Halie

I've been home from uni for a week now, having officially survived my first ever semester! I'm glad to have a break and see everyone again but I kinda can't wait to go back in a way. Idk. I have mixed feelings. On one hand I absolutely hate living in the flat (I'll explain why) so it's nice to be away but I miss the friends I made already and I hate coming home to judgemental relatives asking annoying questions all the time. You know what I mean? Anyone else get that when they visit relatives at Christmas?

Anyway. Why I hate living in halls of residence. Remember the post I made when I first got to uni and I mentioned how nice all my flatmates were? Well that's changed. Two of them (the rugby boys) are complete and utter ****wits and I can't stand them. Particularly the one. He's a spoilt little rich brat. They're both originally from Devon and the one has the most annoying accent ever, it doesn't sound like typical west country, Cornish combine 'arvester or anything. It's like a stereotypical posh English accent and it's high pitched and ugh. He was really quiet at the beginning so we didn't really hear him speak much but now he is SO loud and just the worst. He has no consideration for anyone else in the flat. And they're both so messy. Like, I'm messy, ya know? But they are messy messy. They leave dirty underwear all over the place (I've lost count of the amount of skidmarks I've seen whilst living there), they pee in the shower but like. Not in the drain or anything, because it stinks out the whole flat when the shower door is open. I don't mind if you pee in the shower, just do it down the bloody drain because believe it or not, but you're actually sharing a flat with three other people you barely know and, I know this might be a difficult concept to comprehend, but we actually don't want to step into your piss every time we need a shower.

Someone stole the spoilt bratty one with the horrible voices' chocolate once and he came into the lounge to ask Ellen and I if it was one of us (Ellen is one of my flatmates, she's fab) and we said no, and he said "Oh, it's ok, it's alright, it doesn't matter" to our faces and then walked away, then he muttered "fat bitches" under his breath as if we couldn't hear. I hate that guy. He's so ****ing rude.

Possibly the absolute worst thing they've done is leave a giant bag of chicken out on the window sill in the kitchen to defrost. They left it there for at least two days and it began to stink, so they must've finally realised "Oh, hey, we've just left a big bag of meat to defrost in the sun for a few days, maybe that makes it go off? Idk" and then decided to chuck it in the kitchen bin. Not take it out to the big bins outside in the court or anything, nope. They thought it best to put this giant sack of salmon-****ing-ella into our kitchen bin and leave it there for at least another day. Without cleaning the window sill, btw. Admittedly I'm really stubborn so I refused to take it out for them or clean up their mess. The next day I had to be up early so I was only out in the hallway for a couple of seconds before rushing out the door to get my bus, but it absolutely stunk. I can't even begin to tell you how horrible it was. When I got home, Ellen had gotten rid of it. I told her not to because it's not our responsibility but I understand why she did, it was disgusting. There's no way we could've lived with that smell. And they didn't even apologise. They just left their mess for the clean to fix. Ugh.

One of them stole my ****ing tea, too. Like if little bits of my food goes missing every now and then I'm generally pretty chill but don't you dare steal my tea you pieces of shit. I confronted them, and they lied. The tea was in their cupboard, and it was Welsh brand tea that you can't get in England so there's no way they mistook it for theirs.

Also one time Ellen left half a pizza on the side to cool before she put it in the fridge for later, and when we came back, big bites had been taken out of it. She asked them who did it and they said, "Oh, yeah, that was our friends". They saw her take the pizza out of the oven and knew it wasn't theirs. She didn't even properly apologise, Ellen said they said it really sarcastically and snickered.

The other guy we live with is an international student from Singapore and he barely leaves his room except to cook. We had a little bit of a problem with him before when he was peeing all over the toilet seat and not cleaning it up. Back when Ellen and I still kinda liked the other two, we all put a note on door telling boys to pee with the toilet seat up to prevent accidents and he stopped after that, so we're cool now. He's nice, I think he just feels a little out of place. His English is pretty broken and not fluent so maybe he feels like there's a barrier? Idk. But we found out the other week that he likes the Walking Dead so when the season comes back in February we're gonna ask him if he wants to watch it on the big tv with us. Me and Ellen had been having takeaway nights on Mondays where we'd sit and watch TWD and OUAT with a takeaway.

Ellen's from Belfast, she's awesome and her accent is really cool. I've noticed my Welsh accent a lot more since living in England which I'm actually glad of. It's like I've found a new appreciation for the accent. Whenever I hear one in England I smile. Apparently when I talk normally, I don't sound too Welsh but when I get pissed off it intensifies? Lol. A couple of my guy friends take the piss out of me for it.

I think me and the girls I'm getting a house with next year (including Ellen) have found the house we want. I haven't actually visited it yet because I came home earlier than them, because they're all med students and had to stay on an extra week. But it was my favourite house from the ones we found online and apparently it doesn't disappoint in real life apart from the really small bathroom, so I think we'll be getting it. I'm really excited =D

Got all my presents ready, people have done well from me this year I reckon. I spent most of the term being pretty poor because my scholarship came in late, it came through just before I left for home so I've spent half of it on Christmas presents. I get the next installment on the tenth of January so I should be much better off next term. Wooo!

I got two essays to write over the break. I want to cry. They're both confusing and annoying and longer than my first one and ugh. One of them I'm sure I'll get into when I actually get going with it. It's just the getting started part. I'm basing it on Queer Theory in Twelfth Night. I saw an adaptation of it about a month ago in the university theatre by The Royal Shakespeare Company. It was really good, I enjoyed it. But I was hella disappointed because about half way through some of the stewards came in with pizza and the actors were like who ordered pizza and I put my hand up out of instinct because it's pizza right? Nobody in the audience actually ordered pizza, it was part of the performance. They started giving it out at the front and back of the theatre and we were sat in the middle, so we had to wait for everyone to pass the pizzas around for it to get to us, and literally thE LAST ****ING SLICE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF AND THIS COUPLE BEFORE US TOOK IT BEFORE IT GOT TO ME AND I WAS SO MAD. I WAS SO CLOSE.

WHY???11!!!?

So that sucked. But other than that it was good.

My course is alright, not what I was expecting. Not enough actual acting involved in the first semester so I'm hoping that'll change. It was more about getting us to explore our bodies and open ourselves up to expressing things using our bodies rather than text based performance. Lots of improv involved. I am not about that. I prefer things a little more traditional. But I got into it by the end. I'm not comfortable with improv, I just naturally not great at it. And there were so many people in my group who were really great and comfortable and so naturally funny and I'm just like. How? Teach me your ways! Luckily I wasn't alone, there were plenty of others who didn't get into it so quickly. We're mixing up our groups next term so I'll be with a bunch of different people. Thankfully I'm still with my friend Emily. We're both similar in that we're not improv fans etc. There are drama students who can't wait to be the centre of attention and show off what they can do. Emily and I are not those students. We wish we were.

This is one long-ass post so I'll wrap it up for ya. Congrats if you stayed with it this long, props!

One last point. Go see the film Frozen! I am absolutely obsessed with it. It's fantastic. I could write an entire post on how that film is great and how pro-feminist it is and how I wish I was still a child that could grow up with that film because it is fantastic and all kids should see it. All adults should see it, too. 10/10 would recommend.

That's all!
Haliefax