Hello again from the Emerald Isle – please forgive the delay in writing.  Life is flying by at a slightly terrifying pace, and I keep pushing off writing in favor of other random things.  Desolée.

Let’s start about..11 days ago?  Which is, of course, when I last posted (whoopsies) – the weekend of the 20^th of October.  Sarah went on a “Shamrocker” tour (google it), but I wasn’t able to go because they left around 8 am on Friday.  Dang class…so I hung around UCD, instead.  Saturday was an epic day in the city centre with Elaine and Abby, another American who Sarah met during a class trip.  We got on the 12 o’clock bus and didn’t get back to UCD until after 5:30 pm – quite a day!  We disembarked at Grafton Street and ate lunch at Avoca, this adorable mini-department store with super-girly kitchen/household goods.  There’s a small café in the basement and a larger restaurant upstairs (the bathrooms are also upstairs, so I got to see both of the eateries).  I had a cheese and caramelized onion quiche, which would have been amazing had it contained about ¼ of the onion that it actually had…slightly disappointing.  I’ll definitely be going back there in the future, though – it’s SO adorable.  After lunch, we wandered around the market that Sarah and I usually visit every weekend, and Abby perused the jewelry and prints in the craft-y section. Next we stopped into a quaint bookstore and perused the selection for about half an hour.  I picked up a few Christmas presents for mi familia at that bookstore – can’t really elaborate on those, for obvious reasons, but they’re pretty hilarious!  Then Elaine introduced me to the fruit market, which boasts 15 apples for 1 euro at some booths!  (I got a selection of 12 for 2 euros, which I was quite content with…)  Abby bought a pumpkin for 5 euro from a vendor for carving, and then we realized that the grocery store was selling them for 99 cents – darnit.  I ended up carrying the pumpkin because I have a humongous bag that fits just about everything in it – it was pretty heavy, I’m not going to lie, but totally worth it. We stopped into the Post Office on the way back so Elaine could send a package, and Abby schooled me in Irish historical knowledge (guess I should have read that history book – sorry, Daddy!).  I ducked into the flower shop next to the bus stop to grab a stem of lilies again, of course, and then we boarded the 39a back to UCD Belfield again.  It was a great day (although I’m still completely befuddled about how it ended up being more than 5 hours!!).

Sunday was spent being a Hopkins-student-wannabe – I actually went to the library!  So, so strange – it’s above ground!  I could see grass and trees and some dogs and people walking, which was definitely a (welcome) distraction. J Wenjun showed me her favorite seat in the library and I stayed there from 1 to 5 (with one 40 minute break for unproductive activities, of course); after that, my brain wanted to explode so I headed home.  Also, I freeze if I sit in one place for too long so I could barely use my hands to write after the four hours, so I needed tea and a blanket when I got home!  (Wenjun finally showed up at home after 7:30 that night…crazy woman).  Sarah got home that evening and we made dinner, no big deal.

The week was semi-normal – we got groceries delivered and had classes – but it was also not the best.  My oboe stopped working properly on Wednesday, the day of our orchestra rehearsal (which the other oboist, Becky, couldn’t attend…the conductor thought I was crazy and couldn’t play L ), so I brought it to a repair man in the city centre this past Saturday.  I have yet to hear anything good or bad about the diagnosis (dang bank holiday!), but I’m praying it will be good news.  I also got sick to my stomach around the same time.  That lasted until yesterday – it wasn’t queasiness or a stabbing feeling or anything, just general unease, so I didn’t work out much and eating was really weird, also.  I didn’t attend the dissection after my Exotics class on Friday because I figured that could be a terrible decision.  Thank GOD that’s over….

