Trying to catch up - part 8 - my first Reading Week

Buona sera :)

After the emotional post form earlier, let’s get back to work with the “outstanding events” series!

Outstanding events - #7 (1^st to 6^th November):

 

Saturday 1^st: after waking up at 9am in the quite uncomfortable positions we had fallen asleep in after Halloween’s party, Isabela went back to her room and I fell asleep again, this time in a normal way! I wasn’t up again before midday, when I went to the kitchen to start tidying up... let’s say I was kind of mad for what I saw, but I am not elaborating on this now! So I started and Isabela joined me once she woke up. We literally spent most of the day cleaning up, interrupting to do some “people watching” LOL I mean, we have a huge window in our kitchen and we are just in front of a park, so it’s fun to watch other people and make up stories about them some times :D

Later on I was getting ready to go and try the bike-sharing in the very same park, but I found the announcement of the third guest for the Once Upon a Time Convention I am going to in June: Colin O’Donoghue *-* Gosh, I am soooo happy! I was so excited when I read that. I love Colin and seeing him in the same convention with my favourite actress ever, Lana Parrilla, will make the weekend of the convention so amazing :D Poor Meghan Ory, I am completely ignoring her... she is the first guest announced, but I am not really too interested in her, despite her being lovely! 

 Anyway, because of this announcement, I ended up leaving home a bit late and I went to the park when it was already dark... so I was quite scared of cycling there alone for too long, especially because I couldn’t see anything and I was scared of falling in the canal or the pond! I only stayed 25 minutes, in the end, which was good because if you stay under 30 minutes of cycling you don’t pay the ride but only the 24 hours licence that you have to pay anyway.

In the evening, Isabela and I eventually finished watching the episodes of “Sailor Moon Crystal” that had been released until that day (until episode 9, I think).

Sunday 2^nd: in the morning we went to Straford shopping centre (Westfield) and we bought Maria Stella’s birthday present, a gift card for the Build-a-Bear workshop :P She loves that shop (and so do I, by the way)!

After an afternoon spent cleaning my room, the evening was not exactly a happy one. Just a couple of days earlier we had finally set the date to watch Wicked to the Tuesday evening and I was so excited to go with a “big group” and see the musical I had heard so much about and sang for about two months with Isabela. The group was meant to be composed of me, Isabela, Maria Stella, Andrea, Coral and Emily (Isabela’s friend). We had decided that some of us would go on the Tuesday morning to the box office of the theatre to get the front row tickets, discounted and allowing us to buy two tickets each person... but that night Isabela told me Emily didn’t want to go to the front row and that they would therefore have o sit at the back (totally better seats, for the same price, but allowing only one ticket per person so everyone would have to show up at the box office). I called Coral and she told me she really couldn’t come to the box office, so I was very upset for the rest of the evening because Wicked is “mine and Isabela’s musical”, since we sing it together all the time. 

Monday 3^rd: it was the beginning of Reading week and I took the name of the week seriously :P I spent half of the morning finishing “Earthbound” by Aprilynne Pike – loved it, by the way!

In the afternoon, the seats problem was kind of solved, because Emily decided not to come so we all ended up going to the front.

Tuesday 4^th:  It was the day I saw "Wicked" and there's a whole post about that :)

Wednesday 5^th: in the morning I received an email from my first Evolution lecturer, saying he accepted to be interview by me and Isabela *_* i was so excited that I literally started screaming!

In the evening there were fireworks around London for Bonfire Night, the celebration of Guy Fawkes’s death, and Isabela and I were watching “Puella Magi Madoka Magica” (another anime). Every time we saw a firework we would shoot out of our chairs and to the window to watch... but we didn’t get to see any proper grand show from our flat, neither from the kitchen side (towards East London) nor from her side (facing Central London) :(

Thursday 6^th: at 9am I had my one and only lecture for this week, a Molecular Biology one in Whitechapel, which was really interesting because it dealt with the aftermaths of Mendel’s discoveries and the things he had ignored! The lecture finished early, so there was plenty of time to return to our campus to meet with the Tutorial group. We quickly made our poster presentation on Cell Organelles and then we split into tw groups for the essays on the debate: Andrea, Moh, Hisham and I were in the one about Insurance companies (the topic I debated as well) and Rose, Lina, Kash and Harry were in the one about Stemm Cell Research. 

