winter break

Good day, world!

I'm back in Manchester after a month-long break in Kuwait and California, both very good trips.

It started off with me setting off from Gabs to a taxi that would take me to the Piccadilly Train Station downtown. From there, I took a two hour train to London Euston Station, from which I then had to take another cab to London's Paddington Station, from which I took what's called the Heathrow Express train which goes to Heathrow Airport in 15 minutes (19 if you're going to Terminal 5). Every 5 minutes, I would receive a text from my dad making sure I was still alive. (Seriously, the entire world was worried I was going to fall into a hole or something on my own, navigating the countryside of England and the maze of London.) In fact, this trip turned out to go so quickly that even my father fell behind. While he was texting me to see if I'd gotten to Paddington, I responded that I was already on the Heathrow Express. It took me exactly 3 hours to get from Manchester to Heathrow, making it 4.15pm. 

My plane was at 9.45pm.

I walked into Terminal 5, lined up for the Fast Bag Drop -- I'd already checked in and printed my boarding pass online -- only to hear, a couple people ahead, the airline counter person tell the passenger trying to check in his bags that it was too early for him to check in his luggage. Too early? At that moment, I don't believe anyone could have been more 'too early' for a flight than I. 

When it was my turn, I gave the counter person a little innocent smile and asked if it was too early to check in my bags for my 9.45pm flight for which I have arrived at the usual time of 5 hours early. He looked at my boarding pass, counted the hours on his fingers and then proceeded to laugh in my face.

I went to sit on a bench and pulled out my phone. My mother and sister had just arrived from Los Angeles to Heathrow and my mom texted me to say they were eagerly awaiting our reunion! I texted back: You'll have to wait a little bit longer. Why? Because my parents were so overzealous in their efforts to make sure I did not die on my way to London that they made me take a train before two. Actually, they pretty much wanted me on a train at around 10am from Manchester but I shrugged them off and booked one at 1.15pm instead. Turns out, I could have booked one for 3frickingo'clock in the afternoon and STILL BEEN THERE TOO EARLY. Sigh.

So I sat around. Luckily, I was prepared for this kind of thing. I whipped out Brave New World (by Adlous Huxley -- it was pretty good but I liked 1984 better (the two are forever being compared and contrasted which is why I picked up BNW after I devoured 1984)) and read and read and read. In fact, I read so much that I finished the novel and had to rummage through my luggage to get out another book. Yup. That was when I started reading The Bell Jar, which was pretty great. In between all this literacy, I was trying to use up the 150 free UK texts I'd just received from my mobile carrier which, get this, began on the day I was leaving the UK and ended on the day I would return. I have such laughable fate, don't I? So I sat there texting every UK number I had in my phone, bothering my friends on their breaks, explaining my poo-y situation. 

I went and got some juice from Cafe Nero. I watched the same 3 Nokia ads over and over and over on the big digital billboards. They were actually pretty awesome adverts. My grandmother called to check up on me. My other grandmother called to check up on me. My dad called. I saw some people dressed as a princess, a donkey, and the Burger King. I watched a woman extract -- I kid you not -- the entire contents of a picnic from her purse. Really now?

Finally, I checked in my bags, walked through security -- WHERE I DIDN'T HAVE TO TAKE OFF MY SHOES OR TAKE MY LAPTOP OUT OF MY BAG: TAKE NOTE, AMERICAN AIRPORTS, TAKE VERY DETAILED NOTES. Sorry. Airport security gets me very riled up. Then I called my mom to see where she was at in this giant expanse of a terminal. She said she was sitting under the huge bubble lights (turns out, there are three sections of bubbley lights, good thing we were in the same one). I stood at the railing and looked down into the lobby/shopping area and spotted my mom and sister and told my mom to look up. I waved and she waved and then I could hear her start to cry so I laughed. And I went down to meet them and it was oh so precious and lovely and she told me I looked skinny and I told her she got tears all over my face.

