up down left right

wow i am already slacking on this thing and i haven't even had it that long!

so friday i played squash with a couple of my co-workers. it was great. me and aude suck! but we are at a similar level, so it was good. i won one and she won one. it was cool. so we left there and aude just bought a bike, so we brought it with us. she was on the phone with her boyfriend and i was riding this thing around. so i wanted to adventure down this path and then catch up with her but she ended up following me. so we got to the end and had no idea where we were. haha. it was great. we ended up taking the longest possible detour. we were like at the city centre! hahaha. but then we decided to go to the store and ended up meeting ben coincidentally who was going to suzie's. it was quite hilarious
then we went over to suzie's place and her roommate lucy and made us currie. it was fantabulous. i really liked it. we just hung out all night. we met this chick named joy who was hilarious! her trains of thought were so unique. i loved it. we watched this show dr. who which is quite popular here. i liked it a lot.

saturday. met ben down at the city centre where it was pissing down. we walked around the european food festival. got some cheese and bread and went to ben's house. we ate. watched tennis. then we did arts and crafts. played wii. my pants were soaking wet so i was wearing the obnoxiously loud shorts that ben had. he wanted to get a frame for his picture that he made, so i thought we were going right down the road so i just wore these pants. oh no but we ended up walking all around the city centre! muahahaha. it was great. i could read people's mind and they were just like what the heck. and apparently 6 x8 frames are impossible to find!! anyways went back to ben's then i was walking home because i was tired. instead took a detour to suzie's house and hung out with lucy all night. we played clay. hahah i know art day. and we were going thru his library and listening to a million songs.

sunday..met suzie for a creme tea and it was really good! oh man i love those things. it is like gain 20 pounds in one sitting. but whatever. you only live once! haha. we walked around the quay and looked at a river. did some physics on a bridge. we were jumping up and down at the same time and shook the whole thing. it was great. borrowed some of suzie's cds and stuck them on my computer.

pretty chill weekend overall. it was nice though. i could have gone on a 10 mile hike in the rain but i really wasn't feeling that! haha. will put up pictures i promise!! i just don't have them on my comp. at work.

going to cambridge this weekend and holland next weekend. so those will be full of exciting stories for the weekend! playing squash tonight and going over to aude's for dinner.

oh yeah i forgot. somehow i contracted some english rash. haha it is so hott! i went to the doctor and apparently it is just one of those annoying things that are just there, itch a little, last 6 weeks, and look oh so hott! typical. unknown how it is contracted also. the best part about the whole thing is that the doctor visit was free! i am moving here. just for that reason only.

signs of aging

i realized that i am getting older from a few key signs that have popped up

1: my nails are long. why? because i haven't had to play water polo :)
2: slippers is not accepted when you go places
3: i am white white white. no more gorgeous tan from being outside all the time. learning to live with it
4: oh yeah you really have to do one of those things called a budget. :P

well those are all that i can think of right now and will work on more.

i went to dinner at my supervisor's house two nights ago and it was really good. she is a really good cook and has this cool cook book. we sat around and ended up watching a movie also. it was some indie film that was just laying around. she is really cool and telling me about some opportunites in leiden, holland that she may be able to help me with so lets just cross our fingers for that.

last night, i played squash with ben and dave. it was really fun. i am pretty bad at it but it was really fun to mess around and stuff like that. they are really good squash coaches. who knows i might have found my new calling in life. haha nah just kidding.

after that we went bowling and it was sooo fun. there were about 9 of us and nobdy was professional or too serious about it so that made it a lot more fun. we had rounds of left handed bowling and things like that. hannah, dave's wife, was such a cutie and just got better and better as the night went on.

we stopped in at a pub later and played one of those quiz games. it was funny most of the time i had no idea what was going on, not too keen on british pop culture i suppose. i had a pretty rad convo about relationships with a happily married coupdle and a gay guy. very interesting view points i would have to say.

so i carried on hanging out with this gay guy named lucy who was so very rad. we were just talking all night long about random things so it was quite nice. he invited me over to his place for dinner and cocktails on friday. he lives with suzie so it'll be great.

back to work, enough procrastinating for the day :)

oh it only gets better

sorry i am at work right now so i don't have my pictures of the weekend yet! but they were pretty rad, so check a little later and they'll be there.


