BUSY BUSY BUSY

And we have reached the end of my scheduled posts! I will try to write some blogs this weekend, but the next two weeks encompass an essay, the last couple weeks of class, and an eight-day internship. So I am in an office all day, and then catching up on school stuff in the evenings for the next couple of weeks, and won't have a ton of time! Plus I'm going to Beltane on Wednesday night!

But until then, have a couple of photos from my beach break xx

Sun & A Surprise Park

The week between London and Majorca was largely spent doing school work, interspersed with going to see Captain America The Winter Soldier for a second time with Keira (seriously, its so good), hanging out with Maya and Jordan having scrambled eggs and sparkling wine (a winning combination), getting bubble tea with some other pub people, reading in the sunshine outside Starbucks, and going for a wonderful walk.

(As I said to Shanni, my baristas know my name. They may not know how to spell my name, but they know my name).

I knew there was a rather large park about 10-15 min walk from my house, but the last time I was up there it was freezing and I didn't get far (the walk there was brisk enough, much less going up the hill). However, I really wanted to participate in the Art Assignment's fifth assignment, the quietest space, which challenged viewers to take a walk from their place of residence and find the quietest place. I figured that park would be my best bet, and headed up there. It was absolutely gorgeous out.

It was kind of amazing, because there were so many song birds around, and bees, and all these flowers blossoming… but there were also a ton of people out enjoying the sunshine as well, but there wasn’t any real people noise. Like me, everyone who was out seemed to be content to just wander along silently, soaking up the sunlight and the sounds of nature.

I took a bunch of videos on my phone, which I may edit into something at some point, and which you can really hear all the birds on. It was really funny, because I just kind of spontaneously decided to do this, I was up there in my jeans and nice shirt, converse, big purse... and I passed so many people wearing like, proper hiking clothes with water bottles and stuff. Which was mostly funny because I was like dude, if you think this is an actual hike and not just a nice walk up a hill, you really shouldn't ever go to Canada.

I also discovered a massive community garden that I didn't know existed, that looked rather like some strange shanty town. When I was up here in the winter I thought it was maybe some sort of science station, as there was no one there, but on this day there were loads of people in there working on their gardens.

Arthur's seat looks really intimidating in the distance... I still haven't gotten around to walking up there, but now that its nicer out, I will hopefully do that soon.

In other news, I did my nails for the beach yesterday, and had some trauma over the latest episode of game of thrones (don't scroll past the nail picture if you want to avoid spoilers). 

Connie was not helpful.

PARCEL

Awaiting me when I returned home from London was a lovely surprise - a parcel from Megan! This being the parcel that she first told me she was going to send to me in September... but hey, she sent it eventually :P

CANADA! My favourite place!

(chocolate bunnies)

And finally, her legendary copy of Good Omens, which has been lent to many a friend...

... and which she got signed by Neil himself! Unfortunately, I had at this point rather given up on ever receiving this particular copy of the book, and had already read it (however, I am sure I can bring myself to reread it).

Thanks again Megan! You are awesome :) 

Farewell to London Town

The last day in London was seriously gorgeous. I got to the book fair really early specifically so I could get one of the LBF's official totes before they ran out, but then didn't have anything to do until the one seminar I wanted to go to at one. Happily Laura and Rachel headed up to meet me. 

We went out for a really tasty brunch (I was hungry pretty much the entire time I was at the book fair - wandering around all day for like, seven days made me really hungry).

Then I went to this talk, which was pretty much my favourite of the conference. The twitter recap is, again, on my tumblr (bottom up for chronological order).

They had these big screens downstairs that were showing tweets about LBF - I didn't get a pic, but people kept coming up to me saying they had seen one of my tweets on these screens (in this pic you can see half a tweet mentioning me though - thanking me for live-tweeting the YA seminar).

Laura went to catch her train, but Jonny and Rachel both had time to kill, so we headed over to Hyde Park to enjoy the sunshine.

Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in London, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.

I noticed quite a few Muslim women around London this time - there were quite a few women out in burqas with their kids in the park. Part of the reason I love London is definitely its diversity - I feel at times that I have spend all my life moving from one majority-white place to another.

Such a nice day. We stopped and hung out on the grass for quite a while...

...before heading into Kensington in search for Frozen Yogurt.

Success!!

We then headed over to Berkeley Square in search of an art installation Connie had told me about called The Sun.

Dale Chihuly unveiled The Sun in London’s Berkeley Square to the world’s press on the 3 April 2014. The 5.5 Metre installation consists of 1,573 hand-blown glass elements, weighs 2,000 Kilos and is illuminated each night.

The Sun has been on view in many prestigious museums and gardens around the world including the New York Botanical Garden (2006), de Young Museum (2008), the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (2010) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art (2013).

It was very, very beautiful, and definitely worth the detour.

After that, we went to Starbucks for a bit, before splitting up for me to catch my train at seven.