Again, it's been several regular days, so I haven't felt a need to post that much.
I saw the Harry Potter movie and was disappointed...though my friends and I did go in costume.
The most exciting thing is that my sister is here to visit!!!! She arrived Wednesday afternoon. We've spent most of our time just walking around Oxford, exploring.
Alex's parents and brother are here visiting as well, and they rented an apartment. They were sweet enough to have us all over for Thanksgiving dinner. We baked some pies and headed over for mashed potatoes, chicken, green beans, gravy, rolls, and stuffing that Alex's mom had made, sacrificing clothes to make room in her suitcase for the ingredients...it was delicious. We had a lot of fun :)
Today Naomi and I mostly just walked around. There was a Christmas market that we went to, it was cute and we enjoyed it :)
Tomorrow, we head to London for a day before she leaves on Sunday. It was short, but really fun :)
Next week I have two concerts, I turn in my last paper, and on Thursday we go to ROME!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
the last two weeks
Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Not all that much has happened, and I got kinda busy with work and being sick and some field trips for my soccer class.
On the weekend of Nov 5, the boys and I went to a Guy Fawkes celebration in a nearby park, which including a little fair, a way-too-nice-for-fair-food cheeseburger, an awesome fireworks display, a burning effigy, and a GIANT bonfire. It was kinda cold, but a really fun thing to go to.
The following Wednesday, our entire soccer class got on a 7:30 am bus to Liverpool. We got there and got to get a tour of the Everton stadium, Goodison Park, where we were headed to a game that night. It was actually really cool; we saw the players' locker room with their uniforms for the night laid out, and we got to see a lot of the Everton memoribilia in cases, and then we sat in the Director's box for a little.
After the tour, we had time to kill in Liverpool. After a quick lunch, a group of us went to the Beatles Museum, which was pretty cool. There were several artefacts, as well as an audio tour and just a lot of talking about the Beatles. The best part was certainly getting socks with yellow submarines on them in the surprisingly decently priced gift shop, followed closely by real goldfish in a model of the yellow submarine.
Our professor very nicely paid for an Indian banquet for the entire class, which we thanked him for by buying him an Everton windbreaker. Afterwards, we went to the game, where Everton managed to score the tying point in the last minute of overtime.
Liverpool pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=298788&id=725549275&l=e8633610eb
The following Sunday, Andrew, Muthu, and I went to London for a Chelsea game at the Chelsea stadium. Chelsea is the team at the top of the English Premiere League, arguably the best English team, hadn't been scored on at home since March 2009, had won all 7 games at home this season...and somehow we watched them lose to Sunderland 3-0. It was ridiculous. It was still really fun, though--the crowd atmosphere was amazing.
Andrew and I stayed in London through Tuesday, very nicely being put up by family friends of mine both nights. On Monday we went to a lot of museums, meeting up with Alex and Andrea who came in after a trip to Canterbury and Dover. We walked through Hyde Park and down Oxford street to the British Museum, then walked to the National Gallery with a stop for sushi along the way. We got ice cream cones in the park, and then went to the Victoria and Albert to meet the girls. Andrew, Andrea, and I went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs, which was REALLY cool, though we were slightly disappointed by the rest of the museum. The gift shop had dinosaur socks, but only for small children, and we were sad.
The next day Andrew and I spent a little time in the Science Museum, which was REALLY awesome, and the headed back to Oxford. It was ridiculously foggy out and cold out of nowhere.
Last night, our group went to a formal dinner at Magdalen College. We dressed up, Oxford students wore their robes, there was a Latin blessing at the beginning and end, and there were fish knives, which I didn't even know existed but shouldn't have been surprised that they did.
That is a summary of the last two weeks. Due next week is my final paper for my tutorial, a double-length paper about Muslim women in the United States. On Wednesday my sister comes (!!!!!!!) through Sunday, and we'll have Thanksgiving with Alex's family and then go to London for a couple days.
Hard to believe there are only 3 weeks left here!
On the weekend of Nov 5, the boys and I went to a Guy Fawkes celebration in a nearby park, which including a little fair, a way-too-nice-for-fair-food cheeseburger, an awesome fireworks display, a burning effigy, and a GIANT bonfire. It was kinda cold, but a really fun thing to go to.
The following Wednesday, our entire soccer class got on a 7:30 am bus to Liverpool. We got there and got to get a tour of the Everton stadium, Goodison Park, where we were headed to a game that night. It was actually really cool; we saw the players' locker room with their uniforms for the night laid out, and we got to see a lot of the Everton memoribilia in cases, and then we sat in the Director's box for a little.
