So in the couple of weeks since I've posted, I've become consumed in the whirlwind that is academia. My first dramatic literature paper put me in the library for somewhere between 16-19 hours over four days, I wasn't keeping track in the beginning. Then again, that's partly me being an overachiever. It only had to be 1500-2000 words, it came out at over 3000. Oh well. The Bodleian library is absolutely beautiful, but unfortunately, you can't actually take books out of it. This makes for a lot of time spent hunched over books in a rather dark room.

I went to London a couple of weeks ago. It was incredibly fun. We saw all the famous touristy things: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliament buildings, etc. We also visited the Winston Churchill cabinet war rooms, which were absolutely amazing. They're underground, buried under six feet of cement, and have remained pretty much in tact since WWII ended. It was so amazing to walk around and see all these rooms where the war cabinet used to meet, and see all these wall-sized maps covered in pins with the Nazi progression, and see original schedules of alarm signals that said things like "imminent aid raid danger: red flashing lights" and "ground attack from outside or inside the building: klaxon". Being there in the dark, underground passages really helped to give you a sense of how scary it must have been during that time.

My favorite part of the trip, however, was The National Gallery. It was, by far, the best museum I have ever been to. They had any famous artist you could mention. Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Seurat, Monet, Manet, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Titian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Valazquez, Vermeer, etc etc etc. This is the museum where Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and Seurat's "Bathers at Asnieres" and Da Vinci's "The Virgin of the Rocks" live. It's a huge museum, so we didn't have nearly enough time to see everything in the museum, but we did have a map that led us to all the "big ones" so it was just an absolutely AMAZING hour and a half.

Other than London, my life has really just consisted of a lot of studying. I've been eating at the Christ Church dining hall every night to save money. It's actually quite nice. The great hall in Harry Potter was apparently based off of it, and the stairs leading to the dining hall are actually the stairs used in the movie, so that's neat. Also, it's all fancy-pants. Some of the colleges here have traditional cafeteria-style setup, but at Christ Church, they serve you. You get your starters, then your main course, then dessert afterward! It's a nice little way to relax after putting in six hours at the library :-)

Anyway, here are a couple pictures I'll add on for those of you who I don't have on facebook. The one at the top is me at Buckingham, and here's my roommate and I in front of Westminster Abbey.