Ha! Today's my first day in London for my Thanksgiving Break. Tomorrow will be my first full day, but I wanted to do a short little recap first.

So I more or less skipped school today to fly on airplanes all day long, but you won't here me complaining. We got hopelessly lost when trying to find our hotel (apparently when you turn right out of the tube station it is possible to go left), but once we got the map away from my dad everything went a lot smoother. We had Tandori for dinner, which I guess is just a fancy word for Indian food (anyone care to tell me what it really is?).

Tomorrow, for Thanksgiving, we're traipsing around London to do some touristy things, then going to watch the Lion King on the West End. YES. THE LION KING. How awesome is that??? My friend Emily, who is a total play buff, told me that it was supposed to be really good, not to mention the great reviews online for it. I'm so excited!

That's pretty much it for now. I really should be sleeping, saving my energy for tomorrow, considering that I fell asleep on the Tube from the airport to our hotel. I'll post more later, once I figure out how my NaNoNovel is going to continue anyways.

40k and climbing!

~Cam~

The most I've seen it snow in my five years here is the few flurries we had back in February that didn't even stick to the ground, and yet we still managed to get a 'snow day' today at school. How, you may be asking?

There's been some shit-strong storms passing through, reminding me that the rainy season isn't just a name. Apparently, last night it knocked the power out around base at around 2am, and hasn't been back on since. All of the housing on base is without power, but most of the major buildings have power, except two: the schools.

I was toasting my bagels this morning before we left the house, and my dad said, "Guess what? No school today." I ignored him because I thought it was kidding, but a minute later he said, "Okay, I'll change that: no school unless the power comes back on." And it never did. Of course, the crazy superintendent said that the teachers had to work anyways, despite the fact that there was no power (meaning no computers), no heat, and only phones were working. Crazy bitch.

This is similar to something that happened a few years ago, when there were some protests outside the front gate of the base and no one could get in, so they called off school.

But of course, I didn't bring my laptop, so I had no way of working on my NaNoNovel while at the library all day. I will be better prepared tomorrow. But still...

I ♥ Snow Days.

I have just rediscovered the Stomp Out Loud group. Last time I heard them was in fifth grade, when our music teacher had a few days worth of lessons planned entirely around them.  I think I'm in love. <3

Just a quick update here to say that NaNo offically started for me nearly two hours ago, and that I'm 2,125 words in. AND I ACTUALLY HAVE A PLOT. No, this is not some sort of miracle, but I though I'd just share this with you (whoever you are, anyways).

The weather on Thursday night was such total shit that I think a typhoon passed through. And then, of course, there's the fact that the weather can't make up its mind about whether to be cold or hot, so we're stuck with some sort of sticky mess that's somewhere in between. And I think that storm marked the official start of the rainy season, so for the next six months or so my shoes (and jeans) get to be semi-permanently soggy.

But the real reason I'm writing this now is because of the funny dream I had last night. Kevin, a guy whose been in school with me since fourth grade (I'm in 8th, and this is uncommon where I live, seeing as a third of the kids in the school move every year, and most are only here for two or three years), grew about two feet (he's practically a midget) and got red hair (he's a sort of blond). It scared the shit out of me, mostly because he had grown so much but still wasn't as tall as I am (which is around 6ft). And there was something else funny about Ryan (the only other person whose been around since 4th grade), but I couldn't tell what.

And when I say that someone's been around since 4th grade, or whatever, I mean that they were in my fourth grade class. Out of the 28 of us that had Mr. L for fourth grade (myself included, I was number 28) only three (really four) of us are left. I say it like that because me, Kevin, and Ryan have been here in Naples for the three years since the end of fourth grade. Josh, on the other hand, is the "fourth person" of this little group (notice how I'm the only girl much?), but he moved the summer after fourth grade and came back this past summer (the one after seventh). And somehow, in three years, he got...hot. Like, totally, friggin', more-than-half-the-girls-in-the-grade-has-a-crush-on-him kind of hot.( Warning: Crazy Boy Talk Below. Read At Own Risk. )

So the girl told me wrong yesterday. We were tied the entire game, 0-0. Then we went into overtime and they beat us 3-0, all because our goofy coaches decided to run for the win instead of kicking a field goal I know our kicker would have made and tied.

And, in other news, I was in Writer's Hell today in English class. We had to do a friggin' graphic organizer, which I don't think I've done in like, two years. The people behind me refuse to shut up too, so in one ear I have the mindless chatter and in the other ear I have whatever stuff my teacher is trying to get us to do, while at the same time I'm trying to outline my NaNoNovel.

Yes, you got that right. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. If you don't know what that is, Google it. It's a great thing, and I did it last year for the first time and won. You can definitely expect more posts about that in the weeks to come.

