Long time no blog. Sorry!

Hello potential audience! Sorry about the month that has now passed between blogs. I have a lot of catching up to do, and I hope you'll forgive me for my extended absence, my school year has finally gotten busy, and this blog has suffered the consequences.

SO, last I left you it was nearly Halloween and Chantel and AJ had just visited.

Halloween I went out with some of my flatmates. I went as a with (It was really easy, I just wore a black dress, purple tights, black boots, a £shop witches hat and a £shop false witches nose, which I particularly enjoyed. I kept going "It's not my nose, its a false one!" Andrew wore a leopard print adult sized onesie and pretended to be a leopard. Although he just looked like an adorable adult sized baby. Anyway - we went out the thursday before Halloween because apparently Halloween is a week long here. Then, by the time it was actually Halloween (a Sunday this year, if you remember) we were too tired and old to go out again.

Baby Andrew, learning to crawl

Halloween was decidedly more exciting in Glasgow for Chantel, AJ and Christy who went as Mounties and immediately got recognized from a secret Due South following here in the UK.

Officers Loitz and Biggin, reporting for duty.

Where is Deifenbaker?

After Halloween it was like someone turned the weather to "crap" mode. It started to rain more often and never get sunny. I have to take a minute here to complain about the weather here in the Autumn.
I want you all to imagine your favourite Autumn scene or memory from home. Mine involves crunchy leaves, that satisfying sound, that delicious smell of the dust from the leaves, jumping in them when your parents rake them up... Fall in Alberta is a beautiful thing. Here, on the other hand, it is treacherous. I call them the LEAVES OF DEATH!

Leaves of death.
I took a picture because it was such a nuisance in my life that I felt it needed to be documented.

They are the millions of leaves that fall from the big beautiful trees that are everywhere here. They then lie on the sidewalks and pavement, not getting raked up because they are unrakeable. Why? Because it rains everyday. They turn into slimey layered slippery discs of mush just waiting to make you fall on your ass. Nothing smells good. Nothing is beautiful or enjoyable. Its wet and slimey. Thats all. Quite dissappointing. Luckily they are mostly gone, as the weather has recently actually turned into winter. There is snow and ice and other slippery things that I am much more accustomed to.

We have recently celebrated a few Birthdays in our flat. The 13th November was Maria's 22nd. For her birthday she wanted to order pizza and do "Charity shop roullette". The rules of Charity shop roullette are simple. Everybody spends £5 on an outfit for somebody else. The more ridiculous the outfit, the better. Its like Secret Santa, but for ridiculous clothes. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.



I love this photo because there is so much going on.
Featuring: Dan as "Sexy Baby", Maria as "Gypsy mom", Andrew as "Old man Geisha", Chris as "crazy gramma", Billy as "Grandpa" and Me as "George Knox Hislop IV, as imagined by my flatmates.


Then, the 25th November was Billy's 29th. For his birthday we went to a local Curry restaurant and had the most delicious curries. I ordered Chicken Naga which was quite nice, and very spicy. MIAM! Afterwards we went to The Bot  (our local pub) and they had a kick butt cover band playing, so we enjoyed that music for a while.

From Left to Right: Alex, Stephen, Dan, Chris, Adam, Helen, Andrew, Kasim, Zandra, Hannah

From Left to Right: Chris, Dan, Me, Andy, Maria, Kasim, Billy and Adam.

Early this month, I don't remember exactly when, a Continental Christmas Market opened in town. Its an outdoor market that has lots of cool international baked goods and food vendors as well as neat gifts and crafts type of stands. On the Saturday that it opened we all (Andrew, Kasim, Maria, David, Helen and I... there might have been other people there - I'm sorry if I forgot anyone!) went down to get into the Christmas spirit.

Delicious candied fruits and vegetables at the French stand.

No Kasim, You are the Turkish Delight!

Well it worked! After we got home from the market we listened to Christmas music in our common room, and since then we have purchased and decorated a Christmas tree for our common room. All of the western people are really excited because we get to bring our favourite Christmas traditions to Belfast, but I think its most interesting for some of the international students like Kasim, who has never had a Christmas tree before. Its really fun to answer his questions and remember the "Reason for the season", LOL. We've planned a Christmas day in our flat on the 13th of December. We are going to do Secret Santa and have a giant Christmas feast and watch our favourite Christmas films. I'm very excited because Christmas is my favourite holiday. (I'm going to take pictures and add them later. Sorry!)

This past friday the accommodations team provided a bus and ticket for £10 to the Belfast Giants game (ice hockey). A bunch of people from my block went and we had a good time. The game was a total bust, the Giants lost, the ref's were blind and our Goalie was napping. But it was a good time nonetheless.
(I didn't have my camera that night. I'll post pictures when Maria and Alex get round to posting them on facebook)

Last night there was lots of snow, both on the ground, and falling, so on our walk home from his house my friend James and I built GIANT snowballs. I've included pictures here just because I am so proud of them. His was bigger, but mine was more pretty.

We went inside because we were cold outside.

It kind of looks like he is magically floating his snowbomb in between his two hands. Oooh!! (Wengardium Leviosa!)

I hope I have time to Blog again before Christmas, if I don't before, I will be able to once I am home. I've got a lot coming up in the next few weeks, a paper due, my Birthday, Christmas, my first weekend trip to Dublin with Chantel and packing for and going on a European adventure. When I finally arrive in Castlerock for Christmas I will be exhausted but cultured!

Love you all! See some of you soon!

P.S. Just a shout out to Shantel and Mike, hope your engagement party was a huge success. Your photos are gorgeous (props to Kim Stein, the photographer), you guys look truly happy!


If any of you know Shantel and Mike you know how perfect this photo is.