Around 1pm, Andrea and I decided to go to lunch to Nando’s, since we had done separating the jobs... but Hisham wouldn’t let me go and he kept talking to me! It was too funny to see Moh and Andrea rolling their eyes and sitting back down in the wait! Eventually, I nearly ran out of the room and dragged Andrea with me :P The two of us went to Nando’s for lunch, where I had already been with Elena some time before... but when I had been there with Elena I had had some bread around my peri-peri chicken... this time i had pure peri-peri chicken wings, though as plain as they come! Andrea nearly choke on her (hot) chicken wings when she saw my face once I bit in the first wing hahah I really can’t stand spicy food, my mouth can’t deal with it LOL

At 3pm, I met with my tutor for our first one-to-one meeting and it was nice. It was awkward at first, because he seems to be very shy around all of us tutees, but then he started to warm up because I jumped into the chatting quite easily (well, that was the idea, I wanted to chat properly!). We discussed the various aspects of my life here at QM, of my course, my residence, the feelings my family have about all of this and my financial situation. We also talked about Australia for a while, since we have been there and loved it! 

The rest of the afternoon was spent studying with Andrea, then I joined Isabela at Maria Stella’s place around something-past seven... I was soooo tired! 

When I got there, Isabela and I started researching a bit about Dr Wurm’s work, since we were to interview him the next day, while Maria Stella was doing an assignment. Then I made pasta for everyone and eventually we came back home.

Back to our flat, we meant to finish researching and riting the questions for the interview, but we... well, we kind of got distracted :P Still very worked up because of Wicked (see the post “Wicked the Musical” to understand my excitement), we ended up going through a great number of different actresses/singers playing Elphaba and a few Glindas. It’s not that I don’t like Glinda, but I like Elphaba better and she has more songs! Anyway, we officially drew our personal rankings of actresses/singers. Here is mine :)

Elphaba:

1) Emma Hatton - though I haven’t see her live yet, but I call her Miss Perfection, because she is amazing! She is also the present standby in West End and will become the official Elphaba from the beginning of February, so I want to go back to the theatre and see her for my birthday.

2) Jennifer DiNoia - just very very slightly under Emma, because of that minor detail of her not-so-total perfection in Defying Gravity. Otherwise, she is amazing, awesome, incredible and adorable *-*

3) Idina Menzel – the one and only original Elphaba. Well, the musical was written pretty much for her, so she is perfect for all the songs. The only flaw that I find is that she lacks of emotion when singing, compared to the other two...

4) Kerry Ellis – She used to be at the top, but she disappointed me a bit with some of her lives and then the others came in and won my heart :P

Glinda:

1) Kristin Chenoweth – the original Glinda, the best and most perfect person for this role.

2) Hayley Podshun – the American Glinda, who used to sing with Jennifer before she came to the UK. I love her version of For Good!

3) Savannah Stevenson – technically, there are plenty of better singers for Glinda, but she still ranks third for me. Why? Because she is the best actress I have ever seen in the role, either live (well, I saw her live) or in videos, thanks to the emotions she can express and all the feelings she puts in her songs. Her version of Popular is my favourite, even better that Kristin’s, and her No one mourns the wicked is amazing because she sounds like she is actually grieving her lost friend.

The Australian dilemma

The title gives away the topic of this post, I guess. It’s not the story of what has been going on lately, but a dilemma that I always have to deal with. I thought I was done with it, I thought I had got my head around the fact that Australia is out of reach for the moment. But it looks like I haven’t. There is still a part of me hanging onto that dream of mine, that dream that developed in the past couple of years and that didn’t go anywhere, because I couldn’t achieve it. I thought I had given up and that I was fine with. It seems that I haven’t. 

I love London, I love Queen Mary so much that I can’t believe part of me is still “grieving” Australia. I can’t believe I haven’t got over it. I don’t regret, not even for a single moment, having chosen Queen Mary. I can’t regret it, because the course I am doing is amazing and the people I have met are fantastic as well. Eventually, I even managed to reject the offer of acceptance from UQ three weeks ago: it’s been there, in my email, for a year and I still had two months before I necessarily had to give an answer, but being here had given me the strength to let go of it. So I thought it was over. 

I hadn’t considered another part of the problem though. Do you remember when I was describing the universities I had visited and when I mentioned that QM would allow me to go on an exchange to the University of Melbourne next year? That was my plan, I really wanted to go through with it and spend my second year down under, in a new city, but in the same country I have fallen in love with. Then once I started studying here I gave up that plan for various reasons, including the fact that my parents wish I could stay closer and that I don’t want to have to settle in every single year (I have already moved this year, I would have to do it again and again for the next two). So it was my own decision to say no, to give up on that. I was okay with it, I knew I was doing it for good reasons.

