Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I know Christmas was quite a few days ago, but I'm still going to wish everyone a Merry Christmas anyway (it's the holiday season, so it's fine). This Christmas was my first Christmas away from home and family and my usual traditions, so you would think that I might feel at least a little bit of homesickness... but no. Throughout this whole exchange, I haven't felt any homesickness whatsoever and I sort of feel guilty about it, but I'm just enjoying myself so much that I didn't think about all the Christmassy stuff I'm missing out on if I was with my parents. Don't get me wrong, I love my parents to bits- they are incredible people and I am so lucky to have them- but I had a great Christmas this year and didn't need them to make the day special.

I spent Christmas with my friend and their family and neighbours and we had an incredible meal. And because it has been quite warm for winter, we had lunch outside in the sun and then after the meal, we all went for a walk around the fields where they harvest oysters. And the night before, we also had a great dinner and exchanged gifts. And plus, I got to wear my Christmas jumper! My first ever Christmas jumper which I think is really exciting (it's dark blue and has gingerbread men holding candy canes on it).

Returning to the song of the day, which is Marina and the Diamond's cover of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and because her voice is just perfect in every single way, it sounds as if the song was written just for her to sing. It is, in my opinion, the best cover of this Christmas classic:

So I hope you all had an incredible Christmas and all living a blissful food coma like I am.

UK trips #6- going to France

Technically not a UK trip, but it certainly is a trip and I was departing from England, so I'm just going to make this count. So, as you can probably guess from the title, I am in FRANCE!!!!! Being on exchange and on the other side of the world, I was going to be away for Christmas, and part of me had this horror realisation that I was going to be alone during this celebration and probably find a packet turkey to microwave and eat alone and watch Christmas movies all day. But no! Because I have one of the most amazing human beings living with me, who is also on exchange and she invited me to spend the Christmas break with her and her family at her home in France. FRANCE! which I happily accepted. So on Sunday we took our flight (which was delayed by an hour, but that's okay because that meant I got to sleep for bit longer on the plane) from Gatwick to Bordeaux and then were greeted by her lovely parents and drove two hours to their hometown.

Anyway, so far:

Day #1
I slept in until 2pm and then my friend and I drove to the sea and walked for a bit before going to a cafe, where I had a delicious goats cheese with honey crepe and salad. We also got to see the sun setting over the beach which was so stunning. Unfortunately my camera doesn't show how vivid the colours were, but believe me, it was beautiful and so tranquil.

Day #2 
Slept in again until 2pm (oops) and my friend and I drove to Royan where we went to a cafe and got nutella hot chocolates, which we took away so we could walk along the sea while drinking them. We also walked around the Christmas market that was there and around the different streets until it was dark, when all the lights came on.

Day #3
My friend and their parents took me to the docks where they catch and harvest oysters, which I thought was really interesting because the majority of the people living in that area are in this profession. I know nothing about oysters, so today was quite enlightening. I feel bad that I don't actually like oysters, but for dinner we did have other seafood which was delicious. We had fish soup, shrimps and sea snail things that I've never had before but they were really nice.

And that's my adventures so far in France, but stay tuned, because there is more to come.

Afterglow

For the past couple of weeks, I've chosen very old songs to talk about in my posts. So today I feel like I need to mention more recent music, and when I mean recent, I mean that have been released within the past couple of years. Wilkinson's 'Afterglow' (released in 2013) was featured in his appearance at my current uni's club a couple months back, which was an extremely popular night. I have to be honest, I didn't know who Wilkinson was, but I do appreciate good music to dance to and this track certainly is great for that.

I'm a massive fan of dancing all night long and whenever the lights come up in a club and we have to all leave the dance floor, I actually feel my heart break a little inside because I just want to keep dancing. But just like the song suggests, "the night is young" because my friends and I will walk back home and even though we all have to go to bed, we somehow spend the next five hours hanging out in someones flat and eating food, playing games and chatting. So I guess that is our version of the "afterglow" and we end up staying awake until after the sun comes up. Because last week was the last week of classes for the semester before our Christmas break before exams, every night there was some kind of celebration, which meant a lot of late nights (eg. going to bed after 9am the following morning). On one occasion I cooked up a massive batch of pasta and improvised making sauce which was really delicious for my flat mates and I, because obviously having a complete dinner at 6am in the morning makes perfect sense.

But I love the lyrics of 'Afterglow' so much, even though you don't really notice them when you are in a club, but when you listen to the song in a completely different setting, you appreciate how much they capture the feelings of a night out. But it's definitely the beat and pace that gets you moving and full of energy.

UK trips #5- Oxford

On Saturday, a couple of my friends and I visited Oxford for the day and luckily it wasn't raining, so we had the opportunity to spend our time walking around the town and admiring the absolutely stunning architecture. We didn't go inside any of the buildings or colleges because we are poor uni students, but we really appreciated the outside. Two of us are Australian, so we got excited over every single landmark and took an excessive amount of photos, just wanting to capture the magical beauty of Oxford (no wonder a lot of Harry Potter was filmed there). Also, being a massive Lewis Carroll fan, it was especially exciting to be there.

The confit duck with roasted sweet potato

The money we saved from entering buildings, we spent on food. We found an old traditional English pub for lunch, where we had confit duck, which was delicious and a real treat, because duck isn't a common thing to eat. Inside the pub, there was wooden floors and a Christmas tree- that's another great thing about going to different places in the UK at this time of year, is the Christmas decorations that light up the streets and fill the shop windows. It makes everything seem so festive and you don't mind the fact that it gets dark by 4pm in the afternoon.

