Just your average weekend

The past three weekends have actually been pretty eventful. All of them fun, but in their own way. And of course mixed in with some of the fun is misery, but such is life. Buckle in, this is a longish one (sorry Jessica).

Weekend One (April 23rd & 24th)

I had quite a cultural weekend, mostly spent sitting on really uncomfortable bleachers for hours at a time. On Friday night, Perri, our friend Ginny and I went to Mexican restaurant (out of three in the tiny town of Grinnell). Later on Perri and I went to the ISO Cultural Show, which was filled with dances, music, and singing from different countries and cultures. It started off with a fashion of show of clothes from a wide range of countries. To add to the show's 'wow factor' they manipulatively had little adorable children wear some of the outfits. The show was fun and I generally like watching dance, but gosh, it lasted longer than Avatar. ISO does not know how to budget its time well. I was also a little miffed because I was really looking forward to hearing Grinnell College's acapella group, the G-Tones, singing Don't Stop me Now by Queen. Perri and I stayed for the whole time to here it and then, of course, the person who normally sings lead was sick and so they substituted in a song I had no interest in gah! To complete our cultural evening, Perri and I watched an episode of Supernatural that featured Gods from different religions, including Norse Gods like Odin and Hindu Gods like the eternally bad ass Kali. When I returned to my dorm I discovered that ISO had spilled into my dorm. I had to fall asleep to the sounds of very drunk people practically yelling outside my door. It was not the last time I had to deal with drunk people this weekend.

Saturday evening, Perri and I attended one of Grinnell's annual events, Titular Head, a student film festival. The films are generally pretty short, or else they get booed, and are generally humorous, though occasionally pretty vulgar and sometimes disturbing. The people in charge also have to show any film that is submitted. I had heard that people usually yell, cheer and boo at Tithead pretty loudly, but I was not aware that most people come very drunk as well. I should have guessed though because dinner at the dining hall was insane. People were having fake dance/slap fights and forming human pyramids. We saw one guy on his phone trying to become the bottom of one pyramid. Ben joked about what the guy's phone conversation must be like: "Oh sorry, I can't talk anymore, I'm joining a human pyramid."

Later, at Tit Head, Perri and I ended up seated next to a very annoying drunk pair that could yell louder than should be possible. The best video of the night was a clay-mation film about Zombie's attacking Grinnell and the ever watchful Stephen Briscoe and our fearless President RKO fighting them off. The worst... Well, first some background. Several weeks ago a first year student made a very stupid stupid mistake. Darwin the first year thought it would be a good idea to try to jump onto a moving train. Unfortunately, the train didn't like that plan so it bucked him off, severely injuring his leg in the process. There was talk of amputation, but luckily it didn't come to that. I must admit my sympathy for Darwin was very small. I think the first thing I learned, ever, was not to jump on moving trains. But, he decided to make another (well two more) mistakes during Tit Head. Like many first years, Darwin didn't really understand the concept of Grinnell's Film Festival: films should be short, sweet and funny. Instead he decided to make an eight minute video about his experience tying his existence to God's greater creations. Of course I have nothing against Christianity, but dude, know your audience. He also unpleasantly showed us said leg that has twists in it legs should not have. Later Darwin had another video of bloopers that were not funny...at all. I may be taking out some aggression on Darwin because of another misfortune of the night. I attended Tit-Head to see a video my friends submitted...and they failed to show it. Apparently the powers that be had forgotten to add it to the Festival playlist. Ah well.

Weekend Two (May 1st)

