pull your balls out of your purse and get on with it

greetings from canada!

i don't really know how to start this, so much has already happened! everything is so overwhelming, it's finally dawning on me that i am out here, on my own, having to find a job and somewhere to live! currently i'm staying the the samesun hostel in vancouver, i've never stayed in a hostel before so it was really quite strange!

if i'm honest it was a pretty rough night last night, i stupidly didn't think that i would get homesick but bloody hell, i am! i basically cried constantly haha. it doesn't mean i did sit with people and socialise though, i tried to laugh through the tears! i came on a group flight with other people from england and i've really got to know (well, as much as you can in two days) some of them + they've been great with me. a lot of them are post-grad, so like 21+ and all seem a lot more sorted than me! but actually, they've turned round and said that they are really impressed that i'm doing this as they couldn't of done anything like this when they were 18. them saying that mean a lot!

i'm so tired! not adjusting to the time change well at all. I tried to stay up last night but ended up falling asleep at about 7pm, then woke up at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep. i was feeling quite sad so went to get some change ($1 - loonies!|) to use the computers as i knew it would be empty. however what actually happened was that i went downstairs to seem them preparing the breakfast thing and ended up having 5.30am chats and jam toast with the hostel staff! some nutters are in this hostel i am telling you! a boy with us, call Will, well last night he got absolutely wasted (because like me he is 18, so daft) and ended up peeing himself in someone elses bed, then he peed on someones laptop. then got lairy and started on the hostel staff. i mean, you just couldn't make it up could you... absolutely hilarious. he got kicked out with all his stuff at like 4am, but lost all his stuff and spent the night wandering the streets of vancouver. got his stuff back this morning, luckily, but i mean, as if you would do that on your first night! :)

canada is so weird. for one thing, they don't include tax when you pay for things, so say if you buy something for $10 when you get to the counter you actually pay around $12.47 or some wierd number (and they are always wierd numbers) it's so stupid because you don't actually know the proper price of something! apparently it's so the shops can be showing you that it's the government that's making you pay that and not them, but it's just ridiculous.

also, everything in vancouver is so expensive! their mobiles networks are shit. you get paid to take an incoming call, no matter who it's from or where you are. and in the same way that if you rang a phone outside of the UK from the UK, you would be charged long-distance, they have that here but as with cities instead, so if you ring banff from vancouver you get charged loads.

AND AND AND the deals are awful! in the UK, for £10 i get unlimited texts and 300 minutes. here, for $19 you get 50 minutes and 50 texts. i actually almost had a tiff with the mobile lady cause i was whinging about how ridiculous it all was. i mean WHAAAAT.

anyway! i'm not homeless anymore! well, for two weeks anyway. currently i'm in vancouver but on saturday i'm going on a 14 hour bus journey to BANFFF! so excited. vancouver's nice and all but i'm not really big on cities, and i came to canada to live by a lake, so i think that might be a reason why i'm feeling quite sad at the moment. i'm going on my own though, so it's scariness once again!

tomorrow it's Chip's birthday, so tonight we're going out to celebrate! not sure how well that's gonna go tho as the age over here is 19 and i'm 18... think we're just going to bars though so i might be ok!

sorry about the mammoth post, i'm not expecting anyone to actually read all of this but if i'm honest i'm keeping this as a travel journal for myself!

speak soon, love!

i was here but now i'm gone

hello strangers! time has flown, the past week has been crazy. in three hours i begin my journey! i have to check in at heathrow at 10am tomorrow so tonight i'm staying at a hotel in london. while i'm away i'm going to try and post once a week, but i don't actually have guaranteed internet access as i'm not taking a laptop or anything, so we shall see how that goes! obviously the blog is going to shift it's focus, for seven months i'm just going to use it as a travel journel really so everyone back home knows what i'm doing :)

here's a few photos from the past couple of weeks:

While I'm away my brother will be staying in my room, and I'm not sure if my family will move or not so I decided to try and pack away my room - a decision which pretty much failed, apart from I took all the memories off my wall, which was actually a really sad occasion for me and now my room doesn't even look like mine. This is what it used to look like:



and now it looks like this:



the blue tack ball that came off the wall! :O

i'm leaving for london in two hours and i haven't even finished packing yet. i absolutely hate packing with a passion and i'm so worried that i've packed too little/packed too much, that i should've taken a rucksack instead of a suitcase etc etc...

i'm so excited don't get me wrong but ridiculously scared. i'm 18 years old and have never lived away from home and in two days i need to wash and cook and clean for myself. not to mention find my own accomodation and a job!

i wish i could write more really but i think i need to go finish packing... ARGGKAJDHAKDAKJ

part of me doesn't want to leave. i'm going to miss everyone so much.

speak soon, from canada!

ps: this is christmas monkey, he's coming with me. you'll be seeing a lot more of him :)

WAITING ON DOUBLES and maybe a blog post?

couple of photos from a disgraceful night in manchester with my work girlies last friday :) the black drink in the first picture is probably the strongest thing i've ever tried, it's a hungarian drink my friend reka brought along called 'unicum' (no laughing !) and apparently they drink it all the time, and enjoy it. eurg. these eastern europeans and their liver strength :) !

they gave me such a good send off - was slightly worse for wear the next morning but hey, seeing as soon i won't be able to drink legally anymore i may as well make the most of it!

had a horrible hung-over three hour journey to my dad's on saturday, i only got back this morning and i don't have easy internet access their as i don't have my own laptop so that's the reason for the lack of posts! well, along with the fact that I AM LEAVING THE COUNTRY IN ONE WEEK AND I AM FEELING VERY STRESSED ARGGGGKFHASKDNASKDANSJKS think i've settled on taking a backpack with me, although god knows how i am going to pack seven months into there. gargggg.

off to bed now to get up early and get to primark before the cream of manchester do and ruin the place ;) speak soon, love!



