Go Ape!

Hello!! This week was very exciting and next week will be even better, so stay tuned for that ;) Monday was a bank holiday so I couldn't go to school, but my Thai flatmate and I have decided to crack down on our other flatmates to keep the kitchen area clean so we did a really thorough cleaning of the kitchen in the morning. We even cleaned out the refrigerators and underneath them. Now we have a cleaning schedule and everyone has to be in charge of keeping the kitchen clean for a week at a time. Hopefully it works as people have just been getting messier and messier. I wandered down to the quay in the afternoon with some friends and we got ice cream and looked at the ferry trips available. You can go to the Channel islands for only 25 pounds round trip! That's almost all the way to France.

Tuesday I went to school and got a bunch of researchy stuff done. I'm trying to get through it as fast as I can so that when I'm gone in July I'll already have all the data collection done. Tuesday night I was going to make dinner for everyone, but then Le offered to make Chinese food so we did that instead. It was delicious. She made ribs the other day and they were amazing. I must get her to teach me how to make them before I leave here :) Then we watched Leap Year. It was pretty dumb, but oh well....

Wednesday was awesome! Me and Melissa went to this thing called Go Ape! It is an obstacle course in trees. So you get a harness and get taught how to hook it up to the safety ropes and then you climb up a rope ladder and have to go across rope bridges and stuff and then down zip lines. It was sooooo much fun! The harnesses weren't all that comfortable, but still. We had a bit of a hard time getting to the park that the course was in because our bus from Poole was late so we missed the bus to the park. So we had to get a cab, but it was only 7 pounds so that wasn't too bad. The park itself was really nice as well. They rent bikes and have a restaurant and hiking trails and stuff. We may go back there sometime just to walk around. The Go Ape! course was really cool. The first one was really easy and very low so that the instructors could watch everyone and make sure we were doing it right. Then we were pretty much left on our own to do the next 4. For each one you went up a rope ladder, did some obstacles and then went down a zip line. On the 3rd zip line Melissa's harness broke. One of the leg straps came undone. We went and found an employee and he said he could just fix it, but got her a whole new harness instead so that she would feel safer. After that we finished the course and then headed for the bus. We had to walk quite a bit, but we finally found the bus stop and that bus got us back into town on time to catch our coach back to Poole. It was an awesome day!

Thursday I was at school again. I made it about 6 hours before dying. Then I came home to make jacket potatoes with mexican chili for dinner for the girls. Friday I was at school once again and had to learn how to use a microfiche reader. It isn't that hard, just a pain. I understand using microfiche in the past as it was pretty much the only option, but I have a book published in 2000 that has microfiche in it. It makes me really mad. Get with the times Barry Cunliffe! So I'll be back to the microfiche reader on Monday...

Friday afternoon I came home early and then headed to the beach with Melissa. I covered myself in spf50 because I had no intention of getting sunburned. And I didn't! When we got to the beach around 3:30 it was really crowded, but it started to clear out around 4:30. And it stays light forever here, so we stayed until about 6:30 and it was still nice. Sytske met us down at the beach eventually and we did a lot of people watching. There was a group of cheerleaders there that were doing backflips and throwing people up in the air. When we got back Sytske made us Dutch pancakes for dinner. They are thin like crepes and we had savory and sweet ones. We figured we could eat a ton of them, but after one savory (bacon and cheese) and one sweet (black cherry jam and ice cream) we were stuffed. There was a formal dress party in another flat on Friday night and we meant to stop by for awhile, but by the time we were done eating it was 10pm and we saw them heading out so we skipped it. Ah well...

Saturday my alarm didn't go off so I slept really late. Then I met Sytske and we went to the Slug and Lettuce to study. I got quite a bit done, but we also spent a lot of time chatting. It was fun though. Danielle and I got our train tickets to London in the afternoon for our trip to Paris on Tuesday. We have to stay at the train station for a few hours over night as our train is at 5:30 in the morning and the last train from Poole to London gets in at 1am. So that sucks, but we figure we can kind of plan out what we want to do and then sleep on the train ride. Then Sytske and I got back together after dinner to watch a movie. We watched The Last Legion, where Colin Firth plays an action hero. It was pretty ridiculous. Who knew that Arthur Pendragon was descended from Caesar?

Today I finally got to the gym and now am doing laundry so I have clean clothes for Paris. So I'll have a million pics next week I'm sure, but here are the ones from Go Ape! Enjoy!