Every year Perri, Aki, and when she was here (Emily), and I attend the fall/winter market in Des Moines, which is held in a mall. But this year I went to my first spring out door famers market in Des Moines with Jessica, Elyse, Sara, Ben, and Leah. New friends-new tradition, well if they weren't graduating in two weeks. I admit when Jessica said we must leave at 7:30 in the morning I was skeptical that we would really need that much time in the market, after all the winter market takes up two floors in a pretty tiny mall. However, the spring market was quite impressive, spanning about five blocks in several directions. There was food (bread, fruit, meat etc), soaps, food stands, and arts and crafts...and food. The event was a mixed success for me as I accomplished one goal and completely failed at another. I did succeed in stuffing my face with food from various food stands. I started off with a nice breakfast peanut butter & chocolate cupcake (the 2nd best pb&c cupcake of my life), then a couple crab ragoons from a chinese stand, some of Ben's baguette, and a couple bites of samosa from an Indian stand. I massively failed in buying the food items requested by Perri. Hey, it's harder than it sounds. When you go to a market that spans many blocks, you don't want to buy from the first bread, or jam, or cheese stand you see because then you have to carry around your spoils the entire time. But then its time to go home and you find you've waited too long and missed all the best stands and completely failed your friend. That was probably more detail than you cared to read, but it's all about strategy. Alas, I only came home with a bag of kettle corn and probably the worst loaf of bread from the entire market.

When we got back to Grinnell it was time for fun! Well, actually it was time to immediately fall asleep on my bed because I woke up at fricken 6am. But then it was literally time for a day of fun. In honor of the retirement of our fearless leader RKO, Grinnell College organized a sort of fun fair on Mac field. Complete with petting zoo! American Gladiator-esque games! A (evil) bouncy slide! Live out door entertainment! And more! First, Perri, Ginny, and went to the petting zoo, which was surprisingly not disappointing. (Sara had feared that the very over-hyped and promised day of fun would consist of a single goat and maybe a sheep). There was two lamas, ducks! (which I succeeded in touching! My personal goal for the petting zoo), big bunnies, goats (including a very nibbley one) and a funny chicken with a big puff on its head. Next, I reconnected with the group and watched my senior friends pair off and challenge each other on various bouncy surfaces. First, they took part in a contest that involved going into a bouncy castle, wearing unnaturally huge padded boxing gloves, and trying to knock each other down. It looked like fun, but also a lot of work, so I abstained from this challenge. However, the highlight of watching came from seeing Jessica and Ben fight each other. The were the only two people who managed to argue with their words instead of fighting with their fists. Jessica could not remain standing on the bouncy surface and Ben was mad she would not fight back. Jessica and Ben bicker a lot. The next challenge, involved two people standing on two platforms, holding long sticks with padded "puffs" on either side, and trying to knock each other off their platform (best out of three wins). After watching my friends compete in this challenge I finally got into the joining and fighting spirit. I couldn't convince Perri to get into the mood, so I was paired against Sara. It was hilarious. I knocked down Sara once, but she won overall. As the fight went on Sara and I got progressively more exhausted (from a mix of hitting each other and laughing so hard). The second round Sara kept hitting me relentlessly in the same place over and over again, wearing me down, while I tried to push her legs. Sara's center of gravity is amazing. In the last round, Sara was trying to push my legs out from under me, but she was so tired she couldn't push very hard and I was so tired I could barely hit her at all. As a result we ended in a hilarious stalemate until Sara finally won. After that, since I was finally in the fun festival mood I decided to go on the very tall blowup bouncy slide. There was a little board of warnings about the slide that included "cuts and abrasions may occur" and "You will have fun!" I joked about the ridiculous set of symptoms with Sara, but I really should have been reading the warnings carefully. Because I was going very fast down the slide, I absentmindedly put my elbow down by my side-I guess to slow myself. I failed at the slowing, but I succeeded in scraping/rug-burning off a layer of skin on my elbow. Let's just say that quickly took me out of the fun mood. I called my day of fun, a day, and nursed my wound (which ended up taking a ridiculously long amount of time to heal).

Before I had gone on the slide Perri and I had this little exchange (a nice little foreshadowing, though Perri thinks I'm overreacting).

Perri: You're never too old to have fun.

Me: You're never to young to die.

