Oh pumpkin pie.....

I am both sad and relieved that I used the last of my pumpkin puree yesterday. I'm sad because we've already eaten one of the two pies I made yesterday, and since I don't have another pumpkin to roast, once we finish the second pie, that's it. But....I'm relieved because I've eaten more pumpkin pie in the past few weeks that I would've though possible.

It's oh so good.

I watched 'A Good Year' last night. Despite all the bad press it got, I really enjoyed it. Then again, I do have a huge acting crush on Russell Crowe ("acting crush" -- I am in love with him on the screen...based mostly on talent. I don't really want to make out with him or anything. I'm just impressed by some of the roles he's done). Anyway, Sonja did production design for that one, so she's proud of it.

I finally ran out of deodorant at the end of the week. So I went to Boots (British version of Longs/Walgreens) yesterday to buy deodorant and a toothbrush and also to check and see if I could find a substitute for my expensive hair product that I've also run out of. Sadly, deodorant here is most an aerosol affair. Which is completely strange. Can't just buy a stick of shower fresh Degree. So I sort of stood in the deodorant aisle for a few minutes, comparing the few non-aerosol options that I had (to be fair, the local Boots isn't too terribly big, so it doesn't have a lot of selection). They did have my same toothbrush though. Hooray! And, as luck would have it, I also found a cheap replacement for my depleted stock of hair product. Double hooray! It was a good run to Boots.

My fingernails and toenails are painted bright pink at the moment. I'm feeling cheeky.

I have three essays due within the next three weeks. Sadly, this means I won't be able to do anything extracurricular until they all get handed in. Maybe I can get a jump on things and hand them in early....

I got locked out last night. Took some pie over to Neighbor Clare's house. Sonja, Julian, and Conrad had gone to a movie, so I had the house to myself. Anyway, took the pie over, got to chatting, next thing you know, it's midnight. Try to let myself back into the house.....the chain is on the door. Whoops. Slept on Clare's couch. Apparently they assumed I was in my room asleep and thus put the chain on. Whoops.

Okay. I'm going to watch 'Time Bandits' now. I keep falling asleep during the opening credits. Oh. Tea first. Then movie. Then sleep.

Keep on truckin'.....

Twice in one day!

There was frost this morning. So weird. It's cold.

I am very stir-crazy this week. Plans to leave town for the weekend have been thwarted because I forgot I agreed to tutor one of Conrad's friends on Saturdays (for a little extra cash, of course). And there's a side job that Sonja wants me to do, and since I know this is my last essay-free weekend until the end of the semester, I'm going to be a grownup and cancel my plans so I can tutor and do the job for Sonja. I'm not too pleased about it, but what can you do?

I have a weird almost-migraine at the moment. I'm going to take more ibuprofen, but my four hour interval isn't up yet. Sooooooooo........I've decided to do some cross-stitching and watch 'High School Musical'.

Yep. You read that right.

The problem with wanting to cross-stitch is that I need to have the TV on. Since there really isn't anything good on TV tonight, I needed to pick out a movie that it wouldn't matter if I just listened to it. I bought 'Clueless' on VHS a couple of weeks ago, but my VCR isn't cooperating. And it seems like all the movies that Sonja owns that I've already seen I'm just not interested in watching again. Can't watch a movie I haven't seen before because I won't really be watching the screen...need to keep an eye on my stitches. Enter 'High School Musical'. Haven't seen it before, but don't really care if I can't pay close attention since it's a stupid cheesy bad Disney Channel Original Movie. Perfect!

Good news for the day is that I've sort of figured out postmodernism a bit more. Enough to be intrigued by it to the point where I'm considering switching to that essay topic instead of the medieval vs. Renaissance historiography topic (which is so alluring because I'd get to ramble on about the importance of language...woot.).

In other news, my hair is too long. Thank god for bobby pins. And headbands. And hats.

I am also thankful for thick tights and skinny pants. Seems like combining the two is really good for keeping the chill out.

It is mighty cold. I plan on bringing back my heavy jacket. I don't care how dorky it makes me look.

Anyway, time to get back to the movie/cross-stitching. Hopefully this will calm me down as intended. If not, there's always Gone with the Wind....the book....don't have my copy of the movie....

