Brr!

It's starting to definitely cool down at night around here.  We were rowing on the Isis last night until about 7pm and it was unbelievably cold... and I was not prepared!  Let's just say that it was a long walk/bike ride home.  And, of course, we finished later than the park closed so we had to jump the iron gate to get out.  That just added to the excitement!

The workload still isn't too bad although I do need to start a paper this week and do some reading for my tutorial on Friday.  For the most part though, this is not at all like the workload I would've had at Bryn Mawr this year (as far as I can tell).  I think it's because we don't have tests here during the actual term, which helps a lot.  It's more-so just reading, but it's selective reading (AKA, you don't have to read everything on a reading list if you don't want to).  It's obviously helpful to read most things when going to a tutorial so you can sound like you know what you're talking about or if you're writing a paper on the topic, but for the most part the lectures cover the material decently.

My debit card got DESTROYED by an ATM here last Friday so I've been getting loans from a few friends until my new card comes in the mail tomorrow.  I think I'm going to try to open a bank account at Barclay's today, just to have a back up account in the UK for these sorts of things.  Plus, my pay-as-you-go phone is making me broke so I'd like to do a monthly contract of some kind, I think.  They need a UK bank account for the monthly contract, which stinks, but I understand where they're coming from.

I want to start visiting more of the Oxford colleges when I have time.  I haven't got to go into many of them except Queen's, St. Anne's and St. Catherine's.  I really want to see the inside of the older colleges.  Christ Church meadow is one of my favorite places in Oxford; it's a beautiful walk to St. Anne's boathouse.

Booked our Harry Potter 7 tickets today for when Steph visits in November!  We'll be seeing it at 8pm on November 19 in Oxford.  I'm stoked!  Then Steph, her friend and I are headed into London on Saturday to explore.  I'm excited to finally make the trek to London.  Everyone always thinks that Oxford is close-by when in reality it's a good 2 hour bus ride from London.. much the same as Philly is from NYC.  It's doable but not exactly an evening endeavor, per se.

Since dinner isn't served on weekends here, a group of British and American friends started getting together for 'dine with me' Sundays.  The Americans cooked first last night and it was a glorious fest of American breakfast-for-dinner, complete with banana, chocolate chip and regular pancakes, fried over-easy eggs, scrambled eggs and real American bacon.  I think the British friends really enjoyed it.  I'm excited to be cooked-for next Sunday!  It's a nice time to get together and have downtime with just the ladies.  I'm quite glad the idea was created.

I'll leave you with a picture of our newly inducted 'female social society' members.  They're a great group of girls!