Wednesday 30 November 2011

Christkindelmarkt & more on Daniel Sloss

Hellooo :)

So, today about half of the college year went to Leeds. Myself, Eliza, Keyana and Katie made up a small part of that half. In a nutshell, Eliza bought a dead fish hat, Keyana bought a cannabis incense stick, Katie nearly froze to death and I didn't do anything funny or sad. Enjoy a few photos...

Eliza hiding behind her candy floss...
Eliza and the dead fish hat. We did about 7 laps of the market while she made her mind up about that, and she didn't take it off all the way home
I still don't know if they were *really* pancakes, but they were nice
"Logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere"
We saw Aiden in the bus station (Hi, Aiden!) and I made him take a picture of us. I'm not sure if Eliza was talking, yawning, or being deliberately dim
Right, more on Daniel Sloss. Not much, as I need sleep, but a little more. Firstly, the venue was quite small - though easily the best venue I've been to for comedy yet. You could see the whole audience quite easily and it seems to be true that comedy works best in an intimate venue. We knew who 'stoner man' was by the end of the night. That doesn't generally happen in an arena. Equally, we all witnessed one man spit on another for no reason. You don't get that in an arena either. Secondly, I've never been at a show where the main act invites the whole audience for hugs after the show ends...except for last night. And yes, we did go for hugs, and our group hug was great, thanks ;) I also owe Poppy a response to her battle rap (see yesterday's post), so you can watch for that and it'll complete my story of last night.

Now, that was terrible blogging, but I'm tired, so goodnight.

Besos
Rachel 
 

Tuesday 29 November 2011

If you're losing an argument, just battle rap...

I've just got in from seeing Daniel Sloss live in Sheffield with my good friend and comedy twin, Poppy. It was brilliant. In fact, today as whole has been brilliant, but tonight was definitely the best bit :)

To quote myself, taken from Facebook, "Brilliant day laughing at odd strangers in the LRC, spilling coffee all over the field (again), laughing at Cory's Swedish accent, ranting on the way home and finally meeting Daniel Sloss and Kai Humphries with Poppy-Jay...even if she is now battle rapping at me..." 


If I'm being honest, I hadn't heard all that much from Daniel Sloss before, and I hadn't heard anything from Kai Humphries, but the gig was fantastic and I now have two new comedians to stalk follow. I'll write more tomorrow as I'm out all day with friends and will have plenty to say, but in the meantime, here's a picture taken on my phone, and one I stole from Poppy as mine was so terrible...


Hey there, demon eyes...
We were doing the standard ''ohhh, which camera do we look at?!'' laugh, obviously too cool ;)

And just a last photo of Poppy and I - these are obviously our ''we just met two awesome comedians'' faces :)

Thanks must go to Poppy for the free ticket <3 Laughter therapy is the most wonderful sort of therapy I know of and it was awesome to catch up with my CT (that's Comedy Twin, for anybody who isn't myself or Poppy). Love ya, CT! (even if you are a hummussexual...) :)


Besos
Rachel 


Monday 28 November 2011

They hoped, and hoped, and they said you would break

It's weird when something upsetting happens. I tend to go through stages...
1) The event consumes everything
2) I freak out about everything
3) I try to forget about everything even vaguely related to anything that has happened
4) I just feel permanently broken
I'm currently in stage four, and life is just hard.

For a while, I didn't write about it, I felt like I couldn't write about it. The unwritten rules of society stopped me writing about it. Well, those and my conscience. But by not writing about it, I never had the chance to address it - and when you're never able to address something, holding it in becomes quite tiresome. 

Why am I writing this now? Well, the tale starts way back, but for argument's sake, it started at about 4:05pm today, when my Spanish teacher asked if I was alright. I'm sure you can all related when I say that I knew I'd break down if somebody asked if I was OK. It seems to be (unfortunately) quite a common occurrance. I think I did a fairly decent job of holding myself together (that means I only cried a little). She spent a few minutes explaining to me that when you ''hold things inside, they only stay inside''. I understood what she meant. I've heard it for seven years now, every single time I've been upset. Except for last year, because the person who always said it was suddenly no longer there every day and rarely there at all. It was so strange hearing those words again. It didn't matter who was saying them. They could have whispered, they could have shouted, it didn't make a difference. I heard them.

And even though I heard them, I'm still exactly where I was before they were even said. Why? Because there's still nobody there. It's all well and good to know you need to talk to someone, but what about when there's nobody there? No teachers, no family, no friends, nobody who will sit with you and just listen. 