DIY ombre results

so last night i finally plucked up the courage to ombre my hair, and i'm so glad i did! i've never dyed my hair before and i was so nervous, sitting on my bathroom floor in a bin bag tentatively 'placing' the bleach on my hair (more like squirting it here there and everywhere, 'non-drip bottle' my arse). as you can see it hasn't gone really blonde, more strawberry blonde, but this was what i was expecting really seeing as my hair is quite dark to begin with. 

i did it twice; after the first time i really liked it but it was slightly darker than this, and i also didn't go as far up so it looked a bit funny. second time round i was a lot more confident and thought i'd put lots more bleach on but it turns out i hadn't, so it hasn't gone as light as i had hoped!

i think it's a bit dip dye at the moment, because i have layers and didn't seperately bleach them it isn't quite the 'grown out' look but i might get sophie to touch it up for me when she comes home before i leave (bleaching my hair twice in two weeks, hair please don't hate me!)

but anyway, what do you think? everyone says it, but honestly it was so easy, so if you're considering doing it... well stop considering and just do it! if anyone has any questions i'd be happy to (try) and answer them :)

speak soon, love

ps: if you look closely you can see the ear cuff i was talking about a while back in this post! i am so so happy with it!

movember metro moustaches

Inquisitive tash...

...friday-night-on-the-pull tash...

... and puzzled tash!



:) Did anyone else read todays metro? It was the cover competition winners edition and the very front one was about movember, an event that you now have most likely heard about as bloggers love it! it's basically an event that raises money and awareness for charities concerned with mens health, focusing on prostate cancer. the idea is that guys should 'start Movember 1st  clean shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month.  The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men'. Basically a bit of fun for a good cause! Anyway, the front cover contained about six different moustaches to cut out and wear, and seeing as i can't grow a real tash, i thought i'd wear these instead :) now i'm fuzz-free again i've stuck them on various inanimate objects in my rooms, a cause of much amusement for me whenever i catch it's eye/tash.

AND GUESS WHAT ELSE...

i finally plucked up the courage to buy bleach to ombre my hair! this was my second trip, the first time round i felt like such a melon stood in the hair dye aisle like WHAT ARE ALL THESE BOXES I DON'T UNDERSTANDDD and then i was also quite embarrassed by the funny looks i'm sure i was getting - i mean wouldn't you if there was a chinese girl with dark hair staring at the armful of blonde hair dyes she was trying to juggle? anyhoo, i've read the instructions, but so far that's it. maybe i'll have the guts to do it tomorrow!

until then, speak soon, love!

handmade by mae: cushions

remember that project i was working on that i mentioned maybe a few weeks back now? these are the results! i made two cushions for my best friend for her 19th birthday. she had wanted a union jack cushion for agesss but they are SO expensive and i didn't think any of them were quite good enough, so i made one myself :) and if you are wondering what 'toeb' is, well it's a code word between me and her, because we are like that ;D aha.

the fabric for the union jack one is from abakahns, a haberdashery in manchester, and both cushion pads and all the fabric from the 'toeb' cushion were sourced from ebay.

might sound like i'm tooting my own horn here but i'm really proud of these - i didn't want to give them away :) ! i have two cushion pads left so if i get any time in the next two weeks i might make some more. i'm thinking of making an exact duplicate of the union jack cushion EXCEPTTT abakhans has sold out of the duck blue spotty fabric, so i'm going to have to use lilac, ew.

i'm off to bury now for a contact lens appointment and hair dye! :O i know. i've never dyed my hair before, because i kinda like my natural colour and i don't want to wreck my hair. BUT i really want to ombre it, so i'm gonna have a go. as i'm a complete hair noob it's probably going to fail... i think next summer when i'm home i'll treat myself and get it done professionally and really beachy-style (or, i'm gonna be honest, i basically just want rumi's hair) but for now, budget DIY it is! wish me luck!

speak soon, love

problems with mae

so for anyone that might actually read this on a regular basis, you'll have noticed that i haven't posted for a looong time. and if you've just stumbled across this; well hello; i haven't posted for a looong time. (well apart from the long-needed warwick post below that i have just done (: !) i'm finding blogging a really drawn out and frustrating process at the moment which is why i'm not getting round to it - i really love posting itself and taking photos etc - the problem comes when trying to put the photos on the laptop! i've mentioned in the past i'm having storage trouble, and i still am. yesterday i spent like 2 hours transferring photos from here to my sisters laptop using a 512MB memory stick which was painful - and even then it didn't seem to make much difference! and then when i've FINALLY got them onto the laptop, it takes like ten minutes a photo to upload them to photobucket. my photo files are so huge and i don't know why - like anythin from 3MB to 7MB which i am sure is too big.

so to conclude, for the unforeseen future it's probable that i'll only be sporadically active on here. i'm leaving the country in less than three weeks anyway and i don't even know if i'm going to have internet over there, never mind have time to post! it's a sad day :'(

speak soon (ER PROBABLY SHOULD STOP PUTTING THIS AS I'M KINDA LYING), love



photo diary: warwick



i wish i went to warwick university. i miss my best friend.