Happy Guy Fawkes Day! Hooray fireworks!

What I should be doing is reading about Christopher Wren. Awesome, awesome bloke. Designed shindigs such as St. Pauls cathedral... giving us a fantastic view of London right outside of the financial district.





I'm really enjoying my architecture class. It seem trite, but literally ALL the buildings in London and Oxford and other places as well make so much more sense. Also, our professor Dr. Tyack is amazing. We had tea with him last week and made homemade cookies. Everyone had at least 6...then couldn't eat dinner. But around 10 there was a MASS trip to Ahmeds, the closest kebab van down the street (drunk food)... best hummus, pita and veggie burgers period. But also lots and lots of chips, bad habits.

These past two weeks have been filled with adventure! Sam and I went caving, which is indeed a legit sport here with a club and everything. We descended down this small triangle chute in full on caving gear and thus spent three hours underground climbing on rocks, sliding down waterfalls, crawling through holes...falling down ravines in Sam's case (she's ok), still one of the scariest moments of my life. But it was awesome and I'm def. considering going on a trip in the upcoming weeks, or I might join Sam on the surf trip. Surfing? In England?!? Yea I know right, but really...if you think about it...it's all coast. All you really need is a good wet suit and you're off to the races...




To give you a little bit of an indication of what caving consists of...although you really don't know until you're down there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIqmVDDwM_s

We've been talking a lot about autism in my medical ethics class. Read a book by Temple Grandin (youtube her) and Mark Haddon's Curious incident with the dog in the night time. Super interesting reads both of them... in class however, the discussion sort of always ends up in questioning what it is to be human...and the meaning of life. You know, all that jazz. Right.

So also, we tie dyed for Halloween! Sam, Stav and I decided to be Hippies so we tie dyed t-shirts, socks and a gorgeous sash with our friends from St. Hugh's college...







Halloween here was also legit. The Stanford House had a progressive because Halloween isn't too big here, or the concept of dressing up as anything that is NOT scary isn't too big here. But it was really fun, there was a BOP at Magedalen College that everyone went to. Some costumes of note... Holmes & Watson... superman... :) It was awesome.





We also went to the Opera this week to see La Traviata...then everyone promptly came back to work on their essays ALL NIGHT. Not even joking, the collective bed time of this house was approx. 4am. Also, 4th papers were do this week and definitely feeling a mid quarter slump in how well the papers are going. Instead of the usual "excellent" or "very good" from my tutor, this week I got a "Right...so... did you find this exercise useful?" Not sure what that means...can't be good. Next week I'm writing about HIV/AIDS though so I'm feeling a little more inspired with that one :)

Speaking of being halfway through. It seems COMPLETELY unreal. I feel like we just got here and we're enjoying everything so much!!! I can definitely see why some people are inclined to stay here for two quarters...even the entire year. But alas... home calls.

We got this awesome gift from the states that will be unveiled this weekend at a party...and I'm going to the ballet in London with Siqi, Stav and Michelle on Saturday! But first things first, tomorrow we get Dim Sum!!! MMM yay.

hokay. That's all for now. More adventures to come soon :)

PS. I LOVE THE UK

PPS HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM :)