Recipes for Friends

I had my first savory pie tonight January 29, 2007

It was called Old English chicken and stuffing pie or something like that. With mashed potatoes and gravy, almost like Thanksgiving all over again, with chicken instead of turkey. But I’m the girl who can’t tell coke from pepsi. There’s no way I can tell chicken from turkey. It was actually pretty good, and now I am completely stuffed. I had a lot of bread too because you never know what the meal will be like, so you have to choose to fill up on bread at the beginning and risk being really full if the meal is good or leave room and risk having an empty stomach if the meal is not so good. Then they had pineapple upside-down cake, which I was looking forward to, but it wasn’t so good, really dry. Oh well, can’t really expect an entire good meal out of Regent’s.

I haven’t written here in a while, been occupied with my essays for the week. I turned in my econ one Sunday evening and my politics one this afternoon. Now I just have to get through the actual tutorials. I really hope the politics one doesn’t go quite as badly as last week’s. This week, I’m going to try really hard to start reading before Thursday for next week’s stuff. I have two extra hours from dropping those lectures, so that will give me a little more time. Actually tomorrow I only have one lecture during the morning. I have another lecture tomorrow evening starting, which conflicts with my business lectures. I’m going to have Ula pick me up a copy of the notes. This week is also the last week of my international econ lectures, which are my only 9 a.m. lecture on Wednesday. So then my earliest lecture will be Monday at 10 and the rest of the days I don’t have anything until 11. So exciting. I just have to convince myself to use my time wisely.

Sunday I used my time wisely, I think. Celia always goes to the grocery after church, and this time I went with her and we got some pizzas and came back and ate them and watched Everybody Loves Raymond on my laptop. It was nice to relax. I hadn’t finished my essay, but I decided I really wanted pizza and so Celia and I planned to do that, so I did. I justify all these things by saying they keep me sane. I can’t study all the time. Although lately I feel like I’m really slacking. And on that note, I should probably try to get some work done before I fall asleep (I got up at 6 this morning to work on my essay so I don’t think I’ll make it much longer before my eyes start to close while reading).

2 days in a row is pretty good January 27, 2007

I got up this morning, very sore and tired. I just finished my warm-up for my yoga routine, and I think that might be all I do today, maybe some plain stretching when I come back from the library after having walked. I did the whole routine Thursday and Friday mornings. I had planned on taking my break on Wednesdays. I have a lecture at 9, so it makes it more difficult to squeeze it in. But I think it’s okay not to push myself too hard in the beginning, when I haven’t really exercised in a long time. Don’t want to hurt myself, right? So now I’m writing in here before I go take a shower and then head to the SSL to work on my econ essay. I really don’t like this having essays dues right after the weekend thing. I always worked on weekends, but didn’t have to have my crunch-time then. Oh well, just get through this term.

So yesterday, I met with Suke, my advisor, and we decided what I would be doing for the rest of my time here for sure. Which means I get to stop going to two lectures a week that I had been going to, down to only 10 lectures a week. Yay! Then I tried to read a bunch. I was fairly successful, but some of my econ stuff I have to read is in confined books in the library, so I still have to go there today. I hope to get the essay pretty much written today, and then I can write my politics one on Sunday for the most part. Then I can start next week’s econ on Monday and maybe actually get into a good routine where my weekend isn’t completely gone. We’ll see how this plan actually plays out.

Last night, Sarah and I sat at the high table with all the SCR people at formal hall. I sat directly across from the principal, Dr. Fiddes, which was a little intimidating, although he’s really nice. It was pretty crowded. They had jammed in as many chairs as possible on our side of the table. And at one point, Dr. Fiddes said it was a good thing I was so slim or it wouldn’t have been an enjoyable meal. And then he apologized saying he hoped I didn’t mind him having drawn attention to my size. It made me laugh. Toward the end of the meal, Sarah and I were just talking to each other, mostly about Veronica Mars. She borrowed season 1 from me last night. One less distraction for me. After dinner, we all went into the SCR (the actual room) and people had coffee and talked. Sarah and I talked to this Korean couple who had just moved to Oxford for him to be head of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies or something. They have family who live in Louisville, KY. How crazy is that? Sarah had a lot of connections with them too. They said the centre has lunch every Wednesday, and we should come by sometime. So we might do that, which will be fun. Then we headed to the JCR for a bit, and when Sarah had to leave, I excused myself too.

I was tired, but I also had told myself I had to read some before I got too tired and talked to Kyle and my mom. So I got some econ reading done, got to talk on the phone some, and then I fell asleep.

A new day brings new hope January 25, 2007

Okay, that sounds a little too mushy for me, but oh well. I fell asleep last night with a killer headache. I barely even talked to my mom. It came on really suddenly, and then I was really tired. And my mom saw me on the camera and told me to go to sleep. So I said I might wake up later and call her back. Which I did wake up later to turn the lights off, and set my alarm. And I vaguely remember approving Brendan’s skype account to see when I’m online. But I didn’t call her back, just fell back to sleep. I guess I needed it. Then at 6:30 this morning, I got a wake-up call from Kyle who had gotten home from hockey and was trying to finish his Russian. Then I fell back to sleep until around 7:30, at which time, I forced myself to do the warm-up stuff from my yoga routine. At first I told myself I could just take it slow and just do the warm-ups today, continue to the standing sequence tomorrow, the sitting sequence the day after that. But then I just decided to do it all. And besides the feeling that my legs were going to give out every time I stood up, I felt pretty good about myself, used my workout playlist on iTunes even.