After that comes Kuwait for a couple weeks, which was good. I ate SO MUCH. And got addicted to a Turkish soap opera dubbed in Arabic. And I read some more -- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, pretty swell. I studied the smallest bit. I played with my cousins, met some friends, sat with family. Ate, ate, and ate. And my mom showed me this amazing thing called a sweater shaver that shaves off all the little beads of fluff that collect on your sweater from friction and washing and use. It's incredible. I am going to buy one for myself.

Then we flew back to London -- all the fields were snowed and frosted over:

Then we flew allllll the way back to Los Angeles (I used up some more texts when we stopped over in London) and I was finally home. I met my dearest Amanda at the airport because my dad picked her up on the way and we went to In'N'Out together and then dropped her back off at school. Then we went home and I swear I could have cried I was so happy to be back. I wanted to kiss the walls and my bed and my stripes and my desk and my fridge that has food in it. I snuggled my cat and my pillows and traced my books and petted my desktop. I did a little dance in the bathroom that I don't have to share with 11 people and wear flip-flops in the shower. I hugged my TV. It was glorious. The short short couple weeks (10 days) that I had there were also pretty good. I slept a TON, ate some of my favorite meals, visited FSHA for a day and felt like the most loved person on the planet, went to my old creative writing class which was awesome, went shopping, drove around, ate, slept, saw a couple friends, rejoiced in the fact that I was in the same time zone (approximately) as everyone else for the first time in 3.5 months. I loved being home. All too soon, I was packing again and off to the UK. I was sad to leave but now I'm just super super excited to go back to California and it will be fantastic. This summer. Which is simply too far away. 

I enjoyed this at LAX's international terminal. Bring your attention to the third flight down for Airline Mexicana. Notice it's destination. Then notice that it is currently boarding.

How great is that?

Then I hopped on a plane (the fourth one down) to London, spent a couple hours in Terminal 5, then took a 40 minute plane to Manchester so I wouldn't have to drag around my luggage across England again. 

Overall a good but very very short winter break. Next year, I think I'll just spend it at one place instead of on three continents. Although all the flying made for mass amounts of movie-viewing. I watched "Mamma Mia", again, because it is the essence of awesome, "City of Ember" whose original book I'd meant to read years ago, "Breakfast At Tiffany's" -- over two flights because the first time my TV decided it hated me and didn't want to work -- which was cute and funny and I really do love Audrey Hepburn now (I'd never seen a movie of hers before, shocking I know). I also watched "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist", some episodes of Fawlty Towers, and an Indian movie called "Kismet Konnection." I think that was all? I feel I'm missing a couple. Oh! "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" which was really sweet. 

And just to let you know. I mentioned before that I am forever trying to be on a flight seated next to a really cool amiable person (read: very attractive person of the male persuasion) and how I am always thwarted. This time, I thought, will be the time because I am on a flight on my own, there must be students flying back somewhere and I will succeed. Ahem. Not only did I not have my future husband sitting next to me, I had NO ONE sitting directly next to me. On both flight to London and to Manchester. There was someone a seat away but not in between us. Really now? I did however get to witness an interesting middle-aged German couple who seemed to have walked out of circa 1985 (mullet and baggy Mickey Mouse sweater included), who a) refused to sit down, b) stood in the aisle making out and swaying from side to side, c) decided to become best friends with their seat neighbor while everyone else was trying to sleep, and d) were utterly and obliviously mocked throughout the flight by surrounding passengers. It was hilarious. I actually started cracking up when a girl, waiting for them to move so she could walk past, gave me a look and shook her head laughing. 

And now I'm back. Kat and Becca left me a warm welcome note on my door:

If you know about The Game, sorry, but you just lost it. Hah!

Now I've got to immerse myself in the art of study. I shall remerge after exams are done or if I have some free time (hahahahahhahahaha). 

Happy second semesters! Hope you all had good Christmases and New Years and whatnots and that the transition back to school wasn't too strenuous. 

old coyote - the weepies

Ring around rosey game

Always ends the same way

We all fall down

Get up now, baby

Get up now, baby

It's your song,

It's your song playing.

the bell jar

This has been brewing for quite some time. It is a mix of past, present, and potential feelings and thoughts. I'm not quite sure that I can articulate everything that I need to get across but I have tried my very hardest. It is also a godawful long post of my broiling thoughts so feel free to pass.

In my first week of being in Kuwait, I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I'd been meaning to read it for the longest time but I find it interesting that I ended up reading it when I did. It's a great book, a thinly disguised memoir of Plath's mental struggles in her early twenties. I didn't know quite what to make of it as I read it but once I'd finished, I missed Esther Greenwood's narrating voice in my head. 

It is so hard to organize my thoughts about this.

Leading up to the days that I was leaving Manchester (and going to Kuwait and reading The Bell Jar), I became more and more homesick and depressed. And insecure. And doubtful. 

The previous weekend, I had just heard from a former schoolmate that she had gotten in, early decision, to what had previously been my first choice school. My first choice school that had wait-listed and then rejected me this past summer. When I got the final letter, I was expecting it and I thought it wouldn't affect me that much because it had been long coming. But when I heard her fantastic news, something in me broke. A deluge of regret, doubt, stupidity, sadness, came rushing out to engulf and overwhelm me and send me spiraling downwards. All the old feelings of worthlessness and my shortcomings, all the questioning whys and how comes, all the disappointment came rushing back. 

Then I thought, why is this affecting me so much? Why should this even matter to me anymore? And I realized it mattered because I expected that once I got to Manchester and fell in love with England and university life, I would forget the struggle it took to get here. I would forget my misgivings, my failures, my rerouted dreams. Everything would just wash away in my excitement for being where I was. And it didn't, because it doesn't feel right yet.

I haven't gotten over my stupid little disappointments because I am dealing with the biggest disappointment of all. It's not that I am unhappy or that I am too homesick. It's that I feel like I have put myself in the one situation where I feel I am stuck. I feel stagnant, like I'm in Esther's bell jar. I hate feeling stagnant. I felt like I couldn't move forward and, of course, could not move back. 

Manchester has not, so far, been the perfect place for me. I've yet to meet the kind of people I would like to meet, the ones who inspire me just by their presence. I'm not having that much fun. Classes aren't that enthralling either. I'm not experiencing the great city of Manchester like I expected. I'm not feeling particularly stimulated by my existence right now. Whenever I think of existence, I think of a PostSecret that says quite plainly, "I want to do more than just exist." As of yet, I merely exist in Manchester, nothing more.

It took me some time to figure out why and, to be honest, I still haven't figured it out. I think one massive chunk of this whirlwind of disappointment is that I am very homesick. It's taking a lot longer to settle in Manchester than I expected, although I should have understood how far of a distance this move really was. College hasn't started to feel like home yet and I'm not sure how long that's going to take. 

I think another reason is my room. For one, I spend way too much time inside it, curtains shut so that people outside can't see in. I think seeing my room was my first disappointment. It doesn't look like the college dorm room I expected, but now that I've made it more my own, it doesn't bother me as much. But it still bothers me a bit. I think it's the high window and the fact that the majority of my light comes from the fluorescent light on the ceiling. My hall itself (the whole dorm) makes me feel a little cramped and disconnected. The common room isn't very common and it's not very active and social. It's too small. I thought that by living in such a small dorm, I'd feel more comfortable in such a huge university but now I wish I'd gone somewhere bigger. And I don't often notice the hugeness of the university even though I would have liked to go to a smaller one. 

Lastly, I've used the same phrase in every single one of the previous paragraphs: 'like I expected.' I think I expected too much and then wasn't satisfied. It was bound to happen because I set myself up for it. But that doesn't stop it from being any less disappointing. 

"The silence depressed me.  It wasn't the silence of silence.  It was my own silence."

