"Him asking you out again is like when the internet isn't connecting, but you keep hitting the 'Try Again' button anyway."

 

 Sorry for my lack of posts... again, I state that there is nothing going on. I mean NOTHING. I sit, watch stuff on youtube, hang out with Katie, eat pixie sticks, go to youth group once a week, occasionally go to the grocery store with my parents to get out of the house. There is my life right there. 

Actually, I did go to a youth retreat thing yesterday. It was at a park, so I'm now coated in bug bites and have a bit of sunburn. Overall, though, it was a good time. I brought Katie along, because her life seems to be just about as eventful as mine. Everybody walked out to the boardwalk, stayed there for a while, played capture the flag(they put me and Katie on the same team, automatically dooming us), barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers on the barbecues in the park with the gas provided, a walk up to the observation deck, and Zech making sure everybody was six inches apart. The latter lead to many group hugs. 

School is in *drumroll* nine days including today. Strangely enough, I don't think I'm going to have a mental breakdown about summer ending like I did last year, right on Sam's couch. About two weeks ago, I ran out of things to do. I think that I can only handle another week of this. 

Love,

-J-

"It smells funny in here." "Sorry."

I guess this is what summer is about; doing nothing. I have nothing to document except that I went blueberry picking today, with who other than lovely Andrea? I was definitely an interesting group to go blueberry picking with, consisting of my mom, Andrea's mom, Andrea, her two sisters, my brother, and me. There was a lot of screaming about spiders and worms, etc. It was a good time.

This entire evening has felt like some sort of screwed up deja vu from this time last year. I don't know why, but I definitely appreciate that it is no longer this time last year, because I was really different and insecure. Hopefully I don't fall back into my old ways.

Now seems like a good time to write a list of what I learned this year:
1. Being self conscious doesn't get you very far.
2. Confidence (but not too much) does get you far.
3. Stepping out of your comfort zone can be good.
4. What people think of you is their problem, not your's.
5. Procrastinating holds people back in life.
6. If you want money, getting a job is a good idea (take note, me)
7. Friends are the ones who stick with you no matter what.
8. If people tell you that you're judgmental, chances are they're a hypocrite. 
9. Coffee and a lot of candy at once is not a good idea, because you will crash terribly later.
10. No matter what happens, some people will not let the past go.
11. Under no circumstances slap somebody when they upset you.
12. If you think you're a big deal, you're probably not.
13. I like pretty much everything British. Their accents, the awesome city of London, Doctor Who, movies that aren't Hollywood, and random sitcoms, thanks to week I spent at my grandparents' house.
14. The future is so far away. Wait, I have three years until I graduate. And then, I have no clue. Should work on that.
15. Somebody with Alzheimer's should not be in charge of feeding a pet. Or say hi to your hippo, which used to be a cat.
16. Sad enough, doing nerdy things is sometimes worth it so there's something to talk about with some people.
17. Don't eat the open chips in the church cupboard. Seriously, just don't.
18. For a month long trip, a big suitcase, carry on suitcase, and a backpack is far too much luggage for one person.
19. Reality TV is getting going downhill rapidly.
20. When I'm sick, I tend to do irrational things like watch chick flicks and Gossip Girl.
21. Stoners will roll on the floor laughing when you fall off your chair in class.
22. Canada is sleepy. And there's no chance of being carjacked. 
23. Family gatherings will never stop being awkward for me.
24. Being friends with guys is almost drama free, unless your friends are dating them.
25. Being awkward in public places is my calling in life.
26.There are some people who you will never get along with, even though everybody else does.
27. Life tosses you strange situations... deal with it.
28. Hating people gets you nowhere. Tactfully avoiding works much better.
29. Standing in a crowd next to a friend who just screamed,"YEAH! I'm gonna get laid!" makes you wish you weren't present at that particular moment.
30. But loving your friends is still necessary, no matter how strange they are.
31. If I ever lean my seat back all the way on airplanes, I feel like I'm invading people's personal space.
32. Condescending eccentric people cause the world suffering.
33. Keeping in contact with old friends is the only way you'll stay friends.
34. I won't take your crap.
35. I hate hearing people being made fun of. Unless they deserve it... ex: Justin Bieber, people who are doing pathetic things in a drug addled state.
36. If you hurt my friend, I plot your demise.
37. Don't live your life as a wannabe.
38. When your friend's mom has a hilarious slip of tongue, try your best not to be the first to laugh. 
39. Sometimes, people are scared to do petty things, so you have to do it for them.
40. Be happy with your life, and don't wish for something else. Do the best with what you have.
Love,
-J-

