Pourvez-vous m'aider s'il vous plait?

Nothing too exciting to talk about since the last update that I can think about right now. I'm also feeling lazy. Went to see caspa/rusko while rolling, that was pretty awesome. Saw Grizzly Bear with Beach House which was also awesome. Also saw Why? a few days ago, which was great as well. I've been through another bad spout of homesickness. Been drunk a lot. The usual. But things shall be getting exciting real soon.

My mark on Europe continues tomorrow. My flight to Paris is Friday at 6am and the latest I can take a train to the airport is Thursday, arriving at 10:30. This means I get to hang out in an airport for 7 hours, while staying up all night! WOOHOO!!! My plan is to hit up the airport bar to kill that time. Maybe I can strike up a conversation with an old man about how life sucks or how weird it seems to eat snails. Once I get to Paris, I seriously have no idea how I'm going to get to my hostel once I land. I've tried to figure out how and I just don't understand. I'm going to really piss the French off trying to get help to get there. I just made like 10 flash cards of some really basic French phrases to try and help me get to my destination. Once I'm there, Charlotte can do all the translating for the weekend. Considering the French are known to hate tourists, I don't think they will be very friendly to a drunk american at 8am who doesn't know a word of French. I'm sure a good story will come out of this at the least. Anyway, I should have a big long update with tons of pictures after the next couple of weeks, which brings me to Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, back to Brighton, then London for a week with my pep pep. I am so excited, this is truly epic. I should have some periodic internet access so hopefully I can stay in touch. I hope everything goes swell back home! After this things should fly by until summer, I can't fucking wait.

Keep it real.

...

Homesick again. Surprise me sometime, for only a small fortune. Feel free to give me a good ol' international drunk dial at 011-44-1273-0844-887-2222 ext. 27486. Yes, I actually think that's what you have to dial to reach my room from America. Or mail me a letter or something at

Matt McNally

Park Village House 4 Room D

University of Sussex

Falmer, Brighton

East Sussex

BN1 9RD

I've been trying to send some things to some peeps back home but I have no idea where the post office is in town, and the one on campus doesn't send packages internationally. But soon, certain people can expect something!

cheap rum and cows

It's that time again. That time where I've slept all day, am wide awake, bored out of my mind, drinking, and listening to some kind of poignant, depressing music (today it's the magnetic fields). These are the times that produce blog updates. So let's see, what's been going on these last few weeks... Judging by the pictures I have taken the first thing to mention would be that I finally found an American style, massive grocery store. Most of the food shopping I have been doing has been in Walgreens/CVS sized stores at best. However, on another rainy brighton evening on I went on an adventure to the city and was able to find a huge ass grocery stores that could satisfy most of my needs. My favorite products included pre-mixed jim beam and cola cans as well as a plastic bottle of rum that read "a little less refined but still mixes well at parties."

The part of this trip that sucked was that it was raining pretty hard, beginning as soon as I got off the bus. In the long period of aimlessly wandering around looking for a grocery store, I did discover a really awesome part of Brighton known as the North Lanes, which is an area of cool alternative shops, pubs, and such. I was able to get a couple cool pics from that.

The next memorable event I can remember was a fake wedding that occurred. This might be hard to explain properly...but basically someone organized a fake wedding for two really close friends (both guys, but not gay, for the record) that live in the flat next to me and it was all a well orchestrated joke. First off, there was the night before the wedding, which here in the UK is called "stag night" for the guy and "hen night" for the lady. Obviously, I went out on the stag night, which involved going to the pub with the bachelor wearing a dress and bunny ears. Our goal was to find this pub that we found an advertisement for that read something along the lines of "girls dancing in underwear on the bar. 'nuff said." We never found this bar and I can't decide if I'm happy about that or not. Anyway, this was the night that I whipped out that plastic bottle of rum mentioned earlier and it sure did the job, since I completely blacked out by the end of the night. I remember going to a cool pub in Brighton and being there for a long time and then I remember going to some club and a friend buying me a few drinks (I had run out of money), but from there it's almost a complete blackout. Apparently on the way home I was ranting about atheism or something, as someone told me, but of course I don't remember any of this and have no idea how I even got home. When I woke up the next morning, I was looking through my pictures of the night when I saw a picture I took of myself taking a piss at the club we went to. Having no idea why I would ever do that, it was confirmation that I blacked out.

So that was a really great night, from what I remember. Next was wedding day, which was also fun. The people in charge got pretty into this, setting up a whole wedding like setting in a little common area, complete with fake rings, fake priest, and a real cake (not wedding style of course). This is the second occasion since I've been here where there has been a party requiring me to dress up but I didn't bring any dress clothes. Therefore, in the context of a wedding, I kinda looked like some kind of distant alcoholic relative no one had seen for years but appeared because he heard there was an open bar. Anyway, it was another fun night.

The next thing I can think of was my acid trip a few saturdays ago that occurred quite randomly. I was hanging out at another flat than my own in an area known as east slope, when a friend started asking if anyone wanted to do acid with him. The thought was tempting, however, it was midnight, so I as well as everyone else declined the offer. He then offered to pay for the tab if I tripped with him and having nothing else to do, I said fuck it and took him up on the offer. The acid was great but unfortunately there wasnt anything happening on campus this saturday. We watched Where the Wild Things Are as well as Trainspotting, both of which were great. After this we went to the campus bar (open till 3 on saturdays) which was pretty awesome. It was very hard to order because I couldn't stop hysterically laughing for no reason. For this reason I was very happy I didn't run into anyone I knew there. The two of us sat in a booth staring at beer foam, lauging, and talking about random shit until we decided to check out some party we had heard about. Walking through campus was beautiful, as the frosted grass was twinkling away the whole time. We made it to the party, but it was a bit overwhelming and we didn't know anyone, so we left after about 5 minutes. We then went to hang out with some people in east slope I had never met before, sitting around smoking spliffs and listening to radiohead (i also introduced them to grizzly bear and they went over well) for the rest of the night. All in all a pretty good time.

This brings me to the last week. There was sun. Finally. A beautiful golden sun shining upon us, providing warmth and happiness to the land. On the nicest day of the week, which was about 50 degrees (sorry english folks, I can't convert to celcius) I went on an adventure with a friend to a little farm village called Stamner. This involved walking through a massive field of cows! We smoked a spliff on the way there, so maybe I was a little extra paranoid, but at first this kind of freaked me out. I mean back home, you can't really just walk amongst cows. Usually its a prohibited fenced in area in the rare case that you see any cows and I imagine trespassing would bring an angry redneck with a shotgun out of the barn. But this was a massive field, complete with walking paths and everything, where anyone can just run up to a cow and try to ride it if they felt so compelled. I keep asking my friend paranoid questions like "are you sure it's safe to just walk through the cows?" "How fast are cows?" "That one is staring at me and doesn't look very happy..." Alas, we survived the trek and it was actually really cool. We went to a tea shop in the old time village and when I sat down at my table I was scared shitless when a dog jumped at me from under the table next to me. The owner then held the dog's leash tight to his side after apologising, which made me feel bad because it just startled me, since back home there are few places that serve food that also allow dogs. I think due to my reaction he thought I was petrified of dogs. Oh well. The village was really cool and I am going to go back on my own next time its nice out and I have the time, because my camera ran out of batteries while I was there and there was still a lot more to explore.

That about brings us up to speed. Last night was an incredibly fun night, as I successfully completed a power hour (one shot of beer every minute for an hour) in my first ever attempt. This was a lot of fun and almost everyone made it. One friend threw up during the 59th minute and another soon after the hour was complete. We then went to one of the campus bars at which point things became a bit of a hilarious shitshow, with everyone being incredibly drunk and weird things happening. I stayed up till about 6 in the morning drinking. And now here we are. The future looks bright, for spring break is just a couple weeks away! I have epic plans to meet up with Charlotte in Paris for the weekend. After that we are going to go to Barcelona and then I can check off one life goal when we travel to Amsterdam. Then I'm heading back to Brighton for a bit and then spending the last week of my month off in London with my dad. I can't fucking wait. Hope everyone's spring break back homes kicks ass, miss you all!

P.S.

