Go Places

I'm now back and snug in my safe European home in Bath. I loved the rest of our time in Oxford, but at the same time it's a little nice to be back in our home and not feel so rushed to see everything in Oxford. (Unfortunately, this also means I need to focus on all the homework I let slide whilst in Oxford, but that's just how it goes.)
Even with classes and whatnot during the week, I was still able to enjoy Oxford. Not too surprisingly, some of my favorite parts of the week were the eating bits. Since we were provided with breakfast and lunch every day (and got to eat in the gorgeous Great Hall), we all felt more inclined to splurge a little bit more with dinner. During the week, I ate at The Bear, which is the oldest pub in Oxford, and The Eagle and Child. At The Eagle and Child, I finally got a British pie, which was actually delicious! (And I don't think there were any extra unwanted toppings involved...) The Eagle and Child was extra exciting because that was the pub where the Inklings, a group of writers including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, used to meet. So we got to pretend we were fancy and intelligent like they were. On Tuesday night, we had an ASE group dinner at an Indian restaurant. Now, as you know, I'm certainly not very adventurous when it comes to food. I like my mac and cheese and peanut butter, butter, and velveeta cheese sandwiches, thank you very much. But I figured that, since it was a group outing, it would definitely be an experience and this would probably be one of the best times to try Indian food, since the group would be a mix of knowledgeable Indian food lovers and others who had never tried it before. Surprisingly, I really loved it! Granted, I got the korma, which is the blandest curry option, but still. I felt very proud of my food adventures. Plus, we went out and got some ice cream after eating that night, so that made it even better.
Outside of food, there are a lot of other things that Oxford offers. One day I went out and explored Cowley Street, which is a long row of thrift shops, little boutiques, and the largest and most varied group of ethnic restaurants I have ever seen. It was like a little world market and was lots of fun to just explore. Then there was some more convential shopping. I meandered down one of the main roads, popping into boutiques that I knew I could never affoard. But I had more luck at Primark, which is kinda like a department store Forever 21. It was so huge and so cheap! There's also an Alice in Wonderland shop (across from Christ Church College, where Lewis Carroll used to teach) which had so many cool Alice merchandise and the cutest tea set I have ever seen in my life! (Unfortunately, buying the tea set is in no way remotely practical). My favorite store, though, had to be Blackwell's. Now Blackwell's is a book store with five floors. Not only that, but the bottom floor goes under the street as well because it holds so many books. My roommate and I agreed that we could just set up camp in the store forever and be perfectly happy.
I also went on a tour of Christ Church, which is one of the largest and most famous of the Oxford Colleges. (Extra special note - Harry Potter has been filmed here!! And they essentially replicated the college's Great Hall to create Hogwart's. The Hall at Christ Church didn't have an enchanted ceiling.) It was huge and really gorgeous. I also went to the Natural History Museum. They have like an additional museum inside called the Pitt Rivers Museum which is one man's collection of stuff that he's gathered from trips around the world. There were lots of old instruments, writing materials, and stuff, but my favorites were probably the shrunken heads (courtesy of Trader Sam maybe?). In the rest of the museum, they had your usual awesome dinosaur fossils and stuff, but the highlight was the remains of a dodo!!! That's right, a dodo.
On Thursday, our last night in Oxford, we had a classy, fancy dinner in the Great Hall of Univ. with our staff and a group of our professors. I love opportunities to get really dressed up and this was no exception. It was a great way to end our stay in Oxford. On the way back to Bath on Friday, we took a trip to Blenheim Palace, which belongs to the Duke of Something. (If I felt like pulling our the material we got about the palace I could tell you. But I'm lazy.) The point is, it was huge and gorgeous. And there were some fantastic gardens. There was even a garden maze, which was a lot of fun. (And thankfully, there was no portkey at the end.)
Now, as I said, I'm back to my books and homework and papers. But that's alright. I watched "Sense and Sensibility" with some girls from my house today (it actually was kinda homework - promise) and then we're going to visit Cardiff in Wales tomorrow. So I can't complain too much. Maybe on Monday I'll be back to work.