It was also a really awesome week at the same time (such a strange, dichotomous life): I started doing research in the Veterinary Parasitology Lab.  The lab is actually run under the auspices of the Vet School Dean, Grace Mulcahy; I think it’s slightly ironic that, as a pre-vet, I’m working in the Dean’s lab…but I’m definitely not going to complain about it.  The purpose/job of the lab is to take samples (can be skin or fecal, etc.) from sick animals and test them for parasites; these samples come from companion animals, a nearby wildlife preserve, and the Dublin Zoo!  So far I’ve tested samples from dogs, a cat, a mara (aka, capybara), and a kangaroo – super exciting.  I’m working under the guidance of Amanda Lawlor, a technician in the lab; she was really excited that I knew how to use a microscope and could tell the difference between debris on a slide and parasite eggs (score one for ALL of my Hopkins teaching labs, I suppose).  I’m going in this week, by myself (read: unsupervised), on Tuesday and Wednesday morning – it’s crazy to me that, after working in the lab three times I’m trusted to go in by myself and not mess stuff up!  (They didn’t even check the slides I plated out last Thursday to make sure I knew what I was doing, they just said – ok, Claire said it’s negative for these parasites so the parasite isn’t present).

Now onto this past weekend – Amanda, one of my best friends at Hopkins (who is currently studying in France), is visiting for the whole week!  She got here Friday morning (right as I was going to class, of course, so Sarah was kind enough to meet her at the main entrance to the school and walk her back to the room), after an overnight travel experience (from France to London before Dublin); we both took fairly long naps, and then ordered pizza for dinner.  Two guys from the IFSA program showed up unexpectedly and hung out for about half an hour, but we weren’t really in the mood to go out that night, so they headed out to find something to do and we just hung out.  On Saturday, we went into the city centre to check out the market, and then we had lunch at The Ha’penny Bridge Café.  We managed to knock the saltshaker off the table when we sat down, so the waiter took the salt and pepper off our table…whoopsies!  We were sitting there enjoying our meal (minus the fact that the bacon on the club sandwich Amanda ordered wasn’t actually cooked) when a group of four American girls came in and demonstrated why Europeans think we’re obnoxious – one girl asked for nearly every ingredient in the dish to be changed (cheddar instead of swiss, mustard instead of mayo, etc. ad nauseum) and they were all ridiculously loud.  Grr.  Giving us bad names and whatnot.  After lunch we headed to SuperValu for some groceries, and then back home.  Sunday was a TON of fun – we headed north of the city centre to Malahide Castle,             owned by the Talbot family from 1185 to 1975.  The story of the last two owners (a brother, Milo, and sister, Rose) is quite interesting – as he became older, Milo started to travel throughout the Indies.  He found, on the island of Tasmania, an area named after the county in which the Malahide Estate is found – after retirement, he bought up land in this area and became a farmer there.  His younger sister, Rose, maintained a farm on the 500-acre estate at Malahide until Milo’s death in 1973; however, to offset the death tax incurred upon his death, Lady Rose sold the property to the Dublin County Council.  The 500-acres were set aside for “amenity and sporting purposes” (according to the Malahide Historical Society), and the Castle is open to public viewings – for the moment.  Amanda and I were actually extremely lucky in our timing – Malahide will be closed, from October 31, for the next 2-3 years for renovations!  Just another reason to return – we’re going to need to be able to do a comparison! J

I sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed my commentaries for the moment!  Off to make dinner…

A little walking tour of the town where I live. Only 2 more weeks!

It is impossible to believe: I have already been in Chile for a little over 13 weeks. I had a website do some math for me (seeing as my own math skills are hardly up to par with such a task), and my time here so far is equal to 96 days, or three months and four days, or 2,304 hours, or 138,240 minutes.

Considering that I am only here for another 1 month and 16 days (or a little more than 6 weeks, or 1,128 hours, or 47 days), that is a lot of time that has passed and that I can never get back. And it feels like nothing. It feels like just yesterday I was at the IFSA orientation in Olmue, walking around the town center, being lovingly followed by a pack of dogs that hated each other. I can’t help but cringe while I write this phrase, but…Looking back, skydiving in Mendoza does not feel like it was nearly a month ago. I could swear that I was in Peru and the north of Chile only a couple weeks ago (it was, in fact, well over a month ago).

Perhaps because my stay in Chile is limited, it feels like time is speeding by at an alarming rate. The worst part is that I have no say in the matter. You know that over-used ice-breaker question, “If you could have one superpower, what would it be?” Well, If I could have one superpower, I would be able to control the ticking of the world’s clocks. That way, I could make each hour here longer. I could create more sunny days at the beach. More night hours for both homework and carreteando. More days for trips to the countryside and the center-south, both places that I haven’t explored yet and still have no firm plans to go to (ah!!!). More time to pass talking with Chilean friends. … More time to make Chilean friends.

