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 :)
Thursday, November 4, 2010
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/
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
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)