i love the smell of it...

It's Spring!! I love this season partly because of the fact that it's a happy medium. Being the winter child that I am, I can't do the depressing weather story for longer than is good for my mental health. Cuddling, fireplaces and reading can only continue for so long.
The the flowers come out - yay! - and then everything smells amazing and the sun shines softly and the world just looks like such a pretty place to be. You want to go outside barefoot and bush dive (Rhodents do this a lot - we kinda just dive straight into them [slightly inebriated, of course] and pray for the lack of thorns) and spend the day reading and tanning in the sun. We did this last week Monday. Kinda just took the day off and basked in all the glory of the majestic sunshine and became browner than before and went back to res a lot sleepier than before.. Was such a beautiful day!
Yesterday, our residence (which is soon to be named Rosa Parks house) had our Spring Day Fun Day. All the usual: apple bobbing, 3-legged races, sack races, egg spoon races, water-balloons by the ton and blind man's bluff. I was the one in our group who had to do the apple bobbing because I was the only one who hadn't just had their hair relaxed or had a weave. So I had to shove my face into a bowl of warm, still runny jelly and get the 3 apples in it, out and then run to my team mate who was waiting with a plate to receive my apples. Tons of fun, but my face didn't like it too much. Had such fun. Our entertainment rep who organised the day wanted to know why we must always be so politically correct, but in her rush, she instead asked us why we had to be so "politically ERECT". Entertainment rep indeed. :)

So this week is the last one of term and then we have a ridiculously short holiday of 10 or 11 days and then it's back to the grindstone - seriously!! I have 7 major things due in the first 3 weeks of being back as well as our Hall Ball and in order to complete one of those things I need to read a book. The 14th of October might not survive what I'm going to do once I hand in my last task. It really might not. And then it will be onto studying for exams like a mental person. Sheesh.... This is me, not thinking about it..

Just thought I'd share a song with you.. Think it's such a sexy song, however corny it may be, it still rocks. And I think Rob Thomas has definitely become nicer over age, like red wine or whatever it is.

It's quite old, but don't judge mkaay?? We all have random, old songs that we secretly dance in our underwear to.. At least I hope that we all do, otherwise I'm alone in the gyrating in your underwear phenomenon.

And let me also just point out how amazing Riverdance music is?? (can you tell that my media player is on shuffle?) Especially Reel Around the Sun, with the noise of the tap-dancers' feet in the background.

Ok, so I am going to allow myself a little bit of venting space here, forgive me. Telkom is the absolute worst service provider in the history of service providers!! Haven't been able to Skype my boyfriend since Friday afternoon which is terrible because we usually Skype twice a day and by the time the phone lines began working again today, I had started suffering from withdrawal symptoms!! Missed his face so much, but this weekend I will be back with him again and happier than a kid at Christmas.

For now though I must go and work my fingers off again and recover from this weekend..
Peace...

Long time, no see!

So exams went by, and then holidays started and then those went by and now I'm back at university for term 3. Sheesh this year is moving way too fast!
Much like my previous lengthy break from blogging, I thought a million times "Oooh I should put that on my blog!", but, as before, I can remember none of it. Fail.
Recent thoughts though:

I have come to the stage of my life (or it might be just a phase) in which all I want to do is, (well only after travelling) find myself a nice job in a nice place and move into a really nice house or start building one with the man I marry and be able to count on having someone at home when I get there and then tell him how my day was and you know, just lead the simple life. It sounds so boring, but for me, that sounds like heaven because I know who it will be with and he alone embodies paradise for me. Anyway, I was telling someone this the other day and she basically told me that I was a disgrace to women and Feminism and for a second there I felt like I was, just a little bit. But then I realised that that's not what it's about. Feminism is about the power of choice. It isn't about women getting out of the home and destroying a stereotype, it's about giving women the choice to do that. If they want to stay at home and bring up children or if they want to go out and be powerful businesswomen or public figures should be their choice. It's all about being able to choose and the more people I told this, the weirder the looks I received became. Now I'm really just a bit baffled because I'm pretty frikken certain that forcing women out of the home does not amount to freedom. Hopefully it's just the noobs that I spoke to that have this view on Feminism and women.

