Day 30: Rough Seas and Red Lions

After sleeping in almost ridiculously late and finishing my book (I'll get to that later) my father and I went scuba diving off Maenporth Beach. Sort of. We swam 200 meters out into the sea (in the rain, in the frigid water, each with what felt like my entire weight in equipment, and getting tossed around by rocking waves), went under for a few minutes and saw, oh I dunno, three different kinds of fish and lots of algae and lots of seaweed and lots of sand, but mostly just murky water, then proceded to fight the tide back into shore (a long swim) after deciding that it wasn't worth it in these rough conditions. Also, neither of us had enough weights on our weight belts to get us all the way down. Oh, it was exhausting! I'm glad we did it, because we've never been successful in scuba diving in England before, but god was it tough going. By the time I got out onto the beach I was lugging around an extra thick layer of water all around my body as well, and my too-big shoes were completely bloated and my fingers didn't work because of the cold water. But maybe tomorrow the weather will be better and we'll get back in our astronaut suits and dive down at Pendennis, which is supposed to be better diving. Maybe.

Then we came home and I tried to rest but instead ended up making Easy Bars and Flapjacks, two Australian snacks which are delicious. I will include the recipes, because recipes are one of my things.

EASY BARS

3/4 cup brown sugar
200g butter
1 1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup chopped dates/dried fruit

Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan. Remove from heat. Add flour, eggs, and dates. Spread in a greased pan and bake at a moderate temperature (maybe 350F?) until they look edible.

FLAPJACKS

6 tbsp Golden Syrup
200g butter
12 oz oats

Melt butter and syrup in a saucepan. Add to oats and mix to coat. Spread in a greased pan and bake for a while at a good temperature until they look edible. Haha.

But seriously, both these things are delicious and worth making for easy picnicking.

Blah blah blah then we eventually went to dinner with some friends of my grandparents, Mike and Sheila Golding, at the Red Lion, a really neat old restaurant that was built in 1500 or some such ridiculous year a million years ago. It had a lot of ambience,, and some really nice candles that made for wonderful entertainment, until I stuffed it out on accident. But food was good. Lots of olives.

Now I'm in bed and I desperately want to go to sleep and I want all this orientation nonsense to sort itself out because, no, UNT, I will not be attending both Orientation 5 and Orientation 6, and I would like it very much if you would realize that before I "miss" the first one and you freak out on me. Also, I wish you would save all the classes I need for me, but I doubt you will, so blah.

All of this nonsense is so confuuuuusing. :-/

Oh, and I was going to talk to you about Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger! Overall I thought it was okay - not nearly as good as The Tie Traveler's Wife, but Niffenegger is clearly a talented writer with a very distinctive style that I happen to love. While this story was less...I dunno...charismatic? than her first, it certainly wasn't a waste of a novel. But it was more depressing, and not in a the cathartic, life-affirming way of TTW. Just straight up depressing. As in, it will make you depressed. It was one of those books that kind of leave you feeling ill because of the complete moral ambiguity and the horrible dilemmas and ultimately the decisions that the characters make that, despite the element of fantasy (ghosts/afterlife), are so prevalent in real life, even if they are kind of hidden (because they suck). So yes, it was a valuable read. But not an uplifting one and kind of a stomach-curdling one, too. And I don't usually like ghost stories, so I don't know if this is something a ghost-story lover would enjoy, but just...have caution. I didn't really like any of the main female characters, either. I kind of loved the main male characters, each for different reasons, but they were ultimately disappointing (in an entirely human way - I'm not blaming the author for this). The girls, on the other hand, all had that weird mental/personal feverishness that made them hard to connect to and almost repulsive, as if their personalities are diseased. I'm not sure if that makes sense here, but if you read the book you'd know what I mean.

I don't mean to sound so critical - the book was legitimately good, a fascinating look at some of the weirdest kinds of relationships, from twin sisters and their twin parents, romances with massive age differences, dead lovers, spouses struggling with OCD. It was truly absorbing, just incredibly hopeless. So, read with caution. But do read.

Day 27: Shopping in Falmouth Town

First of all, I would like everyone to join me in admiring the new shoes I bought at ASDA (UK's WalMart), as long as you ignore my horrible TOMS tan. I am glad to welcome a pair of floral flats to my admittedly large (shut up) shoe collection. Yay! I feel cute! :D Maybe I will actually fit in with the classily floral-clad youth over here instead of my usual bedraggled (but practical!) vacation attire that I am so sick of.

I also bought a new swimsuit at ASDA, as I do almost every time I come here, because swimsuits over here fit my figure so much better than American ones. American swimsuits seem to be blind to the fact that some of us do actually have boobs and need more than just little fabric triangles to be comfortable. So thanks, Britain, for your innovative swimsuit designs! Huzzah!

Thirdly, I bought yet another book for under three pounds. This will be my fourth book purchase of this trip and I'm beginning to be concerned about space, but not concerned enough to not read anything for the next week when I'm on such a roll! I have read five books so far -- FIVE books in three weeks, four of them in the last five days! Oh my god, I had almost forgotten what it was like to have time to read. The book I bought is called Her Fearful Symmetry and it's by Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote Time Traveler's Wife. That's honestly the only reason I picked it up (it was fate, I swear - I walked into the shop, picked up a book, saw her name, and was out of there in three minutes, prize in hand), but I trust her completely to have written another brilliant read.

Other than that, we wandered around Falmouth's High Street, looking in Cornish shops and watching the water. At one point we found the Falmouth Theatre Company's rehearsal space, and we went in and talked to the three people who were building the set for their upcoming show, Theft. Too bad I won't be around to see it, but their program seemed remarkably -- and charmingly -- similar to Denton's Campus Theatre. They were very cute, though. One old man who was talking to us must have lit five matches to light his pipe but each time they'd burn out before he'd stopped talking long enough to use it, so he'd just throw it on the floor and light up another one. It was very quaint. :)

Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of any of this because my phone was dead. So just use your imagination, I guess.

Then we went to the beach for a while. Enjoy these pictures.