Halfway Point

Hey Everyone!

This weekend marks the halfway point in our seminars. The next two weeks will definitely be crazy, but at least now we're on the downhill side. This weekend I'll be focusing mainly on reading. We have four novels due in my English class Monday. (Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Secret Agent, and Howard's End.)

I just finished my first paper for that class. We had our first essay seminar on Friday. It was pretty terrifying. Basically three people read out their papers, and he stops you and critiques you along the way. Sometimes it's critiques about your writing, and other times he questions your arguments and you have to defend your point. It might be a little less intimidating if he were just any old professor, but he's actually the head of the English Faculty at Oxford.

Then, once you've read and defended your work, he gives you your grade in front of everyone else. Yikes!

At least for my History class you just e-mail him your papers!

Last night after dinner I went to the Eagle and Child Pub with some friends from the program. It's the very same pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien used to meet with their other literary crew. They called themselves "The Inklings." I've heard that Lewis and Tokein would play Scrabble together, but they would each use words from the languages they made up for their book series. Craziness. It's a fun little place to sit and talk, and I'm excited to go back and actually eat there. I've noticed that every pub has a sign out front advertising "the best fish n' chips in Oxford." I'll let you know which pub actually has the best.

In other news, I had an embarrassing moment at the grocery store today. I had my whole basket on the conveyor belt before I realized that I had left my credit card back at the house. So I power walked about 1/2 mile to get my card, hoping they would hold my basket for me. Turns out they didn't, so I had to "re-shop."

Next time I'll be a little more careful about what's in my wallet!

Thanks for stopping by!