My weekend

Compared to the last two weekends, this weekend was pretty lame. But not in a bad way, just in a I didn't do really anything kind of way. Saturday was gorgeous out, but I didn't even leave my room till 3 in the afternoon, and only because Rob and Jamie invited me to get tea. So we went to Kaffechinos which is a locally owned coffee shop that has a lot of fair trade stuff. I ordered a hot chocolate with marshmallows, (Cadbury hot chocolate no less) and it was pretty delicious. After hanging out for awhile, I headed back home to meet up with Alissa.

Alissa made us tasty salads for dinner, and then we decided to check out the TV lounges. Neither one of us had been to a lounge in our building thus far, so it was an adventure! There is one close to Alissa's room with a pretty nice TV, but some guy was watching his DVD's on it, so we searched for another. We found one upstairs, unoccupied, so we settled in. I think we only get like 5 channels, but it was kind of nice to relax in there. One of the channels is MTV, and the rest are either BBC or other British channels. We kind of flipped around for awhile, until Sleepy Hollow came on, so we watched that. Meanwhile two guys wandered in to watch it with us.

Yesterday my plan was to wake up and tool around the city by myself. Turns out it was a very foul day. It was actually pretty warm, but it was "drizzling" randomly. I hate drizzling, and would much prefer rain because drizzling is like spit just floating around. It's not hard enough to really do anything, it's just an annoyance. So I met up with Alissa in front of the Baltic Contemporary Museum across the river Tyne in Gateshead. It was a lovely walk to and across the river. On Sundays, on the Newcastle side there is a market, which is why we met up, so we could check it out. There is a local cheese maker that was there, so we got to sample a few different kinds, which were all delicious. We picked up two kinds to take to Rob and Jamie's last night for dinner. We then stopped at the Co-op to get some groceries, and I pretty much blew all the money I had on toilet paper and food. Awesome.

When we got back to our building, we realized that there was a game in the stadium. We were pretty excited, and got back to Alissa's room (which faces the stadium) and opened the window to hear the cheers. We decided to take our tea to the TV lounge to watch the game, however unfortunately they weren't showing the Newcastle game on TV. But it was cool to hear the cheering, and we are planning on going to a game at some point, since it is right next door! And Newcastle is pretty big about football. On Saturdays and Sundays people (mostly men and boys) where the Newcastle jersey. Everyone is a fan.

Around 5 pm we headed towards Rob and Jamie's for dinner and games. They have a calling plan which enables them to call the US for free, but land lines only. They offered to let us use it anytime, so I figured I would try to get in touch with a couple people while I was there. I tried my dad, my mom and Noah's family. Nobody answered. I was a little bummed out, but not terribly disappointed. So Rob and Jamie just bought the Newcastle version of Monopoly, so we decided to play while our soup cooked. We had bread and cheese and apples to munch on while we waited. The rules are a little different in this version, but it was still basically Monopoly. When the soup was ready we ate, it was a delicious lentil, potato, carrot, chicken broth based soup with some Indian spices. I thoroughly enjoyed myself! We then continued to play, but the game kept going on forever! I decided to try to make a few more phone calls. I got in touch with my dad, which was good. I also got in touch with Noah and his family, so that was also good. I ended up winning the Monopoly game because I had so much money, so I hope that that bodes well for my future money matters that will be fixed this week!

And now I am off to spend the day catching up on my reading for class tomorrow. Luckily, it isn't that nice of a day out, so I won't feel guilty staying in to read!