All this makes me feel like I'm not at college. The campus doesn't feel like school because there's a main city road splitting it in half. The University is spread down this long road instead of being a cluster of buildings and dorms. It just doesn't feel like college to me. I'm sure I can't be the only one (I hope I'm not the only one) who doesn't feel like she's at college but I haven't heard it from anyone else yet. I don't know. I just feel something missing in my college experience so far. Maybe it was because I was prepared for an American college experience but took the leap across the pond instead and now find myself on unexpected grounds. 

I haven't been able to come to terms with any of this really because I am so bent on having the amazing college experience that I was told I would. I feel like I can't admit to everyone that I'm not having that amazing time because everyone is expecting me to. I'm in ENGLAND, for goodness' sake, I shouldn't be having a crap time. And it's not England that bothers me. That part is great. It's just. Sigh. What do I say to people when they ask me how fantastic Manchester is and how I must be having the most perfect adventure of my life? I put on a smile and respond quite positively because I know they don't actually want to hear that it's not so great yet. Who goes to England and doesn't have a great time? Then I wonder if everyone else who is supposedly having an awesome time is just faking it. But I really don't think they are. I think very few people are not having a genuinely good college experience. And everyone thinks I'm part of that grand majority who are living it up. I SHOULD be part of it. I am so fricking lucky to be able to be here, what the heck am I complaining for?

Now, take these overwhelming thoughts and feelings that I have just attempted to voice and come back to The Bell Jar. In my overdramatic state, I read this book about a girl falling apart, mentally and emotionally, because she merely exists. On the outside looking in, Esther Greenwood has a life other girls crave. She's got it all going for her, really. And then she goes insane, literally. Ever so quietly and unexpectedly, Esther takes a long trip downhill until she hits rock bottom and has to climb her way up. 

As I sat reading this book, I could hear my mother playing my graduation video for my grandmother in the living room. I could hear speeches being given, names called, diplomas given out. On that day, I still felt like I had all the potential in the world. College hadn't happened yet but when it did, it was still going to be phenomenal. It was like how Esther described her future:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.  From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked."

Listening to this and reading the book at the same time, I felt like I was standing in the middle of these two extremes. No, I wasn't planning on going insane. But I felt like if I stayed going the way I was, it was likely I would have some issues. And on the other extreme was the ever-achieving potentialful student that planned on changing the world, the one staring at all the figs. Except I felt like, stuck in the middle, there were no figs, or at least none within my reach. In that moment, I felt like there was no way I could ever go back to being that ... promising? confidant? positive?

I tried to comfort myself by saying my parents would have never been able to send me to Brown. Like that mattered. I kept thinking I should have stayed in the States. I should have gone to UCLA. Wouldn't I have been happier? Wouldn't that have been fine and dandy? I could have been near home but far enough. I could have roomed with one of my best friends evaaar! But I know I would always wonder what it would be like if I'd gone to England. The What Ifs would not shut up. But then maybe they WOULD shut up because I'd be having such an amazing time? And I could always have done a semester abroad. That's what I should have stuck to, a semester abroad. Then if I didn't like it, it would just be one semester and then I'd be done. Then again, who's to say this wouldn't have happened to me anywhere, wherever I was? How am I supposed to know what place would actually be perfect for me? Who the hell allows an eighteen-year-old to decide her future? Seriously? I KNOW NOTHING.

"[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."

"How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"

That was my depressive mode.

Then I figured I should snap out of it. A couple of my friends at uni in the States would listen to why I thought I was having a bad time and then they'd say they pretty much didn't do anything either but that it didn't bother them as much as it has me. But maybe that was because, again, I'd expected too much. Either way, I had to quit it and find a way to be happy even if I thought I couldn't. I would go out more, I would smile more, I would get off the computer, I would just not do what I've been doing. Instead of waiting to meet those people, I am going to be the kind of person I want to meet.

