Sicky Mcsickerson

me in Stanmer Park
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This past week has been rather laid back, and I can't say much has happened. I was sick for the first 5 days of the week. Food poisoning and flu--all at the same time. Needless to say, it was a rough week. I was supposed to go to Lewes, a town right outside Brighton that houses charming streets and an old castle, on Saturday, but I got food poisoning the night before, so, I wasn't up to going there. I spent the whole day in my bedroom with the blinds shut watching 24 episodes and drinking sprite and other liquids. Not a fun day. Sunday was more of the same because I was still reeling from the flu and such. Monday I went back to classes. It seems from a comment on Maddie's blog that some people a.k.a. Neill Osika believe that my blogs are 90 percent bar stories and 10 percent school ones. Thus, in order to increase the school percentage, I will talk about my time in class. I had one class on Monday--history of magic and superstition--which is a horrible class. I rarely take notes because to be honest, I can never understand what the point of the lecture is nor the main topics. The professor reads right off a piece of paper for the entire lecture, so I usually just doze off or daydream. As one can see, my school stories are sorely lacking. :-P. After class, I believe I came back and didn't do much of anything. I was still sick and pretty exhausted, so I think I spent the rest of the day relaxing.

the rolling hills in the park were GORGEOUS
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Tuesday is my longest day of classes--11-6. I had history of English society in the morning from 11-12, which was very uneventful. I am not a fan of the professor in that class because she is quite technologically challenged. She doesn't respond to emails and when she does, she responds answering NONE of the questions that I had asked in my previous FIVE emails I've sent her over the last month or so. Needless to say, I do not show up to her class often. After that class, I usually go to Bramber house to the cafe there to have lunch with Greg, a friend I met the first day I was here and who is also in a course with me. Our lunches are usually really good--we just talk about what each other has been up to over the weekend as well as commiserate on how crappy the education is at Sussex. A good time is had by all :). After lunch, he and I head to our lecture for our witches and jews course. That lecture is usually unbearably boring and silly. This lecture was even WORSE because my history of English society professor--the tech challenged one--was doing the lecture. Here at Sussex, a lot of first year courses have multiple lecturers used so as to give the first years a wide grasp of the different professors at the university. Thus, we never get the same lecturer that often for this course. I took notes, though, this time, because she was using powerpoint and all the notes were written out for me.

There were cows grazing and horses being ridden, and lots of people out walking their dogs and kids flying kites. It was my idea of a perfect day.

haha, yup, I took a picture of a cow.
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After that lecture, Greg and I parted ways, and I headed to the computer lab to spend two hours doing nothing until my next class at 4. I had to do an image search for my next class, however. My professor was asking everyone to bring in two images of witches for discussion. So, that took about 5 minutes of my life to do. Then, I spent the rest of the time writing emails, facebooking everyone, etc. Juliet was also in the computer lab too. She had been working on some ridiculously hard homework that she had to turn in early since she was spending the week in London. I talked with her for a bit and helped her work out the printers. Then, she headed out, and I went to my seminar. The seminar was a waste of my time. My professor for that course--magic and superstition--is what I would call a classic, bumbling fool. He rarely gets any of the jokes and snide remarks people make to him and under their breath. He also never seems to have any idea of what's going on technologically either. He can't work a simple webbrowser nor does he understand anything you try to tell him when you attempt to explain how to use the computers. In other words, I do not like him. And stupidly, he told all of us in passing that his lecture is not compulsory for the course. Thus, we all know that I will probably not be attending it anymore. I don't really need to, to be honest. I have to write a paper for that course, but I can get all my information from the readings and other books. One of my friends is in that class too, and she never goes either.

flowers for you, Dad. Love you and miss you!
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So, anyways, after class that day, Amy (my friend from that class) and I rode the bus back home. I was going to go out that night to Event II, the local trashy night club on the sea front, but I decided against it because I wanted to be well for the rest of the week, and I was still getting over the flu and such. I spent my Tuesday night in just relaxing again. On Wednesday, I went to Celia and Rays for lunch and to do my laundry. While my laundry was going, Celia and i decided to head to the house where my dad and she used to live with their parents. It was a really cute house on Manor Close. Celia told me all these wonderful stories about how she and my dad used to ride their bikes through the alleyway chasing each other, and the stories of my dad coming home from university to visit on his little three wheeler car. I can just imagine him on that piece of junk, haha. I took a couple pictures of it on my aunt's camera, so when those are developed I'll put them up here.  After doing that, Celia and I headed back to her flat to have dinner. After dinner, I headed back to my place for an anti-Valentine's day movie marathon with a friend. We watched all three of the Evil Dead films, drank, and ate lots of ridiculously unhealthy munchies. After the movies were over, Carl stopped by, and he and I watched Swingers. By that time, it was 3am, but I ended up staying up another 4 hours talking online with Danny. We had this really intense conversation, but despite how serious the convo was, I felt closer to him and like I had a great friend to confide in.