More time. I just want more time.

I would extend my stay by another semester in a heartbeat, even with the student movement and everything, because I love living in Chile. I love the nature, the cities, the people, the dialect, the food (well, the hallullas, I’m not completely crazy about)…I love almost everything about Chile. The problem is that it is impossible to both extend my stay and stay an English major. I would not graduate on time. Once upon a time I was considering changing my major, but the truth is, I love being an English major. And in a backwards kind of way, English might help me come back to Chile in the future–after graduation. You see, I want to teach. In fact, I want to teach English. English teachers are in high demand in Chile. Why not, if I still like the sound of it in a year and a half, and if I can scrounge together the airfare to Santiago again, come back to Chile in the future to be an English teacher?

Hey, it’s an option.

But back to the time issue. The saddest part of having only one semester (in total, 4 months and 19 days) in Chile is that, at this point, I can see the end coming. I have November and early December planned. I am scheduled to leave Chile about four days after my final big trip (to Patagonia), assuming that I can’t find a good enough excuse to merit the fee to change the date of my flight back to the States so that I can stay a few more days. (Or a week, perhaps. Or all of winter break. Or my entire life. That would be nice.)

I can pretend all I want that I don’t see the end coming. I can try to take it one day at a time and try not to look at the calendar–other than to plan trips and weekends. In other words, I can turn my head, so to speak. And trust me, I’m really trying to focus on the time left here instead of the part about having to leave. I am desperately trying not to look too far forward. Even still, with my head turned to the side, trying to ignore the inevitable, I can’t help but see nasty little Mid-December from the corner of my eye. It is making faces at me, taunting me, grinning evilly. It smells my fear that it will approach before I am ready to face it.

I apologize for the heavy dose of sobriety. My next post will definitely read happier.

You know what’s funny about this post?  I writing it about academics, and I currently have a 850 page book to finish ASAP so I can do research and write an essay about it by Tuesday!!!  And when I finish that, I still have to read several books for history and write a slightly shorter essay for that tutorial by Thursday – and I haven’t even started that assignment!!

Right, got to keep it short.

I don’t have that much to say anyway, since I’m only doing two tutorials as is typical at Oxford.  A tutorial is a one-one-one session with a tutor.  You can basically suggest any topic in the world to study, and if there’s a tutor that thinks they can manage to make at tutorial out of it they will do so.  One tutorial is called your “primary” which meets for an hour once a week, and one is called your “secondary” which meets for an hour once every other week.

Class for two hours a week at most?  Easy, you say!  NOT EASY.  I literally have no idea how I’m supposed to do the work for next week well and by the deadline, and I haven’t even been procrastinating (except for a poorly made decision to visit the farm all afternoon and evening last Tuesday…oops.  I had to return Lauren’s bedding?).  It just takes SO LONG to do the reading.  This is my break for today – I’d been reading for the last 7 or 8 hours aside from a half hour lunch break (on four hours’ sleep thanks to a 5:30am rowing wakeup this morning and football initiations last night).

I’m actually really enjoying myself academically, though.  Obviously this is due partially to the fact that all I have to do is pass these tutorials – the grades don’t affect my Kenyon GPA.  Still, I have a lot of pride academically so I never planned to slack off here.  I think a lot of the fun I’m getting out of this comes from the fact that so much of my academic life was designed by me – I chose my subjects, my tutorials, and I have so little class time that I can mold (almost) my entire daily schedule.  Despite the fact that none of this time is really “free”, I feel very liberated.  I’ve been trying to go to bed at a decent hour every night and then I usually just set my alarm for eight hours after I go to sleep, which is a huge improvement over my sleeping habits in general.  I wouldn’t mind working so much if I felt like I had more time to meet people get integrated as well.

