Superbowl and Letterman

Time for the weekly update.
Last Saturday it was my friend Mehdi's birthday so he had a party at his flat and we went out afterwards which was quite fun. On Sunday it was the Superbowl which is the biggest sporting event in America. Green Bay Packers took on Pittsburgh Steelers. I find American football a bit confusing but I enjoyed the game, I chose to support Green Bay and they eventually won 31-25. They'd been leading 21-3 at one point and it looked like Pittsburgh might steal it at the end but Green Bay just about held on. Personally I found the adverts and the pre-game and half-time shows more entertaining. Christina Aguilera sang the national anthem but messed it up badly which was quite funny. The Black Eyed Peas performed at half-time and although their vocals were terrible, the show itself was spectacular. The adverts cost up to $3 million for 30 seconds so some of them were very entertaining!
Monday and Tuesday were boring as I had lots of work to do, but on Wednesday I went to New York to see Late Night with David Letterman. Before the show we ate at an amazing Mexican restaurant where they made the guacamole in front of you! We arrived at 2 and lined up for about 15 minutes then got given our tickets and were told to come back at 3.30. We eventually got into the studio at about 4.15 and a warm-up comedian told a few jokes then introduced the orchestra who played a couple of songs before David Letterman came out. It turned out that it was 47 years to the day since The Beatles had made their American TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in the theatre that we were sitting in! The guests were Elton John and Anderson Cooper, who's an American journalist. At some points it was difficult to see because of the huge cameras but it was still very entertaining!
On Thursday we went to WT's as per usual then on Friday we went for dinner at Chipotle which is a Mexican which is halfway between fast food and a restaurant. Afterwards, everyone was going to see The King's Speech at the cinema but me and Emma had already seen it so we went to see True Grit, which I had already seen but I preferred to The King's Speech. On Saturday I went to the cinema again, this time to see Made In Dagenham, which was a comedy drama about female workers at Ford's Dagenham factory in 1968 who went on strike for equal pay. I really enjoyed it but it was very strange hearing Dagenham accents in America, and I'm sure the main character partly based herself on Stacey Solomon! At night we went out to a couple of bars.
Next week, it's Winter Break so we have a week off. From Friday to Monday, I'm going on a road trip with some friends to Buffalo, Toronto and Niagara Falls which is all very exciting. It's only costing about $130 each for car hire and hotels which is an absolute bargain! I don't have much else planned for this week so I'll update the blog after the trip - bye for now!

Back For Good

I realise that I've done a very bad job of maintaining the blog but I'm going to summarise what's happened in the 3 weeks that I've been back in Albany, then I'm going to try my best to update the blog weekly. This is not going to be in any logical order because it's far too difficult to remember what happened when!
First of all I have to talk about the weather! I've never experienced such cold temperatures and huge levels of snow in my entire life! It's snowed quite heavily a few times since I've been back but the most surprising thing is the piles of snow on the sides of the roads. At the mall car park they must be at least 15 feet high! A couple of weeks ago, the temperature dropped to around -25°c which was unbearably cold, so now when it's -8 it feels perfectly fine - that certainly wouldn't be the case if I was in England! There was a terrible snowstorm that hit most of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday and we were supposed to get it really bad on Wednesday so the university called a Snow Day. This annoyed me because I don't have any classes on Wednesday so it made no difference to me whatsoever, but the storm faded out before it reached the North East so it wasn't really bad here.
Since I've been back I've been on a couple of trips. One afternoon I went to a shopping outlet in Massachusetts which was just under an hour away from Albany. Apparently it was quite small compared to most retail outlets but I got a pair of Hilfiger jeans for $13 and a gilet from Gap for $12 so I was very happy. Last weekend I went to New York for a night out with some of my friends. My friend Emma had a friend visiting from England so they were staying in an apartment for the weekend so we all just stayed there. Unfortunately, I inexplicably got very drunk and can't remember any of the night besides being sick. Needless to say, the journey back to Albany the next morning was very difficult!
I'm enjoying my classes this semester more than last semester. I'm taking American Foreign Policy, Roosevelt to Reagan, Issues and Images of Diversity and Introduction to Report Writing. The last two are my favourites so far.
On Wednesday I'm heading back to New York because I've won tickets for The Late Show with David Letterman. The guest is going to be Elton John which should be very entertaining! I've also got tickets to see Bill Clinton give a speech at my university in March.
I've booked a cruise for Spring Break which is the thing I'm most looking forward to at the moment. We leave from New Orleans and go to Belize, Honduras and two places in Mexico. I don't think it's a young persons cruise but I'm more bothered about relaxing in the sun than getting really drunk! My mam, Brian and Matthew are coming to visit the week before I leave and I'm going to stay with them in St. Louis for a few nights before I go on the cruise - all very exciting!
That's all for now but I'll write another post next weekend. Bye!!