Oxford Coma

On Saturday I woke up at the crack of dawn (or 7:30) to get ready to head out to Oxford! One of the parts of my semester with ASE that I was most looking forward to was our week in Oxford at University College (the oldest Oxford college) and so far it hasn’t disappointed.
We got to Oxford before noon on Saturday, got settled in, took a short tour of the college and of the city, had some time to explore, and then had a “ Disco in the Univ Bar” (yes, that’s what our itinerary called it). First of all, I absolutely adore my room! We have singles for this week, which is nice, although I do miss my roommate being around. (Our staff likes to say that this is the week you get to take a break from your roommate. Instead, I go to visit her in her room just down the hall from me.) It’s a cute little dorm room that has its own wash basin and a little chair and coffee table in addition to a bed, desk, etc. But the best parts are that each of our rooms has its own water heater, tea cups, and tea bags (just as a side note – I’m not a huge tea drinker at home, except for Throat Coat on occasions. But since I’ve been here, I just can’t stop drinking tea, especially with lots of milk and brown sugar) and I have my own bay window and WINDOW SEAT!!! I’ve always wanted to have my own window seat and I couldn’t have been more excited when I saw the giant, comfy one in my room. (The only way that my room disappoints, especially now that we have internet in our rooms, is that we were told in the past that some ASE students have gotten a room with a grand piano. So I was really hoping for that grand piano. But I guess I’ll have to make do with the window seat.)
As for the city of Oxford itself, I love it. It reminds me of Boston, in that it’s this giant college city and has this great mix of new and old (although the old here is significantly older). Already, I’ve found some great unhealthy places to eat, like Ben’s Cookies and G & D's Ice Cream (both soo delicious). They even have this chain here called The Mission, which is exactly like Chipotle. We cheated a little bit by eating there the first night, but it was great comfort food.
Our “Disco” was pretty brilliant. The highlight was definitely when Barbara, the director of ASE, came out and made the boys dance with her to David Bowie (apparently she used to dance with Bowie, which is just so awesome). We met another group of American students there who are in Oxford for a semester from Pomona College!! And that’s really exciting because Pomona College is about a half hour from my home and I have a number of friends who go to Pomona and the other Claremont Colleges. It was one of those great small world moments.
Sunday we picked up breakfast and went to the gorgeous Christ Church Cathedral for church and to see the cathedral. One of my favorite parts of Oxford so far is that we get breakfast and lunch on campus. You don’t really realize how much you miss a dining hall until you don’t have one anymore. It’s really adorable because we pick up our food from the Buttery (!) and then eat in the Grand Hall (like Harry Potter!). (Another side observation – bacon here is weird. Still delicious, but weird. They cut wider and fatter strips. It’s more like a fried slice of ham than bacon.) As for Christ Church, I wasn’t a fan of the service itself, but it was fun and amusing to listen to their famous boys’ choir.
Then, we went punting!! It was simultaneously one of the most frightening and most exciting experiences of my life. You’re in a long skinny boat, with someone standing in the back with a giant pole, pushing and steering the boat. I was in a boat with four other girls and we did not get off to a good start. The boat house said they would give us a tutorial about how to punt, but the “tutorial” essentially consisted of “Here’s the pole. Have fun”. So as we were trying to get underway, the boat kept turning around, getting stuck sideways trying to get under a bridge, with us generally squeaking because it felt like the boat might trip over. After lots of trial and error (and getting to our third punter), we figured out how to make it work. How you work the pole to make the boat go in the right direction seemed somewhat counterintuitive, but once we finally figured out how to do it we were fine. The worst part, though, was trying to shift around in the boat to change punters, since the first two girls reasonably couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So there was lots of weight shifting and boat turning and general unrest about not wanting to fall in the water. But once we got going, it was fantastic. It was so peaceful and relaxing and we were punting around a beautiful area. I eventually worked up the courage to awkwardly scramble across the boat and try to not fall in the water to take my turn punting. Since my friend had already figured out how to punt, it was a lot easier for me. It was neat to stand at the back of the boat and steer us around the other boats that were having their own punting problems (and there were a lot of them throughout our journey). It was such a uniquely Oxford-ian experience and so much fun.
Now, unfortunately, we all have to return to the reality of classes and homework. Hopefully, though, in the middle of all the school stuff, we’ll still find time to play and explore. And on the bright side, at least I have a window seat to do my homework on.

