What time is it? TATTOO TIME!

Tattoo? What is it? It's an all day big 'ol party. I have absolutely no idea where the name for the party came from...but I do know that part of the party is the application of (many) LBS tattoos. These are rub on tattoos...or in the case of the party...lick-on. A very strange bonding ritual for the students of LBS....more on that later. Anyway, the day starts off with sporting competitions in Regent's Park. There was a paddle boat race that I missed, Volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee, and Football (aka Soccer for all my American friends reading this) and of course, Touch Rugby!! You know what I did. Touch was sooo much fun. It was mixed, so we played with the boys, and they introduced some different rules than what we play, which made it a bit more challenging, a lot easier to score, and a whole lot of fun! There are pics somewhere out there, but I can't seem to find them. Sad. This was the part of the day that I started saying "TATTOO TIME!" whenever anyone asked what time it was. Love it.

So after all the sporting, it's time for the party, which kicks off at 6pm, it's all over campus, and pretty much every country that is represented by at least one student has a "booth". Some are combined (i.e. North American, Australia/New Zealand) some aren't. Each booth has food and decor representing their country. Everyone dresses up in ensembles that also represent their country...hence the cowgirls from the USA. Aren't we cute? I love the shirts...totally like a puff paint experiment gone wrong (we just used markers). I took tons of pics, but they only let you put so many up on this site. Anyway, below is me and Dan, the other social chair for me stream (on the left), and James. These are 2 of my brit friends. I'm pretty sure they had all agreed to dress a certain way, but half showed up in ghetto looking outfits, half showed up in normal clothes, and Dan wore a tux. awesome.

Then there is Stuart my Aussie friend. We swapped hats.

And Igor, the russian. We also swapped hats, but he had that pic on his camera, and as far as I know, those pics aren't posted anywhere public yet, so I haven't been able to get ahold of them!

As the night goes on, there are lots of entertainment things. The brazilians brought their own dance troupe...at first I thought this was a student! yikes! But the guys on the drums are the students, so that was kinda cool. They had a good time wandering around the campus, stopping here and there to dance

There was also a group that did like the chinese dragon sort of thing. The indian students put on an awesome show. There was square dancing of some sort (i'm thinking it was maybe scottish??!) The AUS/NZ tent had a whole pig on a roast. The Japanese did sushi. There were caprainhas (sp??) and Pims, and Sangria, and beer from around the world. My favorite food was the french table...they did crepes with nutella!! yum yum.

There were henna artists...these are their works on Carolina's and my hands. lovely!

There was also a lady who did your name in Chinese, so I've got that hanging on my wall. There was dancing and singing, and lots and lots of tattooing.

Here is me getting one of my tattoos...

yes, he is licking my neck. No, this is not in any way scandalous. Well, maybe it is just in the sense that he is licking my neck!! But that's how the tattooing at tattoo is done. Why? Who knows. Definitely an odd bonding ritual. (And it turns into a theme wherever a group of LBSers congregates) Very interesting indeed. I've even seen a sports trophy that has been tattooed! crazy! Anyway, the night was awesome, I was sad that it ended, and am already thinking about which booths I should hit up next year!

Not so easy, is it?

I KNOW, I KNOW, IT'S BEEN TOO LONG! I have soo much to catch everyone up on, and so I'm going to do it in little bits over the next couple days, because otherwise, I'll just never do it! The first thing I can think of that needs to be said, is that the main reason I haven't found time to update, is because the social life has continued...but the school life has finally hit and really picked up. It's still awesome, and I'm still loving every minute, but there's definitely more pressure and less time now. The thing is, I don't want to miss a thing here...so when it comes to updating my blog vs. experiencing something here in person, I've been choosing the here. Please forgive me ;)
Classes are, well, classes. I wouldn't go so far as to generalize them as "interesting", "hard", "great", or even "boring"...but they've all been a bit of each. Right now I'm taking Managerial Economics, Corporate Finance, Financial Accounting (FA), and Ethics. Each of these are 3 hours of class per week. We also have some soft skills courses sprinkled in, and a tutorial that is required 1.5 hours each week.
Homework so far has been a bit of a roller-coaster---either a ton, or not any at all. It's hard to get ahead because it always seems like we don't get the assignments on days that have "free" time. I'm getting a bit better at my time management with my course work, but not perfect yet. (I've actually signed up for a quick course on this topic!)
So back to the actual class - it's really a different experience than undergrad. We take every class with our stream (Go Stream C!!) and we have assigned seating, so I sit by the same people all day, every day (I love you Pam and Ruth!) I'm in the very back row at the top of the lecture theatre, which isn't my favorite, although it is nice for getting up to get water, use the loo (I'm so british) and just generally zone out when it gets boring. The teachers are surprisingly pretty young, and we have a lot of female teachers, which is a bit unexpected. They are from all over the place. Right now we have a Turk, Canadian, Italian (2 actually), and Norwegian (I think). The classes can be cool because everyone has their different view points and experiences...but right now we don't get too much of that b/c the courses are the basics that some people took in undergrad (and are therefore bored) and others have never had at all (me! so i leave every class feeling like i just ran a marathon trying to keep up with all the material covered!) I'm looking forward to the electives though, when people actually are in classes because they chose to be and are interested in the topic. I think it'll be really cool to see the class dynamics.
Anyway, that's probably a good enough post on classes. They're not the best parts of school anyway. :) More later!