It shouldn't matter that I'm not at my first choice or that things were a bit suckish in the beginning. It was only the first three months. There is so much more time to be lived and made and experienced. Which seems kind of daunting right now but it shouldn't. It won't be. 

I shouldn't be looking for some amazing adventure that I am not having. I should see the amazing adventure that I am already living. Like I said, I am so lucky and blessed. I have fantastic friends all across the world and awesome people living on my floor and in my whole hall and on my course. It's always, always in the small things, but I think I was expecting something much bigger that it's taking me a little longer to appreciate them.

My friends and I have made a list. We are going to do awesome things and be awesome and do more than just exist. One day we are going to go around the city with just a camera. We are going to venture into the bits of town that we have yet discovered. We are going to find my mom's old dorm. We are going to Chinatown. We're going to eat out. We're going to live the supposedly amazing nightlife of Manchester. We are going to Liverpool. And Stonehenge. We are going to a football match. We will have cooking nights. We are going to find nature and live in it. We are going to make Manchester our own and it will be phenomenal.

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart:  

I am, I am, I am."  

PS: If you've gotten this far, I congratulate you. Please leave me a comment so that I can send you some cookies and hugs.

PPS: It absolutely sucks to be in this mind state and then watch "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" on the plane ride home because in this movie there is a girl named NORAH who goes to a school called SACRED HEART and is deciding whether she should head off to some college called BROWN.

To which I wanted to yell, IT IS NOT THAT EASY, HOLLYWOOD, OKAY?

updates

Hi, so far these are the updates I've made in my jetlagged state. They are as follows:

Oxford Revisited - Oct 20

Amina - Nov 3

November 4th - Nov 5

Talent Show! - Nov 5

Widnes & Bonfire Night - Nov 10

Action Palestine - Nov 18

Becoming Brown - Nov 28

Thanksgiving - Nov 30

Leicester - Dec 15

A Basement Christmas - Dec 19

And in case you missed them:

Fresher's Week & Cacti Sales - Sept 29

The Lewis Story - Oct 5

Adventures with Aamna - Oct 15

You can use the little tabs on the right to navigate your way based on year, month, and title. 

I will continue to let you know what's going down in this post aka it will be perpetually updated until it doesn't have to be anymore. Toodles for now.

2009

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you all had a great January 1st and a spectacular 2009. As I said before, my resolution this year will be not to procrastinate my blogging. And not to procrastinate my studies. And not to procrastinate responding to people on Facebook. Maybe I should just not procrastinate, ever.

A moment from my day --
As we got into the car in the mall's parking lot, my uncle commented on how it was so hot that he couldn't breathe. And then commenced his own rendition of Chris Brown & Jordin Sparks' "No Air," which, in a thick fob Arab accent, went as follows: "No aiiiiir .. I cannot breathe when there is no aiiiiiiir ... something something no aiiiiir ... we cannot sleep ... we cannot breathe ... no aiiiiiir!"

To which my eight-year-old cousin huffily replied, after opening the window, "YES THERE IS AIR."

Prepare yourselves for a supermassive amount of posting in the next few weeks. If I fail all my exams, I'm blaming my adoring fans. That means you.

a basement christmas

I would simply like to share a bit of Christmas cheer from the Basement Crew because we are awesome and so is this snowman:

We then added in my laptop, which has a crackling candy corn fireplace display screensaver, and played Christmas music in the background.

Unfortunately, the judges who said they would be there in 5 minutes were not there ever until the next afternoon by which time I had of course removed my laptop from it's public display since I like it and want to keep it. 

Then we have this on the wall, which I overheard the cleaning ladies trying to read one morning:

The other half:

The rest of it:

This decorating turned into an all-out basement partay which was fun because we never hangout together during the day like this outside the kitchen.

And this is my door:

And the rest of the hall -- YES that IS a giant paper chain that zigzags down the whole hallway.

And some freaks running down it as well but we can ignore them. 

