Haunted Hayride

I'm sticking to my promise and updating the blog exactly a week after my last post!
I didn't really do much on Tuesday or Wednesday, I had a rare week of not having much work to do and most people were revising for exams so there wasn't much going on. We kept up the Thursday tradition of going to WT's which was good and we had a fun bus ride back with a drunk boy asking us if we knew certain people who he knows from England - Americans seem to think that England has a very tiny population!
On Friday, a few of us went to the mall in search of Halloween costumes as the big event draws ever closer. Most people, including myself, didn't find anything at all so we're going to have to make last minute costumes at some point this week. I found a bargain in Macy's as all Levi jeans were reduced to $29 for the day, so I got a pair of black jeans as I've wanted a nice pair for a long time. After a few hours of shopping, I went to the cinema with Emma and Ellen to see Easy A. It was a romcom based loosely around the theme of The Scarlet Letter, which all American Studies students are guaranteed to have read! It was very funny and not too girly, so overall very good. Later on, I got the bus downtown with Emma and the Italians and we met Joe, Ellen and Evan and spent the night in Professor Barley's. On the journey home, we had not one, but TWO eventful taxi rides. The first one drove around in circles for 10 minutes while on the phone to someone he was intending to pick up despite the taxi being full, and completely ignored us when we asked him to take us back. Eventually, he pulled over and demanded $4 each which is more than they're allowed to charge so we refused to pay that and he drove us back to where he picked us up and made us get out of the taxi. After a 10 minute wait, we got another taxi and the journey was going well until the driver spotted a girl walking along the dark road by herself so decided to pull over and shout at her to come over. Chiara didn't like him doing this, as the girl could have been anybody (an axe murderer, perhaps) and started telling him to go, which resulted in another argument - but he managed to take us home for $3 each - the standard rate.
On Saturday, I had a nice afternoon watching The X Factor. I wasn't keen on Cher this week, my favourite was definitely Katie, which I never thought I'd say! That evening we went on a trip with the International Student department to a Haunted Hayride about 30 minutes upstate from Albany at a place called Malta, New York. This consisted of a journey on a trailer being pulled by a tractor through a forest where lots of people jumped out on you and tried to scare you - mostly failing in my case. After about 20 minutes, you disembarked and walked through an area of clowns jumping out and blowing airhorns, which was slightly more scary then a haunted house, where it was pitch black in parts and a lot more scary. The final part was a prison style room of mirrors with lots of strobing, it was almost impossible to judge whether the prisoners were behind or in front of the bars and to work out where to walk - definitely the best part of the experience. Despite telling myself that I definitely wasn't going out on Saturday night, I found myself at Joe's apartment and then we went downtown to Bayou. We had to wait in a queue for around 30 minutes, then the bouncer didn't accept Emma's ID and took it off her, and threatened to get the police involved - really not a pleasant experience, so we went home.
Sunday was a lazy day - we watched Piers Morgan's interview with Cheryl Cole then the X Factor result, then Josh came round to revise as we had a test today. The revision session was actually productive, as we had to learn the historical significance of a huge list of events, people and organizations in order to identify them in our test and it turned out that the revision was extremely helpful. The test was good, so I'm expecting to get a decent score. Besides that, I haven't done much else today, I spent the night in the library doing some mundane work and now I'm going to watch the latest episode of Dexter before bed.
Nighty night!