Anyways...what have we been up to across the pond?
Well two weekends ago we took a truly girls night out (GNO as Shrutes would say) and headed up to London to see the Phantom of The Opera at her Majesty's Theatre, the original! It was fantastic, the singing, the chandelier, the tragic story. My favorite was definitely the Phantom, everything he sang and acted was basically perfection. Melissa and I are HUGE Phantom fans and the week leading up to it all we did was play it/sing it in our room. It was great going out with the girls too because we sand all the way back on the bus...YES.
The next night Melissa turned 20! We made her red velvet cupcakes and surprised her in the JCR with those and rum & cokes. We then went to a club afterward, kind of sketchy not going to lie...but it was still a fun way to celebrate her birthday!
The next day we went to Bath, which was hands down my favorite city that we've been to so far (I mean out of York and Stratford upon Avon). We saw the ancient Roman Baths and walked around in the rain. The architecture is Palladian Classical, which trust me, is gorgeous. The entire city! We also got to go into a small house in the Red Crescent and we were told the history of these country houses by these cute old British women. One of which described how men would come and play cards and look for a mistress or a second wife...much like in the Jane Austen novels apparently?!? And she taught us how to greet each other in proper British, and said she much would have liked to have lived in that time!!! It was like she was reminiscent of a time in which she never lived. SO CUTE. So Bath was great, I'm going to take my mom there when she visits!
Then that Saturday we worked in the morning and some Stanford in Paris people came to visit! On par with our other cooking adventures we decided to treat our St. Hugh's friends to the Stanford Tradition of breakfast for dinner! It was so much fun, although cooking for like 20 people (there were stanny kids there as well) is a bit overwhelming. We had chocolate chip/banana pancakes, which turned out great after a couple of tries haha, and plate sized omelets ala Stern Dining, which Sam and I mastered pretty quickly. There were also Mimosas all around! We then went to a bop later that night and got to wear our onesies for the first time! HOORAY! Climbing the gates in the onesies was also a little bit of a joke, but fun nontheless. 
This past weekend we were preparing for Big Game and got to paint signs, take pictures with them and hang them up for all of Oxford to see. It's amazing how much I miss being on campus and big game week. Even though we kind of got owned by Cal (they did play a lot better than us and controlled the ball for basically the entire game), it was fun hanging out with Stanford peeps gathering around a laptop in the study room at 12.30am to watch the game streamed on pirated TV. haha, good times.
Then came EVEN more work. I can officially say that I know how to write two 10 page papers in less than 48 hours. What a useful skill right? *sigh* But I'm done with my tutorial! It was amazing! The entire experience! And at the end of our meeting yesterday, my tutor gave me advice that was at the very heart of what I was trying to understand coming into this tutorial. All of the big questions that I have about intervention in developing countries, altruism, western ideals...she had fantastic insight into all of it. Basically I'm excited about life :)
I can't believe the academics here are beginning to wind down. It's been a lot of hard work, but the more free time in the coming week or so should prove to be very very conducive to ADVENTURES. woot. I'm excited. You will know of them in the future.
Happy Thanksgiving! Cheers!
PS.
We see the coolest things just walking up high street in Oxford. This is what I want to learn how to do:
Random obese thing in Paris:
Anyone have a good name for it?
