Seriously, the death plague

I have been quite remiss in my blogging duties lately! Mostly this is because nothing interesting has happened and I've been sick, yet again. I seriously need to look into getting some accupuncture here. That stuff was magical last year.

Mostly what I've been doing lately is watching Gossip Girl. And falling more and more in love with Chuck Bass. Guys, he has a band. And they're terrible. Clearly, if they ever go on tour, I must see them.

On a related note, I saw today that Cobra Starship is touring the UK in January/February. I MUST GET TICKETS. It has been far too long since I've seen live music. I'm going through withdrawl!

Last, but most certainly not least, I leave you with some pictures of my two halloween costumes.

Costume 1: Cooper Nielson from Center Stage. I am accompanied by my flatmate Katie, who is dressed as Charlie.








Costume 2: By far the most glorious thing I've ever created as a Halloween costume. Ashley and I were the characters from Le Spectre De La Rose. You may have noticed that I was sporting a very little fake penis in the first costume. This one can only be classified as EPIC. It was definitely the focal point of the costume, despite the fact that I crocheted all of the rosettes myself!





Anyway, now that you've seen me dressed up as two different male ballet dancers, I'm going to attempt to sleep again. I should really get some rest, considering the whole death plague thing.

The reasons all have run away, but the feeling never did...

I have been shamefully remiss in my blogging duties! Life's just been insane lately. I've been waging a brave war against what they refer to as Fresher's Flu here, but the cold medicine in this country is mildly effective at best, so I've spent the last week and a halfish sniffling and coughing up a storm. It's kind of baffling, to tell the truth. They sell codiene over the counter here, but Nyquil is illegal.

My workload remains intense. For lit I had to read the majority of Le Morte D'Arthur (I got to skip the parts about Sir Tristam) and read secondary sources so I could write a paper on the role of individuality in the book. I'm about to email that one in to my tutor so he can tell me I'm full of crap tomorrow. And psych. Oh boy. It is most certainly not a joke. For Thursday morning I have to go through all of last week's reading, which was full of scientific gobbledygook, make a list of things I don't understand in it, write a 4 page, size 11 font, paper on it, then read 5 articles and make a powerpoint presentation explaining each of them with 4-5 slides. I feel sort of like I did when I got to Sarah Lawrence. People told me it was a lot of work. Logically, I knew it was a lot of work. But I couldn't really comprehend what a lot of work was until I actually had to do it. I knew Oxford was going to be hard. I mean, even describing the workload is kind of intimidating. But I didn't truly get it until I had to do it. Which is not to say that I don't enjoy it. I do. It's just HARD.

On a far more positive note, Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame lives in Oxford, and we totally saw him in a pub last night. We're pretty sure he lives in our neighborhood because my flatmate also saw him out running one morning. But, yeah, he was just sitting in the pub, reading a book. Celebrity encounters are always fun, even when you have to pretend like you don't know who the person is, even though it's totally obvious. It was a really nice pub, too. I think we're going to make it our local haunt, and not just because of its Thom Yorke sighting potential.

Really, today's been an incredibly productive day. I read like 3 secondary sources, took notes on them, made an outline, and wrote a 7 page paper, which I'm going to email to my tutor in the next twenty minutes. Then I'm going to do some psych work. It's always nice to feel productive!

Panic! at the library...

So, remember how I said I was really excited for my tutorials to start? Well, they started. And, oh my god. It's a shitshow already. One is insanely hard and the other may be problematically easy. At the moment, I'm attempting to slog through a 700 page anthology of medieval mystery plays. As if this weren't daunting enough, I check out the book and realized that my tutor had neglected to mention that it's IN MIDDLE ENGLISH. Now, I've read Middle English before, but it's been a while, and even when I was good at it, it still took me a while to get through things. And now I have to read 700 pages of it, plus 3-6 secondary sources and write a 7-10 page paper on it for Tuesday. Mostly I like that my tutor didn't think it was necessary to mention that the book isn't even in a language that I know well. At least I was able to check it out, though. There was a good 18 hour period of panic where I thought that the university only had one copy I could use and that it was a reference copy in a library that closes at 5 every day. Luckily, it turned out that I'm just an idiot who can't use a card catalogue.

My psych tutorial, on the other hand, seems like it might be a joke. She only wanted me to write one paper all term. I had to ask to write one every week. And she doesn't want, like, a real paper. Now, I realize that this is probably something I should be happy about, but I came to Oxford to get my ass kicked! Plus, I can study literature all I want at SLC. Abnormal Psych is not really an option there. I have a meeting with the program director tomorrow to let her know what's going on in case things don't pick up in the tutorial.