£££££FRIDAY££££££££

Working on stuff at work. Natural thing to do. Then we left and hit the pub where we met up with some of the other physics kats who were quite cool. we went over to ben's house where he just bought a wii which was my first time at. that thing is soo cool! i am on the verge of buying one :) nah i have figured out my new life calling. i am only buying minimal amounts of food, no clothes, maybe a trinket or two, but other than, only plane tix. maybe accomadations and whatever. i met this guy who travels a lot and only brings out 25 of whatever currency, so he doesn't go bankrupt. genious i say. anyways, we played wii watched this piddly little firework show then carried on home. it was cute and a nice chill night!

€€€€€€€€€€SATURDAY€€€€€€€€€

so i woke up when i felt like it. because i could and ventured into the city centre. it was quite cool, everyone was out since there was a festival or something. i found this hippie fair by the cathedral. it was a nice little craft fair. i went into the cathedral and it wasssss sooooo coool. totally cool architectuure and stuff. i also went into the museum down the road and that was nice too. they actually had stuff from hawaii in there. i was like oooh home.

i randomly found this castle place and this really cool park. i took a million pics, so you can check em out later. oh yeah and i had some fudge on the side of the road.

then the unfortunate but not really i found this place called primark which is the uk equivalent of ross. so i spent the money i didn't have but they were on practical things like an umbrella, rain jacket, towel, etc. i think this is the point where i realized that i am never buying clothes again. i don't think that i have ever said that in my life, but i am changing my ways.

i had to hurry back because i was meeting suzie and a bunch of people for a night out. i took a shower and ran out the door. we had a couple of ciders at this pub that had a basement with a skeleton in it. really random but whatever. then we went to the cavern where they were having indie night. that was fun good music. suzie and i had waayy too many double vodkas with black currant and soda water. some how i got back home after a night of fun! suzie is seriously my partner in crime. she is hilarious!!

%%%%%%%% SUNDAY = TOUR DE BATH %%%%%%%%%%

so jenny, my flat mate and i decided that we were going to bath on the 10 am train. who knows what time that i got home but none the less i was not feeling too hot in the morning. so in a mad dash, i threw some clothes grabbed my wallet, camera, and an umbrella. i threw them in jenny's bag because i was like i don't want to carry anything really and we were only going for the day. so we ran to the station which was not fun and just made it on the train. being on a train with the trees and all in that state, blah not fun!

we made it to bath in one piece and had a creme tea which was pretty okay, not as good as my first but it was in the oldest house in bath. oh i forgot to mention the wonderful train mix up that i had. so being the train expert that i am, i accidentally bought a 1st class one way tix to bath instead of a round trip one like i wanted. which i didnt realize until the lady was checking our tix. sooooo we got and try to see how much a one way back would be and it would have been £ 30= $60! i was like ouch! what about next morning. that would have been £5 and i was like that is cool, ill just stay in a hostel for a night and that will be fun. so i found a hostel and then we set off on our day.

we walked around a bit and went into the roman baths. IT WAS SOOO FREAKIN RAD!!! i mean i thought i was going to just see some pool and be done with it but it was this huge extravagant museum. i loved it. i reccomend it to everyone in the world. so i took a million pix that day but my camera died at the end of it! i was like oh hell. left my battery at home along with my phone since i didnt want to lose it. so i was like oh man only mental pix from now on!

we walked around the city centre of bath. really cool place. we saw these massive trees and that was wicked! it is a cute little city. anyways jenny had to leave, so i carried on looking around. i found this park called sydney park and it was bbeeaaauuuttifful. so i hung out under this really cool tree for a while. just laying there and looking at the structure of the tree. amazing.

so i wanted to see university of bath and i figured i could walk there it would be fine. didnt look too bad on the map. oh but the map was not to scale and left out the fact that you basically hike up the side of a mountain and you dont even know if you are on the right road and there are a bunch of little roads that throw you off too. so i made it there and it was quite nice. there was a rock climbing wall on the campus and a massive sport facility.

back to the city centre, which took me forver!! and it was getting a little creepy cuz it was getting dark. but it was fine i only had to ask for directions once and i was going in the right direction anyway. so i made it back to the city centre and started watching tv thru a pub window. these guys invited me in and i hung out for a little bit. they were really cool and were telling me a lot about london and travelling and stuff.

left there and made it back to the hostel and hung out in the late night dungeon. just a cool place to hang out. i met a bunch of cool people where we talked to like 2:30 in the morning. this one guy went to like 56 cities since he graduated in may! so i was just talking to him about his experiences, very useful info on places to go. he was into political science and was more keen on the situations. i met these two irish girls who were so lovely and we were talking about getting married, being a bionic women and sharing our experiences with life. they were really really cool chicks.