Unfortunately, the judges could not see the amazingness that is our basement and told us we didn't win because we used sellotape -- they didn't actually say that by they implied it -- when everyone else TOTALLY used sellotape. Our was just more obvious. Lame.

Today was my last day of the first semester, Aamna and Amina left me, but I'm going to Kuwait on Monday!! Can't wait.

Happy Winter slash Christmas slash Holidays!

leicester

This past weekend, I was invited to spend a belated Eid with the wonderful family of my dear friend Aamna. And it was awesome.

I was so so excited to go because I was getting to spend the WEEKEND at AAMNA'S HOUSE with her FAMILY. While I took this to be a very exciting and momentous occasion, Aamna seemed to be dreading it. For exactly the same reasons I was excited.

We took the afternoon train to Cleesthorpe (yup, Cleesthorpe) and went on our merry little way which was, in this case, about a two hour train ride. Unfortunately, I didn't get to experience first-hand the odd strangers Aamna always has stories to tell about when she comes back over a weekend. Ah, well. There's always next time. We had to change trains at some point and I thought it was very lucky we didn't get lost because we have a knack for doing things like getting lost.

We arrived in Leicester not that late but it felt like late because England turns dark at around 3.45pm nowadays. Her dad and sister picked us up from the station and so began my existence in Leicestershire.

We got to her house, passing an ASDA along the way, which lit up and bright green. It's owned by Wal-Mart except ASDA has a much better reputation in the UK than Wal-Mart does in the States. Anyways. Someone mentioned we needed to go to ASDA so after we got home, someone should do that. We got to Aamna's house and oh my goodness I love her family. I really do. Her dad is the sweetest person ever. Her mom is such a mom and I miss my mom and she's funny and tells me stories about Aamna has a wee lass. Her sister is also funny and cool and her brother IS EXACTLY LIKE MY BROTHER. It was so weird. 

A little bit after we got in, we were told to go grocery shopping at ASDA (by the by, I'm not putting it in caps because I'm excited about it, that's just how it's written). However, as we were about to pass the intersection to ASDA, we noticed the traffic lights were not working and the entire area seemed to be awash in darkness. Even the brightly lit green ASDA sign was dark. Because there was a power outage and there was a mass exodus coming out of ASDA's car park. Instead we made a giant u-turn to Sainsbury's and did some grocerying there. 

When we got back home, everyone was telling me how this doesn't usually happen and power outages were so rare ... just as all the lights and TV went out in their house. Which made me laugh. 

When the lights came back on, we had dinner which was the absolute most delicious meal I'd had in three months. It was glorious. It was only slightly awkward when Aamna forgot to inform me that they don't use forks and knives usually but eat just using bread and I sat there for a couple seconds staring at my plate wondering what was going on. Then I noticed what everyone else was doing and I saved myself the embarrassment of looking like too much of a loser. I felt like this trip was the culmination of all my previous brownification. This was the exam moment after a semester of education. No, I'm not being dramatic.

Anyways, once I figured out how to get the food from my plate to my salivating mouth, I enjoyed a delightful dinner. Then somewhere in between there we took a walk outside except it was freezing cold (really, it was partly snowing) so it kind of turned into a brisk jog through the neighborhood. Then we went home and watched Kingdom of Heaven, which I had never seen before, but wasn't paying attention to so I can't really say I've seen it now.

The next morning, we had another wonderful meal called breakfast Indian style. After that, Aamna and I got ready for our frolic around town. We went to downtown Leicester, which, if you didn't know, is pronounced LESS-ter, and roamed the streets.

All of downtown was decorated for Christmas and there were giant Christmas trees and a whole snowy scene set out in front of the town hall. And there was this fountain that doesn't work anymore because Caution: Water Presents Danger to Small Children.

