Dance of the Dawn, it’s been a pleasure

Okay, time to update this thing a little bit. So all the exams are over as of two weeks now, and I’ve been bored to death most of the time. The only things that brought a little life in our daily routine was me almost drowning in the pool the other day, and FINALLY going to Devil’s Bridge yesterday. Just to clarify about the first, it wasn’t that bad, I just went (or was pushed by some people!) underwater without holding my breath and swallowed too much water. But after 2 minutes of coughing everything was okay. As for Devil’s Bridge, I wanted to visit the place even before I ever came to Aber, and it was great fun indeed. After arriving, our first try to find the place resulted in us walking the wrong way for about 10 minutes before we realised it. Here I would like to thank the boys for this lovely opportunity. After taking the right path we finally found the famous three bridges, and the stairs leading down to the river and the Devil’s cauldron underneath them. After considerable amount of picture taking and goofing around, we headed up. There was another path leading to the waterfalls, but the gate required 2 x 1 pound to enter, and we didn’t have any coins left. We even had to squeeze by two at a time to enter the gate to the bridges, since we had only 2 coins of 1 pound. So we decided we’ll visit the waterfalls another time, there is a train going from Aber to the bridges anyway.
What else, what else… I started reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray” because it’s my best friend’s favourite book, and having not read it is a huge crime for the literature world (N.B. – I’m pretty sure it’s your favourite book, but if I’m mistaken, sorry!). After all, this is Oscar Wilde we’re talking about here! Speaking of writing, I’ve come up with…. nothing. :D But don’t worry, I’m sure the muse will strike me hard soon.
3 days left till we move from our lovely student house and go to another one for the summer. I’ll really miss the view, but I’ll sure as hell not miss the damn hill leading to it! On the one hand, I feel really fucked up that I’m stuck here for the whole summer, but on the other – I’ll at least miss the unbelievable heat that hits Bulgaria at this time of the year.
I think that’s all for now, expect next blogging…. not anytime soon! :D

Snakes on a plane?

Turbulence, my dear friends, is a very nasty thing. After more than 10 flights I thought I’ve overcome my fear of flying – but yesterday’s flight made sure that won’t happen for a very long time. The weather was very nice on taking off, the wind wasn’t that strong, but even when we were still on the track, the plane was going from left to right with full speed. The situation in the air wasn’t much nicer, it took approximately 20 min for the plane to normalize, during which time some people almost peed their pants (I’m not saying any names). On the other side, I think I took it a little more serious than I should have, because the old man next to me was sitting completely calm and reading the magazine…. while I was about to break the seat handles! Either that, or he didn’t care if we crash or not – he’s lived his life after all. That’s all nice and smooth, grandpa, but I (just decided) I wanna live! Anyway, apart from all the shaking on taking off and landing, the rest of the journey back to Aber was completely normal – for the first time. No missed trains, no delayed trains, no need to sleep on a bench – that’s so poetic I’m gonna drop a tear.
Four beautiful exams lie ahead of me and I should really get on revising because I decided I don’t like failing. Then a summer full of looking for a job and… looking for a job. It’s all nice and swell given that we still don’t have a place to stay. However, I’ve adopted a new tactic called “positive thinking” according to which I have to think everything will work out. And if it doesn’t, we’ll be positively sleeping in the park.
On another positive side, Joe hasn’t come up with anything new, but seeing the clouds from above was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen and I hope it would give me something to write about. If not, again, I’ll be positively doing nothing. Bye-bye now, I’m going to revise positively.

Someday, tomorrow will be April 31st………

Hey, Joe, what do you know?

So I’ve been home for a week now, in case anyone wonders. I’ve barely turned the laptop on, this is the third time I’m doing it, but only because I had to do some work. Because next year is my final for my degree, we need to do a dissertation, and there’s an outline that needs to be submitted now, explaining what the dissertation would be about. Other than that, I didn’t really care about anything online. Oh, and I wasn’t really in the mood – you remember my lower back problem one month ago? Well, turns out I have discopathy on my back or something like that that causes the pain. So Joe is on pills again, surprise, surprise. It’s more fun imagining you’re suffering from something than having a real condition. But it’s not that serious, and I hope the pain would go away, so I can enjoy some of my break. I’ve literally been doing nothing for the past week, except playing around with the puppy. The puppy, who decided my fingers are his new chewing toy, and biting my pants – the only way he could move around. He’s currently being potty trained, and winning the battle so far, with a prize being a few slaps on his fluffy bottom. And as of last night, I have 4 new born kittens at home, so I can easily open a pet zoo. At least Benji will have some buddies to play with when they’re old enough.
So, yeah, that’s it. That’s all from the animal chronicles and the medicated Joe for now. No scribbles, I’ve been lazy for that too. And the next post will probably not be anytime soon, unless somehow I come up with something. Bye!

