Thursday, October 21, 2010

It's been not much of a week. I've spent most of my time doing reading for this week's essay. I've read a complete book, most of another, and half of a third...they're all in different places, so I have to go to different reading rooms and sit down and take extensive notes, because I won't be able to reference the books this weekend while I write. It's so frustrating!

I went to student choir again, that was fun, and I had bellydancing, and then last night was the first night of the fun choir. We sang the Glee version of "Don't Stop Believing" and an arrangement of "Halleluja" that I had done in high school. There were a lot more people there than I expected, including two girls from the House, and I had a ton of fun. I'm excited to go back next week and do more!

That's really all that's happened this week. Friday we're going to London to see "The Woman in Black," which is apparently very scary! And then this weekend I'll just hang around and write my essay. We might go to an Indian buffet on Sunday and make a Mexican meal one night, too. Next week I start having soccer class again...hopefully I won't forget to go for this week.

That's all...
Aisha

Monday, October 18, 2010

Bath!

This weekend, five friends and I went to the town of Bath, famous for the ancient Roman baths for which it is named. We took a bus from Oxford on Saturday morning, which took about 2 hours, and we left Sunday evening. We stayed in a hostel that was above a restaurant where we got a discount.

Bath is a beautiful, beautiful town, though there is not a ton of stuff to do. We saw the Bath Abbey, which is really pretty, and the Roman baths, which are very impressive. You can no longer bathe in them, but at the end you can sample a glass of the spring water; it is warm and very metallic tasting. Apparently it has healing properties, but I wouldn't drink it all the time.

We went twice to Sally Lunn's, an old tea house with "world famous buns." The buns were fine, but the toppings were delicious - lemon curd, cinnamon butter...yum. The house blend tea was also yummy.

We spent a lot of time just walking around Bath, exploring and looking at random things. We had dinner in the restaurant under our hostel, then went out again for a little while.

In the morning, we grabbed breakfast, then walked over to the Royal Crescent and the Circus, two areas with giant green spaces in the middle and housed curved around them. We found a park with a small aviary and a playground and ice cream truck. We all got Flake 99s, which Tara had told me to get: a soft-serve vanilla cone with a flake candy bar stuck in it. It was delicious!

Afterwards we really just killed time walking around Bath and going to Sally Lunn's for the second time. When we left, there were problems with the bus, so we were a little late, but it wasn't that bad.

I met with my tutor for the second time, and he seemed happy again, though he's trying to figure out how to grade that's on the Stanford scale.

Lastly, I got into the singing group I auditioned for! I'm very excited to start rehearsal this week :)

My soccer class is cancelled this week since the professor, the head of the Stanford Bing Overseas Studies Program as of this month, has to go back to Stanford for meetings. That means I only have my extra-curriculars this week, which is great, because it's just in time for the tutorial paper I'm most interested in: veiling issues in the West. Tomorrow I dive into the library and begin!