just a normal week

Sorry it's been a while since I posted! It hasn't been the most exciting week, and kind of busy, because...

I met with my tutor on Monday! He seems very nice and is super into letting me do what I want, which is nice. So I proposed some topics, and he proposed that I look at a couple articles about feminism and the Middle East for my first essay. So he gave me one and I found another in a syllabus from another class he had given me, and I've tried to go to town on them. I've read them, I've taken notes, and now I have a basic outline. Our trip this weekend has really taken 2 days away from my work, though, and I'm a little stressed about it, but I'm going to work very hard on Sunday and then see how it goes on Monday. He wants me to come in and give him a short presentation of my essay and then we can discuss it. I'm crossing my fingers that it will go well!

In the mean time, I have gotten VERY fed up with the library system here already. You can't check books out. So you have to sit in the library and take your notes there, which is fine but I tend to work better in my room. For this week, I just had two short articles, so I could copy them, but for next week I'm looking at probably 3 books, which I can't afford to copy! So I guess next week I'll learn how to work in the library. There's the tiny library at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, which is nice for browsing books, and then the main Bodleian library which has a ton of reading rooms but you can't really browse many of the stacks. The books are kept underground and taken to the reading room you request, and you can keep them there for 7 days but you cannot leave with them. Sigh. Oh, and I forgot to mention the part where the reading rooms are only open Monday to Friday, 9-5.

The highlight of the week was probably Fresher's Fair, the giant Oxford activities fair. I signed up for a lot of stuff, including caving, archery, music, wine tasting, belly dancing... I think I might actually take belly dancing classes, and join a non-auditioned classical choir, but the biggest thing was when I signed up for an audition for what was described to me in this way: Do you watch Glee? Then audition for us! Needless to say, I was hooked. So I'm auditioning on Wednesday...wish me luck!

Today after my soccer class we went out and played. I'm super out of shape, but I had forgotten how much I really love playing soccer. We're going to do it once a week and I think I'll try to do it every week when I can. It was awesome :)

I went to the fish store and bought a fresh tuna steak and cooked it in olive oil, onions, lime, and garlic salt...it was divine. I really like having the specialty shops... I think I'll stock up on essentials at the store and buy a lot of bread/cheese/fish/meat/veggies at the stores in the covered market.

Tomorrow we head out early for York on our trip funded by the Bing family, and we come back Saturday evening. We're seeing a lot of really old buildings, so I'm sure I'll have stuff to say about them...