How come every time you come around my London, London, London Bridge...

Also titled...I HAVE A SOCIAL CALENDAR NOW!!!!

(please follow link to see a picture of my emotions upon that statement)

http://nataliedee.com/071408/banana-split-har-dee-har.jpg

Ok, so...It's been a while since we last spoke, eh? That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything...OH no!

So...Thursday, I believe was the last day we spoke, there was a huge fight here in the house between the hostlady and the Japanese kid, Aki (who recently told me he racked up a WHOPPING 2000euro phone bill before he came here to Lausanne. 2000 EUROS!!$3500 CANADIAN!! Count your blessings, parents of kids with high phone bills!)...Ok where was I, YES! The fight! So, being a diplomatic Canadian I...got stressed out, said f*** this and left! Haha...well, I stayed for as long as I could take until I lost my comprehension and then went to bed. She said that he shouldn't be in the kitchen making food at 10:30 pm, he said that he had asked her and she said that she could. I had no idea, so I just tried to be neutral. So that kinda put a weird swing on things cos I found out that these are real people who blow up occasionally!

BUT now I'm back fresh faced from England, the land of the English aka THE BEST 32 HOURS OF MY LIFE!!

Where to start...Woke up at 5 (f***!!) and showered, scrounged my flat for some clothes suitable for London Town (hard!!) and stumbled my way to the station, rocking out to Ladyhawke's "Paris is Burning" (just cos I'm far away doesn't mean I'm not going to force good music down your throat! Robert, I'm talking to you! )

Station-me- no train- stress.

Mom, I am becoming a Roberts faster than I thought. First the fussy gene and now the "f*** MY TRAIN'S NOT HERE" gene too? I had 5 minutes of panic as I came to the slow realization that the Swiss train perfection thing is a HUGE LIE, as I will later discuss with more conviction and CAPSLOCK than you'll be able to handle! The Swiss trains run on a minute schedule. They will be there the minute the panic and sweats start to seep down your brow, making you doubt your reason for panic. They chip away at your self-esteem or whatever it is that convinces you that you have reason to panic! You do have reason to panic, but the Swiss and their trains and their doors are sneaky like that!

Anyways, early train and early flight meant more time with Aleks (friend and DEVS soul-mate from Queen's for those of you out of the loop). The day started off with a HUGE sigh of relief as the world I knew in Switzerland was turned into a Candyland of ENGLISH!! Not Engrish or a Japanese-English-French melange that my housemate speaks, but English. The English I can order a coffee with, the English I can ask a random with confidence what time it is, my English! Sigh...love French...but I also love the comfort of asking a waiter "oh and with cheese too!" without having to percolate for five minutes on the conjugation of my words. Love your English! Treat it well! If you do, people in Europe will love you for it!

Alright, London...I've been there before so Aleks and I quickly skipped the initial introductions of Big Ben, the Queen, the guards (chose comme ça) and headed straight for the real London...Oxford! But before that, I must, must, must describe one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Sorry to say, but if you've never left home before, never lived abroad, never gone days, months without seeing your family, your friends, your pets, your familiarity, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you have, then you'll know that the moment that you walk, run, (or in my case...) careen through the doors of an airport into the arms of a loved one, is THE most comforting feeling in the world. Running, screaming, shouting, jumping, flailing, whatever you want to call it, but standing there with Aleks, both of us, without words, saying everything we'd felt over the past week, was simply amazing. If you're reading this Aleks, thank you SO much for the perfect weekend!

Ok, on to the show. Chucked my bag into the corner of Aleks' room, threw her a bar of Swiss chocolate and ran out into LONDON!!! The city of not dreams but realities! London is real, London is dirty, and London is feeling. London moves with you, no... London moves and you must move WITH London or be sucked up into the sewer without resolve from this ancient labyrinth. We shopped, and we shopped, and we stopped shopping. JUST KIDDING Y'ALL! We shopped some more. We went to THE Camden Market, aka. Creeps galore! London creeps, all full of knock off goods, and about A MILLION stores all selling the same dresses and shirts and stuff. BUT I did buy a kick assed organic hemp shirt, 20 BUCKS, and its sawwwwwwft!! I also bought a sick shirt, blah blah clothes blah blah (ps, MOM DON'T LOOK AT MY BILL! Hahaha) What else...had some questionable Chinese food for 3 quid 50, chock full of MSG'd goodness! Actually...now that I think about it, I had Chinese for every meal that day, lunch, bad Chinese for dinner, and well, that was it, but if our drunken stumbling around the city at 4am for food had been a success, I'm pretty sure it would have been Chinese again there too!