However, last night I broke down. I received an email from an organisation in Queen Mary suggesting a research experience abroad, in Asia, Europe or America, and that got me started. I looked around the internet for possibilities of doing the same, but down in Australia. Eventually, I found my dream option: a 4/6 weeks long research project at University of Queensland, between the end of June and then end of July. I was so happy and excited and I started imagining applying for this!

Then I visited the QMUL website for experiences abroad... and I ended up on the page concerning exchange programs. One things leads to another and in a matter of minutes I was going through all the information about the University of Melbourne, I was adoringly looking at the page that said that QMUL students could study there for six months or a year. My mind started running and I was dreaming again... then I realised what I was doing and I sort of crashed. I unwillingly started crying when the reality of what I had promised hit me well and truly: I promised I wouldn’t go on exchange, I promised I wouldn’t spend my second year abroad. I gave up my dream and, even if I did it for good reasons, the reality of it still weighted on me so much. 

I am so glad that Isabela was there, because she started discussing with me all the possibilities I have and she reminded me that I can still go that summer (well, winter for as far as Australia is concerned) program at UQ. And she is right, she really is. I have a chance to go to UQ, I haven’t truly given up on anything. I am just making a compromise with my parents, I suppose.

After all of this, it might seem that I am unhappy with what I have. I am not. I repeat myself, I don’t regret choosing Queen Mary, I never do. Never, not even when I think of UQ and Australia. I regret to being able to go on a exchange next year, yes, but it would be too complicated if I did that.

Trying to catch up - part 7: Halloween

Hello,

I am back and ready to go on with the updates! It’s time for the post on Halloween day, which deserves a whole post and not just a bullet point in my “Outstanding events” series :)

The day started with a VERY boring Cell Biology lecture between 9 and 11am. I mean it... the lecturer spoke so slowly I could have fallen asleep and he was also repeating a topic we had already covered in Molecular Biology at the beginning of the term. Cell Biology has officially become my least favourite module (also because Molecular biology has become very interesting and I like the lecturers!), between the topics that I don’t enjoy particularly and the lecturer that I usually don’t like... anyway, during this specific lecture I could see that pretty much everyone had zoned out after less than an hour, even before the break! We were chatting between the four of us (for once, since some time, we had managed to sit together – Coral was missing so it was only 4) and Laurana literally walked out during the break, she went home to sleep. Good day to do so! During the break, Andrea, Elena and I took some photos and couldn’t stop laughing and the second half of the lecture went by very fast because that had lifted my mood :P

 

After lecture, Elena took part in the Chilli Challenge at uni and it was so funny to see her faces hahah But she managed to eat all that she was meant to and then we went for lunch to the pub near uni (the Half Moon, the usual one for me). It was me, Andrea, Elena and her friend Arben, who is so funny! The lunch itself was quite hilarious, because Andrea didn’t get her food for a while, since they couldn’t find our table (we were table number 2: how hard could it be finding us?!), Arben and Elena had a discussion on pronunciation of words in their language (Albanese) in the different areas and then I had a little adventure with a spider web... Andrea saw a spider web ending on my chair and tried to take it out before realising it was actually ending on my shoulder o.O She still took it out, but I freaked out and I couldn’t sit back on my chair, so I had to go and share hers on the other side of the table. For the rest of the time we spent at the pub (and the rest for the afternoon as well!) I felt tickles all around my body, as if I had a whole colony of spiders on me, when I had none :P On the way back to uni we also encountered a very stubborn wasp, that kept buzzing around me and Andrea – we are both very very scared of wasps and stinging bugs in general, by the way! So we were kind of running, looking around and jumping at all the buzzing noises until we got to the safety of campus hahaha

Since the next week would be Reading week, we didn’t have any assignments due, so Andrea went home instead of staying to study with me, and I went back to the flat. However, I met Melanie downstairs and I stayed to chat with her, walked her to get something to eat and we had a lovely and relaxed chat! She was very open and I enjoyed the time together, since we hadn’t had much of it :)

Eventually, we walked back to the flat and she said she wouldn’t come with me and Isabela to the Sainsbury’s for our Halloween dinner... the two of us, instead, went and bought snacks and ingredients for the various recipes we were going to make, plus some more Halloween decorations/accessories (pumpkin buckets and little witch brooms, for example)! 

