My girlfriend who lives in Canada!

Hi everyone! The title of my post comes from one of my favorite musicals, Avenue Q. You can check out the song here: My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada. The gay character in the play, Rod, is trying to prove to everyone else that he's not gay (even though he is). Anyway, the reasoning for the title is because I made a girlfriend from Canada...but she's leaving on Thursday! Boo! I met her at our friend Adam's going away party because he actually also leaves on Thursday for South Africa. It was held at a bar in London where they were also playing the rugby game (South Africa vs. New Zealand). South Africa won and the nice New Zealanders behind us came over and shook the guys hands and said nice game! What good losers! Me and my Canadian friend drank a pitcher of Sangria (yum!) which was perfect because it was a hot beautiful day!





Me and my Canadian friend, Rachel:


Donovan sitting on Chris and Chris (also South Africans):


Luke's twin (if he didn't bench 34324325 pounds):


A bridge on the way home:


Our trip to Torquay on Monday was nice but the weather was crappy. The only picture I took was of a funny thing we saw on the road...



Haha! Don't worry---it's not real!

On the way home from Torquay (tuesday) we picked up Ouma from Carol's house. I met Donovan's cousins and we enjoyed their last 30 minutes of television. Someone burnt a cable in their town and them and surrounding towns lost power for like a week! They only got 3 hours of power a day so we were lucky to get 30 min of tv watching! The next day we did some shopping and had lunch at Nando's (a chicken place). Ouma made frickadels (sp?) which are like hamburgers that are well seasoned and in balls with no bun LOL. They are good despite my description. We brought Ouma to the airport on Thursday evening and she flew safely back to South Africa.

We got the movie S. Darko (sequal to Donnie Darko) and I was not impressed.

So you know when you just get that spontaneous feeling to do something? Well, I got that so I had Donovan put some violet streaks in my hair. Here are some pics:

Damn I look emo! (haha):




This week starts my Eurotrip with my cousin, Nat. First Paris, then Rome, then Venice, and then Munich. Since we both have blogs we have decided to "guest post" on each other's blog. So to see my post, you will have to check out his and his friends will have to check out mine to get his post! In case you want to catch up on his adventures, here's his blog link:

http://germanytotheballs.blogspot.com/

Tonight I got the grand idea to make meringues. Not sure why but they're so good and I wanted some! They are currently in the oven baking so I'm not sure how they will turn out. All we have is a wisk which I thought would be fine but after both of my arms and Donovans' were completely worn out, we knew we needed to take action. I found a drill in the tool box and somehow Donovan attached a wisk to it (and no shock! :-)) Here are the pics of us mixing:




Cheers everyone!

A Posh Time: Castle and Night on the Town

We saw Harry Potter this week. It was ok. Having never seen any of them or read any of the books, I wasn't too excited but Donovan likes Harry Potter so we went! It's funny because when you order popcorn at the movies here they ask you "sweet or salty?". Another thing I've been meaning to mention is "squash" and no I'm not talking about the vegetable. Squash here is like a concentrated juice that you have to add water to. I am obsessed with Orange Squash. It's like a dollar a bottle and you just pour a little bit in a glass, add water, and you've got a delicious drink! Not to mention it's like 3 calories!

We had a plan this weekend to go visit Donovan's friend Tarryn. We were going to leave straight from a meeting Donovan had because it was an hour closer to Tarryn's house. Unfortunately Taryyn called Friday morning alerting us that her soon, Keegan, had swine flu! We were disapointed but naturally understood! Do you know there were 55,000 case of Swine Flu in the UK LAST WEEK?! Crazy!

So Friday, we went to Warwick Castle! The history is very interesting and if you'd like to learn more on that click here: Warwick Castle History. But if you're anything like me, you mostly only care about the pictures and the gory stories! So here goes!

Naturally, we saw the castle rooms with their crystal chandeliers and fancy paintings. We climbed the towers (which we felt the next day in our legs--oww!) and saw the magestic view of the castle grounds. The the "people" inside the castle were made by Tussaud's so you know they looked real! But the greatest part was the tour of the dungeon! We were guided by live actors who really acted the part. We saw the torture equipment, tons of scary stuff, went through a maze of mirrors and Donovan even got his head chopped off! I've come to the conclusion that Dononvan just sticks out of a crowd so I better get used to him getting picked for everything. (Luckily, he's a good sport!) He was chosen by the guy to get his head chopped off and the guy lifted his ax and the lights went out and we were all sprayed with water! Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed on the tour.

It's hard to believe how it would have felt to be a prisonor in those times. Most people had the plague to begin with...then they would have their tongues ripped out, their genitals cut off, or just hung to rot! In the gaol, prisonors were somtimes surived for years before dieing. There were inscriptions on the walls, only one small crevise for excrements to evacuate, and no light. There was even this little underground crawl space where prisonors destined for particularly harsh treatment were bundled into the small, damp and lightless pit below the ground. In this claustrophobic and solitary space, the wretched prisonor was...forgotten. Here is that space...