AMAZING song that I rediscovered this vac though is It's All Your Fault by Pink. I love this chick. And if you merely read the words, it won't be good enough. Download the song or something.

I conjure up the thought of being gone
But I'd probably even do that wrong
I try to think about which way
Would I be able to and would I be afraid

Cause oh I'm bleeding out inside
Oh I don't even mind (Yeah)

It's all your fault
You called me beautiful
You turned me out
And now I can't turn back
I hold my breath
Because you were perfect
But I'm running out of air
And it's not fair

Da da dada da dada da
Da dadadadadada da dadadadadada

I'm trying to figure out what else to say
To make you turn around and come back this way

I feel like we could be really awesome together
So make up your mind cause it's now or never (oh)

It's all your fault
You called me beautiful
You turned me out
And now I can't turn back
I hold my breath
Because you were perfect
But I'm running out of air
And it's not fair

I would never pull the trigger
But I've cried wolf a thousand times
I wish you could
Feel as bad as I do
I have lost my mind

It's all your fault
You called me beautiful
You turned me out
And now I can't turn back
I hold my breath

Because you were perfect
But I'm running out of air

And it's not fair

(Oh yeah
It's all your fault)

I hold my breath
Because you were perfect
But I'm running out of air
And it's not fair

Such an awesome song, beat, words and all.

So I do this thing, that if there's something on my mind, I write about it. Sometimes a poem comes out and sometimes random thoughts and stories come out. But then there are the things that I'm scared to write about in case I jinx it. And eventually I work up the guts to just do it. And falling in love is one of these times. And so I wrote about it after about 6 six months of being with the greatest guy to ever grace me with his presence.

Roll over,
Reach out my hand.
Touch your imaginary face.
You're there.
I see you.
I feel nothing.
Forever near me,
Forever beside me.
You are the one
Who I feel is
With me all the time,
All the places.
Never there,
But ever near.
My world,
Your world,
No dividing line,
No marked conclusion
To either or.
You are I
and I am you.

                                              -by me

Giving you the power to destroy me
Is what I was destined to do.
Your mystery eludes me,
Angry me, lover me, you and me.
Becoming myself with you,
What else could I be expected to do?
Your heart, my heart:
Darling, you must learn to share.
Taking is sharing,
Sharing is taking,
So take and share.
Trust - I know what you could do to me,
But you don't.
Trust, deceit?
My world on a silver platter
While sparks fly high above
Your head, my head,
On a silver platter.
Why don't you break it?
Why don't you destroy me?

                        -by me

Valleys, mountains
Canyons, hills, cliffs.
An adventure of
Wonder, celebration.
No dry, baron flatland
Can compete.
You mark my landscape
On your intrepid adventures;
discovering, uncovering and worshipping.
Adorning every new discovery
With you love, your heart, your eyes.
My landscape thrives for you
My mountains remain ever fast, evergreen
While you love remains everlasting.
Explore me, intrepid adventurer,
until familiarity becomes familiar.
                              -by me

So damn good to be so in love with such an amazing person.

Marise (a girl on my corridor) made my day today. I love the song Little Lion Man from Mumford and Sons and she had it as her status on Facebook, so I comment and say "Play it LOUD, I wanna hear it too!" About ten minutes later, I hear this little speaker right outside my half open door playing Little Lion Man. That pretty much made my day :).

Getting back here yesterday, I traversed around the res to say hello to everyone and later on that night Tiff came back and of course the dear sweet girl hadn't taken her calm down pills and she was hyper as ever!! But she gave me the prettiest earrings ever!! And Belgium chocolate in the shape of a cellphone. After I had devoured like 2 kgs of chocolate at Jarrod's sister's wedding. So my body is not very happy with me, especially after coming back to this shitty food we get.. Cotch face.