As for the space in between the infamous Chinese meals...I can't tell you. Drunken ramble, drunken ramble, facebook pictures, Robin get's drunk with friends, convinces said friends and new friends he's from Foreign Nation X [in this case it was a) Barbados with Aleks b) from Australia with Reegan and c) from London with Sam] We've all heard the stories, seen the photos, received the apologies, so nothing new here! The only difference was that it was in LONDON!! So...I guess that makes it cooler? Je ne sais pas. But basically Aleks, MC (her flat mate) and I went down for 1pound dranks, stayed till closing and made TONS of new friends! One of whom, Sam, and myself, stormed the streets of London by lavishly claiming that we were some form of Royal Half-Bred Sons of infamous Londoner Kate Moss. It was an amazing, no holes barred kinda night. The next morning...well...we had been sufficiently pillaged by the alcohol supply of the room labelled "Bar" in Aleks' residence. All plans of seeing London proper became plans of nursing a serious headache and a bad taste in the mouth. Was it worth it? Heck yus!

The next day we debated how far we'd be willing to go to see London, which turned out to be...not so far! But still! Sunday was MUCH calmer than Saturday in Oxford, and we actually managed to make it into the stores that had been sardine'd the day before, like TopShop, think Urban Outfitters x 10000. We meandered along the crowds, stopping for a pub breakfast and a laugh about the evening that still remained in a stinging liquid form in our stomachs, veins, livers...things of that nature! Eventually, after doing some serious quality control on my camera, I headed with Aleks back to the airport for my evening flight back to Genève. No problems there, international travel...pfffffffft no big deal. Although I had a hell of a time explaining my situation to the boarder control in London, to a lady who had seen far to many an empty bottle of gin in her lifetime. She seemed utterly perplexed that I was in London JUST for 32 hours, and when she asked where I'd be staying, to my reply "Um...London School of Economics...the floor?", she just shook her head and stamped, as I assumed she did with all of us international terrorists.

Ok, back in Geneva (sorry, I know this is SO LONG but I'm making up for my laziness at your expense!) Get to Geneva around 9:30 and to my surprise, ALL THE TRAINS IN f***ING SWITZERLAND ARE DOWN!! EVERY LAST TRAIN!! I don't really know how to ask in French, "WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO KNOW DUMBASS???" but I'll write it down and ask my prof tomorrow! No trains, the Roberts self-destruct gene was starting to catalyze. I ran back and forth in the airport, not quite unlike a game of pong; between "Should I take a bus to Geneva and then on to Lausanne? Should I wait for the train? Should I just end it now, I've had a good run so far..." Of course, none of the busses ran that late either...Swiss efficiency my ASS!! That, Mom, would have been the time that I called you! Sigh. Hearing your family's voice is a close tie for best moments ever. It puts everything into perspective!

And what do you know, after that, the trains started running again. THREE BLOODY HOURS AFTER I GOT THERE! C'est la vie, non?

I got home, sank into bed, and woke for school. I'll summarize today cos I'm tired now...

-School was good

-I learned...things

-Went for coffee with friends, YA THAT'S RIGHT FRIENDS!! I HAVE FRIENDS NOW!!

-Went back to class

-Went for coffee again WITH DIFFERENT FRIENDS

-Went home

-Ate dinner, checked the internet, ALL OF IT

-Went for movie with friend (singular)

-Now am writing blog

-Next bed

-Next school

-Next THE UNKNOWN...actually, bowling tomorrow night, then more movie, then Zurich, maybe the mountains

Well, I survived my first week, and to be honest, it sucked until...Thursday. Then I made some friends and it's been rocking ever since!

Miss you all! Hope you've got love and a summer full of memories!! I can't wait to see you all soon!

If you've made it this far in the post, WOW!! I would have given up around the part about me going to London! But if you've made it this far, you're a trooper, and you deserve my credit card number! But I'm not going to give it to you! But I love you!

PAYCE IN DA EAST!!

OH!! And hope you all had a SIN-TASTIC, DEBAUCHEROUS (Dad, a RESPECTABLE) STAMPEDE!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Love Robin