The only way anything could leave the gaol is this crevice:



People were hung and left to rot:


View from the tower:







Inside Warwick Castle:






The "toilet":


Inside the "toilet" (you can't tell but it drops reallyyyyyy far down):


This little girl would laugh and I thought she was really creepy:






Some falcon thing that would fly on command:





Beautiful ceiling:








So that was great fun! Saturday morning we received a call from Tarryn that her son didn't have the Swine Flu--it was a false alarm! So off we went! Tarryn is Donovan's friend from school in South Africa. Here is her and her husband, Bruce. They have two adorable children---Keegan and Shayla.



We had a plan to go to a fancy new restaurant in the town near them and were all going to dress in black and pink posh...just for fun! Apparently, this town is a little bit crazy and all the people dress up all the time...we saw a bunch of funny costumed people walking by and Tarynn said that someone last week at the restaurant dressed up as a boob. Yes, that's right...a boob! We met up with their friends Simon and Micky and had a great evening!

Us hot tubbing at night:


Out to dinner:


Black and pink posh:


Tomorrow we are off again to Torquay--staying at a Bed & Breakfast. According to facebook status' today, it was a beautiful day in NJ! Enjoy! Write again soon! Cheers!

Hellfire, tattoos, and clowns = the perfect weekend!

Well it has been an interesting week! Donovan got a sty in his eye and it got so huge and swollen but thankfully it has gone down!

On Friday we went to the Hell Fire Caves! (most of these next paragraphs are taken off the Internet) These caves were extended in the 1740’s by the infamous Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the notorious Hellfire Club. His aim was to provide an extraordinary addition to his landscape gardens, no doubt inspired by his Grand Tours of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Many of his fellow dilettantes were building great Estates and landscaping gardens and temples above ground but no others dared venture underground in this way. The chalk was used to build the main road from West Wycombe to High Wycombe (where we live). This also provided employment to the Villagers of West Wycombe following a succession of harvest failures. The achievement is a true feat of engineering and quite remarkable considering they were all dug by hand. You can still see the individual pick axe marks on the walls.
On his return from his travels Sir Francis established the famous Hell-fire Club which subsequently held chapter meetings in the Caves and whose members included Lord Sandwich, John Wilkes and other senior aristocrats and statesmen. Sir Francis later became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Benjamin Franklin was a close friend and visited West Wycombe often. During the secret Hell-fire Club meetings a lot of sh** went down! The "ladies", who attended the meetings, usually wore masks in order to remain anonymous, and with a badge with the words “Love and Friendship”. They had to be of a “cheerful, lively disposition to improve the general hilarity”. Often the "ladies" wore Nun outfits so no one would know who they were.

Here are some pics:

The church:


The hallways:


Freaky little children in the caves:


Ghostssss oooo shining faceeee (Dad)



That is Sir Dashwood's house:


The view from the mosoleum:


Entrance to Hell Fire caves:


Inside of the mosoleum:


The mosoleum:


Check out Sir William Stanhope! He was a member ;-)



The "meetings":


The River Styx:


This video is taken in the center of the cave which has a really high ceiling and where you can actually hold your own dinner party! This is located right under either the church or the mosoleum--I forget!


They caught a Donovan!


The outside of the caves:


Yummy milk shakes...I had the Homer Simpson one obvi--it was cookie dough flavor! Yummy!


What a great day! That evening, Donovan's friend Adam came in from London. We had chicken quesadillas for dinner and just had a nice evening watching DVDs and chilling out. The next morning, Donovan got a tattoo! It's a tattoo on his bicep of his fathers name, date of birth, and date of decease. Here are some pics:

Oww!



Donovan getting his 5th tattoo!!!





Eeek! I got a little light headed so I had to sit down. Guess my parents can relax that I'll never get a tattoo...

Anyway, on Saturday I worked at the pub for 8 hours. Adam stayed over again that night and we drove him to the train station this morning. Today we went to the circus! It was a last minute decision and I guess it was fate because when the clown needed to pick someone to throw knives at...out of the whole audience...guess who he picked?! You guessed it---Donovan! Now, it was not allowed to take picture or videos there but I snuck a few anyway...they are pretty crappy but hopefully you can get sort of an idea... (Donovan is the one in the white shirt and shorts...err...the one handcuffed to the white board...)









LOL! Donovan heard the lady who was assisting the clown say, "Could we have chosen a bigger gentleman?!" For those who don't know, Donovan is 6 ft 4.5 in (can't forget the half!). I think the boards where the knives were thrown were supposed to be on either side of his head...not his neck!

Well, that's all for now! I'll blog again soon! Cheers!