C'est la vie...

So i had a really good weekend at home. Nadine couldn't come in the end but I enjoyed it none the less. Had my mom with me the whole time and had the best cooking in the world, which made me the happiest person alive!

Got back on Sunday afternoon. Later that night at 11:30, our warden (Sandra) starts knocking on everyone's doors telling us that there is an emergency meeting in the common room. The hall warden (Dr Gambiza) is here and he wants to give us some news. Now you can imagine how peeved we all were at being woken up or having our studying interrupted at 11:30 on a Sunday night. What could be this important, really?? So we get to the common room and everyone is speculating as to why we were there. All the sub-wardens and Sandra had to stand there and listen to us speculate and laugh while they knew what was going on. The Dr arrived and told us he had bad news. I will never forget what he said. "One of us has been killed." He said "Anja" but nobody knew who that was because she never called herself that. When he said her surname we all knew it was the beautiful, sweet, amazing Ajaya (AJ). She stayed two doors down from me and everytime I walk out of my room now all I can see are flowers outside of her door.

She had gone to Port Alfred with her friends and had left as I arrived back from home. I walked in as she walked out and I still said goodbye to her and told her to have a great time and thought how brave she was to wear shorts 'cause it was still kinda cold. On the way back on Sunday night the bakkie they were in rolled because the driver tried to overtake on a road that should not even exist it's so bad. I get scared driving along that road in broad daylight with the most responsible of drivers. It's not a fun ride. And not a road anyone should be overtaking on. She didn't suffer though and although that sounds sick of me, it was one of the things that we were thinking about and were comforted to know that she didn't.

AJ never didn't have a smile on her face and I literally cannot recall seeing her face in a frown, ever. Not once in the short time that I knew her. You could be having the shittest day ever and just talking to her would cheer you up, even marginally, but generally exponentially. She was a ballroom dancer and did drama and had such amazing talent.

She was literally one of those people that could light up a room just by walking into it and smiling at everyone. When we heard the news we went to De Beers (our brother res) to break the news. It's amazing how amazing those guys are. We stood in their foyer talking for hours and we stood in a circle praying for AJ and her family. I remember thinking how lucky heaven was to have been given such a special angel that night.

I still can't believe she's gone, but everytime I walk out of my door I realise she is. Makes me want to tell all my loved ones how much I love them and cherish them and all the people I want to make peace with that I'm sorry or I don't care anymore if they're not sorry. I don't ever want to leave this earth with things unsaid.

This is gonna sound weird, but I've always had this thing, I don't know what to call it. A theory? That the shortest lives are the most brilliant. Everyone who I have known that has passed away far too soon have been amazing people that lived everyday until there was no more left in that day. Someone said to me on Sunday night, "The great die young" and it has some truth to it. It's as if all the greatness that could be achieved in an average lifetime has been squashed up and crammed into 20 years, making it even more great or awesome. If this isn't making any sense then I suppose it doesn't matter because it's making sense in my head.

We are having a candle vigil tonight for AJ at which there will be a book in which we can write a message about her, a memory, a poem, something for her family, anything we want and that book will go back home with her family, that way some part of her Rhodes family can go back with her and her family. And then tomorrow is her memorial service and we are going to release helium balloons into the sky with notes attached to them for AJ.

It's amazing how quickly the people in your res and dining hall become like your family. When I think about it, they literally do become that: your family away from home. I've only been here for half a year and I feel like that already. Wonder what the second years feel like by now.

Needless to say, I haven't been getting too much studying done, but I'm getting there. My first exam is English on Friday afternoon and then I have History on Saturday morning. Great stuff. Can't wait for Saturday afternoon!!! For some reason my hand is REALLY itchy so I'm going to stop typing now, but I shall be back soon.

And just in case anyone thought of forgetting: I love my boyfriend!!!!!!!!!

Home sweet home..

