There's NO Place like Home

So I'm writing this now I've arrived home for the christmas holidays, naturally, I'll back track a little.

After our plans to spend the last night of term at the union with everyone, a couple of my friends decided to go home early and so we decided to have a very festive sleep over instead, containing The Holiday and the very handsome Mr Jude Law, 13 going on 30, chinese and finally, snowball, after snowball, after snowball!

On the 16th, my last night in my university house I began packing to leave the following day. For the majority of the night however, my room looked alot like this;

Eventually, I managed to contain the necessary essentials in just two suitcases, two cardboard boxes and my handbag. I'll state now however, half of that was necessary for my side trip to my boyfriend's house for 5 days before making it home for christmas.

I then finally made it home, after a lovely brief encounter with the boyfriend's mother, at around 6pm on the 21st (yesterday), only to be woken this morning by my mother, to help put the food shopping away. Welcome home.

For now,

Carrskid,

Rowling's Apprentice.

Christmas Content

Over the past couple week's I've accumulated a couple new additions to my shelf, typically following the christmas theme given that these were given to me in my last week before returning home for the holiday.

First, I received my very first christmas card from one of my best friends at university :) Obviously this isn't a permanent addition to my shelves but I felt like sharing it with you anyway since I rarely do cards, let alone christmas ones!

My second addition happens to be my very first christmas gift this year from two of my housemates. The bag contains a bottle of black forest flavoured vodka, which they flavoured themselves, along with a stick of kinder chocolate, which happens to be my favourite chocolate! Needless to say, I was surprised and very happy to be given this. I do however have a problem with never consuming these types of gifts because they become rather nice homely ornaments instead.

The third, which I value alot, happens to have been a random gift from another of my friends. Coincidentally, it happened to be something I was minutes away from buying myself, so It's a good job I didn't visit the Yankee Candle shop before meeting up with her on the day! It's the aptly named Christmas Eve candle and I've absolutely adored it ever since my sister bought herself one two Christmases ago. Since then, christmas hasn't smelt right without having this particular candle being lit every day the entire week before the day! Now, not only did I have my own small version for the lead up to leaving university for home, but now I'm back, my sister has bought one of the HUGE jars this year, just to keep the festivities going!

So far, this christmas is slowly getting alot better! Now I'm finally back home, the festivities are flooding in to my door. Quite a contrast from the lack of christmassy feeling back at university, but I suppose that was always going to be a given. There's really no place like home!

For now,

Carrskid,

Rowling's Apprentice.

I'd like to include this post as a general showing off moment of where I live. This lovely find, believe it or not is attached to my campus with just a short woodland walk connecting them, populated largely by squirrels! (never before have I experienced so many of the creatures (makes sense that our mascot is in fact a squirrel) and acorns and oak leaves in one place!) To put it bluntly, I'd never seen an acorn in the physical word, nor an oak leaf (other than drawings obviously) so this excited me ALOT!

The first full weekend spent here was extremely sunny and so I naturally took the opportunity of spending a day roaming round the woods with my camera just to share this with you. I feel extremely lucky to live with this on my door step. Naturally this would be pretty inspirational to those of you who are generally interested in classic novels and wish you were Lizzie Bennet. I personally find it inspirational due to this:

I personally recognise this as my own local scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in which he saves Sirius from the dementors. Naturally I found this amazing! :D

Pinch Punch Happy Holidays!

As everyone is aware, it's the 1st of December and officially the start of the annual countdown to my favourite day of the year. Given that yesterday was then obviously the 30th November, I purchased something new for my shelves of interesting things :D my uni advent calendar.

After receiving a message from my mother asking if I'd bought one for here (and informing me she'd bought one for at home) I decided I'd better be quick and get one! It's nice to know mum bought me one too, and when I eventually get home on the 21st I'll enjoy my backlog of 21 chocolates!

Now it's been a very taxing and stressful day at uni so I shall reward myself with my chocolate for today. I resisted this morning so I could take a photo with the image still in tact :)

Merry run up to christmas everyone!

Carrskid,

Rowling's Apprentice.

My University

It's been long overdue now as I'm currently writing this with only 3 weeks till I return home for the christmas holidays. Nevertheless, now I've spent most of the first semester here, It's probably about time I shared some of my university goodness with you.

This is my room. Please bear in mind when I first moved in, everything had it's place. It was still just as orange then as it is now. C'est la vie.

It is too small to fit into one photograph given the space I have to take said photo. I'm a first year as you may have realised. No this is not in halls. I don't think they like to give their students such vibrantly coloured rooms as my landlord does. Our house is co-ordinated. We have a purple room, blue room, pink room, green room and obviously, orange. Needless to say, I've bought a few posters since being here.

Given that my camera is a Cannon EOD 450D, I personally don't take mine out on a night out at the union and surrounding areas. Therefore, I barely have any photos of my time spent here already, but plan to next semester, along with the beginning of next year as I will (hopefully!) be in the USA.

Over the past few weeks I've been researching and doing all the requirements from our Study Abroad team in order to get myself in the states for the first semester of year 2. From around 30 partner universities I have finally narrowed it down to 4 choices. I need 3. As of next week the application goes live and thus I shall be completing it in the shortest time possible to make sure I get on the programme. Hope fully come the first week of August 2012 I'll be packing my belongings for the next 4 months.

Currently it is 4 weeks to christmas. This year the run up has been a little disappointing so far as I've been busily churning out work weekly for my 4 modules. I'm hoping this is simply because I'm not at home and my usual experience of christmas is somewhat different this year! suffice to say, I cannot wait for the next 3 weeks to fly by so I can go home and experience my usual festivities and christmas atmosphere! Not for lack of trying though, this week I invested in around 20 clementines, a bottle of advocaat, some lemonade and watching the supply of christmas films I brought with me. It's been a little depressing lately but the countdown has become the forefront thought of each and every day.

However, it's not all doom and gloom as they say. Last weekend I finally got to visit home, for longer than most of the friends I have made here as each week I get fridays and mondays (not to mention wednesdays!) off from uni. For the first time in around 6 years, I had never been so delighted to be driven through the streets of my home town. I may have complained endlessly about having not moved to uni yet, but it was a nice nostalgic welcome change to the mundanity that life here at university has become.

The weekend before I also got the chance to visit my boyfriend for an even longer weekend to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. This, for me, is totally a huge deal. This was my present :)

Next time my post wont be as long because I don't plan on waiting 2 months each time to update on my life. So far, university isn't everything people always rave about.

For now,

Carrskid,

Rowling's Apprentice.

Update

So, my plan to kick start my new blog has been delayed somewhat and have been due to the following reasons;

• I started university and as anticipated, my life has suddenly become extremely fast paced and difficult to manage my time to involve updating my blog as often as I would like.
• As with starting university, comes starting a new level of work and thus the demands are alot higher.
• Juggling my time at university, getting all the work done, trying to develop and maintain some form of a social life while I'm here, I'm also stressing about everything else!

Having said this, I am planning on scheduling time into my system to involve this little page of delights so even I can keep up with what I've been doing!

For now,

Carrskid,

Rowling's Apprentice.