Showing posts with label busy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label busy. Show all posts

08 March 2010

Still busy...

Maybe y'all didn't believe me when I said I wasn't sure when I was going to schedule breathing, but it's turned out to be so very very true.

I kept thinking last week that I'd slow down and have a chance to breathe, but anytime I should have academically, my social life caught up to me.
We took a wee excursion to Brighton last week for three days (by we, I mean myself and my housemate Chrissy). More on that later (I'm trying a new program to write the post... but I'm not terribly motivated at the moment).

I can't believe that in less than a week I'll be busy with break stuff, and traveling. I finally got my plans all figured out for now, with a little looseness to be had in certain ways.

Sunday 14 March - After church at St. Ebbe's take the OxfordTube to my brother's house in northern London where I'll be until either Wednesday evening or Thursday morning (depending on the next set of plans). I'll spend most of that time sightseeing in London with my Mom and brother Michael who are coming over from the States.

Thursday 18 March - Leave with groups from Focus for Ledbury, five days of awesomeness up near the border of Wales. We're just going on a retreat together, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Monday 22 March - Arrive  back in Oxford (most likely exhausted), clean the house hurriedly with my dear friend Megan, and then welcome Mom and Michael to my house! Megan is staying with us for the week too, so I can save her some money, but she's fairly independent and will most likely do her own thing I imagine. But still, I have a week in which to show my Mom and brother around my city. That's going to be super super exciting.

Tuesday 30 March - Mom and Michael leave Oxford to go back to the States, I leave Oxford for Vienna, well Bratislava really, because it was far cheaper, but I will take a train into Vienna that evening to meet up with Denise.

Wednesday 31 March - take a bus to Prague with Denise where we will be for 2 nights. We're super excited!

Friday 2 April - in the evening take a night train to Oswiecem, the town that Auschwitz is located in.
Saturday 3 April - tour Auschwitz. That evening take a night train back to Vienna.

Sunday 4 April - after arriving in Vienna spend two glorious days hanging out with Denise and touring her lovely lovely city while she's still on break. When she goes back to school on Tuesday, continue to wander around and do music-y things.

Wednesday 7 April - Leave for Salzburg. Spend two nights there touring the city.

After this, it gets a little sketchy as to what goes on when, but I think the basic idea is going to be:

Munich, Berlin, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Bratislava, Oxford.

I have no hostels booked yet, but I did get a global Interrail pass so, I should be good to go all through Western Europe. Yay.

Eeek. Almost here!

24 February 2010

King Lear, All-nighters, Brighton, and more...

Well, another week has rolled around, and considering I'm at a moment of lull between my two projects (due back to back) I thought I would write a quick post on life in Oxford.

Due to the fact that I had friends here right before 4th week, and my minor tutor having to move our 4th week meeting to 5th week, and keeping Charles and Erin's boys for three days... I got behind. Majorly behind in ways that are never good.
Normally around here we have something we call "5th week blues" or "the 5th week slump". That would have been last week. Unfortunately, I had no time to have a slump, as I have had so much to do so close together.
However, I'm on the cusp of being finished with everything, minus one composition project due tomorrow afternoon, that I should finish at some point.

So backing up a little,
Last week, I had a paper due on Wednesday, and a Composition project due on Thursday. I screwed up my own life by not starting my paper fast enough since I lost two days of research being in London, and ended up pulling an all-nighter that Tuesday night to finish in time. When I was visiting Penelope later on Wednesday morning (as opposed to 7 am, when I finally finished my paper and decided bed wasn't worth my time...) she invited me to go to St. Michael's with them for an Ash Wednesday service. The service was really interesting, considering all I had ever heard about Anglicans was that they were like Roman Catholics minus the pope. Similarities could be drawn for sure, but they are vastly different from what I could tell. Obviously I have been to Evensong services, but that's sort of different from going to a full blown service like that one.

On Thursday I had one of the worst days of the term, but only for all the little inconsequential things. Like being splashed by a car, and then a bus while I was walking to my tutorial. Being harassed by immature boys on the back of the bus, having had far too little sleep the night previous, and none the night before that. And on top of all of this, Tesco called that morning and informed me they couldn't deliver my order since my credit card had failed to validate.
You think Mastercard would realize I live in England now.
You would think.
After a terrible morning/afternoon (but a decent tutorial) I came home to realize I had so much homework, I wasn't sure when I was going to shower and sleep in the next week.
In retrospect, it wasn't as bad as I feared, but on Thursday it looked bleak. So I had to skip Bible study, which some know is the only reason I stay sane from week to week. Sad day.

Friday was spent studying, traversing to tutorial, and then my Friday night consisted of a hot date.
With my kitchen.
I scrubbed that thing from top to bottom. It was very pretty when I finished.
Although our fridge still smells like something crawled in there and died, and no one can figure out what in the world it could be. Ugh.

Saturday I studied. And felt like a loser since I didn't venture out of the house once. In fact, I only left my bedroom to reheat some leftovers and grab the salsa out of the fridge.

Sunday the Warners had a tea party at their house in the afternoon, which is always great great fun. Penelope always goes out of her way to make sure I can eat things, and she made her homemade fairy cakes gluten-free, and meringue cake with berries again. So great. During the tea it came up that some folks are doing a little traveling over the next couple of weeks. My housemate Chrissy, and I both caught the travel bug, and promptly sat down and planned a trip.
We're going to Brighton next week for three nights.
Because we can.

Monday night we journeyed to Stratford to see King Lear, a production put on by the RSC, Royal Shakespeare Company. Not anywhere near as gory as I feared, and an incredibly powerful production. Although, the set distracted me a little. As did their indecisiveness in costuming:
"Were we in WWI or pre-Medieval Britain? Did anyone actually know?!"
-Jacquie Rawles, the tutor who accompanied our trip.
Otherwise, a great production.

The last two days were spent in a flurry of paper writing and compositional exercises. After tutorial tomorrow afternoon, I'm catching a train to London to meet a group of friends so we can all see Love Never Dies, the "sequel" to Phantom of the Opera.
We plan to laugh voraciously at the ridiculousness it has to be.

That's my week.
I'm busy. Way busy.
Can spring break be here yet?