Exploring Oxford

So I've had no classes this past week, which has meant that I have not been getting much done at a very fast pace. Basically this last week has been our version of Spring Break, though there were still a few classes and some people still had work to do. Fortunately, not me! So this past week has been pretty nice, if unproductive.

This weekend was a big travel weekend for some as well. Most of the building was gone, and for the past 2 days there's only been 6 of us here; Me, Jason, Alix, Lauren, Shannon, and Claire, it's really weird. Craig and Laura went to Ireland, a lot of people went to Scotland, and then another group went to France. Easier to keep track of who is here rather than who's gone and who went where. I ate breakfast by myself Thursday and Friday, eveyone else who is willing to get up having left. Still, much as I like Craig, it is really nice to have the room to myself for a while.

Thursday I went around with Alix, Jason and Lauren M. to look at some of the colleges around Oxford while our Bod cards could still get us in for free. Saw Lincoln, Merton, All Souls and two others that I can't think of off the top of my head. They are all gorgeous, and much bigger than St. Peters. A lot of them have little passages connecting the various courtyards, and all of them had at least 4, whereas St. Peters has more like 2 1/2-3 depending on how you look at it. After that we climbed St. Mary's tower. There was a stupid idea. One of the staircases was outside, like a fire escape on a modern building. Then there were these tiny, narrow spiral stairs with ropes hanging down the center to help you hold on. The view up top was amazing, and it's kind of obvious where many postcards have been shot from. But the walkways are super narrow, and getting by people was very ackward. Often if two groups collided, one of them had to turn around, which was a definite problem with the one set of stairs. Good thing I'm not generally scared of heights or anything. Going back down was even more fun, cause first we had to squeeze our way back to the stairs, then we had to wait a while for groups coming up the stairs, and finally some idiot college kids were trying to take a group shot of themselves up there. Oh wait, that was us. We finally had to ask someone to take the picture, no one's arms were long enough to get the 4 of us in such a narrow space. After getting back down (which makes the stairs in Michigan look easy) we decided to come back, since it was almost time for dinner. Pretty relaxing night after that.

Yesterday was pretty much the last day to use my Bodleian card, which I am really going to miss. I really like being in there, especially the camera and old library. So despite someone's protest, I went to the Bodleian after lunch just to read for fun in the Duke Humfrey library. I may also have taken some pictures with my laptop and phone while I was there, but whatever. It was my last day, so I wasn't as worried about getting thrown out. Also, I saw from the window a gorgeous garden that I wanted to visit, that looked like it was part of Exeter college.

Also stopped in the Divinity school when I was leaving, just to have a look around. It's part of the original Bodleian and also where they shot parts of two Harry Potter films. While I was in there Jason, Alix and Shannon showed up, who were just starting to see more sights, so I decided to tag along with them. We went to Magdalen (pronounced Maudlin), New College, University College, Exeter, and poked our heads in Jesus. Again all very pretty, but the gate into Exeter's gardens was locked and said private, and since it was so late already no one was in the mood to find another way in. Maybe I'll go look for one another time. So hours after I planned to be back, finally got here and just relaxed till dinner.

I'd like to say that I spent the rest of the night just relaxing and we had just hung out, enjoying having the building to ourselves. Sadly, such was not the case. There has been quite a bit of drama last night and today, the result of something that happened last weekend and has been building up throughout the weekend. While I am not directly involved, with so few people in the building right now it is rather hard to avoid. Still, being social has not been as fun the last bunches of hours.

Otherwise, things are going well, and classes are starting up again on Monday, so hopefully that will help me to get back into a schedule and motivate me to finish some things. Mom and I are stressing about her visit, there's so many details to figure out. If someone wants to make a lot of money, they should come with a website that explains the best ways to utilize and pay for all the various methods of transportation and how to figure out the cheapest cost to you. It's all very confusing and each little thing is run by different companies and erg, I hate figuring this stuff out. One of the reasons being a homebody is so nice.

Relaxation

So over the past weekend I basically did as little as I could. On Saturday morning I rolled out of bed right before it was time for Brunch, my head felt a lot better. It was such a great feeling to kept up and know that I had absolutely nothing that I needed to accomplish. After brunch I decided to go for a walk around Oxford. I went down St. Giles to Oxfam, which is an amazing used book store. I got a book from 1860 for 3 pounds. It's a little Children's Companion book, but still, I think it's pretty cool. From there I walked down a ways, farther than I've ever gone before. Turned down some random side street and went exploring a little. I finally found a shop that sold erasers too, which they call rubbers here (making the immature part of me giggle). While I was walking I also came across the actual Oxford University Press building, at which point I really wished I had my camera. Definitely going back on a sunny day to take pictures. Now I just have to wait for one, since I missed it for today's. Afterwards came back and just vegged out, didn't even try to accomplish anything else.

