Valentine's Day...

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Feb. 14
Valentine’s Day!!! I can honestly say that this has been one of the best days I have had since I got over here. I spent the day in Brighton with Lee --- we had a friend date and then I had a girl’s night out…..so fun! I gave Lee Bailey’s truffles and two chocolate Lindt eggs and he gave me a teddy bear, a toblerone, and a card. We met up a little before lunch to catch the bus into town and we went to the museum at the Royal Pavilion. It was really neat, some part of it were a lot better than other though and there was a lot of stuff so we didn’t really get to see everything b/c we got hungry after about 2 hours. Lee had picked out some place that he wanted to eat so we went wandering up into the North Lanes…… these neat little side streets with lots of shops and cafes and stuff. We never actually found the place that he was looking for but we did find another little café that ended up having really great Italian food. We sat in the café for a while and while we were eating the weather cleared up really nicely so we decided we would go back to a cookie place that we passed on the way and get some cookies and take them down to the pier and eat them. Before we left the lanes though we stopped into the a vintage clothes shop to try and find Lee some blue pants for a costume thing he was going to --- no luck but we did find some cool hats to play with. Then after the vintage store we got distracted by a hat store and went in and played in there for a little while. I’ve have never seen hats like the ones in that store before. Huge where- to- the- horse-race type hats with lots of feathers and netting. After the hat store we went and got cookies……not just any cookies either. These things are the best cookies I have ever had! There from a place called Ben’s Cookies and it is actually a chain store….and not only are they fantastic there is always a deal of buy 5 get 2 free so you can get 7 of these things for like 5 quid. It’s great! We took the cookies down to the pier and actually found a food vendor that sold glasses of milk…so we had cookies and milk on the pier. It was so pretty that we got to sit outside on the pier too which was nice. Actually while we were eating cookies we think that we discovered the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. See everyone thinks that it is about love and chocolate but we realized that that was just a mistake that must have happened in translation at some point and just stuck…….what it really is about is love of chocolate. People have just been making is complicated for all these years by adding romance to the mix…..Valentine’s day is really just a day for chocolate. After cookies we tried to go to the aquarium but it was pretty expensive and closing in like and hour so we just went and sat on the beach for a little while. We poked around in the pebbles to see what sort of things we could find, but only with in arms reach of course - neither of us felt like getting up. We actually found some pretty neat stuff….shells and rocks and things. Anyway we sat there for a while but then it started to get a little cold so we caught the bus back to campus. When I got back to my room I sat down and read the card and this is what I found:
At some point last year, you decided to come to England
For adventure, friends, beer, and some minglin’
But it’s not always fun and games,
When you start to miss home, friends, and their nicknames.
So you lay in bed and wish to go home so much,
Email, phone, letters; it’s no way to keep in touch.

But even though we both miss home,
On V-day I write you this corny poem.
I simply remember the night, or was it day,
When you looked ad me and began to say,
If I would be your valentine and you be mine.
“of course!” I exclaimed “that would be fine!”
And so this V-day will be like no other
Because this year we have each other.
….. he wrote me a poem! What a sweetie. It was like 6 by the time we got back so I needed to start getting ready for dinner, but I decided that take a power nap first. It didn’t really work…..people were talking too much in the halls. Anyway, about 10 of us got all dressed up and left for dinner at about 8. We went to this really great tapas restaurant and ate a ton of food. We seriously ordered food like 3 times I think. Our waitress didn’t really know what to do with us. After dinner we went to a club called Casablanca. We thought there was going to be some salsa dancing and I was really excited about that but there wasn’t really any. They did play salsa music but no one really danced. There was a band downstairs that was just playing jukebox type music…..that was pretty cool. I wasn’t overly impressed with the club but I had a lot of fun being there with everybody and I would like to go back there sometime when there is more dancing. Girl’s night out on Valentine’s Day was a great idea though. We got all dressed up and just goofed off……great times!!
What I miss: nothing right now actually…
What I love: the churros at the tapas place….yum

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