Wait

And...back again to the daily grind. Not much happening. Just waiting for the ball to get rolling with stuff. But, on the plus side, the daily grind is in England, so I can't really complain.
This week I've gone to class, the gym, and to my internship. My internship work is starting to pick. Not a lot, but some. I worked around the office on Monday, making more copies and helping organize things. My favorite part of that day was the sign they had in the copy room about office fire safety. On the sign, it said "assign these duties to a competent person".
Today, I went to the first rehearsal for the show I'm working on at the egg. They're putting up a show called "Beasts and Beauties", which is a collection of European fairy tales. The cast is made up of 12-13 year olds, which makes me smile because that's the age group I worked with a lot with RCT (Riverside Children's Theatre). I even had a huge RCT flashback today watching all of the kids say hi to each other after not being together all summer. Memories...And let me tell you, these girls were all more fashionably dressed than me, even the ones in their school uniforms. I showed up in my jeans, sweatshirt, and comfy t-shirt, while lots of these girls were all glammed up. There were a couple of girls wearing the Bath-outfit, which is a shirt that barely covers your bottom and then leggings. No pants, just leggings. It's a trend in the US too, especially Gettysburg, but everywhere you look in Bath you see girls without pants.
But anyway, it was really exciting to be at a rehearsal, but there wasn't much for me to do. I mostly sat around as they did theatre games, which was fine. Theatre games are much cuter when they're done by British kids. They were doing games focusing on energy and focus. The highlight of my night was, when the group of kids was asked what the general attitude of the group was, one of the girls said "It looks like they're not bovvered." I just about lost it....(this is why it makes me so happy.)
Last night, my roommate, my Gettysburg friend, and I went to see Sweeney Todd at the Main House of the Theatre Royal. It wasn't a great production - it was a community production and really one of the hardest shows to put on - but I still really enjoyed it. The best part? The comp tickets! Definitely the best part of working at a theatre. I figured the tickets would be way in the back of the house, but it turns out that I got great orchestra (or stalls, as the British call it) seats. It was the perfect place to sit in the theatre. And I can't wait to get to see more free shows there.
As an attempt to make this blog end on a (hopefully) more interesting note, here's a fun fact about my daily walk. On my way to the city center every day, I get to cross over the gorgeous river Avon. But, at the corner of the bridge, there's a little hut. Like, a little house. I don't understand why it's there or how someone gets to live there. (I can just picture the ad - Sweet little hut. Convenient bridge location.) In the window, there are little faded plastic figurines, including a couple South Park characters and a naked caveman. So I'm just waiting for the day when I cross the bridge on my way to town, going trippity-trop, and this troll jumps out and wants to eat me. Hopefully I'll be able to escape by saying that I'm too small to eat...here's hoping.