After the tour, we had time to kill in Liverpool. After a quick lunch, a group of us went to the Beatles Museum, which was pretty cool. There were several artefacts, as well as an audio tour and just a lot of talking about the Beatles. The best part was certainly getting socks with yellow submarines on them in the surprisingly decently priced gift shop, followed closely by real goldfish in a model of the yellow submarine.
Our professor very nicely paid for an Indian banquet for the entire class, which we thanked him for by buying him an Everton windbreaker. Afterwards, we went to the game, where Everton managed to score the tying point in the last minute of overtime.
Liverpool pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=298788&id=725549275&l=e8633610eb
The following Sunday, Andrew, Muthu, and I went to London for a Chelsea game at the Chelsea stadium. Chelsea is the team at the top of the English Premiere League, arguably the best English team, hadn't been scored on at home since March 2009, had won all 7 games at home this season...and somehow we watched them lose to Sunderland 3-0. It was ridiculous. It was still really fun, though--the crowd atmosphere was amazing.
Andrew and I stayed in London through Tuesday, very nicely being put up by family friends of mine both nights. On Monday we went to a lot of museums, meeting up with Alex and Andrea who came in after a trip to Canterbury and Dover. We walked through Hyde Park and down Oxford street to the British Museum, then walked to the National Gallery with a stop for sushi along the way. We got ice cream cones in the park, and then went to the Victoria and Albert to meet the girls. Andrew, Andrea, and I went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs, which was REALLY cool, though we were slightly disappointed by the rest of the museum. The gift shop had dinosaur socks, but only for small children, and we were sad.
The next day Andrew and I spent a little time in the Science Museum, which was REALLY awesome, and the headed back to Oxford. It was ridiculously foggy out and cold out of nowhere.
Last night, our group went to a formal dinner at Magdalen College. We dressed up, Oxford students wore their robes, there was a Latin blessing at the beginning and end, and there were fish knives, which I didn't even know existed but shouldn't have been surprised that they did.
That is a summary of the last two weeks. Due next week is my final paper for my tutorial, a double-length paper about Muslim women in the United States. On Wednesday my sister comes (!!!!!!!) through Sunday, and we'll have Thanksgiving with Alex's family and then go to London for a couple days.
Hard to believe there are only 3 weeks left here!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
travel!
I've made all my plane bookings for my post-Oxford travel, and I'm very excited!
Another girl from the program, Ashley, and I are headed to Portugal on December 10. We're going to spend 4 nights in Lisbon, with maybe a day trip to a small, cute town nearby. Then we both head back to London, Ashley to go home, me to catch a flight to Amsterdam. I tried getting a flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam, but it ended up being just as cheap and as easy to fly back into London - I know, it doesn't make much sense, but there you have it.
I'm staying in Utrecht, Netherlands until the 17th, seeing my friend Natalie and my cousin, who could potentially give birth while I'm there!
Then I fly back to London, spend a couple days with family friends, including their daughter, Claire, who is getting there on the 17th as well.
Then on Decembe 21 I fly home! I can't believe that's in 7 weeks...or that in 2 months I will have already started classes back at Stanford.
Oh, and I don't remember if I mentioned that I'm going to ROME from December 2-7...that's right, I'll turn 21 in Rome with my friends. No big deal. We rented an apartment which was cheaper than a hostel and now we get to cook for ourselves if we want, and save our money for giant Italian dinners. It will be good :)
Another girl from the program, Ashley, and I are headed to Portugal on December 10. We're going to spend 4 nights in Lisbon, with maybe a day trip to a small, cute town nearby. Then we both head back to London, Ashley to go home, me to catch a flight to Amsterdam. I tried getting a flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam, but it ended up being just as cheap and as easy to fly back into London - I know, it doesn't make much sense, but there you have it.
I'm staying in Utrecht, Netherlands until the 17th, seeing my friend Natalie and my cousin, who could potentially give birth while I'm there!
Then I fly back to London, spend a couple days with family friends, including their daughter, Claire, who is getting there on the 17th as well.
Then on Decembe 21 I fly home! I can't believe that's in 7 weeks...or that in 2 months I will have already started classes back at Stanford.
Oh, and I don't remember if I mentioned that I'm going to ROME from December 2-7...that's right, I'll turn 21 in Rome with my friends. No big deal. We rented an apartment which was cheaper than a hostel and now we get to cook for ourselves if we want, and save our money for giant Italian dinners. It will be good :)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
ahmed's, soccer, and a novel
I forgot the best part of Halloween! After the pub, we went to Ahmed's, the kebab van near the House that we go to probably 5 times a week at night when we're hungry. The last time we had been, we had finally introduced ourselves to Ahmed and his friends/sons/nephews. This time, though, Alex and I spoke to him in Arabic! Alex was in Arabic with me freshman year, and spent this past summer in Jordan on a dig. It was really fun, I actually remembered Arabic, and he was very impressed, I think. He's from Morocco! So I will be attempting Arabic with Ahmed whenever I remember.
