And now what?: juni 2012

After having lived in Leeds for almost two years, I will be leaving next week. It’s so strange to have to move countries again. Especially since I will take a six week long stop in Oxford to work at an international language camp. After that I won’t be home for very long since I will start my Masters in Luxembourg in September. So basically I have to think ahead about my life in three stages; summer camp, home and then another move of countries. Since I have to take the train to Oxford and fly from there to the Netherlands, I have to reduce my possessions at every step. I can take as much as I can carry on the train (I predict the trip of hell) but I can only take 20 kilos of luggage and a carry-on on the plane with me. Jikes! So now I, queen of having too much stuff, have to cleanse majorly on the material field. I heard that it works very refreshing and liberating, but I mainly find it very tiring and sad till now. I will have to say goodbye to my lovely smoothie maker and printer and so many books and kitchen things. Not to mention all the clothes I cannot keep. The positive side it that I can restock about half of a charity store with the things I leave behind, so at least good things happen with my stuff.
Now I have to meet up with all my friends who are still in Leeds to see them one last time. MAJOR DISLIKE!

XOXO

My goal for maximum amount of luggage when traveling to Oxford

What I brought when I came to Leeds (only about 3 times as much as my goal..)

Good old Eddy B.

The Edge, representing many good hours of Zumba fun

During my city tour when I had just arrived (and it was sunny!)

My first accom in Leeds

Leeds in a pretty sky

At the end of May, me and my friend Jessica decided to meet up in Liverpool, rather than her coming to Leeds again. This meant that is was going to be a trip for me as well! And boy, how I love trips. We booked an absolutely lovely hostel where we had a two bed room with our own bathroom, kitchen and living room area. The only down side; it was not exactly in the city centre. This was absolutely fine when we were all rested at the start of the day, but it was a bit of a pain to walk back after walking around in the city all day. Luckily we had a great companion during out walks: the sun! Yes, I did get a tan in those four days.

We started of our first day with a hop on hop off tour to explore the city a bit. We got quite excited about the China Town part and got off the bus there during our second circle with the bus. So much for “town”. It was literally one street full of little Chinese shops that were not even open. Fail! The evening we spent eating, walking around the town centre and visiting the Cavern bar to see some random gig. By the time we had walked back to our hostel we could barely stand on our legs anymore so that night the only party we had was in our sweet, sweet dreams.

Second day was Beatles tour day. We went on the colorful Magical Mystery Tour bus to hear everything about the Beatles while cruising around the city. The stops they had promised us were only quick photo moments, which was a bit disappointing. Especially since we found out that Abbey Road was actually in London rather than Liverpool. We did get a nice shot of us next to the Penny Lane sign though! And I got one doing the Beto shuffle in front of a Zumba banner (YES!). Another highlight of that day was drinking coffee in the sun at Albert Dock while smelling the sea behind us. And this night we did go out. It was fun, but the best part was the way back, when we decided to have a jumping photo session in the street of our hostel. I hope nobody saw us…

Day three was museum and more Beatles day. The museum we went to in the morning seemed to have a bit too much staff. We had one glance at some shark teeth in a bottle and immediately got a mini private tour about sharks starting with: “If you are interested in sharks then…”. The poor guy clearly needs some explanation of facial expressions. After some more comments like that we decided it was time for us to leave so we went to the Beatles museum, where we got headphones and no staff approaching us about interests we did not have. Jessica got to take a picture on the (fake) Abbey Road zebra after all and we walked through the yellow submarine. We very much planned on going out again that night but somehow ended up taking several naps. Oops.

Last day was another museum slash lunch outside in the sun day. We discovered the untold story of the Titanic and found a remake of an English house during the war. On the walls were all kind of questions about life in such a house. According to the signs we would need to ask someone who works there for the answers. If only it was not a place without any staff at all. We ended the day with a nap in the sunny park before Jessica had to take the bus to the airport and I had to take the train back to Leeds. After this trip we agreed that Liverpool would be a quite lovely place to live, but that might have something to do with the fact that everything looks so much better when it’s covered in sunshine.