Things To Do In England When You’re A College Student Without A Car:

Good news, everyone, the last few days have been considerably more exciting than the onesfrom the previous blog so I’m going to see if I can do them justice. Sorry its taken me so long to do another post (a whole 3 days! Freak out, right?), but here I am, blogging to you again. That can’t possibly be grammatically correct… oh well. Oh, and a thanks to all of you who are reading my blog, I’m glad you’re enjoying it, it inspires me :).

Anyway, first things first. Saturday proved uneventful until we all decided that that was just thoroughly unacceptable and we were going to go out on Saturday night. Fred got the great idea that we need to “go out for a good curry” and then go bowling somewhere in Norwich. Apparently the English have an obsession with Indian food quite similar to the obsession that New Mexicans (nay, dare I say Americans in general?) have with Mexican food. Unfortunately, Indian food doesn’t hold a candle to Mexican food. BUT, I digress. So we get on the bus at like 7:15pm and we’re all starving because no one ate anything in anticipation of this amazing curry we were going to get.

So we get off the bus and Fred swears that there are a string of Indian restaurants in the northwestern part of the city, so we start walking up there, and we keep walking, and we get to St. Benedict’s Street and no Indian Places. So we all (five girls) look at Fred with looks of deepest loathing when we realize that we are on the *complete* opposite end of town of where we should be. So we start booking it back the other way, down the, right, you guessed it, southeastern part of Norwich! Finally, we get off the bus near all the nightclubs and food joints and we stop in at the first Indian place we find. It’s completely deserted and they put us at this really nice table in the back. We order our curry and I feel completely lost because I’ve never had Indian food. So by this time its like already 9pm when we get our food and finish and the bill ends up being absolutely ginormous. So we all pitch in our money and split, and start looking for the bowling alley.

Why we trusted Fred to lead us safely to the bowling alley after all that is still a mystery to me. Haha, so there’s two bowling alleys, according to Fred. One, Hollywood Bowl, was shut down, which we knew, but there was another one, called The Number Ten, that was, as Fred put it, “only a centimeter away from Hollywood Bowl on the map”. We go down to where Hollywood Bowl was, and we can’t seem to find the other alley! So we ask a security guard who looks at us rather funny and it turns out that we are again on the complete and total *wrong* side of Norwich! So, we ask how long it would take us to walk there and he says about half an hour. At 9:30 after we’d already walked the whole of Norwich we decided we’d better get a cab instead. So we climb into a cab, all six of us, and he starts driving. And he keeps driving. And then he keeps driving. And finally we end up at this bowling alley that’s somewhere outside of main city centre of Norwich. We have no idea where we actually are, but we figure, we came to bowl, so lets bowl!

After two slightly entertaining games of bowling we finally decided to call it a night at about midnight, but the only problem was we again had no idea where we were or how we were supposed to get back to the university. So long story short, we had to call a cab again to take us back to our flat. All in all we ended up spending a whole lot more time and money than we EVER should have, but it was a fun night. I think we learned our lesson: don’t trust Fred when it comes to reading maps. In his defense, however, the map he found for the bowling alley was wrong, and he even proved it to us… so that, at least, wasn’t his fault. :)

SO, that was Saturday night. We get back from bowling and we all end up staying up even later just talking in the kitchen. Finally we make it to bed, and Lucy and I get up the next morning at like 8:30am to try to go to church. Somehow we ended up going to another slightly weird church, and again, didn’t really know where we were so we got to take a 45 minute walk home! We passed a Calvary Chapel on the walk back to the flat, though, so I think we’re going to try that next week.

So Sunday night I had my first experience at the launderette (not Laundromat, the “launderette”). I had run out of clean undergarments (haha, that’s a funny word) so I had reached the end; I could avoid it no longer, I had to do laundry. So I hunker down the steps of the flat and walk across the parking lot w/ Heather so that she could show me how to work it. It was quite exciting and I was proud of myself for accomplishing such a feat. I now have clean whites. BUT, all my darks were dirty still, so I’ve been wearing white for the past three days! I did my colored clothes today, but that’s a different story.

Tuesday I was supposed to sleep in but I had to get up and learn my lines for the scene I had to do in my acting class, and I was woken up quite rudely by the fire alarm which they have to test ever week or something. Fortunately I didn’t have to get out of bed, they were just making sure it worked. I also cooked goooooood food on Tuesday night. It was pretty much amazing and it tasted better than almost anything I had cooked since school started. Chicken, onions, red & green peppers, and carrots sautéed and poured over rice w/ a little gravy concoction I made. Mm…. I had leftovers today.

So that brings us to today: WEDNESDAY. Ah, what a day it has been. So we were supposed to perform our scene in class at 9am this morning, so to warm up and get one last run-through in I was supposed to be there at 8am. Well I wasn’t tired the night before so I didn’t go to bed til late. Anyway, I completely forgot to wake up and I got a call at 8:20am from my cast mate wondering where I was. I had to roll out of bed, without my shower (!) and rush, half an hour late, to class. Anyway, we got through the scene fine, and it went well and all that stuff. So I can be thankful for that. And I got coffee. So that was good.

So I get home from class and take my much needed shower, and walk to the launderette to go do the rest of my clothes and after one failed attempt (the que was way too big, and I didn’t want to wait in it) I finally went back at about 5:30 and did my freaking laundry. I got it all washed and then I went to dry it and they charge you 50p for every 15 minutes in the dryer. (I want to know who my money is going to because they are making a fortune off those over priced dryers). Anyway, after 30 minutes I assume my clothes are dry, right? OH NO, they’re damp. So I decided I didn’t care and I’d dry the darn things myself, so currently, I have ALL my shirts and jeans spread about my room attempting to finish drying. This is what it looks like:

Anyway. That’s the main gist of the last few days. Sorry this one was so long. Hopefully it was slightly entertaining. Well this is Joanna, signing off… its time to go to sleep….