Weekend Three (May 7-9)

The week leading up to this past weekend was my pseudo-hell week. I only say pseudo because this week is what Grinnellians call hellweek (the week before finals). However, for me, hell came early. I had one long research paper due on Thursday and a Bio lab write up on Friday. I don't know if I actually got bad grades, but I'm disappointed in how I handled these assignments. My time management was none so good. I'm going to take this as a learning experience and try not to make the same mistakes next semester. In addition to the heavy work load I became sick...again! I have been sick and off since my London trip. Therefore, I smartly went to the doctors office in town and was prescribed antibiotics...useless useless antibiotics. It was one of my worst colds. Just image me as a faucet. The sickenss would not have been as bad (who am I kidding it was really annoying) if it had not also coincided with my Community Chorus concert. Or I guess I should say it coincided with the three 2.5 hour long rehearsals I had to attend for the concert on Thursday, Friday night and Saturday morning. However, in between the misery of congestion and fatigue was spring waltz!

Saturday evening I had dinner with Perri and the group at a Russian department function: A Russian coffee house, complete with Russian food and Russian songs (which some of my friends helped sing). It was very pleasant and the food was delicious. It would have been more pleasant, however, without massive the tissue use and one side of my face being completely clogged. . After the food and song, we all got prettied up for waltz. Just as last semester was my first winter waltz, this semester was my first spring waltz (and my last waltz with the group *Sigh!*). Spring waltz is held in Darby Gym, which can be prettied up very nicely when it wants to be. There was even a punch fountain! Also, to enter waltz people had to walk down a long set of stairs. I imagined a fancy announcer announcing each couple coming down the stairs. (ex-"Here enters Brittney Snow accompanied by the son of the Hathworths etc etc). The fanciness of the evening was only diminished by the immature exchange between me and Leah, performed with tiny colored stones that were decorating the table. I was making stone pyramids and Leah started doing it too, so I made some sort of sarcastic comment about her copying me. A little later I looked at Leah's side of the table and saw she had written something with the stone. "Abby rocks?" Nope "ABBY SUCKS". I responded with "LEAH SMELLS". She rejoined with "ABBY IS A BUTT". She also included an illustration. Then Zach very pleasantly turned it into "ABBY IS A BUTTERFLY" and the illustration didn't even have to change! I danced, I laughed, I had fun. It was a good night, minus the sneezing and sniffling. To end my weekend I had my community chorus concert of Schubert's Mass in E Major on Sunday afternoon. I refused not to sing after all the rehearsing, so I decided to destroy my voice instead. It was a good concert though, I didn't have to sit down once!

And there ends my super triweekend blog post. I swear one day I will complete an entire post without complaining at all! I might even not complain in the next one if I stop getting sick, stop having lots of work to do, and the weather gets nicer and...Ok you might have to wait on the post-sans-complaining. Oh well.

Falling down the rabbit hole...Hey London its been a while

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Why have I not posted sooner about my trip to London that happened over three weeks ago? Because I got lost in the crazy Grinnell time warp that sucks all concept of the weeks passing etc. I can only take the recent volcano keeping people trapped in England (like my good friend Liz) as punishment for my lack of blogage about my London experience. I apologize. And now that's out of the way, let me try to remember all the wonderful and not-so-wonderful things that occupied my second lovely week of Spring Breakage.

Friday (that's Friday March 26th), I arrived at Euston station and met Liz, fresh from her day of internshipping. We went straight to her home-stay, located pretty close to the East Finchley tube station, and I got to meet Liz's good friend/flat mate, Clara?-Ellen. Remember how I said my first day in Manchester Ashleigh took me to McDonalds? Well my first night in London Liz and C-E decided they wanted Pizza Hut. I don't even like Pizza Hut in the US, oh well. We had a quiet night in, as I was exhausted from my strenuous first class train ride.

Saturday, we went to Portobello Market, a clothing/food/jewelry/antiques market that lasts for blocks and blocks. To find it all we had to do was follow the string of tourists. After some shopping with our eyes, we stopped for a quick cupcake at one of London's many specialty cupcake stores, only to see infinitely better crepes ten feet later (darn). And of course it started raining, which would have been fine if not for the 500 umbrellas that kept hitting me in the head: it's not like I'm hard to see! We worked our way from the market to a Chocolate Festival! It wasn't quite what I thought it would be. I wasn't expecting walking chocolate bars or anything, but more than just stands selling chocolate. We did see a demonstration on how to make chocolate, but watching someone melt chocolate is not really as fun as it sounds. Eating chocolate was fun! I had a kabob of fruit covered in high quality chocolate sauce, a Bailey's chocolate truffel and a chocolate lolli-pop. However, I was majorly disappointed that we couldn't find the chocolate sculptures, which is really what I was imagining in a CF. Choclatier sculptures are insane! Damn that tricky, hidden festival hall!