Last night was the Wadham pub crawl. There were shenanigans. Sadly (or maybe not sadly...) I had to get up at 8 this morning, so they didn't really involve me. I did, however, have a delicious kebab while waiting for a cab to take me back to my apartment, because I wasn't really big on the idea of walking home the half hour home alone at 1 in the morning. I'm rapidly discovering that I'm really not a bar person. I don't like crowds. I don't like the smell of stale beer. I just like sitting around with my friends in an apartment and hanging out. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the social life here revolves around pubs and the like, so I'll either have to suck it up or work on actually enjoying myself.

And now I go back to slogging through this Middle English. On the bright side, at least the dialogue is funny most of the time. Thus far Cain told Abel to kiss his ass and Noah called his wife "ram shit."

There's a dragon in my shower...

Last night I went to this SWEET concert featuring one of my brand new shiny Oxford friends. Oh man. Her band. So good. They're called The Mountain Parade, and you can find their stuff here. The recording quality sort of sucks, but you can still discern the awesome. The other good person at the show was this guy named Chris, whose band is called Winston Echo. Oh man. So funny. He had songs about robots and whatnot. You can find his stuff here, and if you search "winston echo cat" on YouTube, you'll find a video he made to a song about his lazy cat, featuring the cat.

Today I'm having lunch with a family friend of the woman who was the dean of the ninth grade when I was at Sidwell. She's one of my favorite people ever, and she says this guy, who's my age, is absolutely amazing, so I'm hoping it'll be a good time and not the horribly awkward mess I'm imagining. After that, I have an introduction to the Literature libaries, including the Bodleian. Because I'm a huge nerd, I am sooooooooo excited. It's a copyright library, guys. There will be so many amazing, amazing, amazing books. Did I mention I'm a huge nerd?

Tomorrow I have my first meeting with my Lit tutor, and Thursday I meet with my Psych tutor. Even though I know they're probably going to give me a whole ton of work, I am super excited. My brain's kind of been lying dormant since May and I'm starting to worry it might waste away if I don't give it something to do. Of couse, once I start working I'll look back at this and wonder what the hell I was thinking, because anyone and everyone who's seen me with a lot of work knows how frazzled and stressed I get, but right now I am looking forward to it with every fiber of my being.

Yesterday I broke down and bought a bus pass. While this was partly motivated by the fact that my feet and legs are a big, fluffly cloud of ow at the moment from all the walking I've been doing, the real reason is that the pool is a good 45 minute walk from my apartment at a very brisk pace, and I am NOT swimming for an hour and a half and then walking back. This is also yet another ploy to guilt myself into swimming on a regular basis. After all, I spent 40 pounds to take the bus for the next 4 weeks. I need to capitalize on it.

Now Ashley and I are off to go meet this boy. Who knows. Maybe he'll be the English boy I meet, fall in love with, and never come back home because of! But, really, check out the music I saw last night. You will not regret it. And if you do, please don't tell me. Because I will be heartbroken.

London bridge is falling down...

Having spent an entire summer hearing about all the things I'm going to do while in Oxford, I think it's best to start this blog with a list of predictions made by my dear, dear friends, colleagues, and pool patrons. According to the masses of the greater Washington D.C. area, over the next nine months I'm going to:

-Develop an English accent
-Pick up some hilarious slang
-Develop a deep seated love of Fish and Chips
-Meet an English boy, fall in love, and never come back
-Go totally broke
-Learn to like beer
-Have an amazing time

Thus far, the only thing on the list that's come true list the last one. It's pretty incredible here. Everything is so beautiful and full of history, and the program is really helpful in giving us opportunities to meet people and whatnot. Plus, there's a Wagamama. You can't go wrong when there's a Wagamama.

Yesterday we went to London. At some point I'll post pictures, most of which I'll have to steal from one Molly Stern, because my camera died. I'm going to try and make a photobucket for this year so I don't totally innundate this thing with pictures. That way, anyone who's interested can check them out. But, yeah, London remains amazing. Covent Garden is still nifty and the tour of the Tower of London is just as hilarious and fun as I remember it being six years ago. Plus, the crown jewels are super shiny, which is always a good thing.

I meet with my psych tutor on Thursday to discuss what I'm going to do with her this term. I'm kind nervous, but super excited, because I googled her, and the work she's done is really interesting. And my lit tutorial will be excellent, because I'm sharing with Ashley, so I know the other person isn't an idiot, and we can commiserate on papers. It's always nice to have someone to commiserate with.

Now I'm off to buy useful things like a pie plate. The exchange rate is still super depressing, but I'm trying not to let it get me down. After all, that's why I worked all day every day this summer!