British Holidays

First off, sorry I haven't posted in forever. I actually had to go home to Texas for a few weeks to America to have my tonsils removed, which was unfortunate. Since I have been back in the UK I have been pretty much nonstop, but I decided to set aside for a few minutes today to put up a post (mostly for procrastination purposes).

Today is a holiday in England; it is St. Georges day. Or, as Barry our lecturer today said, "a holiday where we celebrate a man who most likely was not British (probably Palestinian) and who may or may not have sleign a dragon (which may or may not have ever existed ever at all)." So, Happy St. Georges day!

Unfortunately I will not have any time to partake in any celebrations. I have an essay due on Wednesday by noon. Then, I am leaving for Germany on Friday morning. Of course, the Monday after I get back I also have an essay due. So, I am attempting to get ahead on that one so that I don't have to worry about it while I am in Germany. Which means I should probably get off of this and hit the books! I will (probably) post pictures of my trip to Germany when I get back. 

Ahhh sick again

So, a few days ago I started to feel like I was developing tonsillitis again. I believed that since I caught it early, it wouldn't be as big of a problem. Silly me.

I have now been on antibiotics for over 48 hours and how do I feel? Worse. Much much worse. I am at the point where I can only sleep for 2-3 hours max, can only drink powerade (I can't even handle supposedly throat soothing drinking such as hot water and honey), and can only eat crackers if I chew them up into tiny little pieces. Needless to say, I'm a mess.

I started to feel better a little bit yesterday, but then two hours later I was horrible again. Lovely. Thankfully, my mom got on the phone with Penelope and Penelope was able to come over late at night and help me out a little bit. I wasn't able to stomach any of her treatments, but I am so appreciative of her help anyways.

I will probably have to end up going home in a week or so to get my tonsils removed. I'm scared. Until then, I plan on going to the hospital today, as soon as I talk to my doctor, to get antibiotics on IV drip. Hopefully my body actually responds to these antibiotics. 

Writing

Today, I will blog about the essay writing process as I do it, mainly as a means of escaping for a few minutes from actually writing this essay. I tend to make the preparation for writing a little bit long, but it does help me in the long run. I was pretty behind when I started to write this morning, since I took a few days off over the weekend (which I now regret, since I will be writing again like this on Friday). Alright so, my process.

I woke up at about 7:00 (well, my alarm went off at 7; I finally got out of bed around 7:15) this morning planning to skim one more book of information before starting to write. Thankfully, I found out that there was a documentary version of the book I was planning to look at. So, of course, I watched that instead.

After watching the documentary, I typed up all of my notes from the seven sources that I am using for this paper. Then I created an outline for those notes. This helps me write, because I am able to look over my notes three times before actually starting. I've found that my papers are a lot more organized when I do it this way, even though it does tend to take some time. But the actual writing process is usually much faster when I take the time to properly prepare an outline before hand.

Now it is nearly 11:00 am and I have started writing. I currently have 93 words, with about 2,407 to go. I am curious about how long it actually takes me to write these essays that I have been doing every week, so every thirty minutes or so I plan on recording my word count. Interesting right? More like a strange procrastination method, but it will have to do.

11:30 - 518 words. Hmm, at this rate I will probably be done soon. But I also probably won't have a very good paper.

12:00 - 1085 words. Making progress!

12:30 - 1804 words!! Getting close... and hungry

1:00 - 2387 words. I think I will probably end up going a little over my 2500 word limit. But, since my tutor is usually too busy interrupting me to actually listen to what I'm reading, I don't think she will notice.

1:19 - 2738 words, and done writing. Now I need to read over it a few times and make sure that it actually makes sense. 

Oops

Wow, I have not blogged in a while. Very sorry, I have been very busy. Lets see, what has happened to me in the past few weeks?

Well, for one, we (the entire group) went to see a play in Stratford. Expecting a typical Shakespearan play, I was shocked by this show. We saw the Taming of the Shrew, not one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It was very very interesting, to say the least. The prop for the play? A bed. Seriously, the stage was set to look like a gigantic bed. The characters had a little bounce to their step throughout the entire show, which was quite amusing. Characters would also frequently roll around under the sheets of the gigantic bed, doing unmentionable acts. Even more interesting? For about 15-20 minutes, a character who very rarely spoke was stark naked on the stage. It needs to be mentioned that this man was quite old, hairy and approximately 250 pounds. Some things just don't need to be seen. Thankfully he conveniently covered himself with some sort of pot for most of this time. It is probably quite obvious that this play completely changed my view of Shakespeare.

After this I got really sick for a while, so I got very behind on schoolwork. I am still playing catch up, but at least I am finally feeling a lot better. I just had a friend from Hendrix come and visit me, so it was great to show her around Oxford and London. It really made me realize how well I am now able to get along in these places. It also made me realize how outrageously expensive everything in England is (my dad would most definitely agree). Anyways, I must go now. I have two papers due this week and of course I have yet to start on either of them. Oops. 