And on this fountain was this engraving, which I enjoyed for no reason:

And there was this little All About Leicester shop, where I bought a postcard and an I Heart Leicester button, which was located on this street:

Then we roamed some more, through the local mall, down the market streets. Eventually, we stopped to have a Nutella-filled crepe, which was quite tasty. It was particularly interesting because we were given this utensil with which to consume our yummy treat:

(Please excuse the littly chunks of chewed crepe and licked Nutella.) Notice the little ridges on the side of the fork's tooth?  They are KNIFE TEETH. Now will someone please please please solve our crisis and name this utensil? A knork? A forfe? HELP US.*

Eventually, we were picked up by Aamna's father and we drove past this castle that has now been turned into a prison.

We had to make a stop in the Indian part of town to get some Indian groceries so I got to see Little India! It's not actually called Little India, or Indiatown, like we like to name our international parts of town in the States, but I felt the need to name it so. We got some yummy samosas there. 

Then we drove all the way back home (I say 'all the way' -- it was really only about 15 minutes) where Aamna's mum was preparing for a small dinner partay for Eid. Several members of Aamna's family was coming over so there was a flurry of activity and cooking etc etc. So Aamna, her sister, and I decided to take a drive to see the most ridiculously lit up houses in town. While their displays were very impressive, they could not compare to some of the elaborate decorations I have seen at home. But it was still fun to see. 

Got back home, showered (Aamna: "You're in my SHOWER.") and prepared to meet the Aamna clan. There were a couple uncles, some aunts, and several cousins of some sort. And they were all very very kind and lively and wonderful people. We all sat around and watched the X-Factor together and celebrated the inevitable win of Alexandra Burke, who is awesome AND SANG WITH BEYONCÉ WHATWHAT. I say 'sang' but really what happened was (you don't care but I'm telling you anyways) Beyoncé strode out on stage like the fabulous diva that she is and Alexandra mumbled "Oh My God" and "wow" and was incapacitated to sing because DUH BEYONCÉ WAS RIGHT NEXT TO HER. She was pretty much drooling. I would have fainted. She's made of stronger stuff than I.

And we had more delicious food and played on each other's iPod Touches and iPhones. Then we rotated playing Mario Kart Wii, which is the hardest thing of my life because I suck at controlling my car. Eventually, people started going home, except for the crew from London because they obviously weren't going to drive all the way back to London at that hour. Instead, we all stayed up until around 4am playing poker. I'd never played before so Aamna's uncle sat me down for a one-on-one crash course in poker. I think I won a couple rounds so I was quite proud of myself. Oh and since we're all hardcore gamblers, we used Monopoly™© money.

In the morning, I was greeted by half the family and a bowl of cheerios. And then Aamna's uncle promply started off the quizzing. Apparently, he does this a lot. He'll quiz anyone on anything that is remotely related to that someone. At first, I got the usual "What are you studying?" and "Why did you come to England?" which lead to questions about how high school is run in America and what did I study in my English classes? which then turned into a full on intensive quiz on the works of Shakespeare. Before noon on a Sunday.

He whipped out his iPhone, which has a Shakespeare application on it, to read out bits of The Merchant of Venice and then Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be speech which he would read and then look at me as if prompting me to complete the sentence. Of course, I could not do so, but this deterred him not one bit. He did not stop until he was done with the entire speech. Then he turned on his son, who was asleep on the living room floor. He was brushed off but, again, seemed jovially unconcerned with our shortcomings and continued to read Shakespeare aloud. After Aamna came down, I went up to use the loo and get dressed. When I came back down, Aamna told me she was so thankful that I had left when I did because at the moment, her uncle began to read the witches' bit in Macbeth in a full-on witchy voice. And Aamna would have been traumatized had I been there. I, however, was quite upset to have missed witnessing this glorious rendition of Shakespeare. Ah, well.

After that, Aamna's mum packed us some food in tupperwares and sent us off back to Manchester. Where we were greeted by Amina yelling our names.

I loved Leicester, I really did. I loved being around a family and a home and delicious food and a town that was cozy and homey. And Aamna's awesome family invited me back whenever I felt like it. 

Mwahaha.

* My dear friend Michelle has just informed me of this website. Who'da thunk.