Trying to catch up - part 10: from a surprise party to an Evolution test and a night out, and all in between

Ciao :)

This post is an immediate continuation of the previous one, but I am going back to the “Outstanding events” format.

Outstanding events - #8 (9^th to 14^th November):

Sunday 9^th: when I got back from the weekend with my family, I started preparing things for Maria Stella’s surprise birthday party with Isabela. Maria Stella was in Italy to celebrate her 18^th birthday and she was coming back in the evening, so we had some hours left. The original plan was to have the party in Maria Stella’s flat, but one of her flat mates called us around 7pm to tell us we couldn’t have the party there because they had to study. Imagine my reaction: I was so pissed off! Though, we didn’t have time to complain too much as we had to reorganise our plans, tell the third organiser (a friend of Maria Stella’s, Anna Maria) to come at our place and tidy up our kitchen. I don’t know how, but we managed to have everything ready just in time, included a birthday card signed by all the guests, a beautiful cake, birthday decorations all around the kitchen and the table set up with snacks!
Eventually, Maria Stella arrived and Isabela and I literally had to drag her to the kitchen with an excuse, because she was tired and wanted to go home... but it worked *_* It was a really nice evening, with music, lots of chatting and taking photos. We also had a session of karaoke with me, Isabela, Maria Stella and Anna Maria singing: “This is me” (Camp Rock), “My heart will go on” (Celine Dion), “Waka Waka” (Shakira) and “All of me” (John Legend) and it was so funny hahaha I am glad it’s all recorded on my phone!

 

 

Around 12.30am, all the guests left and Isabela and I finished tidying up the kitchen (Anna Maria and the others had helped), then we stayed in the kitchen chatting until something like 1.30am... I don’t know why, but late night conversation often end up being deep ones! Anyway, when I got back to my room I didn’t exactly go to bed, because of something else that happened that kept me up until about 3am (and by up I mean downstairs from France House), but again I am not going into details because it’s not my right to do so!

Monday 10^th: I was a zombie throughout the whole morning, because I hadn’t slept much (I had lesson at 9am) and because I was upset and overwhelmed by what had happened during the night. In the break between the lectures I came home and tried to rest for a little bit, unsuccessfully, and then went to the library to finish my Lab preparation for the afternoon... I didn’t manage, so I actually went to Lab without pretty much any idea of what was going to happen!

However, Lab was fine: we did an experiment involving saliva and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). Specifically, we had to prepare the solutions and the make the calculations in order for the samples of our saliva to be used for an agarose-gel test, which was done by the demonstrator because it’s a delicate process. This test is useful to see the length of the molecules of DNA analysed and we got the results the next week (I think I made some mistake, because nothing showed in my result column).

In the evening, I watched “Once Upon a Time” (episode 4x07) with Maria Stella and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G *_* Later on, Isabela and I corrected another Law essay from Maria Stella, then we watched an episode of “Madoka” and had a sleepover in my room, since Isabela’s heating isn’t working and it was very cold!

Tuesday 11^th: Most of the day was spend editing the interview to Dr Wurm and then blogging a bit, until the evening when I wrote my part of an essay for Tutorial (the one about the debate on Insurance Companies). Once i had done that, I watched five more “Madoka” episodes with Isabela and then went to bed.

Wednesday 12^th: most of the day I studied for the Evolution test I would have on the next day and then I had a long chat with Tommaso over dinner :) I finished preparing for the test around 9.30 and then Maria Stella, Isabela and I got dressed for... *drum rolls* the Disney party held by Queen Mary *_* I put on my Tinkerbell costume, while Maria Stella was a human Ariel and Isabela a modern-day Cinderella. We went to the Drapers, but we only stayed about 1 hour and a half, because I had to come back home and sleep to be awake for the test (in the afternoon, but still...!). the party was quite lame honestly and the only very good part was when they played “Let it go” and everyone started singing it together!