I would like to note that while writing this, I ashed in my half full beer can. This is always a sad moment, and I ask that all readers take a moment of silence for this young, fallen soldier.

amber jack is not a friendly fellow

It's been a bit since I last updated...not a whole lot has been going on, but there have been a few exceptions. The first noteworthy thing I can remember after the London trip was beer pong night in the UK! It was pretty hilarious. When we first starting setting up on the ghetto but functioning table we built (as seen above), everyone started organizing onto one side of the table or the other, going "I'm on this team!" This tested my faith of whether this was going to be possible, thinking perhaps there is some kind of cultural barrier here that can not be broken. But alas, when I was given the opportunity to explain the rules I made it clear that you have one team-mate, not 15. We started off simple, the only rule being a bounce is 2 cups. Once everyone seemed to wrap themselves around the basic concept of this, we introduced a few more rules, such as live table, behind the backs, strags, re-racking, etc. We haven't quite made it to NBA jams yet, but things went relatively well. They would be murdered for how far over the table they shoot as well as the popular under-hand throw among some other inconsistencies, but I'll just accept those as a British twist on the game. I actually played surprisingly bad on this night, but my time would come. We also only had one ball, which was pretty annoying. After a lot of pong was played and everyone seemed to really enjoy it, we went off to Club Life. Here would be the begining of the end of that night. I was having a great time drunkly dancing, but by the time we left I was... extremely drunk. I don't really remember exactly how I managed to get on a bus and get back to my bed, but it did someone happen. I've been enlightened to certain details, including that I fell on the bus and also passed out on it. All in all, a good night, as is evident from this picture of me the next morning.

After that there was nothing really exciting going on, I just sat around and did nothing, smoked lot, watched a lot of this awesome British comedy called the Peep Show, which I recommend all readers check out (it's all on youtube!). I've been attending around 50% of my classes and doing most of the readings, so that's a pretty large upgrade from last semester. I'm really screwed for this coming week though. I have my first essay, which is 1000 words. I really have no idea how long any of my papers are, since I'm used to the guidelines being set by pages and not word count. It doesn't sound that long. Then I have this mock European Union thing to do where I have to represent Ireland for something. The EU is the most confusing governmental system I have ever studied and it makes no sense to me. So I basically don't have the slightest idea what I'm going to do, sorry Ireland.

The beginning of this week was sooooooo boring. I did absolutely nothing and it was cold and rainy, which made it pretty depressing. Hearing about fun weekends back at Clark, skyping with certain people, and the upcoming Dan Deacon show gave me another homesick period, which also somewhat brought to forefront my year long existential crisis I may be having. Just as things weren't looking too optimistic, I was able to have a great last few days. Thursday was one of the funnest days I have had since I've been here. To begin the night we played this game that every girl in the flat apparently despises. It's called, "Throwing cards into a hat." Pretty self-explanatory. It was made up by one of my flatmates, and you basically sip your drink every time you throw a card that misses the hat. Later, we got some beer pong going again and this time I was actually on my game. During one epic moment, my team mate made the last cup with his behind the back shot. I got extremely drunk and had a blast drinking and smoking with a bunch of people. My smoky room also set off the fire alarm, but luckily it went off after a few minutes of waving a hat at it.



The next night was also tons of fun. I spent the night drinking and playing card games at the flat next to mine with the Park Village crew (my set of flats..it's like Bullock Hall for England). We played a game they call Kings Cup, which is basically the exact same thing as Kings, except for this one difference. There is a cup in the middle of the cards. Every time someone pulls a King, they need to add a good amount of their drink into the cup. When the last king gets pulled, that person needs to down the contents of that cup. I actually think this is a pretty awesome rule, although it is strange how not disgusted people can be drinking a glass mixed with beer, cider, wine, vodka, etc. This night did not end as well for me. You may remember that 3 liter of 7.5% alcoholic cider known as Amber Jack I posted a pic of a while ago. Well I drank just about the entire bottle, as well as a couple pints at the campus bar during the night. We were just hanging around talking and I took a few hits of a spliff. This caused the sensation we all know as "the spins." Everything is a fog at this point, but I'm pretty sure within a few moments of hitting the spliff I was on the bathroom floor throwing up. At some point I made it back downstairs and into bed. I woke up at 4 with my worst english hangover and have had a pounding headache and violent stomach basically all day. I discovered that I left a hot pocket and left over pasta in the microwave overnight. I decided to take it easy tonight and ended up picking up some dank headies and smoking, which is occurring at present. So that's what I've been up to. I really needed these last few days to be good and thankfully they were. I sincerely miss everyone so much back home!

