I'm Back

Hi (:

So I’m back from Spain. I’ve been back for a few days, but I’ve been busy unpacking, working and trying to get my head in gear for the coming new school year-my last ever!

Morira, which is where my family go in Spain just seems to get more and more lovely every year. It has enough of a tourist industry for people to understand slightly bad Spanish, but it isn’t like you can’t move for English people. I got a little sad on our last night, as next year we’re planning a holiday somewhere else, and I realised that the chances of me coming back to a place I’ve been going to since I was six were getting smaller.

My AS-Level results weren’t quite what I wanted them to be, but I think if the same happens next year I would make the (hypothetical) offers of the university’s I’m looking at as insurance choices, which is still good.

I read all bar one of the books I mentioned here, I’m still on the go with The Lacuna, but I’m really enjoying it so far. So over the next couple of days I’ll tap up some reviews of them for you. As a warning, they’ll probably be brief as I forgot to make notes on them when I was reading, and a couple of the books remain in Spain.

Edinburgh

(My friend & the view from near the art galleries)

On Tuesday, my Religious Studies class went to London to attend the Global Student Forum on education and poverty.

My Religious Studies class...minus me and my friend (and also the lone male student, but he's never in lessons anyway). I'm not going to get into my teeny-tiny rant about the unfairness of the situation as it was based on drawing names out of a hat, due to the lack of places. Although there were enough places for the Year 13 girls (including my RS teacher's daughter), who took part last year, to go. And they went to the House of Commons. Which would not at all have been interesting to a possible politics undergraduate.

But anyway.

We got this really good deal on East Coast Mainline that meant we could go anyone on the line for £18 return. So, as we're pretty seasoned London vistors, we decided to go as far North as possible-ending up in Edinburgh.

I love Edinburgh. It's a city that is easy to walk around. It's beautiful in the Old and New Towns. And the people are so welcoming.

The New Town is really nicely laid out-you have Princes Street running straight down (for what seems like forever) where you have the high street shops including Zara, Topshop, H&M, HMV and Urban Outfitters. This trip was the first time I'd been into an UO as well, the shops are beautiful.

Behind Princes Street is George Street-being crossed through the middle by Rose Street (made up of bars and restuarants)-where hotels, and the more upmarket shops are. Oh, and Paperchase.

The trip along Princes Street ended with me owning two new Zara tops (I adore that shop), a dress from New Look and a pair of socks from Topshop (because to be honest, none of the stuff in there is really grabbing me at the moment).

We then headed to a very nice Pizza Hut for lunch, having already got coffee from Costa. I loved the Hut there, it was long and a lot more intimate feeling to the ones where I live. See also Costa, which was up a flight of stairs, meaning you could see Edinburgh Castle from the window.



George Street took us past Jack Wills (which I adore, but is stupidly overpriced) and into Paperchase, where we both bought new pencil cases. I'm a bit of a stationary geek and could spend hours in there.

We then crossed the bridge through the park to the Old Town, where we went up to the Royal Mile and got iced drinks from this cafe called Chocolate Soup (due to the failure of Starbucks to have anywhere to sit). I had an iced coffee, which filled me up fine, but they had some amazing looking cakes.

Edinburgh is a truly beautiful city, that I would love to visit more (if rail fares weren't so expensive normally).

This Week

Wednesday

This, my dear friends, is London School of Economics & Political Sciences (phew) library. Isn't it amazing!? I didn't manage to see it in person on Wednesday, due to timing etc, but it's pretty darn impressive in picture form. LSE itself was pretty darn impressive, I attended talks on Government (which is so-called as the founders intended the course to be for people that want to govern) and Social Policy (which was fascinating), as well as one on applying (75% academic and 25% extra-curricular information in your personal statement).
I really loved the place. It's in pretty much central London, you can walk to Covent Garden. It's near some of the most presitigious law firms in London, as well as being in easy reach of the City and of Westminster, with internships avaliable for all of those places. It has it's very own Waterstones [where I bought The Master & Margarita], and the accomodation I saw in Holborn was suprisingly big-but expensive.
LSE isn't my favourite course wise, but it was a great place, and the fact the lecturers kept stressing the academic quality of it didn't bother me so much-my school spends a lot of time reminding us how academic they are (I should be writing my English coursework now, but hey). I sort of felt like I'd fit in there...Next up is Warwick on the 8th May and Birmingham on the 25th June.

Thursday

I was hoping to get hold of one of my friends' huge collection of photos (which featured London Tourist, Policeman-Holding-Machine-Gun, London Business Man, BBC Man), but she hasn't uploaded them as of yet. So this is stolen from Google-but it has the right weather...
We went off to a French Conference in a church (for some reason) in London, very very close to Westminster. Lots of very important (and some handsome) suited guys walking around-using free newspapers as umbrellas. Ate too much chocolate. Learnt how to play 21 (the serious way) and Irish Snap on the train. Was served by a very pierced barista in Cafe Nero. Came to the conclusion that London is more fun with friends.
I don't really remember much from the French conference, apart from the fact that French music is awful and French men are really exuberant. Oh, and private-schooled London teenagers are brilliant at French.

Tonight? I'll be spend time with my Mum, popcorn, Ben & Jerry's and the first disc of the first series of The West Wing.
Weekend? Extended Project presentation and English coursework on Hamlet and Duchess of Malfi