the old church in Stanmer Park
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Finally, at 7am, I passed out. I only slept about 5 hours, though, because I had to go to campus the next morning to meet up with a professor. This professor, the technologically challenged one, had her office hours from 2-3 that day, so I met up with her for about 5 minutes to get an answer to a question that she could have easily answered in an email. This woman just keeps getting better. However, after that ridiculous meeting, the day got much better. Celia and Ray were on campus too, and were waiting for me, so we decided to go to Stanmer Park, the park right next to campus. We had brought daffodils with us, my father's favorite flower, to lay down somewhere in the park. He and his family used to caravanning and picnicking in this park before, so we felt it was appropriate to leave something there for him on the 3 year anniversary of his passing. We walked around the park, and it was truly gorgeous. It was beautiful and sunny out, so the weather was perfect and so was the park. The park had beautiful rolling hills and gorgeous countryside with an old house, church, and farm towards the back of the park. There were cows grazing and horses being ridden, and lots of people out walking their dogs and kids flying kites. It was my idea of a perfect day.

pushing Ray in the pond in the park
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Celia, Ray, and I walked towards the old house and church at the back of the park. Along the way we took pictures and when we got to the church we laid the flowers down in front of a beautiful tree. I think my dad would have appreciated the sentiment. Afterwards, we stopped at a small cafe in the park to get drinks and some chips. Then we walked back and we headed our seperate ways. I went to the computer lab to kill time until 6 when there was a British food evening being put on for the international students. At 6, I headed to the meeting house on campus. I was supposed to be doing it with Chris, but Chris had headed to London for the night, so he had given his ticket to his French roommate Fabian. So, Fabian and I ended up eating with a few other people--Becky (a Spaniard from Madrid), Francesca (German), Tom (Thai), and some other French girls. I ate two different types of British plates (Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and a Fisherman's pie)--both were pretty good. Then, for dessert I had bread and butter pudding and a rhubarb crumble with custard.

After dinner, I headed back to Holland House. Rich stopped by my room for a bit to say hi and see how my day was, then Urvi, Ryan, his friend (also from UofM), and I went out to Santa Fe to get a drink. It was nice just sitting down and drinking a cocktail and enjoying each other's company. However, Urvi was being very pushy because we had to get to Casablanca before 11 in order to get in free. Urvi drives me insane sometimes. She's very immature and can't do ANYTHING on her own despite the fact that she's 20 years old. If you don't want to do something that she wants to do, she begs and pleads with you until you can't do anything BUT what she wants to do. Needless to say, we, of course, got to Casablanca on time and got in for free. However, I left a half hour later because I realized that the DJ plays the same exact music every Thursday and in the SAME order. It was boring. So, at 12:30 I went home and got on the phone with mom and had a great conversation about dad. I finally fell asleep at 2am.

Today, I got up really really late, which was nice. I went to Celias for dinner, and after dinner, we headed to my cousin Anthony's. He and his wife Dawn had invited us over for drinks and snacks. It was a really lovely time. We drank wine and snacked on crisps and talked about everything ranging from global warming to how much we hate some computer graphics in movies these days. It was absolutely a fascinating and wonderful evening. Granted, I had to ward off my cousin Anthony's attacks on Americans throughout the night, but it's okay, I had a good retort for everything such as "oh, well, at least we won our freedom from, who again? oh yeah, THE BRITISH." It was all in good fun, though. :). Oh, and they have such a lovely, cozy, house situated amongst the downs. I think I've mentioned it before in one of my blogs. However, the inside of the place is really well decorated and quite gorgeous, I would say. All in all, it was a very nice evening. I got home tonight around 10:30 or so, and Rich came by my room for a bit to talk before he headed to bed.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go to Lewes for a couple hours. If not, I'll definitely be heading to campus to do research for a presentation I have next Tuesday as well as the three papers I have due in two and a half weeks. Till the next time I write, safe travels, everyone! :)