Journey to Marston

So, every other Friday at 4:00 pm I have a tutorial in a neighborhood of Oxford called Marston. The trip there is quite something. It is about 2 miles and takes about 45 minutes. Today, to entertain myself along the walk, I decided to take a few pictures of my journey.

 This is still in town. I believe this is one of the colleges, not sure which one. I just thought it was nice looking.

This is from right after I got on the bike trail that takes you straight to Marston. I got to look out at gardens like this for about the first 10 minutes.

Here is a pretty tree that separates the trail.

Crossed over the Thames on the bridge. The part of the Thames that flows through Oxford is not quite what I would call beautiful.

The Thames with boys playing soccer in the background.

Ducks!

A bridge leading straight through to a path leading through dead grass. Lovely...

Ahh... walking through dead grass. Note the ominous looking clouds in the background.

Ahh a real road. Yay!

And then I got to meander my way around a road like this for about 10 minutes. Lovely. This is the last picture I took since a few minutes later it started to pour. Thankfully, I had my umbrella with me. The journey was very nice up until this last bit.

Bug Problems

So, I have been pretty horrible at keeping up with this block? I'm just going to make the excuse that I have been working really hard on school work (and not that I completely forgot about it until I saw the link at the top of my bookmarks bar....) But really, school work does take up a lot of time too. Oh and bed bugs... thats certainly a story.
So, a few days ago I noticed two bite marks on my hand. They looked like mosquito bites so I didn't think anything of it. Until I realized that its January... Oh and the bites started to swell. Then, two days I noticed another one right underneath my left thumb. However this bite mark was gigantic (and still is). I had absolutely no idea where these mysterious bites were coming from (if I had wanted to deal with mystery bites, I would have gone somewhere more exotic than England...). Anyways, needless to say I was slightly concerned, especially since they seemed to be growing.
I went to two separate pharmacists: one told me fleas, the other told me spiders. Neither were correct. I did get some cream to put on the marks to make them not itch as much. However, this only works if I put it on them every 3 minutes...
That night I went to bed. AKA I laid there all night, scared to fall asleep incase something came along to bite me. I changed my sheets before going to bed, thinking that this might help. No, no it did not do a thing. The next morning when I woke up I noticed these weird stains all over my sheets. This confirmed my suspicion of bed bugs (well that and I'm pretty sure I saw one of the little brats...) When I took a shower, I noticed even more bites. Let me just say that these things must have been pretty hungry, because there are bites all up and down my side, my neck, and even two gigantic ones on my forehead. I quickly realized that, since I am not a meal, this was a major problem that needed to be solved ASAP.
Thankfully, the Warners (our program directors) are amazing; Penelope was able to quickly help me with this problem. I e-mailed her about it, and 45 minutes later when I was sitting in her house, she already had the name of the stuff that I should buy and told me how exactly I needed to go about the process of getting rid of these little monsters.
When I got home, I had to take my mattress off my bed, spray it with the most vile stuff in the universe that stunk up the entire house, wash my sheets twice, and then vacuum my mattress. This took forever. And it smelled horrible. Which was pretty unfortunate since they are trying to sell the house. Potential buyers were coming through all day yesterday. These poor people were greeted by a large mattress in the hallway and the stench of strong chemicals. I don't think any of those people will be coming back for a second viewing.
I have just woken up and I have yet to discover any new bites. I really hope that this is the end of my bed bug adventure, because they really are evil little things. 

Catching up

Well, the studies here are already pretty intense. But I will get to that later, I have a lot of catching up to do since it's been a few days. I had a meeting with my tutor for my minor tutorial on Thursday. The walk to his house is definitely not something that I will ever look forward to. The walk consists of a trek up a hill, followed by a 30 minute walk down a bicycle path that actually leads to a small neighborhood outside of Oxford. It is a beautiful walk, but it is quite a journey. The tutor for this course is a very strange man. He would not allow Aaron, Annie and I into his house because he has a 3 year old (strange occurrence number one) and made us walk down a path around his house. We proceeded to have our meeting in his backyard shed (strange occurrence number two). This is very different from most tutors who welcome you into their homes easily. At least the strangeness makes for some good entertainment.
On the other hand, the heavy workload is not great entertainment. I knew it would be tough, but this is different than I expected. I am still working on the reading for my first 2000 word essay that is due Wednesday morning. I have to read three large reports and should skim through 2 books for additional information. The research process that I must do before actually writing will take some getting use to. I already find myself procrastinating in the most ridiculous ways, (like taking a whirlwind trip to London yesterday) which I am going to have to stop doing. Despite the workload, I think that I am going to like this tutorial system a lot.