 

Selfie with a friendly security guard

Thursday 13^th: I met up with my tutorial group to finish the essay, but we didn’t get too far because half of us were too worried about the Evolution test to think about that (me included!). Therefore, we postponed the essay to after the workshop (3-6pm) and Andrea and I went to the Common Room in France House to revise. Elena joined us for lunch and it was the funniest (and one of the most embarrassing) experiences ever! They took me to Subway, where I had never been, and I didn’t know what to do or what to get so it took me ages to decide... thankfully there wasn’t anyone else, but the employees were laughing at me! When I eventually made up my mind, I couldn’t understand a word of what the two employees were telling me, as they had very strong accents, so I had to rely on Andrea :P She was really trying hard not to burst out laughing in the shop, but as soon as we got out, neither of us could hold it back anymore and we couldn’t stop laughing LOL

At 3pm, the time of the Evolution workshop arrived and for the first two hours we only completed some exercises, that were mostly funny: we worked with beans to look at genetic drift and then we used a software called PopJ to see how it really works in big populations (we only had 40 beans per couple before). However, the fun part eventually finished and it was time for the rather-dreaded test... it was a true/false test, but it was negatively marked so I was incredibly nervous. Afterwards I realised it hadn’t been too bad and I had only left one question blank out of 40 (I think), so I was quite happy!

By then I was dead and I only wanted to go home, but NO: we still had to deal with the essay... So Andrea, Moh and I met up (Hisham, the fourth member of our essay group, was at home because he had already had the Evolution workshop days before) and finished the group project. It took us until 8pm and we were so tired by then that when I got home I felt like a ghost ;) 

The evening was a bit of an up-and-down one. We had Costanza for dinner (remember the Italian girl I met as soon as I got to London, even before starting uni?) as a guest of Tommaso’s and afterwards Isabela and I watched the last two episodes of “Madoka”. Until almost the end everything was fine... but there was a scene in the last episode of “Madoka” where Madoka hugged her mum and I started missing my family, as I already mentioned in the last post :( So that night I struggled a lot to fall asleep...

Friday 14^th: I missed the morning lecture because my phone messed up with the time and I woke up an hour too late... I meant to go in during the break in the middle of the two hours, but Andrea and Elena told me not to bother, because it was a “useless” lesson. To explain this let me just say we had that lecturer from a couple of weeks earlier who is really nice but only reads out form the slides... so it was pointless for me to rush to lecture! Instead, I took my time to complete some work I had to do on one of the many Queen Mary Online resources, eGAP (electronic Graduate Atrribute Program), which I had pretty much ignored until then.

After the lecture finished, I met with the tutorial group and we went to hand in our essays (two in total, as there was the one our small group had written and one form the other group) and then I had lunch at the pub with Andrea, before doing our usually Friday assignments. I like this routine we have on Fridays because it frees up a lot of time that I would have to spend on assignments over the weekend otherwise!

Later in the afternoon I tried to get some rest, being dead from the half-sleepless night, I did the washing and went grocery shopping to Budgens and tried to rest again!

The evening was messy at first and then a lot of fun! Isabela, Maria Stella and I had organised some time before that we would go out that specific Friday night to celebrate Maria Stella’s birthday with a proper night out in London. However, I wasn’t feeling well at all and Isabela was tired, so neither of us was in the right mood... it took us ages, but we eventually convinced Maria Stella it wasn’t worth going out with us like that. Though, after a couple of hours at Maria Stella’s place (around 11.30pm) I suddenly started to feel better and we decided we could go out to celebrate. We had planned to go to a club in Picadilly Circus that we didn’t know... but on the tube we met Josh (my ghost-like flat mate), who invited us to join him and his friends at the LSE (London School of Economics) club. We decided to trust him and we went there. You have no idea how funny it was, travelling with him and his friends. He was completely drunk, so he was talking randomly and I couldn’t stop laughing! But he was also very nice and he protected us from other drunk people in the queue at the club. Because he knows everyone, he also made us skip the queue after a few minutes, because he convinced the security guard to let us in quickly :D So, even though I originally didn’t want to go out, I ended up having lots of fun! The disco was nice and I surprised myself in actually enjoying a real disco for the first time! We stayed at the cub until 2.30am, the we left because both Isabela and I had to wake up at a decent time in the morning for different reasons (mine will come up in the next post) :D

Saucy is the name of the LSE club

In the middle of the dance floor... with random people!

