tis the season for fancy socks

it's officially the christmas season! not only has starbucks brought out their wintery themed drinks and oversized balloon holly sprigs, but i have received christmas socks from my mum. they are tacky and sparkly and i shall wear them with pride (inside my boots where no one has too see them of course) i wish a happy that-time-of-year-where-everything-is-tacky-and-shiney-and-lovely to you all!

this is me, being way too american

It is really hard to explain thanksgiving to people who haven't grown up with it. "was this before or after you killed the indians?" "what about buckle shoes?" "does this have anything to do with the irish?" and "why are there marshmallows in the potatoes?"

I'm not sure a holiday for which we commemorate the mass slaughter of a race of people by eating pie gives the best introduction to our culture, but the food was good and in the end that's really what thanksgiving is about. That and of course, hand turkeys, an age old tradition our british guests adopted with minimal enthusiasm. I was asked to bring a vegetable dish, evidence that none of these people knew me at all. I made carbonized root vegetables with peas, which is about 20 minutes past sweet caramelized root vegetables with peas. I tried passing this off as an advanced american cooking technique but no one bought it. next time I'm brining wine.

do they offer lessons for this?

in attempts to explain why a night out ended with my on my back on a pub floor (if you will recall, this is 100% the fault of a boy grabbing my feet out from under me). i was desperately trying to justify such an outcome without the involvement of alcohol and, as usual misused some rather vulgar british expressions. while laughing loudly, my friend asked how i could have possibly ended up on the floor if i hadn't been drinking. speaking even more loudly so he could hear me over the sound of his own frantic laughter, i exclaimed, "he tossed me off!" which i can assure you does not mean the same thing here as it does back home. nor did this stop my friends from laughing at me, now accompanied by the disapproving stairs of my entire genetics class. the moral of the story is that i am really bad at being british. do you think they offer lessons? and if so, does a fantastic accent cost extra?

winter winds

the wind is so loud here sometimes i am sure the building is coming down. i am also pretty sure this is ridiculous but i keep the windows closed just in case and try not to think about it. this has inspired a number of thoughtful drinking tea curled up in my blanket playlists. walking outside seems to dangerous, the wind whips down the narrow streets and tangles my scarves and skirts around my body, seriously impairing my forward mobility and only occasionally revealing my pants (british meaning) to unfortunate passerby's.

weakenders

so now that i live in a bit exciting city you are probably wondering what i do on the weekend, seeing lots of art, going clubbing, reading fantastically witty memoirs in a cafe on the river... but no, i spent the majority of this weekend curled up with my grays anatomy atlas and these ridiculous slippers i got last christmas. one of the great things about the weather being so crappy and the sun going down in the middle of the afternoon is that this actually seems acceptable.

soup

i always thought it was wrong to eat straight spaghetti sauce because it is not actually a food, but then, by the grace of god i discovered tomato soup. now, i know i probably should have caught on before now, but how amazing! it is basically tomato sauce, and it is delicious and cheap and you don't have to cook it! it is possible that i am too excited about this, but there are so few good foods that come in a can. i know what you are thinking, thank goodness i now have the means of sharing such insightful thoughts with the world. the thing about tomato soup is that you have to be sure and get the kind with bits of actual tomato in it (aka not cambels) usually tomato basil. but really, these are probably the kinds of things i should keep to myself.

there's something wrong with the left phalange!

i have officially completed my first british exam! it was terrifying, but in the end i managed to kick some major written exam ass. now all i have to do is memorize all the muscles, nerves, bones, joints and vessels of the upper limb for monday. i don't see this ending well. hands are really great, i mean, i'm glad we all have them and i  do find them useful, but my god are they complicated! anatomy has really made me appreciate the complexity of the human body, and then promptly hate it. i will be spending the entirety of this weekend holed up in the library with my anatomy text books and one very spectacular anatomy coloring book.