i woke up in the morning and ate the continental breakfast. that was nice for a hostel. and then i jumped on my train. being that i was freezing from the night before and the sun comes up at 5, not the best sleep. so i fell asleep and missed my stop! seriously these things drive me crazy. so i was a fugitive and hopped on a train to go back to exeter. it was hilarious. i hiked up the hill and now made it to work. same clothes, took a shower though, and a cheesy british flag bag i got at a store there.

why would we expect any different right?! oh this is just hilarious!!!!

so it does rain in England!

I have been lucky that the whole time I have been here it is yet to rain. I know quite uncharacteristic of the English country side. It could be that I brought my Hawaiian sunshine along ;)



I did already manage to slightly misplace my phone but it did get recovered at a pub down the road. that suzie girl and i are not a good combo ;) i have decided that i should wear it around my neck or leave it at the house until an absolute dire situation.
IDL working out quite nice. Actually getting things done today. I think that I should have Brittany's British vocab. I will start very small and add to it each day. This is just so that each of you can learn some Brit slang.




------vocab lesson #1--------
bird = chick = hot girl
bloke = dude (haven't quite worked out if it is too good at all)
ginger = red-head
fancy = when you like something
pub = bar ( go there after work every day)
fanny = women's private regions ( so this means don't call it a fanny pack here since they will look at you with a very appalled expression)
bum = butt
----------------------------




that is all for now. if you want to use these in sentences i will give you some examples.
"oohh, i really fancy that bloke who works at the pub. I heard his brother is a ginger which means Suzie will probably like him."

Say things like that and you will be in! Oh yeah and eggs are on the shelves not in refrigerators. And they have teeny weeny cars. Oh and it is day for like forever. Something about this whole latitude thing.

more and more adventures

I only have this thing for a couple days and I am already slacking on the updates. So just a warning this is going to be a long one. A recap of the weekend and stuff like that. *~*~*~*I WILL ADD PICS SOON I PROMISE*~*~*~*~*~*

:±:±:±:±:±:±:±FRIDAY±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±
Work: 10am arrival
11-12 coffee
12-1 colloquium
1:30-2:30 lunch
4-5 tea
5:30 Leave for the pub

What the heck yeah?! Its like why bother even coming in or even starting anything at all. Its like lets just hang out until the next break.

So we went to this pub called the Imperial. It was a nice day out and we had drinks outside and it was like a giant BBQ with lots of friends and things like that. There were picnic tables and people on the grass and stuff like that. It was quite nice and a mellow night.



±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±SATURDAY±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±±::±:±:±

Aude, Jenny (my flatmate) and I went to this place called Dartmoor. You can check out some of my pictures. It was a really cool place. It is like this giant protected land and stuff like that so there are sheeps and horses just running around. There was a river running through parts of it so there were people playing in it. I had the BEST ICE CREAM EVER! out of this truck that was there. It was amazing!!!

We got back and went to a BBQ at Suzie's house (workmate). It was really cool a bunch of people that I work with and their friends and stuff like that. It was a blast. I learned a new game called Balderdash. I don't know if I am even saying it right but its a game where you make things up and people have to guess if it is correct. It is quite interesting after a few glasses of wine. We also played pictionary and I was on the foriegner team! haha I am the foreigner! I have to say it was quite hard with some people since they have completely different ways of saying stuff. Oh yeah and they had this thing on TV that is like American Idol but not really. It was to become the next Jospeh in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat production. And there was the mean judge with an accent. And the accent is and American one!! muahaha that is pretty funny.


±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±SUNDAY:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±

I met Aude at the Cathedral and we walked along the River Exe down to the Quay side. Apparently Quay sounds like key. So we went down there and they were having dragon boat racing in the river. It was really funny to come all the way here and see that. It totally reminded me of the time my mom and I did it at Ala Moana. It was quite comical. I had my very first creme tea. It was soooOOOooooo good. It was scones and jam and this creme thing that you eat with tea. Oh man it is quite amazing. We looked around at all the antique shops that were there.

