Right, this reads like an excited 10 year old's diary, but i'm too shattered to do it properly!

Christmas Eve: Met up with Khai on the bus, which is the first time i've seen him since Easter. Found out he's been living in France and essentially working as a rent-a-Dad for some small kids! Their French mother split up from their abusive American father, so she fled to France with them, and Khai's job is to basically keep their English in practice and show them the good side of life by taking them out and playing with them after school!

Anyway, we went down to the Six Bells and met up with the old crew from the year below me, and me and Emily decided to save money and endless queuing by buying and sharing a bottle of red wine! Then my even older crew turned up too, and I met up with loads of friends from my own year, some of whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years! It was just amazing. Especially having both groups together! Anyway we all (about 30+ of us by that point) went to The James Figg down the road, where they have a separate small building/large room, which we proceeded to take over! Me and Emily moved onto our second bottle of red wine. After a couple of hours of fun there we moved to the Swan, where I saw even more people I hadn't seen in ages! One of them was Jack (Foals drummer), so I found out all about their next album! Then got a lift with Charlie and Khai back home, and very drunkenly made myself some soup, and wrapped my Christmas presents for the next morning.

Christmas Day: I woke up feeling fairly hungover, but good, and gave and opened presents over a strong coffee! Got a Moroccan drum my parents picked up in Marrakech (the weird thing in the picture!), some Tibetan incense, Wind That Shook The Barley DVD, a Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD, a load of socks, some new headphones, and most amazingly of all an Ivor The Engine boxset! Ivor the Engine being a strange cartoon I used to love when I was little (by the same bloke who did The Clangers and Bagpuss - if you know either of them!). It's just amazingly surreal about a sentient Welsh steam engine called Ivor, who sings in the Welsh choir, and has all sorts of strange mini adventures:

But anyway, my sister loved the bag I bought for her from the beautiful little ethnic shop in Cardiff. It's from India and just decorated in wonderful colours, with an elephant on it! We then just had a nice relaxing day, went for a walk, had a big Turkey dinner, and watched Dr Who.

Today: Just went down to my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins from my Dad's side and had another HUGE lunch, then played lots of strange games!

Tomorrow: I'm going to Emily's for dinner, party and sleepover, as her parents are away!

Yep. About £20-£30 per hour lesson, about 10-20 lessons at least to learn how to drive, plus £30 for the theory test, plus £60-£70 for a driving test (with the average taking 2 or 3 tests to pass, as it is really fucking strict here!). Oh, plus car insurance which is an insane amount for under 25s. So lets say an absolute minimum of $500, and really more like $1,000, or more. Plus insurance. Plus car.