I have to say, this summer is looking like a grand ol' time. What I should say is that it's making up for the two month period of hellish exam stress. The weather has been awesome, old friends are coming back from uni, I have my trusty Canon, and a part time job to keep me in the moniez. Good times.





( pose )


PPPPS. I hope the people in the northern hemishere are having a good summer, and the people in the southern hemisphere are having a god winter.

Yes, there were a lot of jokes about the name of the town we were staying in, because we're mature like that.

Basically, Suze invited Rhian, Becky, Georgia, Tom and me to spend four days in her parents' converted barn in Noramndy. We spent them eating croissants with nutella, walking around the local fishing towns, vegging on the beach, cooking with obscene amounts of cheese, playing cardgames sunbathing on the trampoline, and dancing around to 90s pop hits.

For a lot of these activities we were moderately tipsy. :D





( where? )


Fun, fun, fun!

In the end I guess I am kind of glad of glad the rest of the people didn't come. It was nice to be just the six of us.

So... exams have been over for a few days and unfortunately in the confusion I managed to leave my digital camera in my room at school while my mum managed to get me to move back to Camden so she could use my presence in the house to ward off unwated house guests. What with Sasha's 50s themed birthday party, a much awaited lunch-and-movie date with Melissa and series of post-exam bar hops, I was forced to buy one of these:



which means that my photographic evidence of all these events is in the process of being developed. How quaint.

Anyway, by end of the exam period, I think that a lot of us were about ready to admit defeat. There was a week between my last exam and the one before it, so by then I found myself really not caring whether I got a decent grade. You need 40% to pass the year, so a lot of people were like, 'Well, I wrote something in that exam so I obviously passed, and now it's over, I don't give a monkey's.' Anthropology 100 was one of the very late exams so almost nobody had another one after that. This meant that once the exam had finished there was an almost unbroken stream of people walking from the exam hall into the union bar. :D

What's interesting though is that that night after the last exam was the night where I met met a lot of classmates who I'd previously never spoken to before. I think this year came as a big shock to most people, especially the level of work involved and the kind of expectations put on us by tutors and stuff like that. A lot of my friends wished that they had made a bit more of an effort to make friends and get involed in university stuff. And I think the sense of lost opportunity was common among others as well. As the night went on, people who my have never spoken to each other before invited each other out for summer parties and made promises to meet up over the summer. I must have made a note of more phone numbers that night than I had for the entire year.


( since then... )


And tomorrow I am off to stay in the French countryside with a group of girls where I was promised a lot of eating, drinking, gossiping and photo opportunities. Yay!

At this point I'm just waiting for June 5th, when exams will be over. I don't know what it is about the LSE, but people are going NUTS. They are actually bringing sleeping bags to the library and that is why it is beginning to smell. Anyway, I'm currently in the anxious zone. At some point, this will pass and I will enter a phase of zen, where nothing will bother me. Here's hoping. It just seems as though the institution is doing everything it can to panic us, including sending out mass emails telling us that this year, exams will be harder than ever and we'd better be working hard and looking at past exams papers, P.S. The exam board does not tolerate cheating.

So, here's the last three weeks or so in pictures:

( including a very cute bebe )


OK, now it's back to Japanese. Must pass exam. Have not begun to prepare and it happens to be tomorrow...

Greek Orthodox Easter is this week, instead last week, like everybody else. I think my aunt and uncle (whose house we are staying at) were a bit stressed yesterday on their last day at work. My aunt is a human rights lawyer, my uncle is in insurance and today they've been answering phone calls all day from the rest of the world, which is of course, still working and doesn't understand why Cyprus isn't.

I only got here two days ago but so far I feels like I've visited all my extended family, my grandfather, five elderly great aunts, three of my mother's cousins and their children, my mother's aunt and uncle, my other aunt and uncle... and this doesn't include random people I see down town who stop me and tell me that I am the spitting of Elli Pitsilli, and 'Yes, I am her granddaughter... no, my mother is the middle sister...'

Some people are more fun to visit that others. My grandfather had a lot of sisters, some of whom have already died, some of whom have lost their spouses, others of whom seem to think that being left behind means they have the right to be miserable about being old and anticipate death. Stubborness runs in the family, everyone insists that they can't do anything these days, no one understands, 'ιναμ’ πο’εν να καμουμεν?', 'What can you do?'


( things i have seen )