T-E-A-M

This weekend has been very (or v. vair) British indeed.
I went with three girls in my house to tea on Friday. And it was sooo delicious. Quite possibly one of the best things ever. We went to Sally Lunn's, which is a big tourist place because it's one of the oldest establishments (" permanent, floating..." Sorry - I just think of Guys and Dolls whenever I say that) in Bath, but it was really quite cute. Sally Lunn's is also famous for its Sally Lunn buns, which are essentially these giant plate-sized buns. So we got tea (with brown sugar sugar cubes!), scones with clotted cream and jam (which my roommate is obsessed with), and Sally Lunn buns with delicious, melty cinnamon butter on top. All and all, we felt quite classy. Before we left, we made sure to "read our tea leaves". (The whole process of getting the tea leaves in the cup prepared to be read is more difficult than one might imagine.) I kept hoping one of us would see the Grim, but none of us did. I saw an animated moose in mine. But I couldn't tell you what that means.
Yesterday a big group from ASE went to the opening game for Bath Rugby!! (They were playing the London Wasps, which got me thinking that I might have enjoyed the game more if they had been playing on broomsticks.) We met in front of the Huntsman, the pub right by our study center, which is also conviently close to the rugby field. It was astounding to see all of the people mobbed around the Huntsman wearing their Bath Rugby jerseys. We walked over to the field and got situated in the terrace - aka the cheap spot where you stand on steps for the entire game. The terrace also tends to be the rowdy section, and lo and behold, directly to my left was a group of slightly drunk middle aged men who were quite passionate about Bath Rugby. One kept cheering "Go Bath!". At least, I think that's what he was saying. You couldn't really hear any consonants, so it usually sounded more like "Ooo-aaahh!" And really, it wasn't cheering. It was more like the most intense combination of yelling-screaming that I've ever heard. (He would challenge my dad in terms of loudness. And if you know my dad, that's saying something.) My left ear was still ringing for awhile after the game ended.
And as for the game itself, it was definitely interesting. Rugby is one of the most bizarre games I've ever seen in my life. We decided it was a combination of American football, soccer, cheerleading, and UFC. With a little bit of free-for-all thrown in. I was trying to remember all of the things that my friend Krissy, who actually plays rugby, has told me about her own rugby experience, but I couldn't remember too much. Thankfully, Ian (a British student essentially hired by ASE to be our friend - but it's alright because he's really awesome) was at the game with us and really loves rugby, so he helped us kinda understand the game better. The stadium itself wasn't much help in helping us figure out the game. While American stadiums have lots of screens to look at that can help clarify everything as well as lots of buzzers and noises to alert the crowd when something happens, the Bath stadium had one litte clock showing how much time was left in the half and a little scoreboard hidden in the corner. That's it. Maybe they don't want foreigners to follow the game. Anyways, despite (or maybe because of) all these difficulties, I had a great time. I don't feel the need to go to another game, but it definitely was a British experience I didn't want to miss out on.
And to finish up my thoroughly British day, my roommate and I went to see The Jungle Book at "the egg" (the children's theatre at the Theatre Royal and the department I'm working with this semester). The show was brilliant. It was so well done and innovative and had such a cool concept. We both had a great time. Seeing the show made me even more excited to get started on helping out with rehearsals at "the egg".
Unfortunately, with all this stuff going on this weekend, I had kinda forgotten about the homework I had to get done. Oops. So no adventures today (...probably). I'm just planning on spending today with my good friend Richard and his hunchback.

Better

Alright. The week got better from Tuesday. I knew it would, it was just nice for it to actually happen.
Everything else has been pretty low key. I didn't have class on Wednesday, so I mostly just wandered around and took care of some stuff. (Exciting stuff, I know.) But at night, I went with a couple girls from my house to see the new Dorian Gray movie!! It just came out in England and isn't coming out in the US, at least, not yet (haha). Our tickets had assigned seating, which I've only seen in the US at a movie theater in LA, but is apparently what they do in pretty much all the other countries. So I felt very swanky heading to our numbered seats in the theater. The movie was very wrong, in terms of being an adaptation of the book, but it was gorgeously shot and even had an "Oscar Wilde" scene (as my roommate decided to call it - it means boys kiss!), which made me really happy. I'm sure it would have made Oscar happy as well.
On Thursday I had my Shakespeare in Performance and Late 20th Century British Drama classes. I'm excited for both of them. And it's cute because the classes are taught by a husband-wife crazy British, academic, and theatrical couple. (The wife teaches my Shakespeare class and the husband teaches the British Drama course.) They're really cute in their British-ness. But the highligh was definitely going out with Andrew Butterworth and the other interns. Andrew Butterworth decided to take all of us interns out to the Huntsman (a pub that's really close to our study center) for drinks and just to hang out with each other. And like I've said before, A.B. is fantastic. He was talking to us about how nervous he is because he's leaving a couple weeks to do a short college tour in the States promoting ASE. He kept asking us questions because he wanted to make sure he didn't do things wrong. It was really adorable (and British). Then I spent most of my night musical theatre nerding out with a couple of the other girls in my house. Really, the best way to spend a night.
Today, a group of us are going out for an English tea. Then tomorrow a big group of us from ASE are going to a rugby game! I'm excited. And I'm sure there will be a full report.
And to make up for the lack of exciting stuff going on in my life to talk about today, I present you with some more British and Bath-ian (?) observations:
I don't know if they do this all over England, or just in Bath because the roads are so narrow, but pretty much everyday I see a car parked halfway on the street and halfway on the sidewalk. So half the sidewalk is taken up by a car. Personally, I'm not okay with with. I much prefer my cars to be fully on the street and entirely out of my way.
On the positive side, it makes me really happy to see all the British kids coming home from school in their cute little British uniforms. I know there are kids who wear uniforms at home, but it's not as cute. Probably because they're not British.
That's all I've got for now. Cheers :)

