It's beginning To Look A lot Like ....Canada???

So... Im on duty. It's 2am.. I'm doing my "rounds" which I like to call my social outting around residence. I'm in the middle of being quite authoratative, telling some students to keep it down and go to bed. Suddenly from down the hall, a local resident by the name of Sully sprints down the hallway, yelling SNOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!! Sure enough there is a mad amount of snow outside. This is really strange... because, well generally it doesnt snow here. So, I embraced this little taste of Canada and ventured outside with about 30 other eager students and we had a huge snowball fight! So much for keeping people quiet...The fight lasted about an hour and a bit. The next morning I woke up and there wasn't a trace of the snow that had been there the previous nite. It was as though our little dance in the snow was simply a dream conjured up by our longing for a crisp, Canadian winter. That was touching.. wasn't it?

Freakin' Football Hooligans....

AMAZING!!!! Today I ventured to experience an authentic European Football match. It was even better than i expected. An experience that should NOT be missed in Europe. The match was between took place in Southampton (bout 2 hr drive) and they were facing Everton. The game was extremely intense with many scoring opportunities for both teams. Everton was the favorite but Southampton really dominated the game.

It looked like a sure victory for Southampton, but during injury time Everton brought the score to 2-2. Bollocks!

The chants!!! How fun was it to listen to thousands of grown men sing chants like "Oh when the Saints" (the southampon Saints) and "We Love you____" at the top of their lungs. What was possibly even more fun (and particularily more offensive) was listening to some of the ridiculous heckles coming from the guy behind me. I won't repeat them at this time. But I will say Ive never heard words like that yelled so loudly. Sheoooo. FOotball is life for so many of these people. It was crazy to watch the fans stand up and curse when they thought the ref made a bad call. There was one section of the stands that was blocked off for Everton fans only. (In the far corner of the stadium in picture... they wore mostly blue). It was crazy the amount of security that surrounded them!!! It is difficult to see from this picture, but all the stadium security people wore Orange Jackets and all the Policemen wore Bright Yellow jackets. So you can see them in a line right next to the Everton fans in case things get crazy. They didn't. Ah well. Maybe next time. At any rate, it was an amazing day and I am trying to plan another trip to a game with Timmy Jebb. THis time hopefully a Liverpool game.

Kayaking In February. Seems odd.

On saturday it was my co-worker Simon's Birthday (funny lookin british guy in the middle with hat). He is kind of an outdoorsy type, so he decided it would be a good idea to go kayaking on his birthday. He invited a bunch of his friends down. Bonnie, Trisha, Amanda, Ben and me. Even though we were in England where the grass is green in February, it was still freezing.

During our kayak on a nice little winding river through the English countryside, we saw lots of sheep and well.. more sheep. We did a few portages and at one point, rested our kayaks on the edge of a steep hill on the bank of the river and slid down the hill into the river! Great fun! Simon got his birthday present when he tipped himself into the water and lost a sandel.. And geeeeeezzzz was it cold. That evening, a big group of us returned to the castle and had a nice little dinner with some wine. IT was really good to hang out with some crew that were not from the castle and a bunch of them were Canadian too. That evening we ended up at Atlnatis which is a club at the end of a pier in Eastbourne (bout 20 minutes away). A good fun nite of dancing and chilling away from the isolation of the castle!