Yay for nouns. And so I introduce Froadac's nountacular blog. Brought to you by Torte's Birthday
England. I am going to England in just over a week. :DDDD Although the leadup to that is less spectacular.
So my mom has long been saying that we need to have one last big family vacation. My mom has been looking on various travel sites.
As a bit of background my mom goes berserk in regards to vacations. We can never do anything that is relaxing. It's always GOGOGOGOGO to see as many museums and landmarks as possible. She gets all stressed out, and the entire family is suicidal by the end. And I've seen 36 states this way. Although I've only been to Canada. So I just finished Spanish this year. I really DETESTED it. Do I care about spanish people for the most part? No. Will it be useful? Probably. Is French a hell of a lot easier and more fun than Spanish? yeah. So I was bitter over that. So I recommended "hey, why don't we go to mexico. My mom attacked me like somehow I had a deathwish. Although there has been a significant amount of border violence, in 5 years only two tourists were killed, nad that was because they basically went into the biggest drug town in Mexico.
Second plan: Travelocity, Kayak, etc. I really do want to go to Asia. We were looking. Turns out you can get round trip tickets to Korea for 800 USD per person. Japan for 900, China for like 920.
And then it turns out I have a Chinese friend who we could go with. They would take us around, because their family is boring.
Same thing with Korean friend. And I was like Korea
And guess what the parent said. So my mom said you need to come up with an itinerary. So I talked to my friend, and we came up with some activities. I'll actually post the itinerary in the future, it is quite interesting, but that's not the point. In any case, my mom said no. But then I needed to have surgery. So we assumed it would be next summer. but then PT made my pain decrease, and the possibility of me missing school was too high, so I put it off until next summer. And i had already committed to stuff for MUN. So we changed dates around, and I reintroduced Korea/China. And this time around my mom was like
1) Language is too hard 2) Don't trust your friends 3) Fuck asians, I'm an AmeriCAN (alright, not entirely, but there was an undertone in that direction)
So then I said why don't we do like New Mexico/Texas, and stop back at Disneyland. AT THE SAME TIME AS MLG MWAHAHA. Uh, they didn't buy that.
So they were looking on lastminutetravel, and found some deals to London. And I found some deals to Spain/Korea/Chicago. But they had stupid shitty feeds, so it doubled the prices. But my mom was fixated on London. She said she was open, but actions said otherwise. She booked some trip to London, and it's right over MLG. Now she's freaking out cause we don't have much time to plan. We're spending one week london Area, and one week Either France, Ireland, or Scotland. We're doing wales in the London time. Any UKers have advice?
But NO MLG (
Independence: I have been feeling pretty down lately. My mom keeps on saying I'm not responsible enough to do anything, but i'm taking on responsibilities at school, and in volunteer work. She's not realliy letting me leave the house, except to go to the library. Can't go to a friends unless their parent is home. Can't get a drivers license :/
I"ve been trying to do all the stupid stuff she says, but even doing that she doesn't seem to be willing to bestow more responsibilities, whatever she defines those as :/
Any advice?
RANDOM INTERLUDE ALERT:
Shopping: just thought of it
I went clothes shopping today. I would like a semi-formal sweater. No local clothing stores cary one thoug hcause it's out of season. Trying to figure out style/where to get it. Any ideas?
Hmmm, I wonder which tl.net shirt I should get. I'm running low on good shirts. I might get both the horse one and the always epic ESPORTS power one. if I get that hopefully it will be on time so that I can wear it to the UK, and hopefully attract the attention of a random tl.net netizen.
Internet; For some reason I had a 3.5 second ping today. Played ladder games, lost ling/bling stuff because of it. I can't pinpoint the cause. I'm switching to Sonic.net but they use approximately the same infrastructure as AT&T so I hope it works out. Basically the bandwidth was fine but the ping was HORRENDOUS. :/ Should switching to an ISP that still uses the CO fix some of these problems?
Korean: After watching a bit of Destiny's stream today, and learning of his wish to learn Korean, and talking to various others I figured there should be some sort of central thread in Community, an initiative of sorts. I've been working on the OP, and after I get a bit more help from some native speakers it will be up. Hopefully it can be a centralized place for discussion, questions, and keep random isolated questions out of general.
I will also try to announce something in that post that may or may not come into fruition. Ala Incontrol
If you're in London then you can be in Edinburgh in an hour by plane and come visit me By train it takes 4-5 hours.
If you wanna go to France you can take the Eurostar from London and be in Paris in two and a half hours.
Going to Ireland you can fly which will take 2-3 hours or so or you can take a ferry but you'll have to take a train/bus to the west coast I think, that could take a while all combined.
Personally I'd say go with either France or Scotland but I've never been to Ireland so can't really help you with that one.
And yeah, what sixfour said, will make travelling around London a lot easier and cheaper.
Also though, with a short time to plan, if you need to get extra visas or something to visit Ireland/France then Scotland will be a lot less hassle since it's part of the UK so you don't have to leave the country.
I haven't been to the UK but I can tell you from experience that Ireland is one of the most beautiful and nicest places you can go to in the world. First the scenery is amazing, I can't actually recall where exactly in Ireland I was, but I just remember us driving along the side of a cliff that went down to one of the most beautiful stretches of greenery and water I've ever seen. (though it was frightening as anything at the same time, if you do go know that the roads are tiny and driving on the wrong side doesn't help) And second the people there were so naturally nice, it was unbelievable, I've traveled a decent amount and nowhere I've been have the people been just so accommodating and friendly as Ireland.
If you want to get anywhere in london, learn to love the tube, stuff is too widely spaced out for walking, car and taxis are madness, you'll spend all day in traffic, cycling is okay in some places, if you go up river to places like Richmond there are nice places to eat out, and the largest area of green space in London.
Museums that I would recomend: V&A (Victoria and Albert museum) This one will be more popular with the ladies of your group, since its more a museum of aesthetics, it even had a tiny corner dedicated to Korean culture. Its also much less (still quite) busy than the museum of natural history. Museum of natural history Pretty fucking rad if you are into pre-history. Might be less busy if the Darwin exhibition has finished. Imperial war museum I used to be a massive fan of this when I was a kid, lots and lots of tanks, airplanes etc but the appeal of a temple to warmongering has lessened somewhat. Science museum This has some really cool exhibits. Royal of academy of arts Unappreciated, nice if you like arts muesums. British Museum The museum for history, been running 257 years, quite controversial.
I think all of these museums have free entry. Southbank by the river is generally pretty nice.
London is expensive as hell, but the museums are free for the most part and very good if you like that sort of thing. If you go to a show/sports event, buy the tickets directly from the venue, never from an agent. Go to Oxford for a day trip. Try and get to other parts of London other than right in the centre, like Brick Lane markets, Angel etc. Go on the Millieneum wheel, it's cool. Go on a boat trip down the Thames, its also cool.
Dublin and Paris are both nice places to visit. There are some things to do in Edinbugh, and nice countryside in Scotland, but for the most part it's a shit-pit, like most of the North.
It really depends if you want to be city based or you want to travel into the countryside. There are a lot of places to visit in the UK and Ireland if you like the outdoors and nature. Like the west coast of Ireland is nice, and Devon and Cornwall are nice places as well.