Friday 4 February 2011

J-Term Adventures.

Other than moving furniture around my room, I did actually do interesting things over J-Term. These mainly involved snow orientated activities, such as sledging and snow fights and walking on lakes (I have still to try out the ice-rink on the lake because I'm not to sure how it's going to work without the wall to keep me upright, but I think I shall find someone who is good at ice-skating to help me out. It's funny because I used to be fairly proficient at ice-skating, but somehow I have lost much of my prowess in the interim period, but I digress...) The two other exciting things I did over J-Term were going to Magic Wings, and also on fantastical second-hand shopping expeditions. 

Second-hand clothes are magical things, because they are so much cheaper than regular clothes and because you feel like you are doing your bit to save the environment but also find a cure for cancer/help homeless people/feed people or whatever charity it is that you are supporting through buying said items of clothing. This combination of factors leads me to buy a lot more clothes than I would usually buy. Also there is a really nice shop in Northampton which sells second-hand designer and brand clothing. It is almost as bad as the Oxfam book shop in Guildford. I have yet to enter and leave without buying something. The main problem is that they put the retail price in the label so you feel like you're getting a good deal. It's mean. So over J-Term I acquired: one knitted jumper dress, one knitted body-warmer/vest/thingy-with-a-hood and the warmest lumberjack-style flannel plaid shirt you've ever seen in your life. I feel ever so Mount Holyoke when I wear it. 

The other adventure was much more legitimately adventurous than charity shopping. A friend from my Old English class took me on an excitable adventure to a butterfly conservatory named 'Magic Wings' where we wallowed in the amazing warmth, and took pictures of butterflies and the like. There were also birds, and reptiley type things, although the latter were kept in tanks and cages. We even saw a pac-man toad. I will put some of the pictures I took in here somewhere. I took hundreds but a lot of them were pretty blurry because I haven't quite figured out how to change the settings such that I can take pictures of moving objects, I'm sure I should change the aperture or something, but I need to read about it, and I currently don't really have the time. We also went to Yankee Candle Village. Which was a pretty bizarre experience. It's the biggest candle shop I've ever been in. Also, Santa and Mrs Claus live there, and there's a count down to Christmas, and there's a room where it snows every four minutes, lots of fake snow, and there's more candles than you can shake a stick at. Not that I know why you would want to shake a stick at candles ever. Still.