I got done a little before 8:30 and my playlist wasn’t done playing, so I decided to check my e-mails and my family’s blogs to see if anyone had updated. Only one update since the last time I had checked, but it was enough to put me in a really good mood. If you haven’t read Brendan’s latest entry, you should. I don’t know how to make a link, but it’s at www.xorph.com/creator if you want to copy and paste. He’s going to be in the same country as me soon. You can get the details from his blog, but I am so excited to have a relative only an hour and a half away from me. I’ll probably see him here in England before I go home this time and won’t be seeing him in the states for a while. He’ll actually be over here more when I’m not here than when I am, but it’s still exciting. I had to tell someone so I went and knocked on Celia’s door, and she said it’s sort of crazy that my family will actually be closer than hers. She lives like 5 hours away from Oxford.

So anyway, went to my lectures, walking really fast because all three of them are far away from each other, and my legs felt like jelly. Then I came back here and had lunch in my room, and now I’m preparing to get started on lovely politics reading because I have to take one of my books back tonight. But at least I’m in a good mood, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. Yay!!

Finally through my tutorials January 24, 2007

I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through this week. I didn’t have one of my stressful, call my mom and cry moments, and I got my essays done with time to spare. But I didn’t feel confident in either of the things I turned in, and I was dreading the tutorials. My politics tutorial yesterday was awful. At some points I felt like crying or just being really sarcastic to my tutor, but I didn’t. Afterward Taylor and I walked to the SSL together, so it was good to have someone to talk to. We went into the tutorial, and our tutor said he was going to do it differently than he usually does. He wanted us to read out our essays instead of just talking about the topics, implying he was doing this because they were so bad. Which I’ve never actually had a tutorial where the tutor has had me read out my essay until now, unlike what G-town prepares us for. So he said, “Caitlan, why don’t you start reading yours?” So I did, and from then on out it was the worst tutorial ever. Every couple of sentences, he would stop me and ask me what was wrong with that sentence, or why what I just said was wrong, or why I wrote that, or what does that mean. So Taylor and I tried to answer the best we could. We didn’t even get all the way through my essay, much less to Taylor’s. And then at the end, my tutor said he hoped I didn’t feel like he was picking on me. Thanks.

We think he’s Irish, and I have trouble understanding him a lot of the time. There was one time he said something and I thought he was just saying a statement, but it was apparently a question. So I had to ask him to repeat himself a couple times. You’d think I could understand English. So I just took all the criticism. I think I reacted pretty well, even smiled and said thanks at the end of the tutorial.

Last night, I didn’t do any work. I went to dinner after my business lectures, then went to the JCR meeting, which lasted forever, and then came back to my room and read a magazine. I intended to get up this morning to do yoga, but I had a lecture at 9, and I had promised myself I could at least sleep in a little this morning. So I slept in until 7:20. Then got up and went to my lectures. It snowed outside during the night I guess. There was just a thin layer of snow on the grass this morning and slush on the streets. It had pretty much melted off by later in the day.

So after my lectures, I ate lunch in my room and I talked to Kyle some because we had planned to talk today. But then I let out all my frustrations on him, and got mad at him for no reason. And then I cried, pretty impressed with myself that I made it that long. I was really worried about my tutorial today, especially because of how yesterday’s went. I tried to read some stuff today to prepare myself. I had misread an e-mail and hadn’t seen the real reading list for this week, so I sort of screwed myself up because I did the wrong readings and couldn’t answer any of the questions. But it actually went okay. He’s German, and I have trouble understanding his English too. Great. There were only two things that he pointed out that I was totally wrong, better than the 50 or so that the other guy said.

So I’m going to try really hard this week to get all my reading done for both tutorials and get good essays churned out. But now I just feel sort of exhausted and I feel like even when I read the stuff I don’t really understand. Sometimes I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into. This week, so far, I’ve just felt really stupid. And you can’t be stupid and go to Oxford. They want you get really deep into the subjects, and I’m realizing now that I’ve never really done that before. I’ve just skimmed the surface, and somehow managed to get good grades. This term is going to be difficult. I just hope I can survive, take it one week at a time.

Quick entry before my crazy day January 23, 2007

So I’ve had two essay crises in a row, and now that I’ve turned them in, I have to somehow prepare myself for the actual tutorials. In some ways, I like turning in the essays early, so I can get them back right away, but in other ways, I wish the tutors didn’t know how poorly I am prepared for the week’s tutorial in advance. My econ questions took forever, and they were complete crap when I did finally turn them in. But then that left me with not much time to finish readings and write my politics essay, and I was completely exhausted and couldn’t think very well either. And now I want to just take a break, but if I want to get on a schedule where I’m not stressing out, I’ve got to keep working constantly until the weekend and hope that I’ve gotten enough done to take a break then.

So now today I have two lectures, two meetings at college, my business lecture, and my tutorial. Plus I want to try to get some reading done to prepare for my econ tutorial tomorrow. Crazy day.

Oh and I think I know where I’m living next year. In a flat with two other third-years, neither of whom I know very well, but hopefully it will work out. And it’s apparently in one of the nicest flats. How I got this lucky I don’t know. I feel bad because I’m not rooming with Ula, but oh well I’m being a bit selfish for once. I want my own shower and kitchen. Everybody told me to just do what I wanted, so I did. It’s hard to explain the whole situation. G-town’s housing was so much easier and less stressful.

Well I better get my shoes on and start the day. Can’t wait!