Stay Paid. Matt.

weekend in the big city

The journey to London was a long one, taking about 2 hours from our first train until we arrived at our hostel. As you can see from the picture, this is made decent considering how nice the trains are here. Many of the seats have tables between them! Overall the trains are faster, quieter, and far cleaner than anything I have experienced in America. It was a very enjoyable ride watching the countryside fly by.

The hostel we stayed in was very nice, nothing like the one I stayed in last year in Montreal. This place resembled a hotel, was incredibly clean, and has dorms of 4 beds as opposed to a room of about 40 beds as I experienced in Montreal. Jesse, Zach and I had our own room, which was really sweet. Each room was equipped with a locker and sink as well. The only thing bad about it was that it wasn't located in the central part of London, but it was only a 10 min or so trainride away so this wasn't a problem. For $20 a night it was great.

Our first course of action was heading to an area of London known as Piccadilly Circus, which as you can see from the picture below, is basically the London equivalent of Times Square. This area was really cool, with thousands of people moping around at the shops, restaurants, theaters, and pubs located all around. We spent most of the evening trying out different pubs, also grabbing an awesome chinese buffet in chintown.

The next day I was forced to wake up at 10 to begin our long, epic second day in London. We started by heading to Camden Market, a massive collection of shops and food. We were there for a few hours and easily could have spent more time had we not had other plans.

After the market we headed to the Thames River waterfront, where there were many touristy landmarks to see. It was a cold but beautifully sunny day, which made this a highly enjoyable walk. We got to see Parliament, Big Ben, a huge ass ferris wheel I don't know the name of, St. Paul's Cathedral, and more. Here are some pics of those landmarks:

Along this walk there was a wide variety of street performers, from break dancing, to human statues, to the worst rendition I've ever heard of Hey Jude. I have some video of the break dancing.

This walk culminated at the Tate Modern Art museum, which was not only awesome, but free. A spliff and a pint had me in perfect form to explore an art museum for a few hours. I have a few pics from in there:

As you can see, we did a shit ton of sightseeing and touristy stuff, which is to be expected since it was my first time in London. It seems like a great city and I can't wait to explore it further.

I have had to type this message on a shitty wireless keyboard, since my normal laptop keyboard was feeling very thirsty so I spilled beer all over it. I bought the keyboard in the craziest store in Brighton, called Argos. Basically, you walk into this store that has no products on display, just booths with a catalogue. The catalogue has thousands upon thousands of random products, each with an assigned number. You write down what you want to buy on a slip of paper, bring it to the register, and pay for it. Then you get receipt with a number on it, and you sit in another part of the store and wait for your number to be called, at which point you pick up your product at desk. This my friends, is the future.

Overall I feel like I'm getting more comfortable here, although I still really really miss everyone back in the states and have some moments of extreme homesickness. I have a shit ton of reading to do tonight...it will be a challenge to make my 9am class, which I've only made once so far. We shall see how that turns out. Newest language phenomenon to tell you all about: As a way of saying "What's up" or "How's it going?,"many brits say "you alright?" This confused the shit out of me the first few times I was asked. I would be thinking. "yeah I'm fine, does it look like something is wrong? do I look sad or hurt or something?" I'm slowly getting use to that. I'm going to cook myself some tacos, so peace out. Next trip? Amsterdam.

beds and brighton

A bed is something that really means a lot to me. After all, it is where I spend the majority of my life. It's a friend that's always there, comfort when tired, a space for dreaming...You see, the bed is really an extension of my personality. The same traits I look for in a good bed can easily be used to describe myself: warm, fluffy, soft, gentle, cosy, etc. My bed here at Sussex? If my bed could be exemplified as a person it would be Hitler. Instead of springs I think the mattress just has aluminium cans in it. It really blows, its been so hard for me to get a good nights sleep on the thing. Once I roll out of the thing in the morning...afternoon...ok evening, my entire neck and back aches for the remainder of the day. So yeah, just wanted to get that out of the way, I figured the condition of my bed was something everyone was musing about back home.