So, about my specific tutorials.  I like them both.  My primary is Rise of the Novel, so it’s eighteenth century literature.  I love doing the reading, though to be honest these authors tend to be a bit sentimental for my taste.  I can’t wait until the last book – any Austen novel I want!  She’s so much less emotional, despite her reputation.  I’ve gotten very good grades on all of my essays so far, and I really like my tutor.  You might remember me telling you about him in my freshers’ week post – he’s the American who’s lived here since he went to York University as an undergraduate decades ago.  Apparently he is the director of the university’s creative writing department and I’m going to be doing a fiction tutorial with him Trinity term (last term).  !!!!!  I was talking to him about this, and he says that I can work exclusively on a story that I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and that I’ve always wanted to publish!  Obviously this is terrifying, and I have second thoughts about it all the time.  I know he’s going to be very honest.  But I have to do it, right?  Because right now I’ve got a one-on-one session about my obsession with the director of creative writing at the University of Oxford.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and also ??

My secondary is the French Revolution.  I’ve only had one of these so far.  My tutor is very passionate about the subject. She always talks about how the French Revolution is the best revolution and all of the people involved in it were like characters in a novel.  I can tell that she’s nice too because she was so gracious about the whole 4:15/5:15 fiasco.  I’m nervous about this one because I feel like I never have time to think about my secondary after doing all the work for my primary, but I guess I’ll just have to work as hard as I can…

That’s basically it for academics.  Okay, got to get back to my reading.  Bye!

Ari

It’s true that I spend the majority of my time working here, but that is not what this blog post is about.  It’s about what I do for fun.

The social aspect of clubs and societies is a really big deal in England – probably bigger than it is in America.  A theory I’ve read is that English people are so reserved that they need common ground upon which to connect with people.  I’m good with that, so I joined rowing (mostly because I wanted to do at least one Mansfield-only club, and because it’s the most British thing ever) and I made the university soccer team.  I might play soccer games for my college too, but I probably won’t go to practices due to time constraints.  Also, Mansfield has socials fairly frequently at college which always turn out to be quite fun and classy.

The first thing I can remember doing since my last post is rowing.  I did a trial day the first day of term.  I’ve rowed two times now, and I may say with complete certainly and honesty that I am, as the Brits would say, rubbish.  Complete rubbish.  I thought I was relatively athletic – I can run fast, and I was on two state championship soccer teams.  But I can’t even lift the bloody oars out of the water!  And I keep calling the oars paddles!  The thing is, I don’t lack strength any more than the others do – in fact, apparently the main part of rowing is in your thighs, and mine are quite strong(ish) – I’m just pitifully uncoordinated.  But I think rowing is fun.  Maybe not fun enough to warrant the 5:30am wakeups once a week, or all the hassle that comes with putting the boat in the water and steadying the boat while other people are rowing…but we’ll see how it goes.

It’s been great getting back into soccer.  The teams aren’t very successful so far, but that’s okay since it’s really a social thing for me.  I’m on the second team called the Furies – the first team (the Blues) are SO good!  I feel really secure where I am because I know I’m definitely not good enough to be on the Blues so I don’t need to try and prove that I should be moved up or anything.  Everyone on the team is really nice but I haven’t been able to go to a social yet.  Wednesday night is initiation, though, so that should be a good opportunity do get to know some people.

What else do I do that’s social?  Ugh, not much.  It needs to be improved.  I think I can only mention a few more times that I’ve hung out with people.

1. G&D’s, a great ice cream store where they are also famous for random things like their pizza bagels (which are exceptional – and how do you make an exceptional pizza bagel?!).  The second years and I met there 1st week to try to get Holly’s bike sorted out for me, but we couldn’t open the valve to fill the flat tire so I am still walking everywhere.  This needs to change, actually.  Anyway, it was a pretty good night  - the ice cream was phenomenal.

2. On Friday of 1st week Priya and I went to the college bar for karaoke night.  Lauren, Saskia (another second year) and Anisa were arriving just as Priya and I got there, and I ended up separating from Priya and spending most of the night with Lauren, Anisa, their friend Addie (a second year guy from Romania), and a few JYAs.  We sang some great songs – in HUGE groups of people, mind you!! – and it was this night that I realized how fun the pub culture could be.  After karaoke we went to G&Ds for the second time that week, and ate more ice cream over more conversation.

