Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

So I spent all of my 'blog time' last week writing about my fall break adventures that I didn't get the chance to talk about what was actually going on. And since I spent all of my coherent-blog-writing-efforts of the last post, I apologize for the general scatterbrain-ness and lack of structure that accompanies this blog.
This whole last week has been very Bath-tastic. Which was sooo nice. After either being holed up in my house/the library trying to write papers or going off and exploring other cities and countries, it was great to have the opportunity to enjoy Bath and relax.
On Halloween night, after getting back from Scandinavian travels, I went to a showing of Rocky Horror with my roommate and one of our housemates at Komedia, a club in Bath. It was wayyy more low-key than American showings of Rocky Horror (I'm not sure if that is just an English thing or only relates to the showing we went to), but that was actually kinda nice since we were all recuperating from our European travels and didn't have much time or resources to pull together some awesome costumes.
Monday was my housemate Claire's 21st birthday! When we were all done with classes, all of the girls in my house went to Mai Thai, this Thai restaurant right by our study center that a couple of us have been waiting to go to since we first got to Bath. It wasn't anything big or fancy, but it was fun to have all eight of us girls together after we spent over a week apart and traveling. There was lot of joking and insulting (of the loving variety) and giggling. And since Claire was turning 21, we made a not-so-quick stop at the grocery store for her to buy her first bottle of wine as a 21 year old. It took way longer than we expected, but she did make an exellent choice of wine. So then we moved our party to the house dining room and had cake and wine. It really was the theme of this week that things weren't super fancy, but they were actually really nice because they were so simple.
The weekend was, again, more of the simple same. This weekend was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and I had really really wanted to go to Germany this weekend, but for a number of reasons the plans fell through. I was disappointed, but as cool as it would have been to be in Berlin that weekend, I was so glad to be in Bath. It was so nice to just sit and breathe and spend time with my friends here. Thursday night my British Drama class went to see a production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker with fancy man Jonathan Pryce at the Theatre Royal Bath which was quite excellent. (The one downside to this is that Thursday was Guy Fawkes Day - the 5th of November. I'm not a fireworks fan, so I was fine missing out on that, but it was just unfortunate timing that we missed out on experiencing this uniquely British holiday.) Then Saturday I went out to tea! I can't believe I've only been out for a fancy 'cream tea' twice since I've been in England, since it's pretty much the best thing in the world. This time, I went with a group of friends up to the tea room at the Jane Austen Centre. (How have I been in Bath this long and not have made it to the Jane Austen Centre?! That's just ridiculous.) It was lot of fun and we got to be girly and have lots of delicious tea. What else is there in the world?
Saturday's adventures continued with an ASE trip up to the Bath University campus. This weekend was their Family Weekend, where they have a carnival and fireworks. Again, I didn't care about the fireworks, but I thought it would be fun and stuff. And it was a lot of fun. Until it started to rain. And I wasn't wearing my wellies. The other girls from my house that had come didn't feel a real need to stay for the fireworks (especially since they might not happen if it kept raining) and our house is, in theory, at the bottom of the hill that the University campus is perched on. So we decided to walk home. Which took us over an hour. Mostly because we got lost (a couple of times), ended up walking down a street a couple blocks away from our own, and stopped at a convenience store because why not. But it was certainly an adventure. And an uniquely Bath adventure at that. When we got home, there were lots of sweatpants and cups of tea to warm us back up.
To cap off this weekend, I went with a couple of girls to see 'An Education' (which was really so fantastic - I highly recommend it). I was really exciting because we were seeing it at the Little Theatre Cinema - the indie movie house in Bath which I hadn't been to yet. It was so adorable and little and made me think of the Majestic at Gettysburg. One of the best parts of the afternoon, though, was buying our tickets and saying 'One student for "An Education"'. Ha! Plus, it was so great to see this movie right now because it takes place in England and there were all of these gorgeous sequences in places we had just visited, like Paris and Oxford. (As you can tell, homework wasn't too prevalent this weekend. In my defense, we don't have classes this week. So I figured I should go out and enjoy myself this weekend, instead of sitting in my room feeling bad as I'm procrastinating on my computer instead of doing my homework.)
So that was my week. Not too exciting, but really quite perfect for this point in the semester. But perhaps my favorite part of the week is that my housemates have officially realized something about me - it is absolutely impossible for to me be quiet. I can't talk quietly (or whisper, for that matter), I can't enter a room quietly (even when I'm trying so hard to be quiet and not wake up my roommate), the list goes on and on. The biggie this house, though, is that I sing loudly. Since the beginning of the semester, I've been trying to find a practice room somewhere in Bath where I can practice singing and at least try to keep my voice in shape. And I've had no luck so far. Which means the shower has turned into my practice room. And my big problem is that, even though I know the walls aren't sound proof and that the shower is only a couple feet away from the dining room, as soon as I get in the shower I feel like I'm in my own private world and no one can hear me sing. There have been a couple of occasions when I've finished my shower to applause outside the door. I do try to be quiet, or a least quiet-ish, and I don't belt, but no matter how hard I try my house will always get a free concert. And it really makes me quiet happy that my housemates are more than willing to tease me about all of this. I love when you reach that point in your relationship when you feel completely free to make fun of each other - that's my favourite.