Don't ash on my parade

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. It has been far far too long since my last post. A potent combination of four weeks off from school, family visits, Eurotripping, and thesis writing kept me far from the realms of cyberspace for the past month. Sadly, and in some cases happily, all these things have now come to an end. I am back in Leeds, trucking through the last few weeks of classes, and attempting to study, despite the glorious sunshine. I have only been marginally successful.

Though the end of Easter break has once again confined me to the classroom, I am not surrounded by my usual crowd of students. Thanks to a volcanic hissy-fit in Iceland, a good portion of students, who had ventured over to Europe during their holidays, are now stuck there. The ash cloud has yet to make an appearance in Leeds, but the Eyjafjallajökull volcano is still quite a hot topic.  My Facebook feed is being spammed with people detailing their epic attempts to get back onto the island. These usually consist of obscenely long bus trips followed by an even longer queue to get on any sort of boat or train headed back towards England. People have been attempting to get home for weeks now and only a lucky few have been successful. Stories of taking 24hour boat rides without a seat, traveling for over 36 consecutive hours, or buying a bicycle just to get onto a ferry as a "vehicle passenger" have become the local pub gossip. All this in an effort to make it home.

All I can do is hope Mother Earth stops PMSing by the time I have to pack it up and return back to Canadia.