So I'm going home today!! Just for the weekend but I'm super excited nonetheless. I miss home like CRAZY and especially my mom. She's my bestest friend and my mommy all rolled into one. I know people think that you shouldn't be all buddy-buddy with your mom and you shouldn't exactly have your mom as your only friend but my mom is my most important friend for sure!!

Me and my mom on the night of my matric farewell

Anywho, home cooking, yay!! My mom is making beet stew for tonight!! My mouth is watering. Literally. The food we get here is really really below average and I've been sick twice from it. Actually if you count how long i was sick for it's like 5 times. Can not wait to have some real food for a change and not slop. Although some of the meals here are okay and we kinda look forward to them.

More great news, Nadine is coming tonight with her sister and another friend and we (the 4 of us) are sleeping in my room. Going to get interesting. Hehe. Haven't seen that child since like February and I think I might crush her when I see her! Going to be a goooood night :P.. Meh, this blogspot story really needs emoticons!!

Anyway I must go and pack and then pretend like I'm studying really hard!!
Oh, and today you must do the following people: listen to Adele's Somebody like you. Just do it. And then watch Pink's Perfect music video. 'Til the end. The end makes it just that special. I want that. And I think I have that. Or I at least have the promise of having that. Watch it on YouTube and make sure it's the legit version ie. the version uploaded by Pink's VEVO account. Kay? Got it? Good. Go.

Why so seriousssss??

Because I need to be serious now, God dammit!!

I took Monday off just because I felt like I couldn't study (which probably would've failed if I had tried) and then on Monday night I was as sick as a dog about to die so yesterday I still felt like shit and didn't get a thing done either. NOW, it is time to put my head down and start working.. No excuses whatsoever. Haha, feels like I'm preaching to myself. Which I kinda am. OK, I'll stop now.

Last night we sat down at supper (at which point I was feeling a lot better) and I couldn't eat my food. I had beans and a wrap thing which tasted like dog food and I didn't want to eat it after my Monday night experience. So I nibbled at it and then my friend Tiff asked me if I wanted to go to 2 for 1 pizza night at Pirates (I think I have mentioned this place before) so we went to eat REAL food for a change. I love pizza!! Saved my ass from starvation. And i got a Pirates pizza box. They're really cool. It's a plain white box with this on it:

just without the red piece. So it's just the skull and swords and the banner. And about the third or fourth time you look at it, you'll realise something about the skull's eye sockets. Hint?

Raise your hand if you got it!! Hehe, I only realised that after like 3 months of staring at it. >.< Supposed to be all observant and stuff. Meh.

I NEED TO GO AND STUDY!!

Swot week...can you feel it??...it is here! -sigh-

What a great weekend!! Had such a good time in PE with my boyfriend and now I have to find a way to cope for 4 weeks without seeing him.. Think I shall be asking my friend who hasn't seen her boyfriend since FEBRUARY!!!! for advice. I do not know how she hasn't gone off of her rocker yet.

I drank way too much Red Bull on Saturday because they were giving them away at Jarrod's university at the box car race they were having. Bouncing off the walls second to none. And now I have a whole week of no lectures, no tutorials, nothing to do except study. All this free time we get given and they want me to study??? Why, oh, why am I being tortured like this.. DC (the file sharing program) is calling my name!! Just want to watch movies and enjoy this free time.. Hehe. So it's going to be interesting to see how i cope with this. Pretty sure I'll be fine, but I don't really trust myself. Haha, isn't that comforting???