Trying to catch up - part 9: Interview and Family in London

Hello,

Today I am doing another post that won’t follow the “Outstanding events” format, as my family was in London for a weekend and on the Friday I also interviewed my Evolution lecturer (Dr Yannick Wurm, also called Dr Handsome on the blog)! So this weekend definitely deserves its own normal post :)

Friday 7^th November started with me accompanying Isabela to the big Sainsbury’s in Whitechapel. I didn’t need to do my grocery shopping, because my parents had said they would pay for it in the evening, so I only bought what we needed for Maria Stella’s surprise party on the Sunday night.

When we got back to the flat, we finished organising the interview, writing down the final questions and splitting them between the two of us. Just before 4 o’clock we showed up at his office and... he had sort of forgotten we were meant to do the interview! Though, he was very nice and he didn’t mind and he let us in. I literally froze there... I couldn’t say a word, pretty much, and I let Isabela do all the introduction, because I was trying to convince myself that I could go through the interview (I was embarrassed, because he was my lecturer and we had been talking about how handsome he is). Anyway, apart from the first 5 minutes during which I was very held back, I managed to relax and the interview was really nice *_* His research turned out to be rather interesting and he explained things quite clearly, which made it even better! He also took us to visit his lab and see his ants (he works on social evolution of ants) and take pictures of them :)

Afterwards, I caught a DLR train to go to my parents’ hotel, where they had just arrived, but there was an accident on the line, so I was stuck there forever and it took me almost an hour to get back home... eventually, they joined me at university, on foot *-* After lots of hugs, chats and laughs, we went all together to the small Sanisbury’s and Budgens here in Mile End to do my grocery shopping. It was weird that for once I was the one knowing where all the items would be!! 

Eventually, my parents left, whereas my sister stayed over at the flat and we had dinner with Isabela, preparing the playlist for Maria Stella’s party, since Benny (sister) is a lot more prepared on party songs than either of us two!

After dinner, I watched “The Vampire Diaries” with my sister, as she is a big fan and a new episode had just been released. I don’t really like the series, no I am up to date with it at all (I think I stopped around episode 18 of season 1!), but we were doing something together so it was nice :)

On Saturday morning we missed the alarm, as I had forgotten to set it, so we had to rush to get ready. I had to quickly wash my hair, help her with some Physics homework and prepare to go out. My parents then reached campus and we all left to go to Canary Wharf. I had never been there, if not in passing, but I see it every day from the kitchen of the flat, so I truly wanted to go there to visit as I knew it had to be really pretty: it was *-* There was a very strong and annoying wind, but I loved the place!!

My sister, my mum and I trying to shield from the wind

 

Later in the day we went to Greenwich, where we had lunch in a little pub and looked at the Cutty Shark (and old vessel) from outside before returning to Mile End. While my sister and dad went back to the hotel, mum and I came to my room to pick some clothes for the next day, then we joined the others at the hotel and I took a nap... I hadn’t realised I was so tired!

For dinner, we went to Covent Garden with some family friends from Italy, who just happened to be in London as well. We were there to celebrate my dad’s birthday and, after struggling to find a restaurant with room for 8 people at about 9pm, we had a lovely dinner all together! 

Sunday morning I was woken up by dad around 9.30 and the four o us went to Tower Bridge, which is my favourite place in all London so far. I had seen it many times before, but never like this! First of all, there was the “poppies celebration”, so there was a huge crown over the bridge and surrounding the Tower of London, which was covered in red poppies *_* So beautiful! Secondly, we went at the top of the bridge and visited the exhibition on its construction! We spent a couple of hours at the bridge and it was amazing!

 

 

 

 

Around 1pm we went for lunch at Bar Remo, an amazing Italian restaurant just outside of Oxford Circus that my mum and I had found back in September. I had their amazing lasagne, a dish I hadn’t had since the last time I had been there, and I loved them! Since my parents and my sister had to leave around 3pm, we didn’t have much time left to do anything, so we just quickly visited the Disney store. Why? Well, because I had mentioned over lunch the fact that on the following Wednesday Queen Mary was going to host a Disney party and I didn’t have a costume. I had decided to go just in casual clothes, but they were like: “Nooo, you love Disney, so you should do something!” *_* Awwww! So in the end I bought a pair of Tinkerbell wings, her bag and jewels (not that she wears many), to go with the green short dress I already have (not exactly Tinkerbell’s, but close enough I would say!).