We also walked and saw the German Christmas stalls along one of the main streets, which looked really nice and smelt so good with the sausages cooking, roasted chestnuts and mulled wine and cider filling the air. We didn't get anything from there, but we went to another old fashioned pub and had scones with jam and cream and hot chocolate for afternoon tea, which was a really nice way to warm up after all of the walking we did.

Oxford is such a beautiful place, that it's so hard to decide which photo to use for this post, so after a lot of debating and consideration, I have decided to show this one:

Let's Misbehave

Let's Misbehave sounds like a dodgy title, but it's not a dodgy song at all. I'm sorry, but it's another old song this week. I don't know, I'm feeling nostalgic for the 1920's and 1930's- I swear, that if I had a past life, I was a party goer of that era. I honestly have no idea why, but every time I hear a song or watch something from that time, I always feel that sense of sentimentality, as if thinking back on old and treasured memories- which, being only twenty years old- makes no sense. It's like I'm reminiscing and missing a past that I wasn't actually present in... strange.

Written by Cole Porter in 1927, 'Let's Misbehave' has been recorded by various singers throughout the past century, so maybe I'm not the only one who has a weird love affair with the past. It has the great brass opening with that classic dance music that instantly makes you want to get up and have a glorious time:

There's something wild about you child

That's so contagious

Let's be outrageous

Let's misbehave

Which leads me to the great 2003 film 'Bright Young Things', which was adapted from the book 'Vile Bodies' (which I'm planning on reading soon) and directed by Stephen Fry. It also has an all star cast, with Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Emily Mortimer and James McAvoy. The main character is played by Stephen Campbell Moore who I haven't heard of before, so that's why I didn't mention him in the cast of people I do know, but basically it has an incredibly talented cast and director, so I have no idea why no one knows about this movie! It's not a serious film, it's a light and easy going film about a young group of socialites in the 1930's who just go to parties and are living a decadent life, but good times don't last forever. It's just a fun film that I've watched quite a few times, the first time I saw it was with my parents and we all really loved it... in fact, I might watch it now before going to bed. But even though it doesn't have 'Let's misbehave' in the soundtrack, I just find that the two, song and movie, just go well together.

So here is 'Let's Misbehave' and a strong recommendation to watch 'Bright Young Things' if you love that era.

Quick, easy student meals

Cooking for yourself everyday is actually a lot of fun, but sometimes you don't have time to make elaborate dishes with heaps of ingredients. Sometimes all you need is a quick and easy meal just to keep you going before rushing off to do something or go somewhere. So here a few meals that I've made for myself that fit in with this category of "quick, easy student meals":

Pizza/ focaccia: 

All you do is pretty much get a tortilla wrap, use pasta sauce as a base, cut up tomatoes, add spinach and grate cheese on half of the wrap. Put in the microwave for a couple of minutes to let the cheese melt. Fold the wrap in half and cut into thirds so it's easier to eat. 

Wrap and side:

Boil snow peas for the side greens. Then have tuna and cut up tomato then mix together with a bit of mayonnaise and put in a tortilla wrap and the left over filling put on the side and I wrapped it in a lettuce leaf.

Pasta:

My all time favourite food is pasta. There is no doubt about it. And this is just frying up an eggplant and adding it into a bolognese sauce. Cook up the pasta to be al-dente and then mix in the sauce and add grated cheese.

Scrambled eggs:

Beat up the eggs, add some soy milk and pepper then scramble them up. Cut up some tomato, spinach and add it to the eggs in a bowl, as well as adding tuna and mayonnaise.

Couscous: 

Once again, boil snow peas for the side, and to cook up couscous by boiling, you then can add various spices to add flavour, add chickpeas, sultanas, peppers etc. I like the Moroccan styled spices and combination which is what this is. 

Risotto:

Typically it would make sense to use risotto rice, but I used long grain and wild rice which you boil to cook up. Meanwhile, fry up zucchini which you then add to the rice once it's cooked and drained of water. Add in a small amount of bolognese sauce and cheese which makes everything stick together to create the risotto consistency.

___

And those are just a few quick, easy meals to make when you are busy, but are still delicious. And being a student, none of the ingredients and expensive, so it's perfect for us. Also, these meals are filling and keep you going through the night when you need to study/ socialise/ go out and not feel hungry.

Smile

Firstly, I'm sorry for not having written anything last week. It was a very hectic week with a lot of stuff going on and heaps of stuff to deal with. Sometimes things happen all at once and you just have to face it and in the meantime, you get a bit slack in other aspects of life (for example, writing a blog post). But I'm back and today's song is one that is close to my heart. So I hope you all love it, because it is one of my most treasured and beloved song choices, and every time I listen to it, I am completely consumed by so much emotion, because it is just so beautiful. So much so, that I can't even find the right word to describe it without making the song sound average. It is so far from average, it is such an exquisite piece: 'Smile' music written by Charlie Chaplin in 1936, lyrics added in 1954 and sung by Nat King Cole.

I know it's an old song, possibly the oldest song I've chosen for this blog, but age doesn't make a difference, because it is absolutely timeless. The lyrics reach out to the heartstrings of every single person who listens to this song, and with the music, it just makes them ache and break but in the most divine way. I have to put all the lyrics up here because they just need to be appreciated (even though the lyrics are on the clip as well):

Smile though your heart is aching

Smile even though it's breaking.

When there are clouds in the sky

you'll get by

If you smile through your fear and sorrow

Smile and maybe tomorrow

You'll see the sun come shining through

For you

Light up your face with gladness,

Hide every trace of sadness.

Although a tear may be ever so near

That's the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what's the use of crying.

You'll see that life is still worthwhile

If you just smile