Once we arrived back home, we went to kitchen to organise things and Melanie joined us, so we had an afternoon snack with some of the chips that were meant to be for the dinner and we chatted and laughed for a while. Then Melanie retired to her room and the two of us carved our pumpkins (mine didn’t work out too well, as I tried to carve it in a weird shape). We also had to dress up and put our costumes together, which took time and lots of creativity :P

Later, a bit too late, we started cooking. I was in charge of making fried mozzarella, Isabela of some cheese bread and Melanie of “eyeball” pasta (with tomatoes and mozzarellas shaped to look like eyeballs). It took us a lot longer than we expected and, when our guests started arriving at 7.30pm, we were still in the middle of preparation. The first one to arrive was Sumbal, Isabela’s friend, who kindly offered to help us and dealt with the pasta that was on the cooker. Then Maria Stella and Anna Maria, her friend, arrived and... I immediately asked Anna Maria (as Maria Stella had gloves on for her costume) to help me with the mozzarellas :)  In the meantime, Laurana and her boyfriend arrived and I had to go downstairs to open the door for them... then as soon as I got back up and started working with Anna Maria again, also Andrea arrived and I sent Maria Stella to open, because I couldn’t leave Anna Maria to work on her own again! Well, by then we were missing three people, but they didn’t actually show up, so the group was complete... and we started eating around 9 or so, with the food finally ready :P It was a lovely night I have to say, with lots of chatting, taking photos, laughing, etc! Melanie went away sometime in the middle of it and Laurana and her boyfriend left soon afterwards with Sumbal, then Anna Maria and Maria Stella did the same to go and get the other Greek people (Anna Maria is Greek) to go to the Drapers. Eventually, it was only me, Isabela and Andrea and we started singing random Disney songs, before the time came for Andrea to go home and me and Isabela to join the others for the Drapers party. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We never entered there, by the way. Maria Stella, still 17 for a week and a bit, was obviously stopped at the entrance, so Isabela and I stayed outside with her and we wandered around campus for a while. Then we met a drunk couple that Maria Stella knew and we started talking to them, about Brighton (the girl was from Brighton) and horror movies (that I don’t watch haha). It was so funny! The girl was particularly drunk, but a funny kind of drunk, so it was hilarious to stay there! Once they left, we were walking back towards France House and we met Tommaso with his friends, sow e stopped to talk to them for a little bit; then we saw two policemen and we asked one if we could take a selfie with him... now I am not too sure that they were real police officers! 

 

Eventually, the three of us retired to my room and Maria Stella and I took some more pictures.

Then we all sat/laid on my bed and Maria Stella put some very slow music... well, that resulted in me and Isabela nearly drifting off, waking up just a bit when Maria Stella left at 2.30am, so that I could go and close the door after her. In that moment, we were like: “Yeah, the kitchen is a mess and we should go and tidy up a bit, but we can deal with that in 5 minutes... I can’t get up right now”. So we made ourselves a bit more comfortable and... next thing I knew it was 9am!! We slept the whole night with me kind of sitting on my bed with my legs on the desk and Isabela cuddled up at the end of the bed :P Moreover, she was still in her costume! A least I had got the chance to get changed, just before sitting on the bed!

Trying to catch up - part 6: actresses, observing blood, debating... and more!

Outstanding events - #6 (25^th to 30^th October):

Saturday 25^th: After having come back from the Comic Con, since we hadn’t had enough of Japan (manga, anime, video games...) for the day, we decided to watch “Sailor Moon Crystal”! I have already seen all the episodes out so far, but since Isabela had chosen our first anime to watch, “Attack on titan”, it was my turn and I introduced her to the wonderful world of Sailor Moon :P

Sunday 26^th: I had breakfast at Maria Stella’s place and then I went to Victoria Station, to have a juice and a an amazing croissant at an Italian cafè that dad had showed me in September. It took me ages to find it and I was out over two hours just for that, but it was worth it!