The Bitch of Living

Ok, today wasn't really that bad. (And I am exaggerating with my use of song titles.) But it wasn't a great day. And it felt really long. And I apologize for the rant that follows.
I had my first class today, and I was actually really excited. (It's my Jane Austen class - how could I not be?) Then I was supposed to have my first day interning at the Theatre Royal, which I'm really pumped about. (My roommate and I, who's also interning at the theatre although for a slightly different department, had a tour of the whole building yesterday. I cannot say how happy it made me to be back in theatre after being away for the whole summer.) But things didn't go according to plan.
I found out when I got to our study center, right before class was supposed to start, that my class was rescheduled - our tutor had a problem getting to Bath because of a train fatality (which apparently are very popular in this country. I guess that's the way to go?) My class was scheduled at 11:40 and then I was going to go to the theatre at 2:30 after class, but the class was rescheduled to 4:00. So I frantically ran to the computer lab to email my boss to see if I could show up earlier than we had planned, so I could work more than just an hour today.
I had planned to do some errands between my class and going to the theatre so I figured I would just take care of them now. My first stop was go to the bank and withdraw money so I could pay for books and finally get my phone unlocked and British-ized. The bank I wanted to go to ( Barclays, which has a relationship with Band of America and so shouldn't charge me any extra fees) is right by the study center. I get there..and the ATM is down. I figured using the ATM would be easier than going inside and I was sure that there was another Barclays nearby so I decided to just go find that. Plus, there was a guy who had showed up to the ATM right after me and had left it quickly and with purpose, presumably to find another ATM. Now I'm honestly not a creeper, but I thought I would tail this guy and then he could lead me to the nearest Barclays ATM. (It made a lot of sense at the time - I was hungry and stressed! - and I've learned about trailing from the media, so I didn't walk righ behind him or anything. I feel it was very subtle.) Unfortunately, he then went into the grocery store to use the non-brand name ATM there. So that didn't help. I decided that I might as well trek out on my own - after all, I had a pretty good idea of where the next Barclays is. I searched for about 15 minutes and finally decided I should just head back to that first Barclays and go inside. (Too bad, because I stopped searching just one block before a Barclays. Boo.)
I walked back to the Barclays by the study center and went inside. There was this little walkway right before the actual bank door itself and in the walkway was a very old British lady and a lesser older British lady and her middle aged son. And they were all trying to get into the bank and couldn't. The door was locked. Thankfully, I wasn't acting the fool all by myself while we tried for at least five minutes to get into the bank (because why would it be closed in the middle of the day?) and complained to each other. Eventually, someone from the bank poked his head out and said the building was closed for about 20 mintues because of something involving fixing the ATM - which was my problem in the first place.
Ok. Fine. I just won't get money today. That's alright. I then hurried over to the local music store, hoping my day would get better because the new Sondre Lerche CD is supposed to be on sale! Yay! After hunting around the store, though, and not finding anything, I finally went up to the girl at the counter. Apparently, although Sondre's official website says the CD was supposed to be released yesterday in the UK, the store's information (as well as Amazon UK) says that the CD's not released until October. So my one guaranteed pick-me-up - gone.
Thankfully, I was able to head into the theatre early. Not so fortunately, I spent my time making copies and searching the internet for rehearsal space (a surprising incredibly daunting task) and then awkwardly calling these British people about room rates and whatnot. Typical intern stuff, and I know I'm going to be doing much more exciting stuff than this throughout the rest of the semester, but it wasn't the magical theatre cure that I thought it would be.
Finally, I got to my Jane Austen class, which was supposed to be the start of my day, not the end of it, which was actually almost worth the delay. The beginning was the boring, beginning of class stuff, but once we started discussions it was really exciting. Then I got home and made some mac and cheese (it's not the Blue Box, but for microwave grown up stuff it was pretty good) and watched some Arrested Development, so it's not all bad.
Today was just a big reminder that this semester won't be all sunshine and rainbows and magical abroad-ness. It's still school and it's still real life, so some suck-age is naturally going to be involved. There's always going to be "one of those days" and hopefully I'll still be able to make it work. Maybe.