For my soccer class, we have to go to a Premiere League and a non Premiere game, so tonight we went to an Oxford United game, which is the local Oxford team, not the University. There were a lot of empty seats, so we sat one row from the bottom. It was a good game, though the other team won. Oxford kept taking the ball right up to the goal, then missing shots or fumbling the ball. It didn't help that their goalie was like 6 foot 7 or something ridiculous like that.
Finally, I've decided to write a novel!
I'm doing National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo. http://www.nanowrimo.org/
It's a non-profit that organizes this every November. People can make an account and write a novel. The goal is 50,000 words between November 1 and 30. If you finish you get a certificate from them and the pride that you wrote a novel.
At the moment, I'm still not sure what my novel is about, but it's currently at 602 words. I'm not sure if I'll make it to 50,000 by the end of this month, but hopefully by then I'll have something that I want to continue writing and editing until it's actually something I'm proud of doing. We'll see how it goes!
For my soccer class, we have to go to a Premiere League and a non Premiere game, so tonight we went to an Oxford United game, which is the local Oxford team, not the University. There were a lot of empty seats, so we sat one row from the bottom. It was a good game, though the other team won. Oxford kept taking the ball right up to the goal, then missing shots or fumbling the ball. It didn't help that their goalie was like 6 foot 7 or something ridiculous like that.
Finally, I've decided to write a novel!
I'm doing National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo. http://www.nanowrimo.org/
It's a non-profit that organizes this every November. People can make an account and write a novel. The goal is 50,000 words between November 1 and 30. If you finish you get a certificate from them and the pride that you wrote a novel.
At the moment, I'm still not sure what my novel is about, but it's currently at 602 words. I'm not sure if I'll make it to 50,000 by the end of this month, but hopefully by then I'll have something that I want to continue writing and editing until it's actually something I'm proud of doing. We'll see how it goes!
Monday, November 1, 2010
Halloween!
Not much of an update, but I wanted to share my Halloween with everyone.
This is a picture of me and my Oxford family on Halloween:
We are dressed as: Cleopatra (me), Ziggy Stardust (Andrew), a unicorn (Alex), Cho Chang from Harry Potter (Andrea), and the rapper Kanye West (Muthu).
We ended up just hanging out and then going to a pub in costume. Other people were there in costume, too, so we didn't feel like crazy Americans.
Remember that you can always see my pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=285952&id=725549275&l=efc6a86b0d
This is a picture of me and my Oxford family on Halloween:
We are dressed as: Cleopatra (me), Ziggy Stardust (Andrew), a unicorn (Alex), Cho Chang from Harry Potter (Andrea), and the rapper Kanye West (Muthu).
We ended up just hanging out and then going to a pub in costume. Other people were there in costume, too, so we didn't feel like crazy Americans.
Remember that you can always see my pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=285952&id=725549275&l=efc6a86b0d
Friday, October 29, 2010
It's been another not-too-exciting week, but I'm still having fun!
Last Friday we went to London to see the play "The Woman in Black." It was actually fairly frightening. It's just two (well, three, sort of...) actors. One is the old man and one is the actor, and they are together reenacting an experience the old man had. The actor plays the old man and the old man plays all the other characters he encountered during the thing. There is also a woman who is a ghost and kills people. She did not get to come out and bow, therefore she is really a ghost and because I saw her she will kill my firstborn child. Scary. http://www.thewomaninblack.com/
I spent Saturday being very very very lazy, and Sunday writing my paper in the most productive day I've had in a while, maybe in my life. I rolled out of bed at 10, had a draft (minus intro and conclusion) at noon, and had a final, revised, edited paper sent to my tutor by 6.30 pm. It was pretty amazing.
Monday I met with my tutor as always. I'm getting better at having discussions and asking questions to get more out of my tutorial. I got (aka asked for) my topic this week: conversion of western women to Islam. I couldn't find any good sources ANYWHERE in Oxford. There was an anthology I had found at Stanford before that I don't think exists in Oxfordshire County. And I can only get fragments on Google books. I was having a very hard time, so I tried to find some articles on JStor with the Stanford proxy that is letting me access it from Oxford, but there wasn't much there, either. I was very frustrated. THEN I remembered that Stanford has access to a lot of books as eBooks, and BAM. I found the entire book in eBrary, which I can access again with a Stanford proxy that pretends I'm on the Stanford network. AND this means I can do work in my room instead of sitting in the library. From now on, I'm first checking if the books I need are on eBrary before I schlep my way to the library. This discovery may have been the highlight of my week.