3. Champagne and Chocolates!  This was a great day AND night.  It was the day Lauren left, and I let myself sleep in, hang out and do some errands rather than working.  The night’s event turned out to be a lot of fun.  It was just so classy – everyone looked so formal and we were all sipping champagne and listening to live jazz music and, I mean, there was CHOCOLATE.  SO MUCH.  Why can’t America be like this?  I love England.

4. (3.5)?  At champagne and chocolates I mainly hung out with Priya, and afterwards she invited me to her room to watch a movie since Glee is on an annoying hiatus ALREADY.  We ended up talking and watching P.S. I Love You until 2:00am, which was great.

Honestly, I think this is all I can boast of having done in terms of social events and extracurriculars so far aside from a brief rowing social.  I feel like I’ve been kind of slacking socially these past few weeks.  It’s just that there’s SO MUCH WORK to be done here – more about that in the next post.  I’m going to try to kick it up a notch and forget my worries, and embrace this adjustment period of studying abroad.  I guess I’m not doing half bad so far.  Hopefully I’ll have more news for you next time!

Ari

Hello all!  It’s been a while – I’ve been busy.  Oxford life has begun in full swing.  I promise this will be the last vacation-orientation-special event post, and next time I’ll get into my real Oxford life, but I want to wait to do that until I’ve had my history tutorial.  But Ari, you ask, don’t you have your secondary tutorial every two weeks?  Hasn’t it been two weeks?  Yes, that’s true!  As Lauren will attest, on Thursday I was supposed to have my tutorial at 4:15 and I was convinced it was at 5:15.  Oops.  Sorry, Oxford’s thousand-year academic history.  I’m just a colonist, forgive me.  My tutor was really nice about it though, by e-mail at least.  And I wasn’t prepared anyway.

Because…MY FRIEND LAUREN CAME TO ME from Rome and I needed to get my work done fast!  Lauren goes to school with my back home, and she’s studying abroad in Rome this semester.  It was a fantastic visit, though one certainly lacking in sleep.  It began when I rushed with my dinner to the bus station to pick her up, and when she arrived my hands were covered in cheese, so the hug was extra awkward!  After eating dinner (on Lauren’s part) and ice cream (on my part) at the delicious G&D’s, I promptly abandoned Lauren for the ever-entrancing Mansfield College library, where I proceeded to compose the worst essay ever written on the nobility’s part in the early French Revolution.  I finished at 1:45am and was in bed by 3:00am – perfect for our 7:45am wakeup the next day!

But at least it was for a good reason.  LONDON!  We left on the 9:01am train for a full twelve hour day.  Of the three times I’ve been to London, this was by far the best.  We started off with the most important stop – Platform 9 3/4.  It was lame in a way because it was moved to the side of King’s Cross Station – when I’d been there last summer it was in its rightful place (as much as it could be, as there really is no wall between platforms nine and ten).  At least there was a lovely sign telling us that the platform had been moved, directing us to the new location where all Hogwarts pupils could catch the train.  At least we found it – no need to take the flying car!

From there we went to the Tate Modern.  I wouldn’t normally go to an art museum while in London – I’d rather do cultural or historical things like the Tower of London.  But all of those things are almost 20 pounds a piece, and the museums are free.  Also, Lauren – as most of you will know – is obsessed with art and insisted that we at least go to one museum.  As she loves modern art best, the Tate was our choice.  It was actually really cool and kind of inspiring.  I haven’t thought about anything creative in a while, and it was great to finally do so.

Next (I think?) we went to Buckingham Palace.  I was excited about this because it was the only major London sight that I’d never at least laid eyes on.  It was cool – we saw a guard marching in a ridiculous manner, and Lauren insisted on asking a couple to take a touristy picture of us.  For some reason it wasn’t THAT impressive to me, though.  I think the beauty of Oxford is going to my head.  Or maybe it’s that I actually find the country estates I’ve been to to be more beautiful.

Another thing I was excited about was our visit to St. James’s Park, because I’d heard a lot about London’s parks and I’d never been to one.  Again, I didn’t think it was THAT amazing if you compare it to Central Park.  I thought it was pretty much the same except MUCH smaller and with a better lake.  The only thing that made it very clear you were in London was the view of Buckingham Palace in one direction and Whitehall and the London Eye in the other.  So, not a bad place.

