Paper 1. Done!

Adrie and I have diagnosed ourselves with "food tourettes." Occasionally we end up sitting together, each of us on our own computer, looking at Pinterest. It will be total silence until one of us gets to a good looking recipe and then yells out something like, "TAQUITOS!" We could do this all day.

This morning I woke up in "go mode." My first paper was due today and I still had about 1000 words left to write. I sat down once again at my desk and tried to power through, while simultaneously trying not to panic. Two bowls of cereal, a shower, lots of creeping out the window, and some furious typing later, it was dinner time...and paper submitting time.

Fish and chips, mushy peas, and a pint of cider=YUM!

Once I thought of a better closing sentence than, "Henry VIII should've adopted..." and after emailing our papers to Penelope, we (Adrie, Cam, Britney, and I) celebrated our first scholarly achievement by eating dinner out at O'neills, the Irish Pub where I had the best fish and chips since my time in England. When we were leaving the pub it was raining (crazy English weather!) so instead of trekking back to the flat in the rain, we literally walked across the street to Java Co for some dessert and coffee.

When we got back to the flat (after it stopped raining) we watched the Emperor's New Groove on my laptop...a movie that never gets old to me. (KRONK!!) And that is what brings me to my present moment of having "food tourettes" while sitting across the room with Adrie.

Tomorrow morning I have my first tutorial with John Jackson. We're meeting for coffee. The challenge will be finding the coffee shop, so I plan to leave extra early. I had my tutorial with Barry on Wednesday and absolutely loved it. The image of him sitting across from me in his chevron sweater, boat shoes, and hardly making eye contact still makes me smile over what a cute old man he is. When he asked me why I wanted to take a course on Tolkien, I explained how I was choosing between that and CS Lewis. I was delighted when he started talking about how the two authors are so very connected, having both studied and taught at Oxford, and that we would begin the course by studying both. So really I'm getting the best of two courses! Fun fact: Francis was actually one of CS Lewis' last students. And was on faculty with Tolkien during his last years teaching.