Goin' Back to Hogwarts

Today was our trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock, and it was pretty epic. (Again, I should be doing homework. But there's plenty of time for that. This day was just too awesome to not talk about right now. Also, just a quick warning that this is a long post. I'm just too excited to want to share lots of stuff.)
This morning we got picked up (15 minutes early) by our double decker coach, which fit all of the students in our program as well as all of the staff. We sat on the top and front of the bus so we had a gorgeous view of English countryside as we were driving. Our bus got to Stonehenge and we looked around. There's not much to do there, cause it's essentially just a bunch of rocks that are roped off so no one can get to close, but it was still a lot of fun. It's funny actually being there, because it's not quite as epic as one imagines it. You would think you would have to climb lots of hills to get there, but it's really close to the road. Plus it seems a lot smaller in person. Even so, it was truly fantastic. It was so great to be so close to such a huge piece of humanity's history. And even though it's not quite so epic, it still is gorgeous and awe-inspiring. (And, naturally, it's a perfect place for American college students to take a wide range of ridiculous pictures. I promise. On that note, I should have pictures up on Facebook soon if you want to see it all.)
After hanging around Stonehenge, we got back on the bus and went to Salisbury. (Yes, like the steak. But I didn't see anything about steak while we were there.) Salisbury's a cute little medival town with an absolutely stunning cathedral, one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, and a perfectly situated and clean red phone booth that's a great site for that classic "I'm in England" photo.
Our last stop of the day was the little village of Lacock. The village is supposed to look pretty much exactly as it did in the 15th century, and I believe it. Sooo picturesque. Even better than that, though, is that we got to visit the old cloister in Lacock Abbey where they've filmed Harry Potter!!! We went to Hogwarts!!!! (Which naturally meant that this was stuck in my head for the rest of the day.) Needless to say, there were a bunch of us who were just a little too excited for words. After we said goodbye to Hogwarts, we had a traditional English dinner at the George Inn pub. The food was actually quite delicious, contrary to popular belief, and it would have been a great day if it had just ended there. But it turns out that tonight there was a party in honor of the landlords having owned the pub for 25 years. There was a live band and a bunch of people celebrating outside, with a couple of people dancing on a small dance floor. After we finished our meals, a group of us American students went outside and started dancing. All of a sudden, there was this huge mix of American students and Brits dancing, with everyone else cheering us on. Someone even (quite randomly) pulled out a full sized American flag and started waving it around. We ended up crashing their party, but everyone was having so much fun and dancing around like loons . Even some of our program's staff joined in, which was fantastic. I really can't even begin to do justice to how amazing this was. This dance party was so unexpected, but the enthusiasm of everyone involved made it that much better. It was such a great way to end the week and to feel so welcomed into British society.
I realized that I haven't written about the ASE (or Advanced Studies in England) staff yet. And knowing who they are makes the British dance party even more enjoyable. The head of the program is Barbara, who reminds me of a fairy godmother. She's sweet, older, and British, but has such spunk and really great "Disney hands". Then there's Jonathan, the head of academics, who is "Jude Law British". He's really funny and quite gorgey - pretty much all of the girls have some kind of school girl crush on him. (You tell that everyone got really excited when he came out to dance today.) In the office there's Su and Claire - Su is a little more serious and Claire's a little younger and more excitable. They make a great team together. Next is Lindsay, who is in charge of social and cultural enrichment (pretty much only in this program will you find a position like this). She's cute and surprisingly efficient with a great sense of humor (Lindsay used the standard British "big fish-little fish-cardboard box" dance routine today). Finally, there's Mr. Andrew Butterworth, who is in charge of internships and whatnot. The best way that I can think of to describe him is that he is quintessentially British in that you want to sit in front of a fire place with him and drink a cup of tea. (The highlight of the dance party was when Mr. Butterworth came onto the floor and put on some kid's Yankees hat and just seemed to be having a ball being a goofball.)
Come to think about, it seems a little bit like all of us Americans are about to set off on our own Hogwarts-style adventure. Yes, we're not going to class in an old castle and none of us got our acceptance letters by an owl. But first of all, it was supposed to rain at some point today, but it never did. Magic, anyone? Then looking at our motley crew of staff members (not including our professors), they seem to have that special kind of lovable eccentricity that would seem right at home in Hogwarts. And, ultimately, there are so many adventures to be had. No matter what, I'm actually really refreshed from today's journey and ready to start classes this week. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be surprised some day and stumble across a moving staircase or a talking portrait.