We walked back to Aude's house where we watched Amelie. I looOooooved it. That movie is so cute and it makes me totally want to go to Paris and hey you know what I can! I think when Jamie Wendell comes I can organzie something with her. I want to work on my french. My advisor and Aude both speak french so they could totally teach me. I know only a few words like how to say I don't like fat head and stuff like that. Thank you Carena and Joey for letting me keep up with the important parts of the language ;)

I was walking back and I went on a slight detour mainly because if you walk straight down a road that doesn't mean that you are staying on the same road. Oh yeah and street signs don't exist either. They don't believe in that or something. So there are little signs on random buildings that you have to guess what road it is. But it was fine since I stopped in at this place called the Cavern. The were having live music and it was free before 9 so that is when it was. I had a beer and watched the two bands that were playing. They were very good. I can't remember the name of the first band but the second one was called Mohair. They totally rock! and apparently they had a number 1 in Honolulu about 8 months ago. I missed that chart topper and where they actually publish things like this. I bought one of their cds and got them all to sign it like a little fan that I was. I took pictures with the lead singer and the bass player since they were around. I can add it to my list of celebrities ;)

:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:MONDAY:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±

Back to work reading this ridiculously hard paper on some algorithm. I also was learning IDL and the art of programming. I went down to the pool for my lunch break and I got recruited to play water polo for the University. The lifeguard was like woah you are really good since I was egg beatering and swimming. I was really bad actually since I hadn't been in the pool for about a month! But it impressed them. I am going to go on Wednesday night and check it out. It should be quite fun.

We all went down to Dave's ( workmate) wife's party celebration thing for this grad house thingy. The Vice Chancellor was there. We had some free food and free Pimms. Which by the way is an amazingly good alcoholic beverage with lemonade and fruits and stuff in it. We got this guy Ben drunk for the first time too! It was hilarious. He is soooo funny and it just got better and better.

Then we went down to this pub called Hourglass. Very hot waitor helped us ;). Suzie and I ended up drink two bottles of wine together. We played a bunch of card games. Apparently "americans" all know how to shuffle cards. It is funny since the british shuffling technique is to mess it around on the table.

Suzie and I walked back from I have absolutely no idea where in Exeter. She was telling me stuff along the way but I don't remeber what they were. We also stopped in at a pub on the way back to have a gin and tonic for last call at a so called karaoke bar. It was hilarious!

So we were walking back and we found a very drunk girl passed out on the side of the road that Suzie ended up walking back home. She was really cute and totally smashed! I made it home alright and I went straight to sleep :)

That is it for now and here I am at work not doing anything, yet! The key word is yet!

cool little things along the way

my wonderful analysis of the place goes as follows..

*yes it is as expensive as you think it is, but some things are a bit cheaper such as cheese and certain fruit
* i love the backs of the food you eat! there are so many informative things on there such as how much energy you get out of this, what types of foods are in it (standard i know), and some other cute funky things
* pubs are the place to be! everyone goes there after work and you DO NOT have to tip on every drink you buy. I went to this one pub by the river Exe and there were a bunch of ducks and it was so pretty
* it is really hard not to say things like the people around you. i have noticed my vocabulary to consist of words which have never usually flowed out of my lips such as lovely, cheers, midday, etc. it is quite comical
*it is nice that people actually smile at each other when you walk past each other on the streets

well i will work on this but these are the only ones that i can think of right now.

as far as work goes my boss is the kind of chick who runs around to a million places at once doing everything. hummm sound familiar. she is really quite cool and nice and has a bunch of work cut out for me. i was a bit intimidated at first but now i am like well guess i better bust my butt! her postdoc Aude is the nicest thing out there! she is so very cute and shows me around and helps me with everything in this amazing way that doesnt make me feel like an idiot. the rest of the students are all really cool and nice about everything.

the work day here is pretty great.some people dont follow it quite by the minute but most do. arrive work anywhere between 9/10, coffee break at 11, lunch at 1, tea at 4 and finish at 6 where you go to the pub. pretty nice huh? i don't know how you get anything done since once you get into a groove another little break that lasts up to an hour! haha i can get used to this i think ;)


This is the River Exe that runs through Exeter and the pub that we had drinks was right next to this.

only the beginning

in England

far far away from home

but there are a lot of pretty trees and things like that
amazing architecture and gypsies on the streets

figured out why europeans are all skinny
1: have to walk everywhere
2: streets, sidewalks, etc. are very narrow

3: staircases are vertical and narrow too

4: cars on the road drive really fast

had to walk about an hour with a whole bunch of groceries
got lost a bit

have to remeber the whole left handed thing!
cars on the left
people on the left
merging on the left
when you think you are lost go left