(no subject)
the moment i stepped off the plane i fell in love. it was everything i could have imagined. i knew that i belonged there. i've never felt so at home in a place that was so different.
i made my trek through the terminal into the arrival area. my heart was pounding and my hands were sweating. trying to thinking clearly was impossible. i finally found my way to the final escalator. i searched the crowd for tim, but my eyes wouldn't focus. i heard a voice say "looking for me?" and looked up to see him standing there with a half smile on his face. i felt the blood rush to my head as he gave me a quick wink and i leaned forwards, giving out a nervous laugh.
it felt almost as though i'd known him forever as we walked out with ryan to the car garage. i was still a bit shy, but every bit of worry, fear, nervousness i had felt before disappeared quickly.
we made the journey from london to baston and i couldn't help but notice how everything was absolutely perfect. i remember tim being amused by a truck carrying trucks and having a talk about cheese.
about two hours later we arrived in baston. ryan dropped us off at tim's house and hilary gave me an official tour of the house. after i got settled in, tim and i went for a walk so he could give me a tour of the village. as soon as we left the house it started raining. we walked through the slight down-pour to the park where i briefly met everyone. it started to rain harder so we sped up our pace and ended up under some trees by the church cemetery. we laughed a bit and just watched the rain and hail fall. once it let up some we decided to race to a tree nearby, but no matter how hard we tried to hide from the rain, we still ended up drenched. we gave up trying to stay dry and skipped the rest of the way home.
we decided to take a break for a bit and play grand turismo on playstation. (where i totally kicked ass, i might add. :D) after killing some time we took a trip down to the pub. there i met what seemed like everyone in the baston area. the rest of the night was spent talking to iain and watching everyone, but myself, get drunk. (i learned earlier this year at a graduation party that watching people get drunk just might be as fun as being drunk yourself.)
a few days later we went round dan's house, where we watched american pie 3 and once upon a time in mexico. i've seen the ap3 a few times and it was still wonderful, but once upon a time in mexico was a fucking horrible movie and i know now why everyone groans when dan picks out the movies. :)
fast forwarding, yet again, to the bbq night. ads picked us up and we all squeezed in his car. we all headed down to tescos and picked up some food and drinks. ads insisted on getting like 50 different things of sausages, which no one ate. after leaving tescos we got to dan (different dan) and chris' bbq. the food was interesting to say the least and it was quite fun watching chris get ads to eat the burgers he dropped in the coals and on the ground. after a while we started playing drinking games and ads was somehow already drunk and kept scaring himself by running into the tree behind him. everyone seemed to have a story about america and enjoyed making cracks on me. the best part was when they started making fun of the way we talk and whenever it would be my turn for the game they would all start to chant "and i was like dude!!! whoa!!!!!!! like totally!!!!!!!". i almost pissed myself, because obviously no one here talks like that. :D all the while we've got this charcoaled, beer soaked burger frying in the coals. about 2 hours passed and we squished into this little shed and started more drinking games. we finished up the night playing mario kart, with the loser having the consequence of eating the burger. i think it was tiley, matt, and i that ate the burger. (i didn't lose, i just wanted to see if it was really that nasty. it was.) then we all hopped in a taxi back to baston and hung out at the pub for a while before heading home.
i might be getting my days mixed up, but i think next was our trip to london. we started out the morning driving to the train station. we had so many stops before reaching kings cross (the station where harry potter was filmed). we wandered about the streets and grabbed some starbucks. it was wonderful having a frappuccino for the first time in 40 something days. we did a bit of shopping before we started searching for aiu. it took us ages to find the damn thing. when we finally got there i met up with sophie and we chatted a bit. she gave me an interview and once it finished she told me that i did very well and thought i would be accepted. this, plus the fact that she said i reminded her of audrey hepburn, made me very excited. once finished there, we made our way back to the kings cross and i got to ride the tube. on the train back to peterborough tim and i took silly pictures and punched each other at every yellow object we saw. this ended the day wonderfully.
i can't remember if bone and charlotte's birthday party or the movie night at ads' house was next, so i'll combine the two. on the movie night dan picked out another lovely movie, darkness falls. it was almost as funny as mr. deeds, which we watched before. we ordered the most wonderful pizza in the world and charlotte and i drank vodka with orange juice. it was a great evening. bone and charlotte's birthday was also great. we watched a football game and tricked bone into thinking that he'd missed 3 goals by mu. the whole night i tried to get a decent picture of matt and ads, but ended up with them moving around or matt with a goofy grin on his face. the smile was priceless. bone was playing with the wine bottle he got and ended up dropping the whole thing on the floor. we all sat and stared at it for about 10 minutes before bone went to get a broom to clean it up. end another memorable two days.
ah, the best night of them all. we all decided that since i "can't" drink in america and that i've never been drunk that it was a night for getting "completely fucked". it started out with us playing some game. (i can't remember the name of it to save my life.) the only part i really remember about it was bone trying to describe a word to tiley and chicken ended up being a sexually transmitted disease. we ordered pizza from the "large nan" pizza place again and tim and i each got our own 10". he ate all but the four slices i ate. dan got out his bottle of after shock that was somewhere around 1 and 2 years old. that was the most disgusting thing i've ever had next to everclear. sometime after that everything started to blur together. i remember everyone talking about milton bradly games and me thinking we were still playing "think and drink" and me shouting out "marlon brando!". i think everyone either laughed or stared at me. i went off in my own little world again and the next thing i remember is gary, iain, nick, and louise coming in the room. i remember weird conversations from that, as well. tim and i ended up leaving shortly after that and i remember him helping me walk and making sure i stayed awake. i know i would have thrown up on myself if it weren't for him. i think i said thank you about 100 times. he helped me up the stairs about 30 or so minutes later because i was finally starting to sober up. that was the end of that night.
the rest of the time was spent shopping in peterborough, playing football (dodgeball for charlotte and me), running around in the garden and park, eating, and so many other things that i'll never forget.
it was so hard to leave there and i can't wait to go back. i think my chances of being accepted to aiu are great so london will be my permanent home starting in october. and in only a few more months tim will be here and then i'll go back there, or vise versa. :D