this is me, attempting social interaction

so i went out the other night with my friend and some people he knows from first year, but he promptly left to shag his oh-so-gorgeous boyfriend (life is too unfair) and left me with a group of people i don't really know in a pub i don't really know. it was alright tho and i got on fairly will with these kids until i had to climb over this one guy to get out and he for some reason thought it would be a good idea to grab my feet and pull them high above his head and shout, "i stole your feet!" which of course led to me being on my back on the pub floor with some guy i don't know claiming ownership over my feet and most of my legs. good thing i wore trousers... all in all i would say it was a good night out.

done with hibernating

 i am officially homesick, but i am fairly certain it's 60% the sun going down at 1500 and 30% having been holed up studying all week. i plan on spending one more day studying today and then taking a break tomorrow to do fantastically touristy things. the view from my room has become even more amazing now that so many old chimneys are smoking, it is perfectly wintery and only occasionally looks as if it's on fire. in my attempts to get out more i've been taking some really nice walks along the river. it is unbelievably cold there, but it so damn beautiful it's hard to care. i have also knit myself numerous warm layers at this point which helps tremendously.

tea time.

i believe that the amazingness of this mug is not diminished by its being backwards and therefore shall continue to live my life by its wise words.

i am currently lacking in cake, but am oh so desperately trying to move on.

this is me, hibernating.

it's reading week, also known as an entire week with no reason to get out of bed. it's the week before midterms and there are no classes so that all the students in london can move into the library and go insane. i have made it my personal mission to not wear proper trousers for the entirety of this week (and yes i am still bitter about the use of the word trousers). i am also leaving my bed as little as possible and living out of what is in my fridge, which at this point is down to apples and sting cheese. this is as close to actually hibernating as i can get without risking illness. the weather is just dreadful and it gets dark about 1500, which makes me feel rather homesick. at least back in new york winter was beautiful and full of snow related activities. i miss having friends to curl up in bed with to do homework, and i miss hot toddies and cocoa. the british seem to deal with this crap weather by holing up in pubs and drinking constantly. i am no good at this. i have instead immersed myself in cell signaling pathways and compliment cascade. you are all jealous i am sure.

things from home

my lurvey baby pickles died earlier this week. she was spaztic and adorable till the end.

also my mum seems to have inadvertently adopted a very picky peacock who now lives in the backyard and demands to be fed twice a day. i find myself asking why in gods name did my parents have to move to the sort of place where this is even possible? she has named him Robert.

on holiday

Allison and i went to oxford for the weekend, which was about as beautiful as you imagine and far more rural. our trip consisted of site seeing, shopping, and drinking with the middle aged inhabitants of horspath.

our weekend in oxford... in pictures.

 we stayed in Horspath, which is a loverly town in bumfuck Britain. 

 it was beautiful and rural and full of cows.

we tried to feed the ducks by the river

but they were a bit too aggressive. 

 i fully appreciated the landscape

GORGEOUS. 

still gorgeous. 

 i found this really bizarre plastic piece under the sheets in my bed. very princess and the pea...

we saw lots of fantastically old and impressively large buildings 

there were enormous old trees at the natural history museum. i found this really really exciting.  

i pretended to be a big scary dinosaurs

allison did too

she then went on to demonstrate her maturity

we went on dates...

because dinosaurs make good boyfriends. 

allison mimicked birds of prey.

and i made some new friends.

we went to lovely old pubs

(the eagle and child)

and then we went home.

tea and biscuits yum yum yum

i am still having a ridiculously hard time with the language given that it's, erm.. english... i told the boy next to me in class yesterday that i really liked his pants. he just gave me this shocked and confused look for the whole 30 seconds it took me to remember that pants means underwear, and i actually meant to compliment his trousers. i'm sorry, i just can't take the word trousers seriously. 21 years of thinking trousers were what old men wore, tweed pants up to their chests that are just a wee bit too short, trousers. for the most part my friends have been understanding of my handicap, laughing only minimally and very rarely pointing.

boys are stupid.

but that's nothing new, and london is spectacular nonetheless.