(:

 Biffles.

 TRAVEL!

How my stitch looked XD

Style you Sole, & Prom

Style Your Sole

Chloé and Louis run another charity activity at AC like me with Children's Charities. There's is Toms Campus Club. It raises awareness for the Toms charity with cupcake sales etc and there big project is shoe buying [at discount] in February. Granted I was basically forced to buy a pair.

But that’s cool since I really like them.

You are able to paint them with special paints that they bring in to make them unique. This event is called ‘Style Your Sole’. Now, I am a pretty horrific painter. My doodles, well they’re spectacular but please, don’t make me ever do anything more. So my are left blissfully plain.

PROM!

My fourth and final prom. Each has been memorable in a different way. The dress I wore. The guy I went with. The dozens (hundreds) of pictures. This one has its own unique memories as well.

AC proms are really not as a big a deal as they are back home [which is very Americanised in that way]. So a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the Quiet Room on one of the computers and Atsuki, the Japanese second year in my house (but we also share E Systems together, and used to have French) says ‘Abi, do you want to go to prom with me’. –‘Sure!’… Simple. However, I didn’t quite meet Atsuki for this big event until about 9:30.

Let me explain.

It started by getting ready with the girls in the dorm. This is possibly one of my favourite things to do as a dorm. We rush around the room, borrowing each other make-up, asking advice, slightly frantic, listening to loud music and laughing more than ‘preparing’. Gabi even took on the task of ordaining me with fake eyelashes. Oh, we went to the extreme.

At 6:20, 30 friends met at Main Gate to go to Cowbridge to celebrate our friend Avrah’s 18^th birthday, and mostly because pre-prom can be a bit boring. Shana, always the ‘go big or go home’ girl, managed to get us a 60-seater bus. Crazy. Only £4 there and back though.

We basically rented out the back room of a restaurant called Aboreal, where platters of food were prepared for us for £15 a head. It was all fresh food and super healthy. The pizza, quinoa and chick pea salad, hummus and flat bread… MMM. Chlo and I even had a pretty mojito.

When I got back I ran (in heels) back to Morgannwg so that I could be with my date. He had left a bouquet of roses on my bed! No one had ever gotten me flowers before so I was sooo happy. We walked down to prom in Bradenstoke with Einar and Gabs and danced danced danced. What a lovely time.


MOCKS TOMORROW. PROCRASTINATION OVER.
I shall let you know how they go… with no time to prepare for them. Egh.

Abstazzle.

Newsflash, Egypt Currently

On Tuesday in Newsflash, Fareed who lives in Cairo came to speak to us about what was the current situation back home. I tried my best to take notes, but some of the names went past my head so please don't take this all for fact. It’s a bit jumbled as well…

Let's see...

·         The Muslim Brotherhood is now 60% of the parliament, more pro secular conservative, but the revolution wanted more democratic

·         The Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned for the assassinations of the president before Mubarak, all for 15 years

·         He was part of the millions that went several Friday’s to Tahrir Square

·         Now people are going to the Presidential Palace where Morsi lives, he has paralysed the circulation of the area, which has become a criticism of his rule

·         The reformations called for his glorification, the main one that he holds is the veto power [hearing this I immediately thought of History and the League of Nations = no good]

·         Seems he has more power than Mubarak

·         He wannts loans, Germany refused, China gave 4 billion

·         Fareed isn’t a big fan of Morsi, his appeal to the majority of the population is that he’s very religious, but Fareed isn’t Muslim so this doesn’t affect him. Supposedly he went to NASA and helped in something or other, but his English is very poor. His political etiquette is horrible; he apparently checked his watch while the German diplomats were speaking repeatedly.

·         The population want someone is old and wise, 30-40 years old is too young, Fareed was unable to vote in the election because although the voting age is 18, you have to be 18 for six months to be eligible

·         During the revolution the security measures were chaos, the police basically didn’t exist for 2 weeks as they had to go and protect their house. Fareed did this too; all the men guarding the house ‘it was very tribal’, most houses have at least one weapon of protection ‘this is Cairo’. They had to do this as all of the prisoners were let out of jail, this included gang members and rumours of Al Qaeda members going back to Palestine.

Improvements:

·         Media has been the biggest change, he can now read a newspaper without being disgusted at the favouritism for the old regime, it’s not something that tourists would notice though

·         Bassem Youssef, the Jon Stewart of Egypt started an Arabic version to the Daily Show

·         Improvements for women in every sector but medicine

·         Investigation Police [attempted English translation], basically like the Gestapo is non-existent now

International Show- auditions complete

After two days of about 30 auditions we have choosen the acts that will be in the International Show! Soooo many were amazing, I felt pretty pathetic being a judge when I couldn't even clap to a rhythm.
The list below are the acts :)

 