Sunday, I was still relatively healthy. Just saying. I tagged along with Liz's school group for a (sunny!) day trip to Oxford. After taking the train from London, we ate in a giraffe themed cafe

for brunch. This made me happy since my spirit animal is a baby giraffe. Post-brunch there was a little bit of shopping with Liz before meeting back up with the group for a tour with a nice, purply dressed older British woman. She was charming, but I was a little disappointed by the tour because I don't really care about the history of Oxford University. However, the tour did afford me the time to take lots of pictures of statues-which is one of my favorite travel activities-so I could recap them later in hopefully humorous jest (see Facebook if you're interested). I must say I quite enjoyed Oxford. The train ride back Liz and I did something very ill advised-sat across from each other. It was like two people on stilts trying to fit in an elevator. Tuckered out after our day of sight seeing and walking we chilled watching British television at night, like we did many of our nights there because...

On Monday morning I woke up a little less healthier than I was the day before, but only with a slight cough. Late-morning, Liz humored me by taking me to three different comic book stores. The first's selection was too small, the second was too much like Barnes and Noble, but the third was just right! Monday was not the last Forbidden Planet saw of me! Next, Liz and I bought cheap tickets for the hit musical Billy Elliot for that evening. To pass the time before the show started we went to a nice pub. We both ate pub food while Liz read her econ book and I read Wolverine. Billy Elliot was great! The dancing... was... amazing. For those who don't know, BE is about a little boy who learns ballet and does it so well. Did I mention the dancing

was amazing! There is a particularly effective scene where young Billy is dancing with the older version of himself in beautiful unison, to Swan Lake, with fog sweeping across the stage (and there's my attempt at being poetic). Truthfully much of the music was forgettable, but the dancing. Mwah! I've always enjoyed (and secretly hated) watching really talented super young people. The production we saw has three Billys they use in rotation, so as not to wear out the poor kids. I'm glad with the Billy we got though, because of his history. Our actor had only taken a hip-hop dance class prior to being hired and was scouted for the part of Billy at a variety show. They gave him the role with the condition that he would spend two years learning ballet. Two years to prepare for the role. Talk about dedication, and boy did it pay off.

Tuesday morning, my sickness was worse. Therefore, I decided to spend a relaxing day sleeping in bed and working on getting better so I could really enjoy the rest of my trip. Just kidding! I decided to walk in the pouring rain without an umbrella through a very non-touristy part of London. Ok, I didn't plan on walking in the pouring rain, as I hadn't heard any newscasts about a biblical flood predicted for that day. Silly me. Liz's (not for) tourist's book had recommended a neighborhood in East London for cheap shopping and good restaurants. I think it might have hyped it up a little too much. It was nice not being around tourists, but it wasn't the nicest neighborhood. Liz's book had also recommended the Fat Cat pub for good pizza and cocktails.

Except the pub didn't actually sell pizza. Oops. My soaking wet clothes also put a little bit of a damper on everything (no pun intended). Despite the weather, I continued my preplanned route through Victoria Gardens to the nearest tube station. My day was slightly redeemed by finding a pond with mucho ducks, geese, and swans! I cannot stress how much I like waterfowl, especially up close. I showed some of my trip pictures to my friends last baking Tuesday and they commented on the hundred or so pictures of ducks. Tuesday evening, after my harrowing journey, I met back up with Liz at her flat. We took a bus to a movie theatre in West Finchley and saw I Love You, Phillip Morris. I laughed and coughed my whole way through the movie.

