This is just too funny
So I ran into this today and it's way too funny, I had to put it up here. This is for all the John Mayer fans...
but I dunno if the video is gonna work so I'll put the link up too...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Z40m2d4UQ
As promised...
MORE LONDON PHOTOS! YAY! I realize it's a little late but better late than never, right?
Chillin' at the piano bar. Henry, Nicole, Bri, me
The girlies
My buddy Bazz
Rocky Horror... we agreed to be silly yet I was the only one to do it...
Mind the gap
We're going to Hogwarts!
Abbey Road, I'm John. it didn't work out so amazingly well but ya know, Henry did almost lose his life for this photo.
New Year's morning Krispy Kremes, anyone?
The Travel Bookstore, was looking at Bri's camera
Whoopsiedaisy! I realize this doesn't look a thing like the gate in the movie but it's one of those private parks in Notting Hill... close enough.
Ok this isn't being nice and won't let me write below the photo. So this is the whole crew: Nicole, Me, Niha, Henry and Bri. Right after Rocky Horror
Where's Waldo, Musical Style
So this is what I do when I am bored in Belgium... I felt like writing something but couldn't think of how to start, so I texted some friends to get ideas, they had some good ones but they didn't really strike my fancy. So I was listening to my iPod and it hit me: shuffle, first 20 band names, one story. So that is what I did. It's a little depressing actually but it's just what came out thanks to one of the band names. I only cheated once tho, I mean Saosin, gimme a break. I dunno, try to get all 20, I dare you. Some are obvious, some aren't.
The leaves had already changed colors on that day in early November. Jimmy was attending a funeral for a friend. Well, actually, she had been more than a friend.
He stood in his brand new suit and tie, the color maroon #5, according to the saleswoman, but honestly, he didn't care. They had been together ince they were in diapers, she was the girl next door. A matchbook and Barbie romance.
He knew acceptance would come soon enough, but he didn't want it to. They had been partying in the city and she was too drunk to drive home. So he paid for a taxi for his cutie. Little did he know that the cab would crash and lead to her death. His muse, queen, punk rock princess was dead because of him. He didn't want to be rescued.
He looked at the painting of the lady of peace, felt anything but that. In his mind, the memories just rolled through: dressing up as pink spiders for Halloween when they were only seven, seeing her calm his nerves on the starting line of his first track meet, the summer that Uncle Dave shot himselft with a rocket firework, or when someone pulled the fire alarm at the disco, everyone panicked except them, they stayed to dance in the rain. It was like they had a soundtrack to life in Motion City.
He would never forget the time in fifth grade, she made a giant cake of the world for Earth Day. He was in a bad mood because he got a yellow card in his soccer game earlier and had to take it out on someone. Then he saw the cake that she tried to hide, but it was really in plain view. He ended up eating a good part of it before she walked in on him.
Then he stared at nothing in particular but somewhere in the general direction of the fray on the bottom of his pants, already. He thought about the job offer that Something Conglomorate Partners Crap. He had been thinking about taking it so he could make a life for them but now he realized that the last thing she would have wanted was for him to sell out. It was then that he started to feel better. Or maybe he was just numb.
So that's about it, i threw in some song title too. That's about it.
Whoops
Sorry it's been a while, I've been trying to keep myself busy. So, thing are still going great with the new host family, not much has changed there, but I have been a little down lately.
All my Aussies left us a while ago. It really sucked cuz they were pretty much some of my best friends, especially after the London trip, where I was surrounded by them all the time for 5 days. So they left last Friday and they had super early morning flight and so a bunch of us pulled an all-nighter at the airport Thursday night. It was actually a really fun night until that fateful part where we actually had to say goodbye. In case anyone was wondering, yes I am planning a full continent trip of Australia sometime soon.
School has just been school although today I did go to a play, if you wanna call it that. It was really... odd. There were two people in the entire play and it was about a breakdancer... normally breakdancing is fun to watch but it was a little bit weird cuz sometimes they'd have slow music and I dunno, it was just weird.