In the meantime, everything is also just bad. Christmas is coming and I no longer even care about it. I'd almost rather be at college because we're behind in Psychology and it feels like time is running out. It's as if I'm living every single day waiting for the last grain of sand to drop through into the bottom of the hourglass. I don't feel like I'm living life by my own time. 

I wish I could continue writing and try to make all of that make sense, but I have three essays to do and two books to read. I don't have time. 

Besos
Rachel 

Friday 18 November 2011

E' questo amore che ho per te


This week I've been driving a fair amount. I've been driving a lot recently. Fern and I divide up the journeys to college and on the mornings when I pick her up, I usually have enough time to listen to Oceano by Josh Groban while I'm on my way. It has quickly become one of my favourite songs.

Jess and I took a trip out to Starbucks on Tuesday, we played Josh Groban songs on my phone, picked up nice coffees (Caramel Macchiato, lovely) and then played the same songs all the way back to college. It was also a year since his album, Illuminations, was released.

This week also means it's been a year since I organised college's Children in Need activities with Chloe. So it's been a year since this...



Gosh, how much have we changed?! It's Chloe's 18th party tomorrow night, it was her birthday yesterday. We spent lunchtime standing on the Anti-Bullying Week stall in the common room. She was my form buddy and now she's my Psychology and SOS buddy. She was one of the first people to speak to me in tutor last year and I'm so thankful for the friendship we forged through that. I hope she has a wonderful party <3


Lastly, look who's been decorating ;) Do you like it? :)


Besos
Rachel

Monday 14 November 2011

Allow me to be a little shallow... (nail polish review)

...but this is going to be a post about nail polish. It doesn't get any deeper than that today.

Because today, folks, I am dipping my toes slightly into the waters of beauty blogging. I'm not likely to leave them in there long, but you know, it's always good to try something new. 


This evening I've been talking (a lot) to my friend, Jess, about nail polishes. Her sister saw the above picture, I think on Tumblr, and she asked me about them. Well, I ended up searching for the glittery polish you can see online for her sister, and found no reviews of it anywhere - a fact that made me a little sad, because it's a beautiful polish ;)


Now, I'm pleased to report that the polish(es) in question could be yours, but not so pleased to report that only if you purchase £40 worth of Nails Inc products first. If you're thinking ''ouch!'', I sympathise. My mum bought me a set of 15 mini polishes for Christmas and the lady at the counter said we could get a free gift if we bought another product. Well, I spotted the beautiful glittery polish in the free gift set and decided that purchasing another polish would be worth it if only for the glittery one. I was right, but we'll get onto that later ;)

I chose the limited edition 'Old Bond Street' (the larger polish in the picture) because 1) it was limited edition and 2) I've had a thing for multicoloured polishes like this one recently. It is a lovely colour and there's certainly plenty of it. It's a combination of greys, beiges and purples. It shouldn't look good, but it does.


So, that sorted, I moved onto the free gift set. There were two choices of boxes - the pink one (which I chose) and a purple (I believe, don't quote me on it though). Both contained a hand cream - which my mum reports is lovely and she wants to go back ASAP for one herself - and a nail file, but more importantly, three small polishes.

The pink set includes: Edinburgh Gate (glitter), Leicester Square (purple), Burlington Arcade (pink). In the picture at the top, I used Leicester Square with Edinburgh Gate on my ring finger and rhinestones to add to the glitter :) The good news is that these polishes LAST. The above nails lasted for a week without chipping, and only chipped when I started moving tables about in the common room at college for an Amnesty campaign we ran.

What I'm trying to say here is that if you're likely to be heading to a Nails Inc concession anytime soon, and have the money or craziness to spend £40 or more on polishes, definitely watch out for this. I already have my eye on at least two more polishes that I'd like to try. 


And, it looks like it's available online too folks (http://www.nailsinc.com/nailpolish/your-free-gift-when-you-spend-40-on-2-or-more-products/976/). Even if you don't want it yourself, it'd make a great gift for a fellow polish-lover :) The only downside is that I seem to have fallen in love with Edinburgh Gate, but alas, it is not available to purchase independently of the free gift set :( I'm on the look out for a good alternative, so will let you all know if I find one. Deborah Lippmann's 'Happy Birthday' is a pricey but similar polish, I may do some investigating... ;)

What are your favourite Nails Inc polishes? :)

Besos
Rachel


Thursday 10 November 2011

CaminarĂ­a en la infinidad

Before I get started on what I really have to say, that title has nothing to do with anything I'm writing about. I just like the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHgBcthsblY) and couldn't think of a title.