I’d totally forgotten about Whitehall, so we walked through the park to see it.  For some reason I didn’t know it existed right in the middle of London, or that it existed at all anymore.  It was beautiful with a lot of turrets and austere men on horses (I think it’s the place for the royal cavalry or something), and I was glad for the happy accident that brought us there.

Next we went to Trafalgar Square, and since it was much earlier than we thought it was – and since we were still poor – we decided to go into the National Gallery.  The feel was very different in this museum than the last – it was much less, well, modern, and (in my opinion) much more beautiful with its wood paneling and impressive rooms.  In a way the art wasn’t as interesting because it was mostly portraits and that sort of thing, but apparently I looked at some really famous stuff (says Lauren).  I think I liked it better than the Tate because I could recognize historical trends in the rooms from the Georgian era.

When we left the museum we had the inevitable and essential experience of being rained on in London without umbrellas!  We took cover in a bookstore and had a break of coffee and hot chocolate, much like our cafe dates at Kenyon (except now Lauren is a coffee snob thanks to Italy).  When we were finished the rain had cleared up, and we made our way to Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Eye.  They were impressive as always.

At this point we were kind of at a loss to do (ridiculous, I know, but remember that we are poor), so we decided to check out Harrods, the famous London department store.  It was a fun experience to look around in there, but we weren’t buying anything!  I loved one necklace, but unfortunately it turned out to be just short of 2,000 pounds.  Oh well.  BUT we were successful in one room – the most important room – the chocolate room!  Yes, there was a room FULL of fancy chocolate.  After a very short deliberation Lauren and I decided that we should treat ourselves to one expensive truffle each, and when Lauren went up to a counter to ask how much they would cost the woman gave her two for free!  It was the beginning of the delicious food we’d have that night!

Dinner was where we went next – Covent Garden to be specific.  We went to an amazing French bakery/restaurant called Le Pain Quotidien.  There’s one in New York that I went to once, and it was insanely expensive, but this one was quite reasonably priced and just as good.  I got a quiche and salad, Lauren got an open-sandwich thing that I forgot the name of, and we drank a glass of wine each.  We topped off the brilliant meal with a quick walk over to Snog!, the same frozen yogurt place I’d gone to on my birthday during orientation.  It was just as amazing.  The whole trip was one of those days that you can never recreate but you always wish you could have back.

After Snog! we ended our London trip with an exhausted tube ride to Paddington, where we finally caught the train back to Oxford.  When we got back to my room, we collapsed pretty quickly into bed because we had a lovely 5:30am wakeup the next day for my rowing practice.  It was freezing cold, I didn’t bring adequate clothing, and we were SO TIRED.  More about rowing in the next post (for real this time).

After another G&D’s stop for breakfast, Lauren napped (lucky her) while I edited the paper I’d written the other night.  We ate lunch in one of Oxford’s lovely cafes and then I finally got my PATISSERIE VALERIE RASPBERRY TART that I’d been dreaming of every since I’d eaten one the first time last summer!  It was SO SATISFYING.

Our next stop was the farm!  We took the bus to Hampton Poyle and then I took Lauren along my beloved footpaths to Willowbrook.  It was a perfect day for the walk – sunny and crisp, just as I like it.  We visited the Radwans at the farm, which was great as always.

I THOUGHT we left early enough for my tutorial, but obviously THAT didn’t happen.  After walking around Oxford for a little while longer and purchasing weird English candy in a sweets store RIGHT out of Harry Potter, we ate dinner in college so that Lauren could get the Mansfield experience.  She saw the library too before we headed back to my room, again collapsing in exhaustion.  That’s okay, though, no need for energy when you’re watching Pride and Prejudice!!  We’d planned to do it the night she got here, but my paper prevented that.  So it turned out to be a goodbye thing rather than a welcome thing, which was just as great.

We went to bed pretty soon after the movie, as we had a 5:45am wakeup the next day.  At this point you can imagine that we were pretty sick of getting up before the sunrise.  As soon as I’d dropped Lauren off at the bus station I walked home dropped back into bed.

I still haven’t recovered from the lack of sleep.  In fact, I kind of want to drop into my bed right now, and I think I will very soon.  Good night everybody!  Next time I promise there will be more daily life stuff.  Just got to make it to my tutorial on time…

Everything in general is going very well here.  I hope all is well at home!