You’re waiting for a train…

Sooooo, Joe had a (not so) lovely trip to Manchester the other night to pick her cousin from the airport. Isn’t it funny how when you’re in a terrible rush, the trains are never on time, and you miss all your connections? The train from Aber was mostly on time, but half an hour later it stopped in the middle of nowhere for 40 min without any explanation. After the 30th minute, when everyone got extremely nervous, they finally announced that we’re waiting for another train to pass and clear the rails. Oh, gee, thanks for not caring if people need to catch another train and their tickets become worthless as a result! Anyway, we continued with our journey, but as you can imagine I did miss all the other trains. The good thing about the rail system here is that there are trains every hour or so. The bad thing for Joe, however, was when I arrived at Wilmslow, where I was supposed to catch the train to the airport, and missed it by just 2 minutes. TWO minutes! Why can’t THIS train get a little late? So the guy at the station told me there would be a BUS in an hour to the airport, but I would probably need a new ticket for that. Ok, fine, I got the ticket, and went outside to find the bus stop – at 10pm, outside, in the freaking cold, alone. The most positive thought that went through my mind while I was waiting was that I would most likely get mugged, and the most negative – that I would be raped and killed. After twenty minutes of despair and freezing to death, I said “Fuck it” and went to one of the taxis to ask how much it would cost to the airport. 12 pounds sounded extremely pleasant at that point, so I got right in and arrived at Terminal 3 in less than 10 min. When I picked my cousin, we had around 4 hours to wait for a bus to Manchester Piccadily and get a train from there. She, however, wasn’t feeling like staying still for so much time, so got on another bus to Manchester around 1pm. That way I can proudly (or not) say I was out in Manchester at 2 in the morning. And if we don’t count the 24-hour sleep deprivation, the journey back to Aber went as smoothly as I could have never imagined. That’s a freaking conspiracy – your life might depend on a train getting somewhere on time, and then chances are everything will screw up. But when you’re not in a particular hurry, everything runs on schedule. Riddle me this!
Apart from being unnecessarily dramatic about my rail journeys, everything else seems okay. I got two reports due this Monday, wrote one last night (because my biological clock was so fucked up after not sleeping properly for 24 hours, that I was in a mood to study!), plus my cousin went out with my housemates to see how British people get wasted on a Friday night, so I had some peace and quiet. 8 days left till I get home for the vacation, and I can barely wait! The good thing is that after the reports are done, I’ll have one week to relax and recycle my nerves.
As for scribbles, I haven’t been very productive lately, I only wrote one verse, so maybe I’ll try and come up with something after I’m done with the other stuff… but I don’t guarantee it!

Medicate

So Joe had a lovely day at the emergency today! And no, I’m sorry to say to all the ill-wishers that I’m not dying. Apparently it’s nothing serious, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting so damn much. The thing is I’ve been having some pains in the lower part of my back for a few weeks. It wasn’t that serious, because it was on and off, most days it didn’t hurt at all. I got a hot water bottle and pain relief gel and stuff like that and it was okay for a bit. Yesterday though it got worse, I couldn’t bend forward, no matter how I was standing or lying down, it still hurt. This morning I woke up with no pain, feeling relieved and all that. I was waaaay ahead of myself apparently. 5 minutes later just a simple bending to wash my face caused an excruciating pain, I couldn’t move, it became constant, so I thought I’d go and get an appointment at the hospital. I went to my lectures, but I only managed to get through one of them and then headed straight for the emergency at the nearest hospital. They did some tests, some of which I do not want to talk about or even remember ever again, and said that I’m fine and it’s probably something muscular. So they prescribed me some lovely painkillers and some other pills and said if the pain continues, I should see my GP. So it was a whole day of going back and forth to do this and that, with that pain, just sitting there and making me wanna strangle someone. Other than that it’s been swell, with all the essays and reports I need to finally get a start on. But don’t you worry, I’ll go through that too…. hopefully.

One year ago… and nothing’s changed at all….

Right. Well let me say that the crisis has been averted for now, and hopefully there will be no posts like the previous one in the near future. Everything I’ve been bottling up is out now, so I have room for more. I can’t say I’m okay, but I’m holding up, or at least trying. There isn’t anything much to say, academic work is going somewhat as usual, personally I’m a mess as usual. No new scribbles yet either. The only thing that’s keeping my spirit up is that this time next month I’ll (hopefully) be home. I’m trying to come into terms with the fact that I’ll be here the whole summer, so I can at least enjoy some spring time.

…I got a word from someone I thought was left in the past. Someone I had started to let go. And once again I don’t know what to do. Being the fucking Libra that I am, I’m standing at a crossroad, not knowing which way to choose. Shit happens. :]

 

“There is no mountain that I can’t climb,
for you I’d swim through the waters of time.
As you go your way, and I go mine,
a light will shine, and it will be me.”