After that, our weekend together was over and we said goodbye after catching the tube back to the hotel :(

It was sooooooo great to see them again! We were laughing, chatting and being together in a totally natural way, as if I hadn’t been away for a month. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was kind of better than when I went back to Italy. The thing is that at home I felt like a guest, because nothing was the same as it should have been, whereas everything was at its place here and I could simply enjoy their presence without noticing the differences :) However, having them here meant that London wasn’t anymore the “bubble” where it was just me and it made me start to feel nostalgic again. I don’t exactly miss home, but I miss my family (and friends, but it’s unrelated to this). I noticed a few days later, when I was watching the last episode of “Madoka” and the main character was hugging her mum... and I suddenly felt that I really missed my own... and then I couldn’t sleep very well at night because of that and I didn’t really know how to deal with missing them!

Am I fangirling?

... I probably am fangirling, yes, I do realise that. But I have good reasons to! They are just so amazing and awesome and... and... they are incredible!

Anyone reading this post will probably think I am crazy, so let me tell you I am not. I'll go back and explain properly what happened :)

After being out all yesterday afternoon and evening (I'll explain in a later post, when I get up to date) with Maria Stella, Isabela and I went to Victoria Station sometime around 10pm. It'd kind of a weird place where to hang out, but we had our reasons... even though we hadn't been back to see the show that night, we wanted to go to the stage door of the theatre (next to the station) to meet the actors from "Wicked" again! Well, for some of them it was again, for others it was a meet for the first time.

I had brought my show programme with me and I got a lot more signatures than last time, because next to us there were these two guys who had already seen the show 19 times and were able to recognise every cast member, ensemble included :P So I received a signature from some of the ensemble people, from Phillip Childs (Dr Dillamond) and Sophie Linder-Lee (Glinda's standby). With Sophie I had such an embarrassing experience... the two guys started shouting "Sophie!" and I was like "Sophie? As in that Sophie??" because I wasn't sure whether we were thinking of the same Sophie. Eventually, it was the same Sophie and she was just next to me while I was saying that hahaha But she didn't make any comment and she was really nice :) I don't have any definite opinion on Sophie as an actress/singer, because there's very few videos of her around: sometimes I like her, sometimes I don't! I guess I can't really judge from youtube, as I have already learnt :P

Anyway, apart from them, I also got to meet the two actresses I went there to see: Jennifer DiNoia (Elphaba - again!) and Savannah Stevenson (Glinda - for the first time!).
Since when I have seen “Wicked”, about three weeks ago, I have been following them and listening to everything they are in on youtube with Isabela and we have started to know them a bit better. I have started loving Jennifer even more and the same applies to Savannah, even though I don’t like some parts of her singing! I mean, she is the best actress out there in the role and I really like some songs from her :)

But as I was saying, I met both:

Savannah Stevenson – she came out first, all of a sudden. I literally saw half of her face and her cap still inside the door and I was like “OMG, Savannah!”. When she came out she was all smiley and nice and adorable and so much different from what I expected! We took a photo with her and she signed my programme. It was pretty obvious how nervous I was, when she asked “How are you doing?” and my voice was sooooo little when I answered and asked her back “How are you?”. I was so struck by how nice she is as well!

Savannah in Glinda-version

Jennifer DiNoia – I got a second signature from her, on a different page this time, and then... Isabela and I gave her our fan letter, the very reason why we were there that night ;) It’s just a short thing, but it was so hard to give it to her... I almost froze because I was embarrassed and I was the one meant to do the talking! But Jennifer is really nice and she was like “Awwww thank you!”. She nearly opened it there in front of us, imagine our faces :P So I literally stopped her with a “Can we also take a picture with you?” and we did! 

 

 

By then we left and we were kind of in heaven! I am so glad we went back to see them :)