One long week!

Good morning! I am so glad it is Sunday... we have had quite a long and exhausting week. We finished up with our class last Thursday and we have an eight page paper due tomorrow morning. It has proven to be quite a task for our class to get the paper done considering we have not really been in school for a good four months. So everyone has been stressing about that because they also do papers a bit differently here so it will be nice to get a grade back in this class to know what to improve on and what not.

This week was devoted to Freshers events... aka big parties every night sponsored by the school which is really weird and a bit hard to get used to. When we picked up our packets the girl told us to be sure and start drinking by 5:30 because it was best to be drunk by the time you actually got to the event... very interesting haha. I went to one of the events and it was pretty fun, if you didn't think about the fact that you were drenched in other peoples sweat and drinks, nice visualization there for you. So besides those events we also had to register for classes, coming in to this I already knew this would be a task because the people who studied abroad last year said it was by far their worst experience here. I would have to agree.

First of all, at Iowa I just log onto ISIS and choose the classes I want while looking at the days and times. Here... we have no idea what times or what days classes are until we get approved by each department. Even then professors didn't know what time their lectures were going to be or have any clue what day they were going to have seminars on. Very frustrating to say the least. I finally found three classes that I thought would work after much trial and tribulation. Only yesterday though I woke up to read an email from my adviser apologizing because one of my classes was no longer going to be offered. So currently I am short a class and have very few options. I am not getting what I was told I was going to get so it will be a fun next semester at home. They are verrrrrry unorganized here which we have known from the beginning but doesn't become any less aggravating.

Anyway... I am sure it will all work out. On top of all this there is some sort of stomach flu/cold going around amongst our group... Everyone but like five people have been sick with it so I am pretty sure that has only made us all the more pleasant to be around... Keeping that in mind... yesterday Alison, Adam and I took a train to Oxford at 7! I think I really would have loved Oxford and it was really pretty but like I said we were all sick and exhausted. We did go to a few museums that were really neat for me, three anthropology/archaeology museums with mass amounts of items. We really wanted to go on the Harry Potter Tour but it was sold out that was kind of a bummer. The one really fun thing that we did was meet up with other friends from school who also had a friend who went to Oxford. He got us punt boats, like gondolas, so we did that for a couple hours yesterday afternoon up and down the canals. It was perfect weather, almost 80 which is a huge huge heat wave here.

Radcliffe Camera

View from punt

Ashmolean Museum

I then tried to leave early because one of my friends at Uni needed my books for a paper and of course my train was delayed so Alison and Adam caught up to me anyway... Today we are headed to a coffee shop to finish our paper and then I am making pancakes and the like for dinner tonight with our flatmates. One of my roommates doesn't like anything with sauces so it is kind of hard to please him... I am looking forward to baking though! Earlier this week I hosted Fiesta Noche and made tacos and all the fixings for thirteen of us because we have all been craving mexican food. I also made brownies which turned out surprisingly well considering they don't believe in measuring cups here.

Alison and I are leaving bright and early on Thursday for Rome! We are both looking forward to that and I cannot imagine that it will be anything but wonderful.

That is all for now!
Julia