THAT’S FRIGGIN AWKWARD? I bent down to get a hand full of grass and offered it to their leader. I don’t think cows actually have leaders, but this one looked like it was. It chose to smell my bracelets instead and then went back to staring at me. Eventually one cow got bored and left which seemed to trigger a lot of other cow boredom so they all slowly departed. It was kind of miracle-like because right at that moment the sun broke through and the rain ceased to pour. Suddenly I felt the theme song from Chariots of Fire rising within me.
I tried to run the rest of the way, but, well, didn’t happen. I did however, make it to Pete’s. We played Fifa football and I won every game by twenty, only not really because I’ve never used a PS3 in my life and did terribly. It was still fun to shout vulgarities though.
I had the Dadinator pick me up for dinner, because I didn’t trust Pete’s cooking skills in his tired state. (He was in a tired state.)
I don’t want to write anymore because a friend of mine who I was online chatting with reminded me that I no longer have access to the best burritos in the world which my hometown had offered. I’m going to glower at everyone for the rest of the night. TTFN xxx
Saturday 16 July 2011
Mobile deaths and Dino-hair
We had a family outing to Stroud - the main purpose being phone business. Mum has adopted the typical parent’s joke that a teenager desperately needs to text and chat on a mobile for ten hours straight. I think she thinks we need to relieve ourselves of the fact that we would otherwise shrivel up in a lonely corner and die.
right.
The only problem is that before my family’s big leap across the pond, I delved into a giant American junket to say goodbye to all my friendies. The fact that my country decided to celebrate its freedom on my last day was not a blessing in disguise, but a curse of many many parties. Oh the agony for a crazy-anyways teen! But it really was agony you see. The situations that the following traveling affairs entailed created some numbers of insanity like, 7 hours of sleep in the past 83... causing me to become quite ill once arriving. It’s taken a while to build up my strength again, but hopefully I’ll be in full health one day. It’s also been a very-fickle-in-terms-of-presence sort of illness. This means that I could be rearing to go one moment, and the next, my stomach would take up gymnastics, my internal body temperature would rise to inferno-status, and each side of my head would take to feeling like the north and southern ends of the titanic after having a run in with Mr. Iceberg. That’s exactly how this trip went down, my friends.
Of course my mother only cares about my death from absence of mobile phone, so I was dragged up and down more hills than the Sahara Desert even knew existed. When we finally reached what turned out to be the wrong service store we ended up taking their service anyways. I don’t know how, but looking at possible superduperawesome phones seemed to have made my sickly feelings disappear. CAN my mother be right? Could I really shrivel up and die?
Everything went up hill from there (literally speaking as well). We mucked around the shops for a while and I found a good deal on a frock that looked like it came from the 70’s. Obviously I’m picking up on fashion trends quite well.
Speaking of fashion trends, if you haven’t seen those of the male kind that reside here, it is well worth the look. It seems as though the new hair style is to look as much like a dinosaur as you can. They shave all round the back and sides but leave the front bit long to spike up as they please. WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY? Also, it’s all the rage for teenage girls to be wearing skirts as opposed to jeans, so I’ll have to get used to being bloody cold and hiding my knickers all the time, and my dad’s “you might as well walk straight to the abortion clinic if you’re going out like that” comments.
To bring the Stroud outing story round to a close, we brought fish and chippy home for dinner. It tasted like rainbows and butterflies.
xxx
Friday 15 July 2011
Next-door Neighbor Girl
Today Next-door neighbor girl came by. She’s one of those rounder people with nice faces and seemed alright. Only she forgot to mention everything important about herself. When she arrived rapping on the door my Mum called me downstairs. The conversation commenced as so:
Neighbor girl: “Hello, I’ve been instructed to come round and introduce myself!”
Me: “Hello, I’m Abi.”
*common hand shake takes place*
Neighbor girl: “Hi”
*…*
I've been here just over a week and I had no inkling as to her or any of my neighbors’ existence, so I suppose she was right in that I didn’t really need to know her name.
We then continued a small chat about schools…
It took three fires at getting her to reveal where she was attending as if it was either a school she’d want to hide out of greed like, say, Hogwarts or a place she might be ashamed of, like a school for the socially dysfunctional/youth correctional facility. No judgment – I’m just saying, WHO KNOWS?! Because who really does when you don’t tell anyone anything. Back to it though: it was when we finally bluntly stated that we were wondering where she was going to school that she replied happily and without hesitation she was “going to Westonbirt, just down the road”. She also invited me over to watch the telly. If ever I got bored watching mine without apparently nameless people.
All in all, she did seem quite nice. I might add that she was wearing what she called a “hippy skirt, I was feeling quite hippy-ish today”. Someday I should like to wake up feeling hippy-ish, what good fun it could be!
xxx
Hello, my name is Abigail and I am terrified of white things
Is there ever a perfect moment? I don’t think I’d like to start my blogging in a negative way, but I had to start somehow and waiting for the right time just wasn’t cutting it. Now you’re probably wondering what’s so hard about sitting down to a white sheet and putting little allegorical black shapes in a certain order to finalize a thought or two. Well my people, hello, my name is Abigail and I am terrified of seemingly huge white things. Figuratively speaking, a blank sheet of paper is, to you, perhaps as simple as a plate you set your tea cup on. To me? Polar bear. You’ll also find that I’m somewhat of an artist, so how about a painting canvas then? GLACIER TO THE FACE. However, I've gone and conquered my fear, (even given myself a good pat on the back) which is all I was really aiming to do with this post! Back with more.
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