1.       Bollywood Fever- Sub-Conti Dance

2.       Bernadette- Nigerian Song in native language about love

3.       Ellinor, Scottish- Harp

4.       MOVE, International- Dance (one)

5.       Mila, East Timor- Tetun Song with Guitar

6.       Bram, The Netherlands- Guitar

7.       Chikara, Japanese- Martial Arts

8.       Josie, English- Beatles Song with Guitar

9.       Yihan- Chinese Dance

10.   Mark, Irish- Italian Opera  Song

11.   Japanese Fisherman Dance

12.   Bram [Dutch], Arjun [Indian], James  [English] and Michael [Cypriot]- Mumford and Sons Song with instruments

13.   Nick [Welsh]- Ginger Song with Piano

14.   African Dance

15.   Whittaker Girls [House on Campus]- Cup Song

16.   Oli [Hong Kong]– Piano

17.   Acapella [International]

18.   Prabana- Sri Lankan Dance

19.   Karabo [South Africa] and Karen- [Nigerian] Hip Hop Song

20.   Clement [Québécois]– Juggling to Justin Bieber

The show is in four weeks tomorrow!


The MCs will be Louis [mentioned in here far too often] from Belgium and Guillaume from Quebec. They will be fantastic together.

Food Festival

Sophie Killip, a Welsh Second Year organised a food festival on Sunday. It entailed many e-mails and quite a bit of organisation and was really something special! If you didn’t provide any food (as I didn’t, the cost was only £1 to try others). I can’t remember everything that was there, or the names of the things, but if I will try to say some…

Norway- Salmon, Cream Cheese and Rye bread

Bermuda- Cassava Pie (with chicken)

Wales- Welsh Cakes

England- Scones

Russia- Pink Soup? Potato Salad

Brazil-   Brigadeiro- Condensed milked boiled with chocolate butter and butter. Rolled into ball and covered in sprinkles. Very sweet and amazingly delicious! Brigadeiro means Brigadier in Portuguese, a position in the army. The sweet was made up by Brigadier Luis Antonio’s wife, when he ran for government, as a campaign tool. He wasn’t elected but the sweet caught on.

Pao de Queijo- Translates into cheese bread. Balls of soft bread dough and cheese baked until soft in the inside but crunchy on the outside.

Turkey- sweet thing… and Turkish Delights

Hungary- pastries of some sort

China- Noodles, and seeded Dates

South of Africa-

1)Seswaa

2) Spicy Onion and Tomato: diced onions and tomato with salt pepper and chillies. This is usually served with something called Kapana which is spicy barbecued beef meat cut into small squares.

3) White Bloomer bread. This was a replacement as we could not make Pap (pronounced p-up).  It is a traditional porridge  made from maize meal to a thick constancy and is more specifically known as Stywepap (ponounced stay-vah-p-up) meaning thick porridge. it has a very bland taste and is almost always accompanied by with sauce and meat.

Italy- Tiramisu

Guatemala- Tamales

International Show PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

This should be public tomorrow. It is FABULOUS.
Ryan Chin from Singapore made it, with Kiera from the US as the voice. It's to publicise the International Show, I just spent the last 3 hours watching auditions - it's going to be an amazing event. Wish you all could come.

Abi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwjI8WGepHo

Ice-Skating Extravaganza.

Two Friday nights, two firsts. This one thankfully planned, and less extreme.

Our houseparent’s organised a trip to the Ice-skating rink in Cardiff for the whole school! We had to pay £10, and for that got our entrance and the travels there. About half the student body went, around 160 of us in three buses J

We arrived by 8 and were on the ice by 8:15. I spent the whole two hours trying to ice skate. I had SUCH a good time. Since I am not a proficient walker, skating is quite an ordeal. I managed to roller blade with the four wheels by pushing off and gliding- but ice skates don’t have that beautiful brake which I so desperately needed.

So for the whole time someone would hold my hand and take me around. By the end it even looked like I could do skate (though if someone let go of my hand I would instantly scream in terror). Finn from Portugal was telling me I just needed to glide and push out…no comprehension. Even so it was good fun. The end of the night also reminded me of something I wrote on my Bucket List when I was probably 13 after watching Ice Princess. I really hope that one day I get to drive a Zamboni – it just looks SO satisfying (OCD tendencies).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkJbvv3pHg

To top it off? It was ONESIE night. Chloé and I dressed in COW onesies. Sexy is right. Pictures to come.

Though I think Mum and Dad did an amazing job for my childhood (love you two ;)), there are a few things I hope my kids can do: 1. Speak two languages fluently. 2. (Ice) Skate/Ski 3. Play an instrument…partially.

 Saturday night was spent mellow, I stayed in and watched a movie (Rise of the Planet Apes!) with my First Year, Vicky who lives in England but lived in Honduras so she’s in the Latino crew. It was unexpected and chill.

 There were two bonding sessions to note: 1. Francophone, where they had to dress up as chavs. Chloé arrived back from the bonding to get on the bus to Marcross with face paint and a diaper around her neck. It was confusing.

TALL PEOPLE BONDING- or as it was called on the FB event: Gigantomachy. I didn’t go, though I am probably the fourth or fifth tallest girl in the school. I think for girls they had to be 178cm and guys had to be 190cm (AC is blessed with many tall guys, it makes me happy J).
I considered going but just wasn’t in the mood by that time. I heard it was quite good… seriously we bond in any way possible.