When a disco ball has a wig and 3-D glasses on, I couldn't resist naming him.

So, eight days without my wise words... how tragic.

First of all, this is pretty much all that's happened as far as room redecoration so far:

It's a TARDIS. Hopefully I can make some more lovely art pieces for my walls eventually. This week I was pretty busy with VBS(Vacation Bible School).

About VBS: Moriah, Andrea and I were the photography/music helper team. We basically walked around took pictures, helped out in the music workshop when we were needed, and ate snacks out of paper cups. I think that I'll have VBS songs stuck in my head for the rest of the summer, including the actions.

I seem to be condensing everything today.

Today I went to Andrea's house for a barbecue for her birthday with her family and stuff. It was a good time. Andrea sang romantic songs to a caterpillar. For some reason, we then waxed each other's legs because Costco is stupid and makes you buy three boxes of wax at a time, which makes you feel entitled to use it all. My legs are now patchy, but no longer look like they have super chicken pox. I WILL NEVER WAX MY LEGS AGAIN. Seriously, it causes much pain.

I have decided that RJ creeps me out. Just saying. I think I may just follow up on his request to add him on facebook so I can hate him after being slightly better informed on him.
Love,
-J-

You know your cool when you come up with plans to purposely creep people out on facebook.

I made it home, believe it or not. After, on Thursday, having our flight from Heathrow delayed from 11am to 3:30pm, having our other flight from Iceland delayed for two hours because of that delay. At the Iceland airport, three late flights had come in at the same time and the airport must have not been expecting more flights. It was pretty much closed down, except for a little cafeteria style place that made up a ton of fries and ham sandwiches and then left. However, it did have more space displaying beer than food. Our flight left, I fell asleep, woke up, read(currently reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), fell asleep again, woke up and finally we landed, got through customs, got our luggage, and drove back in our van Grammie and Grampie brought to the airport. By the time we got to their house, it was around 12:30am, and I just kind of collapsed and got back up in the morning.

Getting home was nice in the afternoon. I managed to unpack in about 20 minutes, using the lovely system of piles... clean clothes, dirty clothes, and everything else. I spent about an hour cleaning my room and writing down ways to make it better. A while ago, I seem to have had a desire to make everything in my room dreadfully tacky, and now's the time to help it recover from that. I may as well organize a bit while I'm at it and get rid of some crap I don't need*coughcoughTWILIGHT*. I'm trying to figure out what I have that I don't want and could sell on ebay, and hopefully my Twilight books fall into that category. I paid a lot for those in this stupid brainwashing culture.

I spent yesterday evening hanging out with Katie. 'Twas fun. We'll probably make some videos soon, so look for links.
Love,
-J-

"What's the protocol for if you look like your passport picture while traveling?"

(I wrote this yesterday morning, and in my slightly confused state I didn't post it, but left it open.)

So, here I am at 6am, sorting my pictures. Since I've taken the pictures off my camera a grand total of two times this entire trip, so they are really disorganized. I'll try to pick out some of the better ones and put them in my posts. Since I'm still in London, I guess I'll post one of London today. Other days it'll probably be a random, completely irrelevant pic.

My videos are something to be organized at another time. I have something like 40 videos that I have no idea what to do with, from reading weird signs to parts of the three hour church service.