This week hasn't been too exciting. I've been doing some of my work, attending some of my classes, so that has been a positive break from the past. Most of my days have been spent sitting around reading the news, reading for class, or watching random things online. Then at night I've been smoking and hanging out at the east slope bar on campus. I did have a rather interesting adventure a couple days ago when I went into Brighton on my lonesome to do some shopping. Every time I had been in Brighton it had been night and I was heavily intoxicated, so it really doesn't make sense to me yet. I just got off at a random bus stop and went into the first grocery store I found, since my main objective was food. I bought what felt like about 50 pounds of food which I then had to lug around in my backpack for the rest of my journey. My other main objectives were an alarm clock and a pillow. I found this really cheap piece of crap analog alarm clock in a convenience store and a pillow in the 99 pence store, which is like their dollar store, except for me it's like the $1.61 store. Overall this trek through Brighton must have involved me walking a good few miles all over the city. Eventually I was quite exhausted and recognized one of the bars that was part of the pub crawl last week, so I went in to reward myself with a good meal and drink. While waiting for my barbecue chicken, complete with melted cheese and bacon, I was trying to put a battery in my little alarm clock. I proceeded to drop it, and it broke apart into many pieces that scattered throughout the bar. That was pretty embarrassing, I must have looked like a crazy homeless person sitting by myself with a full backpack, a pillow, and the cheapest alarm clock you have ever seen. People eating stoped to return the pieces to me and I was actually able to re-assemble it and get it in working order. Exhausted, I finally find the right bus stop and took a bus back to Sussex.

Random notes. I bought an 8th of weed the other day that was very low quality. For those interested, I've included a picture of this. It's a sad sight indeed.

Luckily, the lack of smoking has led to my tolerance lowering, so it still does the job, just a shitty job.

Also, why so many coins England? Pound, two pounds, one pence, five pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence...i just have this ever growing pile on my desk of useless coins.

This is interesting. In England, you have to pay a special license just to own a tv (I didn't bring one). Well I found this letter under my door the other day. Apparently it's not something I should worry about...

Lastly, I would like to leave you readers out there with a message and a song (this was once a music blog). The song is one I have been listening to quite a lot latley and I'm hoping to see them in Brighton. It's some low-fi garage punk for everyone's enjoyment! But remember kids:

Japandriods - Young Hearts Spark Fire

dubslope

Finally got all my classes straightened out. My schedule is pretty sweet. Wednesday sucks because I have a 9am, but every other day starts at either 11 or 12 and I have no class on Friday. The courses I'm taking are Society, State, and Humanity (Phil), Making of Modern Europe(Govt), Politics of Governance: European Union (Govt), and Comparative Societies (Soc). I must be one of the few students at Sussex with a diverse schedule like this, as it seems students here have to strictly take courses in there major or minor. My sociology seminar teacher seems like he has the potential to be one of the coolest teachers I've ever had. We spent most of the first seminar discussing how we would like to run it, he talked about how he hated school and would never give out essays and exams if it were up to him (making I funny joke about Karl Marx writing the communist manifesto in an hour and a half in silence with no food or drink), and mentioned that he was going to a slayer concert soon.

Last night was dubstep night at one of the campus bars. Dubstep seems bigger here than back in America. It was a lot of fun, but I got far to drunk. I barely remember stumbling home, but I'm pretty sure I left a trail of what I drank that night if anyone was trying to follow. I also have a painful bump on my head that I have no clue how I sustained. It's strange that on the weekdays everyone goes out clubbing and bar hoping but on the weekends everyone stays on campus to party. No idea what's in store for tonight. Also, I can't figure out how to turn the italics off of this post, so sorry for that.

Last night I went to a club called Coalition. It was fun, but I wasn't too into the music. Apparently it was "cheese night" so they were playing cheesy songs, mostly crap from the 80s. With drinks and dancing you can't really complain though. Here are a couple pics of the club scene: