it's sort of getting warmer!

It's been some time folks! I'm sure your all craving to know what I've been up to since my spring break; checking daily, perhaps even hourly, awaiting a new update. Well friends, that time has arrived.

First and foremost, I have a new puppy named Belle back home. My mom bought it after my dad got stuck in London for an extra week (the first week was visiting me) due to that Icelantic volcano known as "edagjsdfiohgosdfighiosdughdf." She's undeniably adorable.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww


Now that I have you emotionally invested...

As mentioned, after my trip with Charlotte across Europe I spent about a week in London with my Dad, which was a good time. Everyday was basically filled with museums and ended with a few drinks at various pubs. The museums visited included the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, Churchill's Bunker, and the Natural History Museum.

Above is the Rosetta stone. Brings back memories of middle school...

The battle of one armed creatures!

I had to leave the dinosaur section of the natural history museum after about 5 minutes for I was getting violent urges to kill all the children running around being loud and obnoxious around me. They would have had better luck against a T-Rex.

Apparently above is what a wombat looks like. One scary looking fellow.

End Spring break. Begin summer semester. Once back in Brighton, we had an entire week of sun. This miracle has been unseen my entire time in England. An entire week of 55+, sunny, dry weather. I wanted to make the most of it while I was still in the habit of actually waking up in time to see the sun. My first attempt at adventure kind of failed. I just started walking, planning to find something cool, but ended up just walking to the bar and drinking at 2 in the afternoon. One of the pubs on campus had a really cool outdoor set up for the nice weather, including a barbecue that I just couldn't turn down.

The next day I did accomplish my goal and went on an epic walk. First I decided to find the Gym on campus because it is somewhat isolated and the only building I had never seen. Once I got there I just kept walking past it, despite the lack of a path or anything. A little past the building I found a little country road that I followed. What I found were endless rolling hills littered about with farm animals, especially sheep. It was a really cool feeling knowing I was nowhere near modern civilization (well, I actually wasn't that far, but it felt like it!) as I ventured further and further into the wilderness. More pics than you care about below:

Along the journey I found this cool little abandon brick building of some sort.

When I went down this little woodsy path I encountered a bit of a scare. I hadn't seen another person for a very long time and while walking here I noticed two people in the distance building teepees. This scared the shit out of me. I thought I had discovered some native tribe for a moment and was afraid I would be shot at with arrows or something. As I slowly approached I noticed that these were not natives, just two weird looking hippy girls, who said nothing and just gave me a little stare as I walked by, probably surprised to see someone. I tried to take a quick picture of them and their teepees when they weren't looking but it failed.

After randomly deciding to make my mark in England for eternity (or until someone cuts down that tree) I thought it looked really cool, so decided to engrave "Nat Frat" on another tree. I think it's album cover worthy.

Discovered a farm mansion, complete with a tennis court!

And that was my multiple hour long hike on what was the warmest day we have had yet since my stay in England.

Everyone was in good spirits being back at school and enjoying the nice weather, so the first couple weeks back were full of lots of partying and clubbing. I got wasted almost everyday during this period. This one club known as Audio has a dubstep night just about every Wednesday that I've been going to a lot. There was another bar/club I went to that I was originally excited about because the music for that night was advertised as "alternative, indie, and punk." I was even more excited when the first song they played after I walked into the bar was Yeasayer's "Ambling Alp." However, just about every song after this was absolutely awful screamo/emo shit. It was terrible and the club attracted all these dumb scene kids who danced like epileptic retards the whole time. I will give the place some credit though, they had 2 pound double shots (when ordering a mix drink over here, you have to actually specify how many shots you want in your drink and the more shots the more it costs. I hate this!). That is an incredibly cheap price so I had at least 8 double whisky cokes throughout the night (another note, british shots are smaller than american shots).