In the afternoon I had a quick chat with Josh, a bit of a longer one with Melanie and then I worked on my uni stuff: I had some Lab preparation to finish and a power point to make for Tutorial :) 

After dinner, Isabela and I started looking up various “Wicked” actresses and changing some of the songs to fit a fanfiction centred on Elpheba and Glinda as a couple LOL Now, let me give you the backstory of all of this, otherwise you’ll think I am crazy! Throughout October, I was introduced to all the songs from the musical and I started loving it as much as it’s clear I love it :) I also started paying attention to the different versions of the songs, depending on the singers, and making my own ranking. At the time, as I already mentioned, Idina was my numer 1, Emma Hatton came right after and then there was Kerry Ellis, from the couple of studio recordings I had heard. That night we also found out that Kerry Ellis was the official London Elpheba at the moment and Emma Hatton her standby! So guess how happy we were *_* Yes, we still didn’t know that Kerry would be there only two days longer and that my/our rankings would changes soon :P But going back to the fanfiction... if you have ever heard the songs from Wicked, and I specifically refer to those concerning Elpheba and Glinda (e.g. “Defying gravity”, “What is this feeling?”, “For good”, “I’m not that girl”, “No one mourns the wicked”), yuo know that they sounds very much like loves songs between the two of them. Especially when some (FEW) words are altered! Well, that’s exactly what we did to plan a fanfiction! We changed some of the lyrics and turned them to fit our ship (yes, I ship Elpheba and Glinda) :P

Monday 27^th: at 9am I met the new Evolution lecturer! I was very impressed with him, because I truly do like how he teaches and how entertaining he is :D

In the break between the two Evolution lectures (remember, I have two hours in the middle), I met up with my tutorial group to put together our power point presentations and we finally managed to meet the mysterious eight member, Rose. We had never seen her before, because she had never showed up, but since one of the guys in the group knew who she was he contacted her and she came as well! Our tutorial group was finally complete hahah She is actually a lovely, though very shy apparently, girl! Now we are exactly four boys (Moh, Kash, Harry, Hisham) and four girls (me, Andrea, Lina and Rose).

In my lunch break (yes, this Monday was a nightmare because I never had a proper break), I met with the group for a debate I had signed up for by mistake and we divided our arguments. We were motioning for “Insurance companies should have access to human genetic data”, something I honestly don’t believe in but... what can I do?! I had to debate in its favour. 

Eventually it was time for lab! The experiment of the day concerned blood and we actually had to handle some samples of bloods, which at first didn’t exactly please us girls in my group, but we got over it quickly hahah The problem was that the blood was from somebody unknown, sow e weren’t very comfortable with it...

Elena, Andrea, Coral, me and Laurana

After lab, the five of us stayed chatting outside the building for a while and we were laughing soooo much hahah We were talking about how we all laugh when we feel awkward or nervous and how people find that annoying :P It’s good that we all share that trait! We also talked about Halloween and I invited them over to our flat “party”/dinner. Andrea and Laurana said they were going to come! 

In the evening, after watching “Once upon a time” with Maria Stella like every Monday, Isabela and I spent FOUR hours correcting her law essay. Now, we don’t understand anything about Law, so the best we can do is proofread the grammar and the style, more than the content :P But it was okay and now I am learning some Law things, because so far I have already corrected three of her essays (two more after that one).

Maria Stella, me and a Halloween ghost!

 

 

Tuesday 28^th: this time it was the turn of Melanie’s Law essay to be corrected, but it was on the same topic so we were fine hahah Plus, Melanie seems to be very good at writing essays!

Wednesday 29^th: in the morning I had Tutorial and our group presented the power point we had made on structure and function of cell organelles. I was assigned (or better, I chose) ribosomes, which are kind of my favourite organelle :) The presentation was good and I got A+ for it, so I am really happy!

In the evening, Isabela and I had a talk with Maria Stella about moving out next year and then, when she went home, the two of us stayed in my room for a couple of hours having deep conversation about our friends, our futures and our families. 

Around 10pm we realised we still had to have dinner and then the evening kind of degenerated and a bit of a mess happened in the flat, involving all of us flat mates apart from Josh (as usual). I am not going to write about it here, though, because it’s not fair to do so. All I am going to say is that I felt very bad about all of this and I ended up not being able to sleep for a long while (probably until 4am or so, also because Josh started knocking on the flat door at 3am having forgotten his keys when he went out).

Thursday 30^th: Having fallen asleep so late, I completely ignored my 8 o’clock alarm and slept until about 10... and when I realised what the time was it was definitely too late to go to my Molecular Biology lecture in Whitechapel! That is, for the first time I missed a lecture o.O

Around midday I met with my debate group again, we looked through all our speeches and then we split up for lunch, only to meet again an hour later for the actual debate in the Great Hall. I was dying... i mean, there were about 200 people in the room, I was going to be speaking on stage... I wasn’t sure I could do it! However, I managed and the debate itself was good, because a girl in my team was very fired up and knew how to debate so she fought back to the other team, allowing the rest of us to breath. We lost the debate, but I had already supposed we would, though it was a nice experience... not that I am looking forward to a repeat!