Halloween!

Good morning peepzz!

So… Halloween happened last weekend! And it was fun! :D

On Thursday the 30^th we went to this big Halloween party in Elephant and Castle which is a different part of London. It went the way those huge parties always go for me: The prepping and getting ready with my friends was fun, the pre-drinks awesome, the bus ride there hilarious and then the party… the party itself stunk. TYPICAL. The club was pretty nice and there were two dancefloor-y things, but downstairs had crap music and upstairs was basically a sauna in the Sahara. No bueno. The bus ride home and the inevitable cheesy chips from ‘’Cutty Sark Restaurant’’ (Our favourite, sliiiiightly dodgy kebab-place) made everything better again. In the end foam canons and bouncy castles filled with drunken strangers cannot hold a candle to carb-y deliciousness and good friends.

But now, let’s move over to the best part… My costume!

I went as super-creepy dead doll! Easiest costume in the world. I bought some ridiculously overpriced white tights from American Apparel because apparently they are the only shop in London that sell white tights for adults. At least they were good quality. Then my flatmate Kellie and I drew stitches on them with Sharpie! Easypeasy, and so effective! People thought I’d bought them in a shop. The idea is from here.

Then I just added my purple dress, a black bow in my hair, some DRAMATIC eyelashes and a little bit of scary make-up. Finito! Now about those eyelashes… It felt as if I glued two dead butterflies to my eyelids. Not the most comfortable feeling in the world and I spent my whole evening annoying my friends by going: ‘’They are drooping. Are they drooping? They’re falling down I KNOW IT! Don’t you lie to me.’’

Look at those suckers! Insanity - I tell you!

Btw – I was TRYING to be creepy here. This is not my smiley-selfie-face, I promise. 

Because I am me and I never miss an opportunity to embarrass myself for the world to see, here’s a picture of my face after a ripped those bloody caterpillars of my eyelids at the end of the night. Gorgeous eh?

 For what we did on the 31^st, which technically is Halloween,  – We got half-dressed up, hung out at the flat for ages, failed to get into the pub we wanted to go, went to a crappy club and then had a blast at home until laaaaaate. That’s student life for you.

 

Procrastination station.

Hello good people!

I’m sat here on a Saturday night trying to finish my essays, but it’s just not happening. I’ve been off gallivanting in the working world for 2 years and now that I have to write essays again it’s like I’ve totally forgotten how to coherently string words together. Let alone make it somewhat intellectual and insightful. Sigh. So because of slightly vague reasons (PROCRASTINATION) I have now decided to show you what my room here at Greenwich is like! Enjoooooy.

My room is pretty good. Of course the mattress is awful, the carpet is disgusting and the walls are full of holes, but it is better than nothing and I’ve lived worse before. (Two words: Ghana. Cockroaches.) Compared to many of the other rooms in this building, my fridge is really good so that’s something.

I have an Ed Sheeran poster because I went to his concert two weeks ago AND IT WAS AMAZING!

Awesome people might recognize the quote on the poster… It’s from John Green’s Paper Towns and one of my favourites.

The bathroom is teenytiny and makes me feel like I’m on an airplane.

The view is amazing.

The hallway in my flat. There’s 7 rooms – one first-year student in each of them. We’ve got a partying Italian bella, a quiet English guy, an ever-happy German dude, a feisty Yorky, a constantly worried English girl and a weirdo from Essex with purple hair. And me! :D

Our kitchen is quite big and, like any proper student kitchen, always slightly disgusting.

Our pin board is the best. One of my flatmates has an obsession with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and another with Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, which causes for an interesting combination of pictures.

View from the balcony. Greenwich is in the South-East of the city right along the Thames. I still can’t believe I now live in London. Who’d thought?

On our flat door we have another rather fantastic picture of Boris. I didn’t know him before I moved here, but he has become somewhat of a hero to me. Look at his ugly mug! Boris 4EVA.

Anyways that was it from Flat 13! Come by anytime. We already have a reputation for throwing the BEST flatparties ever.

First week at uni!