Plans for today: Eating breakfast, catching the tube around 9 or 10ish to the airport(always a joy with luggage and a mother with a fear of crowds), then our plane is leaving at around 1pm. Around three hours until we get to Iceland, a three hour layover, and a four hour flight to Halifax. Grammie and Grampie are picking us up at the airport and we're staying their house for the night.

Oh, and yesterday, I don't believe I wrote about yesterday, yet. We got day passes for the tube and traveled around to the London Eye(see pic), where I realized that I do, indeed, have a fear of heights, but only over water. Nothing other than that worth documenting really happened there. Then we took the tube to the Science Museum, but stopped at Subway again for lunch. Subway didn't have any seating, so we walked in the rain until we found a building with capable bench like objects in the front. The Science Museum was kind of boring, but eventually I just started reading little descriptions of things, and that amused me enough. We only saw the ground floor and a bit of the second floor. I do believe their were four floors we didn't even touch. After that we went back to the hotel. For supper, we ate at Nando's, this really awesome chicken place that I didn't realize they had in Kenya, also (yeah, so I find out now.) They had bottomless frozen yogurt machine and Dad had lots of pocket change he was trying to get rid of, so that worked out well :)

I must go take a shower.
-J-

After blowing African dust out of my computer, it finally isn't threatening to melt on me.

Ok, I have some corrections for my last post, just because I don't feel like figuring out how to edit the post again. I got up a quarter to 6, not quarter to five, and my computer was still set to Nairobi time, so it was actually 10pm here, not 2am.

Yesterday, we ate breakfast at the hotel, and for some reason, mine never came. I asked three times, and they still didn't bring my breakfast. At moments like this I start to feel really self conscious, like "Are you trying to tell me something?". The same thing happened at Sarit Center where they gave me a diet coke instead of a regular one. I think I'm just a bit touchy on the subject. 

Well, back to yesterday. We walked to Westminster Abbey and paid the large amount to get in because, what can I say, we're tourists. It was pretty awesome, and I have to say that I liked the architecture the best. But being surrounded by royal/famous dead people was, as it sounds, kind of creepy. I accidentally made a comment (pr, accidentally said outloud) about how I wouldn't want to be there during a zombie apocalypse, and my parents gave me dirty looks simultaneously. Smooth going, me. They gave us these audio guide things that looked kind of like cell phones, and you hold it to your ear to hear electronic sounding voices telling you about the different parts of the Abbey. Because everybody was listening to these, the place was really quiet.  

Next, we walked to the gates of Buckingham Palace, more or less to say we did, and it wasn't that far down the road. There were lots of tourists, and it really wasn't that exciting. Actually, the gates are pretty cool and golden. The palace is kind of a large, tan colored block with windows. After just being in Westminster Abbey, it really didn't seem like much.

We had lunch at the oh-so-exciting Subway. I drank a cup and a half of fountain coke with little ice cubes and ate a chicken sub. And that is the extent of excitingness of my lunch.

After that, we walked to the London Eye because, I'll say it again, we're tourists. We looked at the line ups to (a) the ticket office and (b) the line to get on, and we figured that we really weren't that determined to get on. We are going on this morning, I believe.

For the rest of the afternoon, nothing happened. We took the tube back to the hotel because at this point, we had been walking for five hours, and our feet were really sore. I spent the afternoon wasting my time on youtube. That's what I do when I get fast, free internet.

Hopefully they aren't opposed to letting me have breakfast today.
-J-

What is love? I think brownies, personally.

Now, after getting up at quarter to five this morning and sitting on a plane for nine hours, I got to London. I've gone through the Heathrow airport a bunch of times, but we've never actually made it out of the airport. So here I am, for a whole three nights. We got in at around 4pm, took the tube to the centralish area(really have no idea what to call it...) The train had to stop twice for a lengthy amount of time because somebody pulled the emergency thingy on one of the other trains. We made it to the hotel we're staying at and ate pizza around 8pm for supper. It's now... 12:12. Which, to me, should feel like 2am. I don't care. But I am slightly tired, and the thought of relatively fast, free internet was too much for me to stay away from. More tomorrow, hopefully.
-J-