Rhodes students are absolute tops at finding new ways to procrastinate and not study. Seemingly normal chores and things become tools of procrastination. Such as:

• doing your washing - great way to get a tiny bit of time out of studying to do something you "HAVE" to do.
• lunch and dinner in the dining hall - you can stop studying at 12 on the pretense that you're hungry, go to the dining hall and sit there until 1:30 or 2 drinking tea and chatting and generally just procrastinating
• cleaning your room - something we used to hate doing as kids, we know find joy in doing, especially in these tiny rooms. Your excuse could go something like this, "I just can't study in a room that's messy or has an unvacuumed floor or that stinks. But now that it's clean, I'll be able to st... Good God, look at how messy those shelves are!! They need to be repacked. I can't work like this!!"
• smoking - for those who smoke, this is a GREAT tool. We can't smoke in our rooms or on the balcony so we have to sit on the lawn in front of the res if we want to smoke. This results in sitting chatting outside and having like 3 cigarettes before you start feeling really guilty and go back inside to study but instead you land up on
• FACEBOOK!! - worst.tool.of.procrastination.ever.

So now that I've procrastinated for the past half hour or so, I am going to go and study! But first I must shower. and do my washing.. Hmm and I'm hungry ;)

Rain. Cold. Sick.

I HATE BEING SICK!!

I'm a winter person and I love the cold but my tonsils are the size of golf balls and I feel like I'm swallowing shrapnel. Every time I need to swallow I tilt my head back and hope that going "Gggghhhuuuurrrrchhha" will magically make the spit go down. Sorry, that's gross, but I'm desperate and now I've got a headache. And I'm supposed to be going to PE to my boyfriend this weekend (if my lift pulls through) and I don't want to be sick!!!!

AAAAAAHHHH!! Thank god I have Sarika. My neighbour over the road (corridor). She is going to town today and is gonna buy me something for my throat :D!!! I love that kid right now. And now I have to go and mission around in this weather too with 2 large lumps in my throat. Joy.

Yesterday I decided to take a "personal afternoon" meaning I skipped 2 (unimportant) lectures and stayed in res after I had come up for lunch. I must've been in res for 15 minutes and the power goes out. While I'm trying to pee. So my plans to finish up on my tutorial work and then watch movies for the whole afternoon went to pot. I slept. From 14:30 until 17:30. The power came back on during that time abut then it went back off after ten minutes. So I woke up and we went to dinner and while we are sitting in the dining hall eating supper, the power goes out. Now one of 3 things can happen in a pitch dark dining hall full of students while it's PISSING with rain outside.

1. Everyone would start stealing food and condiments.
2. We would all just be so unimpressed by the afternoon's shenanigans that we would leave and order Steers.
3. People would start throwing food around.

If you guessed the second one, you'd be wrong. If you guessed only the first or the third you'd be wrong because they started doing both 1 and 3. I got a piece of potato bake flung into my face and about 5 peas to the head, my friend had chocolate mousse in his juice (yes, students were wasting the pudding that we get once a week that you would think is gold when we see it) and my other friend had a pea in his mousse. I would hate to have seen the hall when the lights came back on. All the butter would've been missing and there would be food EVERYWHERE!! So we got back to res and decided that there was nothing we could do there seeing as even the emergency lights weren't working. So 5 of us went out for drinks. As we left the power came on and off about 5 times alternating with the emergency lights. We went to the only bar in town with a generator and power and had a drink there. Being the only customers there that were sober and under 30, we decided to leave ASAP and went to the Rat and Parrot (another watering hole in town) and they had the whole candlelight effort going on. Was really nice and we had another drink there. The power eventually came back on and so we came home because we had work to do.

The second and third years were telling us stories about how they generally have so many power cuts in weather like this during exams that they sometimes end up sitting in the corridors studying under the emergency lights (if they are wowking) with blankets and stuff. Hard times hey.

All in all, yesterday was a complete write off of a day and I feel like donkey's balls right now. Going to finish tying my work and then crash again until lunch.

Free Time...Whooot????

Got a bunch of free time on my hands and feeling guilty coz I'm not spending any of it on my blog.. Well, I should be spending it on studying, but hey. Really.

I will make time for this contraption in the very, VERY near future!! Promise.

Oh, watch No Strings Attached. SUCH a cute movie!! As if my advice isn't good enough, Ashton Kutcher stars in it. And he plays a romantic. Whoooot. Watch it.

Peace.