Wednesday, I was death. Funny enough, walking through the cold and rain improperly attired the previous day had not been the best thing for my health. Apparently, the previous night I had scared the bejesus out of Liz's host mother with my loud coughing. In the morning she offered to take me the doctor if I got worse and gave me some cold medicine to soothe the angry beast inside me. Nice lady. Refusing to be completely held down by my sickness, I set out for my second to last full day in London. Sad. Deciding to take it easy, I took the tube to the Covent Garden area. After having a light breakfast and overhearing very interesting conversations in a small cafe in one of London's gayborhoods, I went back to the comic book shop Forbidden Planet. I wanted to wallow in my geekiness and, my new addiction Dark Wolverine, one more time without feeling guilty for making Liz wait in this habitat quite unnatural to her. It was so wonderful. I happened upon a wonderful Italian restaurant for lunch. Mm, spaghetti with white wine sauce and a cold class of smooth, Belgium, almost like candy Leffe Blonde. Next, I walked to the heart of touristy London-Trafalgar square and took a nice stroll through the National

Gallery. I then walked to the Big Ben, Westminster Abbey area, taking many pictures along the way, which I'll call artistic instead of touristy out of principle and because they were mostly of statues, sculptures and architecture. Wednesday evening, I went out with Liz and Clara-Ellen to an Irish pub because one of their study abroad mates was celebrating her birthday. The pub was super crowded because, why else? there was a football game on that night. It was easy to tell who all the locals were rooting for by listening to the waves of cheering and booing filling the pub. It was a pleasant night.

Thursday morning I woke up very tempted to stay in bed all day and rest up for my plane ride the next day. Except, the shining sun and blue sky, all too rare in London, were too tempting to pass up. Of course by the time I walked out of the house the sky was grey and it was drizzling, but whatevs. I went back to tourist central because...well because I wanted to buy a McFlurry DON'T JUDGE I wanted a Cadbury Creme egg McFlurry that you can't buy in the US. I also won a free apple pie out of the deal. Yes, a very healthy lunch. It also gave me the chance to take more pictures, on the opposite side of the

street from the day before. For my last act as a London tourist, I went over the bridge to the London Sea Life Aquarium. I must admit, after the whole Steve Erwin thing my opinion of sting rays had gone down quite a bit, but the aquarium revived their majesty in my eyes. In a room with a big, shallow, open tank of sting rays I had a nice conversation with one of the aquarium workers. First, I witnessed the worker desperately try to keep visitors from petting the sting rays. I also noticed the s.r. kept coming to the surface of the water. I asked her if flash pictures would bother them-it does-and she explained why her job is difficult. Visitors used to be able to touch the s.r. in the tanks and many don't know it isn't allowed anymore because touching apparently stresses out the rays and makes them die sooner. I then asked her why the s.r. come up to the surface. Her answer: "Oh, because they want to be pet". In another room there was a tank with

a tunnel so you could be completely surrounded fish. It was awesome to see ginormous sting rays fly right above your head. What was not so awesome was the horribly overhyped shark walkway. I was expecting to be surrounded by terrifying menacing sharks swim right next, above and below me. Instead it was a short walk way with like two 5x2 ft glass squares on the ground and three sharks. Oo, scary. Afterwards, I sadly walked to Waterloo station, all too aware my time in London was almost at an end.

Friday afternoon Liz took me to Heathrow Airport, on my last tube ride. Stupidly, I had not considered that it was the Friday of Easter weekend, so I was unprepared for the crowds. I got to my flight on time though. Sort of. I took a little too long getting lunch, so when I started walking toward my gate a screen said that the gate was closing. Now, I imagined the last person (besides me) boarding the plane and the closing of the gate door in mere moments. Gates closing actaully means half the flight hasn't boarded yet. Oh those English. Before I knew it I was landing in Chicago and then back at Grinnell, where I am now, and have been for quite awhile as you know.

There. Sorry it took me so long. I tried to remember all that I could. Despite the fair amount of complaining I did above (hey, wading through snark is part of reading my blog) I did have a great spring break. I could have done without the hacking up of a lung, and a little more sun, but what are you going to do?

Soon after getting back to Grinnell someone commented on how pale I was. I thought for a moment and then I realized why. I love you London. So long... For now.