An awesome tradition that my friends here have established is doing a power hour every Saturday. Lately we have been going the extra mile and doing centurions (100 shots of beer in 100 mins, and we use american shot glasses). These get a bit messy but are a ton of fun. Also, someone discovered via wikipedia that apparently the known record for the most people to complete a centurion at once is 18, so we are hoping through training to beat this record by the end of the year.

Last Tuesday (I think it was Tuesday...) was British election night. As a comparative politics major, this was really cool to witness first-hand and I did my best to follow the election beforehand. For this event one of the campus bars was open till 5am to display election results. This was a ton of fun and the place was PACKED. I stayed for the entire time, blacking out somewhere around 3ish. Before that I remember people either cheering whenever a district was won by Labour or the Lib Dems and booing and throwing cups at the tv when conservatives won. One of the last things I remember was going outside to smoke a cigarette then being pissed I had to wait in a line to get back into the bar. Thinking I was ever so clever I went around to the back of the bar where there is another door, but was met by some seemingly random person that told me I coudln't enter this way. I was in a belligerent state of drunkness so I was like "who the hell are you to tell me that" to which he waved over a proper security guard. Needless to say, I got in the proper line. In Brighton the green party won, with the victor being the first green member of parliament in British history. Unfortunately, the conservatives got the most votes and the douchebag known as David Cameron has just become the new Prime Minister of England. Good luck with that England.

Eventually the nice weather would deteriorate as would my health. It's back to being cold and rainy and I have been pretty sick for about 4 or 5 days now. I'm not really sure what it is. My first guess is allergies because it began with an insane amount of sneezing, seriously every 5 minutes for a day. During this time I have blown my nose approximately 45,000 times. Since I felt it could be either hayfever, a cold, or a sinus infection, I decided to get medications for everything and just take it all. Shockingly, I'm now thinking this may not have been the best method of treatment. As of right now I actually feel really weirdly light headed...could have something to do with that. Oh well. I'm starting to feel slightly better overall. I haven't been able to sleep at all due to being unable to breath and coughing, so my sleeping patterns are once again extremely fucked up. I've been staying up till around 6 and then laying in bed all day.

I saw deerhunter last night which was an awesome show, though somewhat depressing. The singer of deerhunter, Bradford Cox, is an incredibly strange looking person because he was born with some rare illness. While performing he mentioned that he had been in the hospital earlier that day and was both very sick and fucked up on meds. He was coughing a lot and before the encore said "I'm gonna go throw up, then we'll be back." Once they came out for the encore, he had to sit on a chair to finish the set. Hardcore dedications right there and the show didn't suffer. If you don't know deerhunter, check them out.

Anyway, that about brings us up to present. Congratulations to all my Clarkie friends who have just finished their semester. I know how miserable those last weeks are so it must feel great. I'm so jealous I can't be around for the beginning of summer. As of today I believe I will home in 46 days.

Before we wrap things up, I would like to show off my ever improving culinary skills. Normally my meals revolved around pasta, meat, and potatoes. There is a lot that can be done with that tri-force of deliciousness.

Now Serving:

Literal Pasta Salad (with Grilled Chicken, Cheddar crumbs, and Thousand Islands Dressing)

Full English Breakfast (Sausage, Bacon, Beans, Egg, and Toast)

Potato Latkes

Banger's and Mash (Sausage and Mash Potatoes, topped with Gravy)

Shrimp Linguine

Home made Chicken Fingers and Fries, served with Salad.

And there you have it. The rest of this month should be very exciting. This weekend I am attending a 3 day music festival (highlighting up and comping music) in Brighton known as the Great Escape, which is basically set up like SXSW. My wristband gets me into over 30 clubs and bars throughout the city where over 300 bands will be playing. I'm pumped. Later this month I will also be visiting Charlotte in Dijon, France and the day after I return to England from that I am heading to Berlin for a few nights with some friends here. So stay tuned!

Electric shaver died during shave, leaving me looking like sex offender. I had to snap a pic. Now doing babysitting and birthday parties.