Hasta luego.....

My iPod has a weird sense of humor

So I went a little crazy yesterday. The tile grout in the bathroom isn't too clean, and it finally got to me. So I attacked the dingy grout with a zeal that can only be described as obsessive-compulsive. The irony of Sonja's obsession with cleanliness is that she lacks the really heavy-duty cleaning chemicals to make it possible. They didn't even have a proper scrub brush.

We've got one now. And as far as the harsh chemicals are concerned, apparently it's a no-go because the bathtub is enamel. Damn. Maybe I'll sneak some Comet back in my suitcase. The grout is really gross. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed for the better part of an hour yesterday and didn't even make a dent. Apparently the bathroom smelled really nice though, so you know, I got that going for me.

And, of course, I was spurred on by the wonderful playlist I had rockin' whilst flinging bleach foam all over myself. Any time my iPod decides to follow boy band fluff with semi-hard punk is cause for celebration and a renewal of the fervor with which I'm devoting myself to the task at hand.

I've decided I'd rather take the bus everywhere. Provided I can get a seat, and it doesn't take twice as long as usual to get me to where I need to go. Taking the tube is sort of like magic transportation. You ride the escalator down, snap your fingers, ride the escalator up, and POOF! You're at your destination. Or at least you're back outside, within walking distance of your final destination. You don't really get to see all the fun stuff between points A and B. The bus, on the other hand, lets you catch a glimpse of the wonders between tube stops. And it's cheaper.

Today I'm swearing at postmodernism. If somebody out there understands it, can you please give me a call? Not only can I not make heads or tails of what it's supposed to be all about, what I can understand seems like a big load of crap. Poo. I'll stick to Ranke.

School is for nerds....

I'm listening to John Denver. I need to get out of the city for a weekend. I'm feeling a bit stifled at the moment. But only enough for it to be slightly annoying.

But HOT DAMN! I love school! I haven't really been attending to this blog as of late, so tonight I'm making my first attempt to get you folks caught up with things, starting with the whole story of how I managed to get enrolled in Goldsmiths.

Basically, I talked my way into it. The process for applying to universities here is different from the US. There is one main clearing house type website you do your application on, and they in turn send it to the schools you've chosen. Because I came into the process so late, all I did was complete the application then call the universities directly. Much to my dismay, everyone had already started classes, except for Goldsmiths College, which is one of the twenty or so colleges that make up the University of London. I got an admissions guy on the phone on Thursday, impressed him with my high school AP test scores, went in on Friday to fill out paperwork and get my class schedule, then started school on Monday. Time lapsed from starting my application to starting class: two weeks. Not too shabby. I come to find out later that I really and truly lucked out. I've managed to get a spot in a good school.

So. I'm an English and History student, and I'm taking four classes and go five days a week. Each class consists of one hour of lecture and one hour of seminar. Lectures are obviously where you all go and take notes while an important-sounding professor talks about stuff, then you go to seminar and talk about the lecture in a smaller group. The really rad thing about seminars here versus the discussion groups I had to go to at UCSD is that the seminars are run by the professors, not TAs. The lecturers rotate lecturing responsibility in accordance with what their speciality is. Fan-tastic. And although the school year is broken up into three terms, I'll be in the same four classes for the entire year. Also fan-tastic.

Not so fan-tastic: a majority of my final grade in each class seems to rest on my perfomance on what will certainly be a nasty end-of-year exam-type thingie. Not sure about that....

So. The four classes I am taking are as follows:

1) Explorations in Literature: basically a survey course of the big 'uns in that are part of the literary canon. We started with 'The Odyssey' and end with Margaret Atwood. Along the way are Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Hardy, Woolf, etc etc etc. We basically read one book a week. I'm worried that Milton is going to break me. Dante tried but failed since I'd already read 'The Inferno'. The only really frustrating thing about this class is the lack of time we get to spend on each literary work. Two hours with Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' is just enough to gloss over the main points. I suppose that means that the more detailed analysis is going to come from our essays, but I'm going to miss having the chance to sort of test my essay ideas out on the rest of the class. Oh. I just re-read the syllabus and found out that I've got a three-hour essay test...three hours to write three essays. Oh dear. Well. I'll think about that when it gets closer to exam day.

2) Making of Medieval Europe: at the moment, my favorite class. This is the only class I got to pick. My other two choices were Renaissance history and modern history. I chose medieval because it's the one I know the least about. US schools K-12 spend tons of time on the Renaissance and modern times because that's all America was really around for. So I figured I'd change things up a bit. And boy oh boy, am I glad that I did! Thus far, I have been utterly fascinated with every topic we've covered. I really can't go any more into it, otherwise I'm likely to get lost on some tangent involving secular aristocracy or burial goods or good ol' Charlemagne. I may be starting to dig history more than literature...nah...lit will always be where my heart is...

3) Concepts and Methods in History: this is the tough one. Explorations and Medieval are classes that I would normally associate with literature and history majors...we read and discuss literature in Explorations and we read and discuss history in Medieval. Concepts and Methods as well as the last class are more like big how-tos on being history/literature students. At the moment we're charging through the entirety of recorded human history, focusing on the historians that jotted everything down. So these few weeks have been less about what happened as opposed to who wrote about it, and how they went about doing so. After that it's a few weeks on what constitutes a legitimate historical source, then a few more weeks on the specific approaches to history. Whew. It's some theoretical stuff. The difficulty of getting my brain to think in the way they want me to is compounded by my seminar professor. She's aggressive and confrontational, and although I really enjoy her teaching methods, it really sucks when she decides to fix her stare on you because you've said something stupid. Forces me to really focus on being prepared for class though, which is a good thing...

4) Approaches to Text: last but not least, my "how to read literature like a proper literature student" class. I am very bored with this one. The syllabus leads me to believe that it may pick up later on in the year, but it's really basic stuff right now that I've been doing already for ages. I have to read lots of literary theory stuff, which is sort of interesting, and of the four actual literary works that we're covering, I've only read one. Well, that's not true. I was supposed to read 'Frankenstein', but I got twenty pages into and didn't like it. Same thing with 'The Tempest', which is also on our list for this class. The theory textbooks for this class were expensive.

And there you have it. We're in week seven out of eleven for the first term and I couldn't be happier. I'm meeting new folks, making new friends, and stuffing my head with as much as it can hold. It's been hard to juggle nannying responsibilities with school responsibilities, but I'm starting to get the details of a good routine hammered out.

At any rate, I have to stop typing now because I have to finish up the reading for tomorrow's lecture/seminar. I'm going to try and post more tomorrow evening, but no guarantees....

Buenas noches!

Chicken tikka and naan

So after mentioning a couple of times tonight that I wanted Del Taco, I decided to stop at the drive-thru equivalent for some Indian food before I head off to sleep (I totally have a thing for naan...). I'll let you know later whether or not it's as good as a Macho Chicken Burrito for fighting off hangovers.

I went to my friend Helen's going away party tonight. She's quit her job at the Imperial War Museum in order to focus on her studies (which is where I met her...she's also an English and History student). I met some very charming people as well as some slightly doltish ones who didn't get the jokes I happened to be making at their expense. It basically was a bunch of people who work in museums getting drunk and referring to me as a "colonial". Which of course, I loved. Especially since it allowed me to say in a rather condescending tone of voice: "yeah, but if I'm not mistaken it was Tony Blair who spent a lot of time kissing American president backside, not the other way around." To be fair, that bit of nastiness only came out after IT Bob told me that soccer is "a man's sport." Needless to say, I got a bit testy after that remark.

Anyway, I had a very good time.

As I was walking back home after picking up some chicken tikka along with my favorite naan, it struck me yet again how happy I am here. Having met people like Helen and her friend Rob (who gave me a quick lesson on Australian politics after getting me to concede that Hilary might actually be a good president because she's such a centrist), I feel as though I fit in here more so than any other place I've lived.

The major downside being the distance between me and my family.

Anyway, I've finished my late night snack, and it's now 3AM, so I should probably go to sleep. More on what I've been up to later this weekend. After I finish ironing...

Much love to all, and I can't wait to get home for Christmas to see everyone!