Friends - part 1

Hello,

It has been over a month since my last post here and during this semester I have been an awful blogger. I haven’t written down anything of what has been happening apart from a few things relating to theatre, because I have a separate blog for that. But the rest of my life in London has remained unrecorded during these months and I don’t want to lose it all because I have been lazy. So here I am, trying to pick up my series of summative posts again. I’m going to update my previous post about university soon, to add what has happened in the second half of term, but today I want to talk about my friends in England. There are people that were already there last term, others that are new, others with whom my relationship changed over time. I'm going to split the topic in two posts to keep them a bit shorter, since I'm putting a lot of pictures in.

Old...

Isabela – Obviously, she is always here in the list, because she remains my best friend in England and the person with whom I spent most of my time, since we are flat mates. This term we have had a few moments of disagreement and there’s been some tensions (as Melanie called them), but we always solved all the problems rather quickly. Together we took a singing course and had so much fun there for 8 weeks, then we obviously spend laid-back time at home, or visit Maria Stella at her flat or hang out all the three of us. there has been a lot less one-to-one time for us this semester, but it’s mainly my fault admittedly, because I was very busy with theatre, which didn’t happen last term. 

Burgers night before a singing lesson

 

Maria Stella – my other best friend in England, despite tensions that we’ve had and took some time to resolve. Most of it was due to the fact that I started having another group of friends outside uni and going out with them, and seeing Wicked very often. She felt like I was pushing her and Isabela away (Isabela felt that too, but we solved it sooner because it’s easier to talk with her), which I wasn’t doing but I understood why she might feel that way. Together we had our Monday nights watching Once Upon a Time, or we just spent hours in mine or her room just talking, mainly about love interests since she has been very interested in someone for months and he is constantly on her mind.

My birthday

"First step" girls :) Me, Maria Stella and Isabela

 

Fancy dress party

Tiger Tiger

My birthday

Photobooth at my birthday

Tommaso – we had already become friends and “brothers” last semester, but this term was completely different. We started having a lot more meals together,  spending a lot more time with each other and talking at another level. I am very happy and proud to say that before I left for Italy for the Easter holiday he had started feeling comfortable enough to openly talk about his relationship – which he had been avoiding for months despite all of us knowing. We also have a lot of laughs every time, just talking about uni and our friends, or discussing Italy.

In Isabela's room (I think this photo is from last term, though)

Melanie is a bit of a hot topic, because I haven’t figured out what sort of relationship we have. I can’t really call her my friend for real, because we don’t spend enough time together and we don’t have a bond of trust or anything like that. We have done a few things with each other, though: she came with me to Wicked one night, we celebrated her birthday and had a little flat party where she was very talkative. But things don’t always turn out the way we want them and, for every step forward that we took, there was always one backwards. She made me angry quite a few times, with her disappearing without saying anything or with cancelling on most of what we planned (e.g. our last flat dinner, which is the time that I got the maddest). 

Flat party

At Melanie's 20th birthday party (with also Jameelah and a friend of hers)

Josh – I saw him a lot more this term than I did in the past, but we haven’t become friends to be honest. Yes, we’ve had a few conversations, but he barely considers me and same goes for me in his direction.

Josh, Maria Stella and Isabela

Andrea – she remained the Biology friend with whom I spent most of my time, being together in all the classes and at tutorial. Aside from lessons, we often saw each other to do some work, which always turned into random chatting sessions with us laughing most of the time. But we were also very productive :) In addition to that, I went with her, Laurana and Isabela to watch Alice New Musical in late March and we also had a lovely walk along the Thames and lunch there because it was such a beautiful day!

After Alice New Musical with Laurana, Andrea & Isabela

Laurana – If last term she was the one I used to spend the least time with, this semester we made up for it :) She lives on campus, so it’s kind of easy to meet up outside of lessons and we organised for her to come over to my flat once or twice, especially since we decided that she will be moving out with me, Isabela and Maria Stella next year! I am really happy about that :) At the end of term the two of us went together on the Ecology fieldtrip (whereas Andrea and Coral went to the later one). Even though we were not in the same group for the daily work, we shared a room and were together on the coach, so we spent lots of time doing things we hadn’t done before and I loved it!

Elena – we’ve lost her, completely and utterly lost her. As in, she hasn’t come to see us even once since the Christmas holidays! I have seen her around a few times and a quick, casual conversations with her, but it was plain small talk so I can definitely say Elena is a lost friend now. It’s a shame, I really liked her, but what can I do about it?!

Coral – here we start getting into a complicated ground again... until half-term she was always with our group and then she slowly started drifting away, towards her tutorial group (minus Laurana, because she stayed with us). Lately I have seen her very rarely and heard from her even less... To be fair, everyone is free to do as they wish, and I wouldn’t have blamed her for finding new friends to spend time with if (yes, there’s an if) she hadn’t been the one criticising Elena the most for how she has left us. And now she is the one who ditched us without a second thought!

Back when Coral used to still stay with me, Laurana and Andrea

Emily (Isabela’s best friend) – I’m putting her in the “old friends” because I met her at the beginning of the uni year and we got on well from the very beginning. But this term I saw her more often, because she visited us at uni a couple of times, we went out with her to a Brazilian club twice and caught up with her before a singing lesson once. So there were a lot more interactions and I really like her! She is lots of fun to be with, very open and energetic :) Just last week she stayed over for a couple of days and we had a fun night playing with henna and giving one another henna tattoos!

Brazilian Club with Emily, Isabela and Maria Stella

Brazilian club

My henna tattoo: "COMET"