Also in other news, I got into LinguaFest!!! LinguaFest is this big (yeah, you guessed it) language festival they have up in Germany every year. In the mornings you study the language you're studying at school (for me, that's Italian) and in the afternoons you study a new language (I'm thinking either French or German, and leaning towards French). At the end of the week you preform something related to the new language you studied, and generally have a fun time. It's up in Germany in a quaint little town on the Rheine, and you're there for a week. I really didn't think that I'd get in, but then again about half the kids that applied got in.

And then there's the problem where the first day of the week, the day that we're supposed to be on our way there, is the 30th of November, the last day of NaNo. So, I have to finish a day early. No big deal, right? Wrong. I actually have to finish two days early, because that Sunday we're supposed to get back from London, where we're going for Thanksgiving, then a few hours later I leave on the bus trip to LinguaFest, because they could take more kids if they bussed than if they flew, and that's perfectly fine, because it only adds about twenty hours onto the trip.

We had what was possibly the most brilliant show at halftime, really. We did Born for the first time and it was great! And I think we screwed up the National Anthem in the PreGame, but it wasn't too bad.

BUT THE WEATHER WAS SHIT. It was cold the whole time. Then, it got even better right before half-time, because you know what happened? It started to rain. And rain. And rain. And rain. And we can't march and wear our ponchos at the same time (we can wear them while we're in the stands), so we got soaked. We were all cold and wet and went inside after the third quarter. I felt so sorry for the cheerleaders, who were in their little sleeveless-uniform-with-a-short-skirt the entire time. But then again, when it started raining they got to put on their hoodies, so they weren't completely freezing. I bet half are sick in Monday, though.

It was tied at 0-0 up through the third quarter, but while we were inside one of the flags' friends told me it got to 7-4, with us in the lead, which is an absolute miracle. I don't know who won, though, since I opted to get warm and dry instead of staying out there. I hope we won!

From Annie. It's from Annie. Tomorrow, to be exact. And it's not even the really good part that everyone (read: I) knows; it's some crappy part in the middle, and we have to play it over and over and over again while the homecoming court comes down our little gauntlet thing. We got the music yesterday and have to have it memorized by today. Apparently the band director has more confidence in us than I do.

So, the Homecoming court. The Bad News: The two eighth graders are total airheads. The guy is the same one from last year, and the girl is the redheaded version of him. The Good News: My friend's sister won for the freshman, which was a total shock for...everyone. She was just stunned, and had to be pushed up by the people sitting by her. The Even Better News: She's a trumpet in marching band. Oh, yes.

And let's see, the game starts in exactly...four and a half hours, if I did my math right. And I'm supposed to be there in...an hour, so that we can make sure we don't look like total fools when we make the gauntlet thing for the homecoming court to come down.

So I guess I really should be getting ready now, or start getting ready. I'll try to remember to post about how things went later.

So we had what is probably going to be our last marching band practice today. Yes, I'm in marching band, and no, I'm not crazy. As you can probably tell for the subject line, one of our songs is Born to be Wild. It is the best marching song. EVER. I'm just really glad we didn't end up having to play Jenny Jenny, which I've never heard of but other people in the band have and it scares me how much of the lyrics they know to that song. And yes, that is a giant run-on sentence I'm going to leave.

Anyways, did I mention it was freezing? Not really freezing, because I doubt it really got below 60 or so, but the wind was awful. I had on a hoodie and a windbreaker and I was still freezing! We had to run outside in PE, which was insane but we had to anyways. I actually did pretty good, which is some sort of a miracle, because usually I'm slow as Christmas. And then band afterwards as practically murder, although we did finish the last few sets of Born to be Wild. Homecoming is this weekend too, so we get to learn a whole seven measures of elevator music tomorrow for Saturday. Oh, Joy! /sarcasm

But all in all I'm liking Marching Band. It's not too bad, and the bus trip was certainly...memorable.

Is Crazy. Absolutely, positively, shitty. It was 19 today inside a classroom. That's 67, in fahrenheit, yeah, and I know that doesn't seem that cold, but gah! This is Naples, where it's supposed to be nice, warm, sunny weather for another month or so. And what do I get? COLD WEATHER. Four years ago you could wear shorts in November. Tomorrow I'm going to school in a sweatshirt and don't plan on taking off except for PE, where I have to. The classrooms are all freezing because we should be wanting it to be cold, but it's freezing. Absolutely freezing.

Just another reason why Naples is so friggin' crazy.

I'll be honest with this. I don't have the greatest of track records with these kinds of sites. I've registered two blogs on Blogger that haven't been touched in months, plus various other accounts on other sites that I've forgotten almost since creation. The only website I've managed to hold onto for a few years is...well...not exactly a poster child for anything positive, and there's more than enough drama on there for me to want to puke. Maybe I'll be able to sustain this account if I'm lucky. I've been thinking about it for a while, so maybe it will work out. :)