There are THREE concert coming up and I'm so excited! First is +44, which after blink-182 broke up and Tom created Angels and Airwaves, Mark and Travis made +44. So that should be really fun. Next is a local festival some of my Belges invited me to and none of us know any of the bands but hey, it's a concert. Then there's Ok Go, and I'm really excited about that one. If you don't know who they are, think the band that dances on tredmills. If you still don't know who they are, go to
www.youtube.com and search OK Go and watch the video that comes up cuz it's pretty darn cool.
But I have a French test to study for, so I'll be heading out.
Bisous,
Chelsea
The new fam
Well, I changed families on Sunday, I wsn't exactly sure how I felt about that... but I think I'm gonna be just fine in this family. My parents are Benoit and Pascale Denis and living here there are two kids, a 16 year old girl named Perrine and a 13 year old boy named Clement. I won't lie, when I heard there was a 16 year old girl, I was a little nervous about that but she seems really cool and I think we'll get along just fine, probably even more than fine. And Clement is probably the coolest little guy ever, besides Brayden that is.
It really reminds me of home here, they have a dog, whose name I forgot but he completely reminds me of Jack. He's fat and black and lazy and he sleeps all the tme. Ringing any bells? And the house is full of Diet Coke, almost as much as at home. They also have the first three seasons of Gilmore Girls on DVD and I'm pretty excited about that.
Both of my parents work, my host dad is a landscaper and my host mom is an elementary school teacher in Brussels. Their daughter Larissa is in Argentina on her exchange. So now for the really good news, I have a full bed, my own bathroom, my own floor and CARPET!! So pretty much in Belgium, carpet doesn't exist or smething? I dunno but I got really excited to see that I do in fact, have carpet!
Yesterday, my first day here, we had a family event because it was the 10 year anniversary of the death of Pascale's mother. there was a mass at her father's house ad I met a bunch of the family. I guess every Sunday everyone goes to the Grandpa's house to eat dinner. And one ofmy host cousins i actually really good friends with one of my exchange student friends, Marissa. Everything is going great so far, getting to school isn't even as bad as I thought it would be. I just walk about 5 mintues to the train station then take a train to another train. I was imagining a lot worse. And some other really great news, I am now in KeyCard range of Brussels! For those of you who have no idea what that means, which is pretty much all of you I think, a KeyCard is a little train pass of 10 trips for 15 Euros, so I can get to school, Wavre and Brussels with it and that means lots of money saved on transportation! Yes!
Here is my new address,
Ru e Lauwers 13
1310 La Hulpe, Belguim
That's about it for now,
Bisous,
Chelsea
Ok I changed my mind...
I had nothing to do today so I decided to put up some of the pictures, still waiting on some other ones from Henry but I'll get those up soon. :)
My first view of the city, the train station is just around the corner.
My new boyfriend
No, this is not London Bridge, this is Tower Bridge, I was mistaken too. :)
An attempt at taking a picture of the fireworks... didn't work out amazingly well.
Obvious...
Dirty, dirty tourists...
Dirty, dirty, dirty tourists...
London Called...
And I picked up the phone.
So, London trip from the 29-3. AMAZING. That trip was probably the funniest of my life. The first day, I arrived 5 hours earlier than Nic and Bri because if I took that one I would save 40 euros. I got there at 1130 and check in wasn't until 2 in the afternoon. I ended up carting around my huge suitcase for a couple of hours. I thought London would be like Brussels how the metro stops are only like 2 blocks away and I could walk to the hostel from the train station because I had five hours to waste. So I start walking and I figured I'd just find a metro station and go from there. So I start walking and I got amazingly lost and asked for directions and this guy was like "That isn't doable on foot." So I caught the closest tube and it ended up taking me 20 minutes on the tube. London is not a walking city, unfortunately i learned that the hard way.
Nic happened to have some friends, Henry and Brendon, from Australia who live in Belgium and we went to visit them at work in a pub. We hung out with them until about midnight then went back to the hostel.
