Thankful. One month....

Wow Wow Wow. I am soo horrible about keeping up with this blog, I think about writing a new post a lot, but then I just never get to it. Usually some daiquiris or bounce music are calling my name.

Anyway 3 days ago marked my "one month left" here in New Orleans. I can't believe it! Time has just flown by. I honestly am really sad that I am leaving, I wish I could have stayed the one year, but it's ok, I have soo many supportive friends and family back in Nevada and California that I need to go to. :) So much stuff has happened since my last post..let's see where to begin. Well number one, I went to Voodoo Fest! It was probably the best weekend I have had here. My running partner, Ben, was able to buy me a weekend pass and we just had the best of time. The only artists I knew that were there were Drake, Ozzy and Janelle Monae, the other hundred artists I had NO IDEA! ha ha, it was an ear opening experience. I absolutely love Metric, Muse, Weezer, Kaskade....the list goes on and on. Janelle was by far my favorite, she really is one of the most undeserved artist out there!!




I was supposed to be Nicki Minaj for Halloween and I even bought scandy clothes, huge eyelashes and a pink wig, but voodoo fest made me so exhausted that I ended up staying in on Halloween night...cocoNUTS!!!! HA HA HA

The Monday following Halloween I went to a Day of the Dead Parade. Everyone dressed up and we walked the streets of the French quarter. At the end of it we sent something (I don't know what) in the Mississippi River. It was awesome...although everyone there smelled REAL BAD. Have you heard of Gutter punks, travelers or drifters? Ya, those are the people that were in the parade..people that live on the streets, don't shower and just beg for money. It's a lifestyle...they choose to be homeless. It kinda makes me mad because they can choose to be homeless, but there are people out there THAT ARE BORN INTO POVERTY! Anyway, I don't wanna get into a rant or anything.




UMMM, what next? I stopped running immediately after my half marathon...whooops! I guess I need motivation to run. And I think I might not run track this upcoming Spring. My heart has not been in track even since I started running in college and that is the truth. I don't find it fun or anything. The only things that I love about it are my coach and my awesome teammates (shout out to you guys)

I also attended University of New Orleans' Leadership retreat a few weeks ago. I was kinda getting sick of the city and needed to just get away and a $10 retreat sounded pretty good. It ended up being awesome! I met so many involved people that I wish I could have met the first week of school.



My mom came to New Orleans last week! and Oh my gosh, it was so nice seeing her. It was the fist time we have ever had a mother/daughter trip. She stayed at an awesome French quarter hotel with the cutest courtyard. I stayed with her from Wednesday until Sunday..she even made me miss my Thursday class for her...WORTH IT! On Veterans days we went to the National WWII museum which was so amazing. We rode the street car up St. Charles, walked around Jackson square where she bought some street art, went the Katrina Museum (informative, but extremely sad), listened to some music on Frenchman. I even convinced her to have a daiquiris on bourbon and jello shots. I love her so much! It was so fun to have her here. :)

In a couple days it is Thanksgiving break. I wasn't sure what i was going to do until a week ago. One of my girlfriends offered her house up in Shreveport and I was all ready to go until my biological dad called and said he would love if I came to San Antonio and spent it with all my sisters and brothers. Of course I said yes. I am 21 and this is going to be the first time I spend Thanksgiving with my biological dad. If you told me this when I was in high school I would not have believed you. Life is so crazy, but it's all Love. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving break. Give thanks for everything you have and be grateful for the people in your life. I LOVE YOU ALL.

Much love,
Skylar

Videos

It's taken a month but here are some videos.

I know I keep missing people on Skype but I am usually on 5-9pm (unless im napping...) my time so that's like 9am - 1pm PST time. Sooo yea. This time difference sucks.

Videos.

cheers!

go buy your harry potter tickets!!!

A plethora...

Sorry I have not blogged in ages and there is so much so let's get cracking.

First and foremost classes here are hard and excellent at the same time. I am taking:

1. Genre and Film - bomb irish teacher, had to explain the awesomeness of Clint Eastwood to the class and explain that Americans, I mean, Westerners and "former" Colonist don't sit around and watch Westerns all day.

2. Children's Literature - taught by the nicest old lady with a Mary Poppin's voice, well she is nice until you get on her bad side and then she turns into crazy lady.

3. Digital Media and Communications - cool teacher sit around and play with photoshop all day rather easy. The first time in history I have ever used Adobe on a PC.

4. Media Policy and Ethics - hardest class of my life. I had to read to extra books on British television just to understand the first day. British TV does not equal or is even similar to American TV. Not super bad because I have a lovely Italian teacher and she is super sweet.

Now on to the trips I have been on.

East Sussex

Very fun trip. It was a USAC trip so all 35 of us got to bond with Mary and Zoe (our advisors.) We hopped in vans and sang songs and played games. We drove through all of these small countryside towns I could not for the life of me tell you what their names are but they were cute. TONS OF SHEEP! TONS OF COWS! We went to a pub and I had the best shepherd's pie. We then went to the Battle Abbey where the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066. It reminded me of Gettysburg but obiviously more medieval. We walked around the entire battle ground which took about 45 minutes. We also looked at where the monks stayed it was kinda epic.

moving on...

Warwick, Liverpool and Manchester

So first stop was Warwick Castle. Crazy place its like Disneyland meets old ancient ACTUAL history. There are tons of people dressed up and singing and yelling at each other it was interestingggg. Check the video below because I can't even explain what this place was.

Then off to Liverpool the land of The Beatles. EPIC EPIC place. The accent is a little harder to understand but we went to all these cool places like Penny Lane!! Another interesting fact about Liverpool is that it's where films are shot when they can't afford to shoot in London. So movies like Sherlock Holmes and even Harry Potter are filmed there. We went to The Cavern where The Beatles, Elton John, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones played when they were first getting started. It was super fun tons of old people rocking out haha. The next day we went to The Beatles Story museum which was so awesome. I'm a huge George Harrison fan so I didn't really pay attention to all the extra crap they did for Paul and John haha. Poor Ringo... So after Liverpool we hopped over to Manchester which is all about football. We toured the stadium and I guess it was a big deal but I know nothing about soccer so we just looked at all the Beckham stuff.

On to the next...

Robyn Concert

I went I saw one of my favourite artist in Brighton. It was uber cool because her last music video was shot in Brighton. If you don't know who she is well that sucks because she is super talented. Plus it was like 30 bucks to see her which is a steal and when she blows up stateside you all will be jealous of me.

Hang With Me - Robyn (Check out that brilliant seaside)

Amsterdam and Bruges

So we finally got of the island and headed over to The Netherlands and Belgium. It takes about 8 hours which is the same amount of time it takes me to get to Chico...which is RIDICULOUS. 3 countries 8 hours. The scariest part about getting of the island is going through the English Channel. I had a panic attack when our bus got onto a train that went through a tunnel that went under the Channel. I was freaking out, talk about claustrophobic. After that 30 minute death trap we were in France and they literally waved us in, no checking of passports, nothing. Awesome. I was asleep when we arrived in Amsterdam. It was 7 in the morning and pitch black. I already had a cold (surprise surprise) so I was not in a good mood and plus it was like 18 degrees outside. We walked around and of course it rained our tour guide was being lame and we were all in the worst mood until we had free time. What did you guys do with your free time you ask? Heineken Experience. Basically you pay 15 euro and you get a tour, and get 3 pints of beer. For an extra 5 euro you get a custom bottle. Thank you Heineken, I don't like you more than Blue Moon but it was better than being outside in the cold and dying so 100 points to Gryffindor. After that we went to the Hard Rock cafe which was hard to get to because the streets of Amsterdam were alive. Chico is no longer the big bike town I thought it was. Amsterdam is THE bike town of the world. Bikes have the right away every time the lanes are bigger than the car lanes. Our tour guide Omar told us that there are more bikes than people here and you see bikes tied up everywhere or just laying around. We could have literally stole a bike and no one would have noticed. Hard Rock was amazing as usual but I was uber excited to go to Anne Frank's house. There was no photos or videos allowed but I can tell you it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. Each room in the house was preserved and we got to see where they hid and Anne's actual diary. Words cannot express. I was in tears because I cry about everything but it was really powerful stuff more inspiring then sad. It was a good reminder about how blessed I am and how I shouldn't take anything for granted. Later on that night after a good little nap we went back into the city and visited the Red Light District. Very interesting indeed but not as raunchy as I expected it seriously was like "whatever" and we went to get pasta. Oh yes and there is weed everywhere at the floral shops they have "cannabis starter kits" you know just incase you need to grow some at home. Seriously it really propels their economy California should just hop on that wagon so we can get out of debt.

The next morning we went to Zaanse Schans, a dutch village located on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Talk about night and day, these people were walking around in wooden clogs and feeding sheep. There were tons of windmills and we found out that Amsterdam relies on these windmills to pump the water out so the city won't flood. The city is about 4 meters below sea level. We walked around and tasted some cheese and chocolate, watched some shoes being made and then it started to hail. No big deal. We left there about noon and headed for Belgium.