Ari

Part of the Oxford experience is visiting the old haunts of Tolkein and Lewis; drinking warm beer in cold pubs that smell of wet leather and wood, and taking long walks through damp gardens full of bees and butterflies. Another part is doing work. That’s it. There are no fancy adjectives I can tack onto that, and certainly no butterflies. There’s just me, the books that I’ve scoured every one of Oxford’s accessible libraries to find, and that never-ending white page with the blinking cursor.

I say all of this not to entertain, but to remind myself of the hard parts so I’ll think twice lest I want to repeat the experience for graduate school. I know from experience that the long hours spent staring at a computer screen have a nasty habit of fading out of memory, while all night parties and busty British woman seem to do the opposite. Oxford is hard, difficult work, and… ah, who am I kidding? I love it here. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

The trick, I think, is figuring out how to balance the two 3,000 word essays I have each week with fun. I’ll take time to do the essays, to write about Yeats and the occult and the gyres and the significance of the metal bird in the poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” but then I’ll go out and enjoy the country and the culture. If I lived to read, living would be called reading. It’s not. It’s called living.

Tonight I went to an invite-only event called “Drinks with the Master,” a sort of welcome ceremony for visiting students and incoming Freshmen. They had forgotten to make me one so I drew my own: “Kenneth Gould” it said under an artfully redesigned St. Catherine’s logo. Under that I wrote my major, “English.” It occurred to me after that people might think I was English, which I’m not, instead of thinking that I study English, which I do. However, I thought it was silly to ask for another nametag to replace the one that I had gotten as a replacement for another so I stopped overanalyzing the situation and just went inside.

At the door, a smartly dressed gentleman offered me a choice of white wine, red wine, or apple juice. I asked him which wine was better, to which he responded that he didn’t know, to which I responded why not, to which he responded that just because he had a British accent he was not an expert in the luxuries of high society. That was news to me. I took a white. Then a smartly dressed woman thrust a silver platter under my nose.

“Beef and ale or chicken and tarragon pie?” she asked, referring to the two varieties of mini puff pastry on the tray. I was going to ask her which was better, but then just took a beef and ale. I barely had time to look at it before the master showed up at the front of the room and commanded my undivided attention. This was the man in robes I had seen shouting Latin in the dining hall. Surely he had something interesting to say.

“Hello all,” he said. “Thank you for coming. As I was saying yesterday, this year’s Freshman class seems like the best in a long time. Thank you for coming. Goodnight.” Then he left, and his aides took my wine glass and ushered me outside. They seemed to consider taking my puff pastry as well, but in the end they let me keep it. I ate it thoughtfully. It is one thing to advocate that one take full advantage of life, but sometimes life has other plans.

Yesterday while taking a trip to the beach I realized that I had not touched my blog in almost an entire month!  There are a few reasons I have not been able to stay inside long enough to write my blog entries.  First, the weather has finally warmed up enough to uphold Sydney’s reputation as a sunburned country.  In fact, when I walked to the Botanical Gardens a few weeks ago an entire flock of cockatoos joined my friends and I.  Most Australians consider them pests, but we were able to approach a few of these birds.  One Australian woman even took a picture of me and asked for my email address so that she could send it to me; this is a testament to my excitement at finally being able to experience the sun and all the Australian animals that are fabled to be in constant abundance in Sydney.

While Australians are not so crazy about cockatoos or cheap food, they are immersed in a culture that is certainly a reliable oasis of wine expertise.  I took a trip with about 10 other kids to the Hunter Valley where exchange students flock by the dozens to take the famous wine tours.  It does not matter how acclimated I have become to Australian accents, because when our seasoned tour-guide held up his wine glass in the most sophisticated manner and explained the inner workings of the vintage barrels his vernacular was overwhelmingly convincing.  I would have believed him if he said my crystal glass was filled with horse urine.  This driver chauffeured our group to three different vineyards and supplemented the car rides with his own poetry and easygoing humor.  For only $55 it was an awesome way to spend a Friday afternoon!

