Stonehenge, Bath, and Halloween!!

so yesterday was seriously one of the most fun days ever!  two of my friends (julia and allison) and i went to stonehenge and bath for the day, and then last night we went out for halloween.  it was an absolute blast.  so i'm going to attach a few pictures on here.  as far as the adventure:

   -it is important to remember that, while we were all super excited for this trip, we are also all post-grads, so we brought homework along.  yeah...
   -since i've been to stonehenge before, and the two of them have the attention span of a goldfish, rather than listening to all the little recordings about it, we spent a good chunk of time taking action shots, which you will notice.
   -once we got to bath, we went on a walking tour.  unfortunately, all three of us had lost any hope of paying close attention by that point, so we got some more fantastic shots.
   -i also took advantage of the beautiful time of year and played in the leaves, which i'm sure jane austen would fully approve of
   -for halloween, we went with the cheapest costumes we could find.  i was whiskers, the murder cat, and julia was a devil, which just seemed to work for her...
   -allison has a crazy awesome for getting action shots, so the main action shots are from her camera, but i can't get them any bigger.  sorry.

so yeah.  all in all, it was a really fantastic day!!!

random bits of happiness

so this week wasn't really all that exciting.  i went on a mini-adventure and took pictures of a bunch of the different colleges, but i can't remember which ones are which, so that's my bad.  i successfully made spachetti (and by spaghetti, i mean noodles with marinara sauce), so that was a moral victory.  i was also chosen to be one of the two class representatives for our MA course, so that's kind of cool.  i told everybody that, as the american class rep, we would start out taking over other classes, changing things up, switching out their professors, and then we would most likely move on.  we would also put a much greater emphasis on food.  yup.  i was always meant to be a leader.  i've also asked everyone to start calling me "your supreme representative", but we'll see how that goes.  they also don't seem to be partaking in the bowing to me when i enter the room.  but i've got time to train them, so i'm not too worried!  OOH!!  and i got two houseplants!!  they are george, the viscount of st. clements, and lucy in the sky with diamonds!  they're rather fantastic, if i do say so myself, which i do.  they are excellent company, and rarely judge my outfits.

so yeah.  all in all, things here are going well.  keep in touch!

love,
me

quite possibly the worst pasta ever

so apparently, being in oxford doesn't make you smarter just from, you know, being here.

so tonight i decided to be domestic and make my dinner (as in something besides a sammich or cereal).  i tried it the other night, and it was really bland and gross, so my friend who knows how to cook offered to help.  so she sat in the kitchen and monitored my every move.  alas, it just wasn't meant to be.

i had pasta, and in it, i added 3 different kinds of spices, some peppered olive oil, and, when that still wasn't anything good, some cheese.  and STILL, it was pretty much the most bland thing i've ever tasted.  i tried to add more spices, but julia said just adding more and more spices won't help.  (i still managed to sneak some in.)  anyway, yeah, it really wasn't good, and now i feel a little sick to my stomach.  it really was quite awful.

so now i'm going to try to do some reading, but there's a decent chance i won't get very far, because my stomach is really trying to convince me that throwing up sounds much more enjoyable than reading.  i'm SO over not having a personal chef.

me

netherfield park is let at last

so i'm sorry i haven't been on here in a bit, but this has honestly been a ridiculously crazy week!

first things first: i switched my MA program.  i'm now getting a dual masters in international law and international relations.  and holy cow, i am LOVING my law classes!  they are so interesting.  the problem is that i don't have any background in law (international or domestic), so all the latin terms they keep throwing around?  yeah.  it's all latin to me.  (hee hee...get it?  instead of it's all greek to me?  i crack myself up!)  anyway, so that's amazing.  i'm also crazy excited because next semester i'm going to take a class either on international human rights law or international criminal law.  how awesome will that be?!?!  oh, i'm pumped!

anyway, then, for some reason on friday, my computer started acting funny.  by saturday, it wasn't working properly at all, so i had to call somebody.  yeah.  i had a virus.  it got to the point that it literally recognized everything as a virus.  the guy had to take my computer and completely wipe it.  luckily he had thought at the beginning to save all of my music and documents and everything just to be safe.  so he took it back to his lab place, and found over 1600 infected parts.  he said he was impressed, as that's one of the higher amounts he has ever seen on a personal laptop!  (go big or go home, i guess.)  so yeah.  now it's back, and working just fine.

then, on sunday, my friend julia and i went to basildon park, which is more famously known as "netherfield park" in the more recent pride and prejudice movie.  it was FANTASTIC!!  first of all, it turned out to be the most gorgeous day, which is always nice.  especially when you have to walk over two miles to get to the place from the train station.  and did i mention the fact that the sidewalk doesn't continue the entire way?  yeah, so we had to climb a few hills and fences in order to get there.  julia is roughly 8 feet tall, so it wasn't a big deal for her, but yeah, i'm slightly more vertically challenged, so i wasn't amused.  anyway, we (finally) got there, and it was gorgeous.  i'm adding a couple pictures here, including the one of the whomping willow we saw!  the house was really well preserved (it's a national trust house, now, so it's open to the public, not privately owned), and it was cool to be able to see how things were decorated.  also, at the bottom of the main staircase there was a piano for people to play, so i played "moonlight sonata" in honor of mom (it's her favorite).  i also reenacted a couple of the scenes from pride and prejudice, but i figure i can't be the only one, seeing as they people working there didn't even blink at it.  then we wandered around the grounds (freaking gorgeous).  and finally, quite possibly best of all, i totally rolled down a hill.  that's right.  i rolled down the hill at mr. bingley's house.  it was fantastic.  i kind of thought i was going to throw up there for a bit at the bottom, because it was super steep, but it all worked out.

so yeah.  that's about it.  now that my computer is back and in working order, i will (hopefully) be able to do more than one post a week.  then again, we get about 30 hours of reading each week for class, so who knows?

okay.  i will talk to you all soon!

me

fantastic adventure!!

so i was doing some reading today when i looked outside and noticed that, HOLY COW, THERE WAS BLUE SKY!!!!  so i dropped what i was working on, grabbed my camera, and went exploring.  and wow, it was fantastic!

among other things, i saw the rose garden at the oxford botanical garden (the only part that is free), awesome views of christ church college, riverboats, some gorgeous houses, quite possibly the prettiest flower i've ever seen, some african trees cut down to show the rest of the world about how terrible deforestation is, and a few views of buildings in oxford that i liked.  i put all the pictures on facebook, but i'm putting my favorites on here too!!

getting lost--really not as amazing as i imagined...

wow.  it has been kind of crazy around here.  i think i'm officially all settled in, though, which is nice.  i got the finishing touches for my room, so now it's just going to be a matter of doing all my schoolwork.  yikes!


i'm actually trying to think of what i did this weekend, and nothing in particular stands out.  i went on a few random walks to various parts of the city i have never been to before.  in fact, we did get lost at one point.  the problem with getting lost in reality as opposed to getting lost in theory is that in reality, you don't find yourself on cute little cobblestoned walks with adorable little shops and such.  you just find yourself on random roads with lots of various kinds of everything shops (which are the shops that are kind of like a gas station, minus selling the gas), and a few random cafes that serve food you've never heard of.  so yeah.  really nothing very spectacular about that at all.  i'm thinking maybe i should try to get lost in a different area.


just the same, i did have a small adventure when getting the chair i now have in my room.  i found it online from a couple moving to london, so i went to pick it up, and had ordered a taxi to drive the chair and me back to my flat.  well, apparently, someone else had also ordered a taxi for the same house, and i took the wrong taxi.  and, when we were about 1 minute from our house, we had to turn around, because the woman was PISSED (american pissed, not british).  granted, she only had to wait an extra 5 minutes or so, since i lived about 2 miles from the house, but still.  so my friend and i quickly moved the chair to the other taxi waiting, apologized profusely, then went on our way.  so now i have a lovely orange mini-futon chair in my room, which goes BEAUTIFULLY with all of the rasberry colored everything else that i have.  but it works, and when people visit, they will officially have a place to sleep.  (actually, it's pretty comfortable, too, which i was surprised about.)


so yeah.  that's about it.  i have a ton of reading left to do for classes this week, which i'm not too excited about.  apparently we will have about 25-30 hours of reading every week.  yeah, thanks to everyone who has their MA already and didn't warn me about that.  but it's all good, because now i have a comfy chair to read in, rather than in bed, where i would just tend to fall asleep.


i think that's about it.  i'm going to put up pictures on facebook from a few of my walks/adventures, as well as a few of my room, by request.  it's a tiny room, but it works, since i really don't need a lot of space.  i was really worried at the beginning as to how small it is (it's smaller than my freshman year dorm), but i'm actually okay with it now.  minus the lack of storage.  but i've taken care of that.  i've put my luggage in various closets throughout the house. :)


i will talk to you all soon!


me