The next day we got up and headed to Oxford Street for a little shopping, ate some Subway and went to the British Musuem. It was really cool but we were a little tired and it made our brains hurt so we stayed for about two and a half hours then left. Then we met up with Henry and Bren again and went out for asian food. Henry also happens to be a musician and works in a piano bar. His boss, Bazz, is in love with him so we just walked in and then he heard my name. Chelsea Bentley. He just happens to love the Chelsea soccer team and Bentleys. He then decided to give us drinks for half price. We stayed there until about 0130 then caught a night bus back to the hostel. Or so we thought. We asked the bus driver to drop us off at the Stamford Brook station because that's where our hostel is. Appearantly the Stamford Brook bus station and the Stamford Brook tube station are two completely different things. We thought we had just gotten off the bus too early so we started walking in the general direction the bus went. We walked for about 15 minutes, realized we had no idea where we were and then we just happened to come across our number bus sitting on the side of the road. I knocked on the door and asked him for directions to the station and he just told us to get on and he'd drive us right there. We pretty much had a private chauffeur, he didn't even make us pay.
We had to wake up too early the next morning because we wanted to catch a free walking tour of London at 11. We got lost again, missed the tour but did one ourselves of pretty much the same thing. We did the walking thing pretty much all day then we picked up Niha and went over to another place some other exchange students were staying to have burritos. We chilled there until about 9 then went out to the center to see the fireworks. We were on some bridge, and this old guy next to us really liked us so he gave us free party sausages and drinks. That was fun. The fireworks were beautiful, some bisous were given and that was about it for that. All public transportation that night was free but there were SO MANY PEOPLE. It took us about an hour to get probably 100 yards to get into the tube station. It was pretty much a mosh pit only no music and not AS MUCH pushing. We told Henry we'd meet him at the piano bar so we finally got there around 3 and he was playing. We stayed until 6 and then went back to the hostel and passed out.
Me and Bri woke up around 12 and couldn't go back to sleep so we met up with Henry while Nic and Niha slept. We were starving and happened to walk by Harrod's, which happens to have Krispy Kremes. We got some of those and hats and decided to wear them around all day. We started walking around and Henry was all "Hey, we're right by Notting Hill" and Bri wanted to find the house with the blue door but they've repainted it because they were getting too many tourists. So we were just walking down Portebello Road and honestly it was kinda boring. We stopped at a random street corner and were about to turn around and I was just like "Wait. A. Minute." Just around the corner, The Travel Bookshop. Yes, THE Travel Bookshop. I was so excited. We got pictures in our Krispy Kreme hats and it was pretty fun. Then we were just walking around and we found the "oopsie daisy gate." Got a picture there too, just for mom. Ok maybe Bailey too. Then in all honesty we forgot about our hats then some guy came up to us and was like "Where did you get Krispy Kremes?!" and we were kinda like how did he know? are we carrying a bag or something??
Quiet dinner and night at the hostel that night, went to bed early. It was pretty nice.
The next morning we decided we were going to go to a West End show. We went to the ticket box office with hopes of Spamalot or Avenue Q but neither of them were playing that night. So we decided the Rocky Horror Show because it was a little cheaper than Phantom or Les Mis and I had always heard about it but pretty much had no idea what it was so I just went along. During the day we went to Abbey Road. I was elated. We got a picture of the four girls walking across. Then we went to Platform 9 3/4 too. Elated again. Then we went to Camden Markets, which is pretty much the punk/indie rock capital of the world. That was so fun. After all that we headed to the show. All I have to say is WOW. I really had no clue what it was about but now... just WOW. And that's all I have to say about that.
After the show we were too tired to do anything really, except there was a fair in Leicster Square (or however you spell it) and everyone minus Bri decided to go on this huge ride. We got to the top and had the best view of London and it was amazing. Then we went flying and screamed our heads off. We went back to the hostel after that.
The last morning, we did pretty much nothing. The girls left earlier than I did so me and Henry hung out in a Starbucks for an hour and a half then I caught my train. So that's about it. Sorry there aren't any pictures yet, I'm about to change families and I don't wanna put them on the computer just to take them off tomorrow. I'll put them up asap. So pretty much a big shout out thanks to mom and dad for letting me go! It was amazing!
Bisous,
Chelsea
The girlies