A Part of That

I'm sitting on my bed attempting to do homework, but am not doing a good job of focusing. So I figured blogging is at least semi productive. Or at least, I can pretend it is. It's funny because this week, after the exhaustion wore off, seemed to be setting up a semester of fun and games and adventure. And then, all of a sudden, we were all reminded that this is a true study abroad program. It's really good that I'm so excited for all of my classes because I know that I'm going to have to truly work my ass off this semester, especially if I want to be able to travel and explore as well. (Here's hoping this rough start it's a bad sign. In my defense, I am reading the informative, boring introduction right now instead of the fun novel part.)
On the plus side, I'm feeling even more at home in Bath. Each day I feel like I belong here a little bit more. I'm a fan of that. This week has wrapped up on a good note. Thursday night, we went out to the pubs. It was nice and lowkey, and fun to feel British at a pub (although it was mostly us American kids there that night). Last night, the program had a reception at the Victoria Art Gallery in the city where we got to meet most of our tutors for the semester. So we got all dressed up and wandered around the gallery, mingling with a glass of wine in our hands. Classy. I felt quite grown up. (The feeling didn't last too long, though.)
Today we got a tour of the local markets. Best flea shops ever! They had great organic fruit and veggie stalls and local meat and fresh homemade baked goods. The samples were the best part - like Costco! Then they had stands for pashmina scarves (I got a gorgeous one), children's items (one even carried my favorite children's series: "That's Not My..."), and used books and movies (my roommate and I got "The Princess Bride" and "Sabrina ( Fair)" on VHS for only a pound). There definitely moments when I wanted to skip down the isles singing "Portobello Road". But I guess I can save that for next time. Because we'll definitely be back.
One more bonus British thing: I bought Jammie Dodgers . They just make me smile (and for a very silly reason).
Classes start on Monday (Tuesday for me). Thankfully, before the real world truly starts again, we're taking a trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock Village. I'm excited.

I Got Life

I've been in Bath for a couple days now and it's as beautiful as ever. Really, it is a truly gorgeous city. Hopefully I'll put some pictures of the city up online soon to share this fantastic city.
There hasn't been too much going on yet. Thankfully, classes don't start this week and so we just have orientation all this week. But not so thankfully, we had short diagnostic exams (or like written tests) for each of our courses to "give our tutors an idea of what we know, how we write, etc". So pooey that there was some actual thinking required this week.
Today I had a meeting with the internship coordinator and the internship people at the Egg (the children's theatre children's theatre at the Theatre Royal). I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going to be doing - that should be figured out next week - but all the people I met were incredibly nice and the space looks really neat. So I'm excited. I should have more to share soon.
Other than that, there's been a bunch of hanging out and exploring the city. My house found our favorite street in the city. It's nearby the study center and is called Old Or Hard Street. (It's actually Old Orchard Street. But on the sign the "c" has fallen off. So it is now and forever Old Or Hard Street.) Bath is also a great walking city because it's so compact. But my big problem with that is that since nobody really walks in Southern California, I'm mostly used to city walking in New York. And in New York, the pedestrians pretty much cross the street whenever and however they want. That's definitely not the case here. So I just have to keep reminding myself to not be stupid so I don't die.
There are lots of other little things I have to adjust to. The other day, my house went out to the grocery store and it was pretty much impossible to find anything in a jumbo size. Granted, that's not a bad thing at all, it's just different consumerism attitudes. It was only a problem when I was looking for peanut butter (apparently, our house really loves peanut butter) and couldn't find a jar that would last us over a week. The other thing that's really funny is that in the grocery store or the pharamcy ( Boots! ), you can buy insurance. Life insurance, house insurance, anything. I don't know how I would feel buying my bread and car insurance at the same place. One other difference - the other day I saw a Disneyland Paris commerical!...It made me really excited.