Other than that, I went to my choirs and bellydancing this week and had fun. I had my midterm for my soccer class and that was NOT fun - there was a lot of stuff we didn't talk about that he just expected us to know about soccer. I'm not too worried, though, because everyone thought it was pretty hard so it will probably be curved. And I decided I'm writing my essay for that class on soccer as an English religion, which I'm interested in and will probably therefore write a good essay about. The midterm is only 15%, so I'll be fine.
Today and tomorrow my friend Ashley and I are locking down plans for after term ends. I think we're going to go to Portugal for 4 days, and then I'm going to head to the Netherlands to see my cousins and aunt, and my friend Natalie. And then I'll be back to London to see my friend Claire, who I haven't seen in years. I'm not sure what we're going to do, but it will be nice to catch up.
Sunday is Halloween, and we all came up with costumes long before we were sure that Halloween was a big deal here. I'm going to be Cleopatra, Alex is a unicorn, Muthu is Sherlock Holmes, and Andrew is Ziggy Stardust, an alterego of David Bowie's from Mars. And we found a part ("bop") to go, so now we won't just be wandering the streets of Oxford in full costume.
I think that's about it from this week. More updates after Halloween :)
Last Friday we went to London to see the play "The Woman in Black." It was actually fairly frightening. It's just two (well, three, sort of...) actors. One is the old man and one is the actor, and they are together reenacting an experience the old man had. The actor plays the old man and the old man plays all the other characters he encountered during the thing. There is also a woman who is a ghost and kills people. She did not get to come out and bow, therefore she is really a ghost and because I saw her she will kill my firstborn child. Scary. http://www.thewomaninblack.com/
I spent Saturday being very very very lazy, and Sunday writing my paper in the most productive day I've had in a while, maybe in my life. I rolled out of bed at 10, had a draft (minus intro and conclusion) at noon, and had a final, revised, edited paper sent to my tutor by 6.30 pm. It was pretty amazing.
Monday I met with my tutor as always. I'm getting better at having discussions and asking questions to get more out of my tutorial. I got (aka asked for) my topic this week: conversion of western women to Islam. I couldn't find any good sources ANYWHERE in Oxford. There was an anthology I had found at Stanford before that I don't think exists in Oxfordshire County. And I can only get fragments on Google books. I was having a very hard time, so I tried to find some articles on JStor with the Stanford proxy that is letting me access it from Oxford, but there wasn't much there, either. I was very frustrated. THEN I remembered that Stanford has access to a lot of books as eBooks, and BAM. I found the entire book in eBrary, which I can access again with a Stanford proxy that pretends I'm on the Stanford network. AND this means I can do work in my room instead of sitting in the library. From now on, I'm first checking if the books I need are on eBrary before I schlep my way to the library. This discovery may have been the highlight of my week.
Other than that, I went to my choirs and bellydancing this week and had fun. I had my midterm for my soccer class and that was NOT fun - there was a lot of stuff we didn't talk about that he just expected us to know about soccer. I'm not too worried, though, because everyone thought it was pretty hard so it will probably be curved. And I decided I'm writing my essay for that class on soccer as an English religion, which I'm interested in and will probably therefore write a good essay about. The midterm is only 15%, so I'll be fine.
Today and tomorrow my friend Ashley and I are locking down plans for after term ends. I think we're going to go to Portugal for 4 days, and then I'm going to head to the Netherlands to see my cousins and aunt, and my friend Natalie. And then I'll be back to London to see my friend Claire, who I haven't seen in years. I'm not sure what we're going to do, but it will be nice to catch up.
Sunday is Halloween, and we all came up with costumes long before we were sure that Halloween was a big deal here. I'm going to be Cleopatra, Alex is a unicorn, Muthu is Sherlock Holmes, and Andrew is Ziggy Stardust, an alterego of David Bowie's from Mars. And we found a part ("bop") to go, so now we won't just be wandering the streets of Oxford in full costume.
I think that's about it from this week. More updates after Halloween :)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Stanford Daily column
I wrote the inaugural column for the Stanford Daily's new column, "Foreign Correspondence" - read it here!
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/28/foreign-correspondence-an-odd-jump-across-the-pond/
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/28/foreign-correspondence-an-odd-jump-across-the-pond/
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