Okay, so here’s something that I didn’t really count on when re-starting my blog… University is busy! We’ve started properly now and there is soooo much homework. Mostly reading! Which should be easy for me, literature student and book-addict and all, but I’m finding it hard. The tricky thing is also that no-one is MAKING me do the reading, no-one checks if we’ve done it, it is all up to us. Which means I have to be a grown-up and that is… tough. Because everytime I want to do my homework one of my flatmates inevitably goes ‘’Let’s go to McDonalds!’’ and then everything falls to pieces. But I promise, Mom and Dad, I’m trying! Anyways, for my favourite course Writing for the Media we have to do some writing each week, which actually is very motivating :) So here is the first thing we had to write – a ‘’piece’’ (that word feels very pretentious to me) about our first week at uni. The hardest thing for me was the word limit because I ramble like a maniac.

Bam!

Going to university is always going to be a nerve-racking experience, but going to uni in another country is just on a whole new level of fear. You are starting anew in a foreign place without anyone or anything safe to hold on to. It is scary!

Before I arrived I had prepared myself for the worst. I half expected to be sitting in my room all day, lonely and sad, hoping for my parents to call me. Luckily that didn’t happen.

On Sunday the 14th of September I travelled by car, plane and bus on my way to London. I had already had some contact on Facebook with my new flatmates and we had decided to have a party that Sunday night. But I never made it to the party. I got extremely ill with motion sickness on the bus into the city. I blame it on the combination of stress, nerves and the dodgy sandwich I ate on the airplane. My fears had come true, I spent the first night at uni crying on the phone to my parents believing that this was a horrible foreboding for my three years in London. I was wrong.

The next day I finally met my flatmates and they are great! We are a diverse bunch of people and I can honestly say that I have already made some good friends. Life in halls is pretty good so far. Noisy, dirty and soaked in alcohol, but good.

The first week went by in a blur. There was so much to do and so many new people to meet. It was nice to finally meet my lecturers and to walk around on the campus I had visited so many times on Google Maps. I am happy to say that my first week at university was a success even though it had a bit of a false start. 

This is perfect!

Gone Girl!

I went to the cinema with one of my flatmates yesterday. Woohoo girldate! We went to see Gone Girl, which I is a movie I have been looking forward to for ageeeees! I read the book last year and it was one of the best books I read in 2013. For those of you who don’t know, it is a thriller about a wife who disappears and her husband who is the main suspect. That sounds pretty straightforward and even a bit ‘’cliché’’, but let me tell you, this book is so creepy and so well-written that it will not leave your mind for days. I finished it in two days and then I just wanted to tell everybody about it. Gone Girl is amazing and you should read it.

The movie? Was equally as good! Creepy and suspenseful, with a brilliant soundtrack. Rosamund Pike was excellent as the wife Amy. I can’t say too much about her, because that would ruin the movie/book, but her performance will stay with you. Ben Affleck was…. hot as Nick, but he was not right for the part in my opinion. But what can you do?

So – Go see this movie right now! If I haven’t already convinced you to do so consider this: Neil Patrick Harris is in it and he is GREAT! :D

I'm back!

Hola guys!

So I’m thinking everybody who clicked on this link can be divided into 3 groups:

The ones who know I used to write a blog and LOVED it and are my biggest fans. Thank you very much, I love you and I will dedicate my first Nobel Prize in literature to you.

Those who know I used to write a blog, hated it and thought I was annoying.  I would now advise you to please go very very far away and never come back.

Those who’ve I’ve met these last two years and are like ‘’Wut? She’s blogging?’’ Hello, let me hug you to my (admittedly very large) bosom and welcome you to my blog! This is where I dump thoughts and experiences. I sometimes go away for a while, but I always come back. My language and punctuation tend to be atrocious but who cares? It’s MY blog! :D

But why am I blogging again? Well, readers, Marvellous Marieke (I dubbed myself that – it’s my superhero name) is going to university! Or, rather, is already AT university! :D Yes that is right, I finally made it after two gap years! I am officially an English Language and Literature Student at the University of Greenwich in London! Wooohooo!

I started two weeks ago and so far it has been…. Really fun! :D

My course is challenging and interesting, my flatmates are awesome and so far I’ve met loads of really great people. After two years of volunteering and working, my mind has gone back into English-geek mode and I even found myself buying this at the uni’s bookstore the other day

How much geekier can you get?

So, yes, that was a tiny update, just to get you up to speed with my life. I’m gonna leave now and let it sink in…..

I’m back!