Sunday I again got up shortly before brunch again. Wasted time in my room for a while, started working more on postcards that I had hoped to have mailed like a month ago. Anyway, got asked if people could use my computer to watch Tristan+Isolde for our seminar class, so I went down to the common room with them. A good way to spend a cloudy afternoon. I brought my postcards down with me, but that went nowhere. Anyway, afterwards was dinner, and then I got a little writing done. With the stress of paper deadlines gone, it's really hard to motivate myself to do anything. Hopefully that will go away after a few days of relaxing. Anyway, at night I used my gameboy for the first time since I got here. It was a good feeling to play video games after so long and so much stress. I need to find a way to charge it soon though, or once it dies I won't be using it till I get back to the states, and since it was and will be my main entertainment on the long plane ride, I would really like it to keep working.

Today I was a little more motivated, especially since it was sunny and really warm. Couldn't just sit around the building doing nothing. After lunch I went for a walk around University Parks, which is beautiful. While I haven't seen all of Christ Church Meadows, I'm pretty sure I like the Parks better. Took a ton of pictures, which I will hopefully have up on Facebook soon. After getting back I did some work on my computer, got all my pictures transfered to it, now all I need to do is upload them. Tonight my seminar class watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail. While I find the first scenes funny, overall I really don't care for the movie. Not something I'm going to bring up very often though, most people worship that movie. Anyway, it's this, shower, GB, and bed. Again, no work feels so nice.

UPDATE: At some point, I will learn to check that a post was published instead of just closing the browser and assuming it was.

Done

Wow it's been a while since I updated, I've been pretty busy. This last week I had my seminar paper due along with my regular two tutorial papers, and since the seminar paper is 80% of my grade for that class, I was pulling my hair out a little bit. It didn't help that I wasn't really sure what exactly I was really trying to show prove until Wednesday. So most of my week was spent either on my computer staring at a word processor, in a library reading, or at my desk reading/getting distracted by the internet. Despite the hurdles, I managed to finish, and I believe my seminar paper turned out pretty well, though I still have to find out what grade I'll be receiving for it. But it's done, along with my two tutorials, so there's no reason to stress anymore. Spent the weekend relaxing, and getting started on planning things out for traveling after term and when Mom comes, both of which I am looking forward to. After the amount of work I've done these past 8 weeks, I'm looking forward to going back to Elmhurst, which will feel like a cakewalk after this. Being here has definitely helped me prepare for the two Senior Theses I'm going to have write next year, but I am guaranteed going to miss the Bodelian Library system. It's in a class of all its own, and Elmhurst's library can't even compete.

As for this past week, it's been bittersweet. It started with GREEK ending, which made me feel old. That show has been on since before I started college, and now that it's over, I'm growing closer to my own graduation, which is an extremely frightening thought. Anyway, Tuesday was my last Anglo-Saxon England tutorial. While the papers for it were always difficult, requiring hours in various libraries, and Dr. Sykes always found things to critique, it was still a class I enjoyed. I liked the subject matter, and our discussions were fun, where she pushed me to think about things I didn't know or even considered, and really challenged me to push my limits. So while I won't miss the hours I spent researching and stressfully writing papers, I really will miss it. Oh, also on Tuesday they actually had Rice Krispies for breakfast, making it the first time I've had some other than Corn Flakes in 3 months. This is the St. Peter's students last week here as well, so the kitchen seemed to be pulling out all the stops.

Thursday was my last Medieval Travel Writers tutorial, which was very sad. Alun Thorton Jones and I always had such fun conversations together, and most weeks I enjoyed the topic. Some weeks felt pointless, like the Vikings in America, but still, it was all interesting to learn about. It was also to bad that I had my seminar paper this week, since the topic was on imaginary maps now that Europeans had a better understanding of the world, which really was fun but because of seminar I couldn't devote the time to it that I would have liked to. I did bring in the map from Wizard's First Rule to talk about how people still make up imaginary lands and maps today. Fortunately Alun leads the field trips we'll be taking soon, but I'll still missing having a one-on-one tutorial with him. We laughed a lot.

During all this I was working on my seminar paper, reading different books and trying to get a specific topic. I had to meet with Dr. Philpott on Wednesday to try and nail it down, which was a little scary since the paper was due Friday. I had spent about 6 hours on Tuesday after tutorial in the St. Peter's library, and still had some more reading to do on Wednesday and Thursday on top of my last tutorial stuff. Started writing my final paper after lunch on Thursday, though I really didn't start making good progress I liked till after dinner. Got stuck quite a few times where I just stared at the screen with nothing to write. Around 1am I was about 3/4 of the way done, and Craig was looking to go to bed soon so I moved to the computer lab to finish. Unfortunately being me I wasted about an hour when I got there fiddling around on Facebook and watching TV shows on my computer. Finally finished a little before 4, printed, and right as I was about to leave let Lauren M. in, who had just finished her paper. Talked a little with her, then finally went straight to be.

Didn't managed to get up for breakfast Friday, 3 hours was too little sleep. Had one of my Chewy Dips bars though. I'm proud of how long they've lasted, and I've still got some left, which is a good thing cause I haven't been able to find them here anywhere. Beside the point though, spent the morning editing my paper, and on my way to lunch meant to drop my paper off, but Dr. Philpott had a tutorial, so I threw it in my mailbox, and then coming back from lunch turned it in. He just told me to drop it on the table when I walked in, and then went back to work. I was hoping for a little more acknowledgment on having finished, like a congratulations or something. Fireworks would have been nice.

Anyway, after that all the sleep I'd missed out on over the past week or two instantly caught up with me, and my brain just shut down. Also started getting a headache. Still, decided not to nap, and played games till dinner. Friday was also our St. Patrick's day/most people are finished with work party, for which the JCR bought plenty of alcohol and snacks. Fortunately I went down late enough to miss helping with most the set-up, which I was very happy about. I'm so sick of moving that big table. Anyway, they made three things of Jungle Juice, all different, and then there was liters of cider, which is as strong as beer but tastes different, I've been informed. Whatever makes people happy, I really don't care.

I like the Doritos and the chocolate cupcakes with green frosting. Definitely ate too many of those. There were also some kids from the St. Peter's badminton team there, that people here had joined and invited over. It was a little awkward at first, but they were a lot of fun here. Sadly, even though we had to explain Beer Pong to the one English guy Nathan, he won for over over 2 hours before he finally lost the last game of the night. I'd say dominated, but since some of the rounds took over 30min, that doesn't seem like the right choice of words. Might have been easier if we actually had SOLO cups. Anyway, that was a lot of fun, but there was a BOP that night as well, so a lot of CMRS people left early to go to that. After cleaning up, which went really fast since all the English kids helped (seems to be a common thing whenever we have them over), I decided to head over and check it out one last time, since there won't be anymore before I leave.

Apparently BOP stands for Big Open Party, or so I've been informed. The reliability of the information is slightly questionable, since even most the St. Peter's people don't know what BOP means. Anyway, I had a headache that came and went throughout the night depending on what I was doing. So when I walked into the St. Peter's courtyard and the music started to make my head throb from that far away, I knew I was in trouble. Still I went to the bar, which was super crowded, definitely much more than I'm comfortable with, but I managed to squeeze through to find some of my friends. Could barely hear what people were saying, the floor was super sticky, and after like 5 min. I knew staying was out of the question. Said goodbye and pushed through the way I had gotten in, went over to the dance floor but there really wasn't anyone there either, and the music was even louder with a strobe light, so I took off right away.

Came back to the room, put on a movie and just let myself unwind. Got invited to go out to a club around midnight, but neither Craig nor I were up to it. Both of us were just fried. Took a shower, read for a little bit, and went to sleep. Craig was still doing something, but I hit the pillow and passed out. I was dead tired. Spent the weekend relaxing, which I will hopefully write about tomorrow. I feel this post has gotten long enough, and I feel like doing something else.

Work Week

I've spent the last couple days pretty much just working, and all I plan to do for the next week. I have my seminar paper on top of my two tutorial papers this week, so it's crunch time, and I am really not looking forward to it. I got a letter from Grandma on Tuesday, which helped to brighten my day quite a bit. It was also coated in glitter, which was fun to clean up from all over my desk. I'm wary to take it out of the envelope now. Also found a new way to waste time. I downloaded a book I own but didn't bring with me to England so I could read parts of it, and suddenly several hours disappear. Stupid thing to have done this close to the end with so much work to do, but too late. Hopefully I won't procrastinate with it too much. I also did laundry, which I have decided is a main reason to get married. I really hate doing laundry. Otherwise nothing really interesting going on, spending most of my time with my eyes glued to my computer screen or a book. *tear*