IFSA-Butler also managed to take a few willing participants to the Blue Mountains and Jenolan Caves. We stopped first at the “Australian Grand Canyon” where we stood at a tourist lookout that displayed the Three Sisters (three big rocks that australians are crazy about), and then the bus took us to a terrifying cliff.  The bus felt like it was about to roll off the edges and straight into this gaping black hole in Australia’s landscape, and I could not see how some people could get a thrill out of such an experience.  I was only happy to survive in time to walk into an enchanting array of rocks which they called a cave.  Our original plan was to drink wine and watch dolphins in addition to this trip, so many of us were disappointed that 2/3 of our “adventure” had been misplanned.  Still, the caves were beautiful and we even got to witness a light show in some majestic corridor deep within the cave.  As soon as we emerged into the daylight, our tourguide informed us that the 8th best cave in the world was just a few meters away and that it had been featured on the Planet Earth documentary.  After traveling for 3 hours I would not have minded seeing a cave with such a reputation, but I still have to admit that our low-key unknown cave was not such a bad experience.

Outside of organized trips, I have also gotten to pretend to participate in organized marathons!   By this I mean that one of my best friends ran a half marathon in late September for a charity and I was thoroughly exhausted just by watching her.  Her marathon finish line, which was located right in front of the Opera House, was parallel to that of another marathon for children, and a few meters away bikers in a simultaneous marathon for yet another charity whizzed by the harbor bridge.  That day it seemed that the Sydney Harbor was made of the sweat of the thousands of participants in all these races, and for the rest of the day I found it difficult to walk by someone on the street who was not sporting their race number pinned to their shirt.

All of these activities kept me busy while I prepared for Spring Break in late september.  In Australia, intra-semester schoolwork is rare and awkwardly strewn among the weeks before Spring Break.  As a political science major I had very few midterms, and they occurred only in the form of scattered paper assignments which I was reluctant to do while I tried exploring Australia.  It is hard to be one of the few students whose grades actually count, because most of my friends are here on a pass/fail basis.  Since the average grade in Australia is a 50%, it is much easier for them to navigate the assignments than for me!  With schoolwork and spending money being my only complaints, in today’s world I think I am still coming out ahead!

Yesterday I was at the gym changing in the locker room, a pretty Americanized gym, and a prostitute walked in. I was like. WOAH. haha. not judging but I had never been that close to one before. they walk around Heredia at night, along with the transvestites, but I had never been next to one, up close and person, at 3pm in the afternoon.

then I was biking and I wasnt sure if I should tell the old lady next to me who was biking quite slowly that her machine wasnt on lol. Gosh I should really get my personal training license when I get back to the states.

and then I was talking to my host sister this morning. she was venting to me about how she went out last night and this crazy girl she was with was driving her nuts. then she began to elaborate how all her tica friends have been nuts and how her personality doesnt fit in with those of the ticas (ticas = costa rican latinas).  she explained how theyve gone behind her back and told lies that her dad was a drug dealer, that she was sleeping with all these people, etc etc. very childish stuff that we all go through in middle school that she continues to go through today as a 24 yr old. it made me think. hm. thats why i feel like I dont belong here in the Costa Rica culture. I’d like to think of myself as open, very friendly, and quite the social butterfly with many different groups of freinds back at home. I love the party scene, I also love the academic scene and the athletic scene, hence I always had different groups to relate to. here, the ticos are distant. they will be nice and help you to an extent; homework, directions, get you a drink for you birthday, give you advice on where to travel. but any closer than that is weird for them. in terms as my sister put it, ‘ costa ricans are repugnant, and the most snooty of all the latina countries in Latin America’. thats why i felt strange here. lik that minority in an all white, private, rich school where you got there luckily. like that new grl from a huge city that comes to a rural town in South Dakota. its different. different dynamic. I miss being a social butterfly. my close freinds are all in my exchange program. ive made tico friends, dont get me wrong, but no body significant. oh well. I think we all know from my first post ever from Costa Rica that I will be returning to Spain lol.

on another note. I do love my family though. they are amazing. they have shown me and demostrated that functional families are possible! haha. its great really. they care so much. and i am going to miss my host mom´s cooking SO much. she is literally the best chef ever. taking all of her recipes. fo sho.

6 weeks left in Costa Rica!

expect some adventure stories