blackpool competition, day three

Amateur standard went...not that awesome this morning, but we made it back to the next round anyway! This means that I'll be doing this to my hair again tomorrow:

which is highly painful for some reason by the way. The crown of my head seems unable to handle hair pins. I will also be nail gluing an earring to my right ear lobe (realized after I got here that the whole clip on piece was gone, leaving just a hunk of rhinestones). Ouch.

I think it's sort of funny because my appearance has been altering between really, really done up for competition and then really, really disastrous after I'm done and showered. This is due to a fried straightener because plugs in England look like this:

so in order to use appliances you have to have a) a converter to even get the plug in and b) a transformer to change voltages, because the voltage in the walls here is 220 V (or maybe 240, can't remember) whereas in the US it's 110 or 120 or something lower like that. Anyway, I put the transformer on the wrong setting the very first day we got here, and it hasn't turned on since. I've been going all natural on the hair, which is to say terribly frizzy. Alas. Twas a necessary sacrifice to the gods of European travel.

Next on today's agenda:

watch standard team win the formation event
watch professional latin
party on
!!!!!!!!!!

blackpool competition, day two

Today I danced, shopped, and hand washed clothing.

Here is a photo of all of my purchases so far:

note the stamps (postcards to be sent soon to a few of you!) and the delicious Fingers cookies (sort of like a Twix bar only minus the carmel and way more addicting as they're covered in Cadbury chocolate)

Washing clothes in the tiny English sink was quite the adventure. I've been wearing my Nike Blackpool warm ups since we left Salt Lake so they smell like sweat and fake tan (sick). My practice clothing has not fared any better. I finally decided to get down to it and wash them. Sinks in England have two taps, one is scalding, the other is freezing. Even though I washed my clothes in freezing water (so the dye wouldn't come out), they turned the water deep brownish/black. Yum. That's what's been on my body the past four days. Fingers crossed they dry adequately tonight, because I've got to wear them in support of the standard team tomorrow as they face off the Chinese in the standard formation team championships!!! Woo!!! Go BYU!!!

Dear future husband,

Two more qualifications for you: I can wash clothing in a sink, and I'm really good at spending money on stamps (5 pounds spent today). 

Here's a photo to prove the sink part:

Not knowing when to use the flash when taking a photo is one of my disqualifications.

Yours truly,

Your future wife

On a...neutral? note, we did not make another round in amateur latin. I don't feel too bad though, because no one else from the team did either. Tomorrow we dance amateur standard and secretly I'm hoping we don't make it past the first round...two days of full standard hair and makeup is not so fun and very time consuming.

We've got rehearsal at 6:40 tomorrow morning, so I think it's about time I headed off to bed! Cheers!

blackpool competition, day one

So blogger/slow internet is really, really annoying for uploading pictures in posts. I've taken over 100 photos in the past 2 days, but within this post you will find maybe 8? which is still a lot...but not fully representative of the exciting adventures I've been having!

Yesterday we went to Preston, England and visited a few church history sites including the River Ribble, where the first people were baptized in England, the obelisk where Heber C. Kimball and his companions first preached the gospel in England, the house where I can't remember who...probably Heber C. Kimball and a bunch of other people were staying and they cast out some demons (it's the house in my header picture), and the oak tree President Hinckley had planted to commemorate missionaries in England. We got to have sacrament meeting in the park right next to the river, which was really cool. We also went to the Preston temple, which was very pretty.

This photo is to prove to Aaron that brightly colored doors are adorable. So many of the houses in Preston (and pretty much everywhere else actually) have them and I love them! So cute!

the River Ribble...more proof that England is absolutely beautiful

obelisk! aka location of preaching (it's also right in the middle of a carnival, which was interesting for us to parade through in our matching clothing-long black skirts and nasty plastic brown jackets with leopard lining, Alex said we looked like Jehovah's witnesses, we get the weirdest looks everywhere we go)

Afterward we went to this uber picturesque little village called Downham, which is exactly what you'd expect an English village to be. I couldn't stop myself from taking a million pictures of sheep...or posing in front of rustic stone walls, wooden doors, wheelbarrows, etc...

my future home

posers.

sheep! this place was better than a petting zoo

beautiful stained glass window in the little church (a warm up for France, yeah?)

me in front of said church

Today was my first day of dancing at Blackpool. We competed in Amateur Latin...which was scary...and kind of fun...

and....

we made it back to the next round!

So tomorrow I'll be dancing again! And that is all I expect to dance, haha. I never expected to make even one round, so this is quite exciting.

me and Mike after dancing, love the makeup

Once the dancing was over we went shopping. Love, love, love Primark, Next, and New Look. The shopping is great here! I got a pencil skirt at Primark for 7 pounds. BAM. And I also bought a couple of Cadbury chocolate bars. And a couple postcards. (Side note: I was so excellent at picking out the correct amount of coins to give the salespeople. I am so pro at paying in pounds/pence.)

Today is probably pretty representative of what the rest of the week will be like. The next round of amateur latin is tomorrow, then the standard formation and amateur standard are on Wednesday, and latin formation is on Friday.

I look forward to more shopping (I've got to get myself a British world cup shirt), more dancing, and more wandering around Blackpool. :)

Cheers!