Now...

It's fair to say that lately, I've been distancing myself from a lot of thing - from my friends, from my family, from anything online, from my college work a little too. Why? I honestly couldn't tell you. I suppose when you're going through something difficult, things like that tend to happen, though. Thinking about it, I was sick of explaining the same stories to everybody every time I saw them, I was tired of feeling like I had a duty to keep everybody updated on every single aspect of my life at the time. Especially when they can't do anything to help you with the things that are causing you trouble. 

So, this week I've slowly been building back up to shortening that distance a little. I've been almost living in the language lab to get back up to speed with all the college work I missed without being able to access a computer at home. I also went and sat with the usual crowd in G block for a while today. And I've realised one vital thing: distance can be a good thing.


Why? People get agitated and bored of the same people and the same conversations every day of their lives. You then start misreading their body language, the looks they give you, the words they choose, as all being that they're unhappy with you. But when there's a bit of distance between you every now and then, you actually find you have things to talk about - it's not just dragging yourself over the same point again and again until there's nothing left to say. And certainly for me, creating a bit of distance between me and my friends has helped. I still know what's going on with people, but I haven't found myself completely wrapped up in what they're all doing, because I'm not really ever there to witness anything. And equally, I'm getting my work done and coming home with nothing to do. I'm not saying there's no downside, but it can work to your advantage. 


Even more equally, the fact that my laptop decided that functioning was no longer its favourite task has worked to my advantage. The distance that was placed between me and social networking has meant that again, I haven't found myself wrapped up in what everybody else is doing. I haven't had a moment recently where I've caught myself ranting about pointless Facebook statuses or what A said to B. Don't get me wrong, I've also spent a large amount of time making virtual pizzas on an iPhone app I have, but it's not like I've spent even more time telling people about it (until now, but this doesn't count). 


So yes, today's lesson has been that distance can work, and it can work well too. I'm slowly sorting out my headspace and everything else on top of that, but I'm not sure I could be doing that if everything was just as intense as it was before...


Besos
Rachel

 

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Hello, stranger

To those of you who didn't totally give up on me - do you remember me mentioning laptop problems? Well, here we are a month later and with a new laptop. Yeah, that one ended well. It's been an odd month, I've kind of had nothing to do, but I'm SO behind on college work now due to not having access to PowerPoint (I have a vendetta against that program, it makes me so angry...) - awesome.

Anyway, I'm back. Properly. Unless, of course, this new laptop decides that just completely ceasing to work is its best option, in which case you will find me hitting my head against a brick wall with considerable force. Moving on...

I'm exhausted and have nothing particularly interesting to say tonight, it's been an odd sort of day where I've spent most of it in the language lab finishing my EP presentation on the Hebrew alphabet...only for the teacher to be ill. Please tell me my life isn't the only one that has a habit of just being annoying? Here are a few pictures of what I've been up to recently...


In the holidays, my parents, my brother and I went to Edinburgh - also known as the city full of roadworks...everywhere. We only went for two nights, so we only really had one full day as two days were spent sitting in the back of my dad's car. The highlights were finding an international newsagents (Spanish magazines = entire week made), seeing a member of college staff in the queue for Edinburgh Castle and being able to sleep, slightly, during the second night. Oh, and the GIANT Starbucks I had, that was also good. 


Last Thursday and Friday, we held our first proper Amnesty Group campaign of the year. This is the only 'group' shot we got, which doesn't contain at least half of the group. We got about 160 signatures that will be sent off as part of the campaign for the human rights of the Roma people throughout Europe. From left to right in the picture, there is Jade, myself, Emma, Kim and Matthew. 



On Saturday I went to the lovely Sophie's awesome Bonfire Night party. Here's a pic of the hostess and I ;-) The party started with 7ish teenagers lining up and forming a human converyor belt to pass massive rocks across her garden, we nearly set her neighbour's tree on fire and a fire engine drove past her house at one point too. But other than the near fire, as Sophie would say, les bon temps.



Finally, Jess drew this drawing of college life while we were in the lab yesterday (she was supposed to be doing English Lit, I was typing out the Hebrew alphabet, fun stuff...). It gave us plenty of amusement, anyway. Her updated version is more amusing - probably means nothing if you don't go to our college, though.


Tomorrow is open evening and Jess, Sophie, Cory and I are all going out for food seen as we have most of the afternoon free and don't have to be back at college until 6pm. Open evenings are significantly better than average college days...


Will be back soon with proper posts again, I've missed writing :-(


Besos
Rachel