We went to the city of Bruges in Belgium which is an intense medieval town. It is well preserved because Belgium was neutral during the wars. There were tons of horse drawn carriages and cobblestone roads. It felt like Christmas already because of the snow on the ground and all the Christmas stores. We headed straight to a restaurant to get some real Belgian waffles. AMAZZZING!! We were only there for 3 hours and I really want to go back. So our trip was finally coming to a close and we headed back to France. Going back into the UK is way harder than leaving. HARDCORE. We all had to get off the bus and get sniffed by a dog haha. So many people were throwing their weed away it was hilarious. Smart ones. After that whole ordeal we got back on the bus and into the deathtrap train and finally we were back in Brighton.

Good times indeed.

Next up: More escuela, England v France game, Guy Fawkes Night, Paris, Harry Potter, Bath, and Stonehenge!!

Cheers!!

I'll post the video soon-ish! (I hate editing)

My Grand Adventure

I have been on University of New Orleans' "Fall Break" since last Wednesday. :) I really wanted to get out of town to maybe Florida or Baton Rouge, but those plans fell through. Regardless, my friends and I made the most out of New Orleans. Salsa dancing, throwing GI Joes off of buildings downtown, blowing sugar off of beignets, picking up a lost dog (cute!), finding Banksy art... Here it is in pictures. :)

Coding blah blah

I dunno if the weather coding was messing up for anyone else but I just changed it again because it was bothering me...the blog layout is kind annoying me but I won't OCD about it.

But I think the blog is best viewed with Firefox...so yea. :)

I am also obsessing about coding right now because I am bored and I miss all of my friends and family very much and if you do take the time to look at the weather in the sidebar you can see that it is raining constantly here. So I'm being super emo.

Love you lots!!!

Cheers!!

Seriously tell me if the website looks weird I seriously lose sleep at night because of the coding for this thing...okay that is all.

Seriously? How is the layout?

Really.

London. Lewes. Wales.

"You alright love?"

The most common British greeting ever. P.S. You are everyone's love, darling, and sweetie here. Fear it, embrace it.

The past week and a half has been pretty amazing. Moving 1000 kilometers a minute. Kilometers because no one uses miles, it's uncool, just like fahrenheit.

Haven't actually started "teachings" at all, things don't officially start till October 4th so my flatmates and I have decided to travel as much as possible.

Flatmates ar amazing by the way. There is:

Stephanie from California.

Stephanie and Kait the twins from Cheeks!

Wei from Denmark/China.

Hazel from Korea.

Katie from Surrey.

Sophia from London.

It's a wonderful mix and everyone is super sweet and brills.

(We spend most of our time coloring in MY Hello Kitty coloring book which makes me a GENIUS for bringing it in the first place. People from other flats come by to color in it as well. *toots horn*)

The other USAC kids are fantastic as well. Charming bunch. Our advisors in the American office, Mary and Zoe, are terrific. Their advice to us? "Please don't be a boring lot, we are trying desperately to forget the last group that was here. And that one girl...pain in the arse."

All in all Brighton is marvelous and I am very blessed to be here.

There are a few film festivals coming up and I am so excited to be able to meet local English filmmakers and see what types of stories they wish to share with the world. The cinema here is completely different from America and the narratives are fascinating. There is a local cinema here, kinda like The Pageant (shout out) and I am excited to visit it. Also, I cannot forget about the theatre scene, there are tons of plays I am excited to see as well. It is almost like Brighton is San Francisco and London is New York. So much art and history to soak up. So many stories, so little time.

Another interesting fact is that our flatmates, well and other random Brits love the American accent. They think WE sound sophisticated. So...grass is greener y'all. Oh and another thing always be prepared to answer, "So what do you think of Obama and what is it that he has done that you dislike?". Number one question. ALWAYS.

I need to start reading the newspaper again because changing the conversation to Oprah and Disney does not always work.

So this video has London, Lewes and Wales.

London - can't ever put into words. Even more brilliant the second time.

Lewes - a super small town with mounds of history. Thomas Paine used to hang out here. THOMAS PAINE! COMMON SENSE! The man that more than pushed us towards our Revolution. Lewes also features a 15th Century castle, Anne of Cleave's house (Henry dumped her in Lewes after he divorced her luckily she saved her head), and no noise what so ever. Super quiet town where everyone can see the bloody castle from their backyard.

Cardiff, Wales - my new favorite country. 50% of the population speaks fluent Welsh so most of the signs are in Welsh. CRAZY! We only stayed for 2 days but Welsh people have to be the most hospitable people on the planet. The hostel we stayed at was the nicest place. Thanks Abi and Charlie!! If you ever need a place to stay The River House is the spot. Wales also is where Roald Dahl is from which, if you were ever a child, is a pretty big deal.

Till next time

S'later

Cheers!!

Youtube is crap so there is that. Also I need to stop filming with my iPhone but whatever, I am lame as well.

back on my vlog grind!