So . . .

I can't believe the program is almost over! Less than two weeks left . . . It will be such a relief to be done, but it's going to be sad too. I'll miss London, and I'll miss my friends. For now, though, I'm just enjoying the time I have left. Today was great--short reading, short MAG, and beautiful weather. I read and wrote in the park for a while, then came back for dinner, which was chili--a good meal! And dessert was chocolate cake. So perfect. After dinner we watched On the Waterfront. We'd seen the play last week; both were good, although done very differently.

Earlier this week--on Monday, to be exact--we went to the Imperial War Museum. It deserves a mention just because it was such a hard experience. Utterly emotionally draining. Seeing the devastation caused by the war, the stories of the men who died and the people who were left behind . . . and then there was the holocaust exhibition, which was equally trying. It was painful. It was sad. Overall a pretty depressing day.

Anyway. I just wanted to let you all know what's going on. That's all for now. :)

Much better

Already this week has been so much better than last week (and the week before). Easier reading, shorter MAGG, and beautiful weather. On Monday we got ice cream from an ice cream truck (my first ice cream in London!) and read under a tree in the park.

Yesterday four of us dyed our hair green for St. Patrick's Day. It was spray-on, wash-out dye we got at a store called Preposterous Presents. We used a washcloth to protect our faces and took turns spraying each other and combing the dye into our hair. It smelled really strongly, and Eri and Steve started feeling funny. My comb turned green. Instead of doing his hair, Dan did his beard. It looked so funny. Steve had most of his hair done, and Eri and I did streaks. It turned out pretty well on all of us. (See pictures on Dan's blog, and on my Facebook eventually.)

Our friends' reactions were great, ranging from shock to amusement. Some people loved it, some seemed horrified, and it took some a while to even notice. The best part was going out to the Tate Britain and getting weird looks from strangers. Some smiled; some just stared. A schoolgirl said scornfully to Steve, "Oh my god, you have grass in your hair!" It was great.

That evening we watched the Fox and the Hound, since we hadn't done our weekly Disney movie last Sunday. And today Eri and I are done with MAGing for the week, and I've finished my reading. So I'm free! We might play tennis later; it's another lovely day. Life is fun again. :)

Funday

Ahhh, Sunday feels so good after a crazy week of work. This was the biggest MAGG (Museum and Gallery Guide) we've had (according to the professors), so it took a long time and wasn't the most fun. But the John Soane House was really cool--he was an architect and his house was like a maze, and each room was unique and filled with random stuff from his collections. So that was cool. The reading this week wasn't too bad--two of the major ones were fiction, Candide and part IV of Gulliver's Travels--but one day we had this long philosophical thing, which was actually interesting but really long, and it drove me crazy. Dan drew a comic on it for me, though, and Eri wrote encouraging notes. So that made it not as bad.

Also this week Adam, Dan, Mary Beth and I finally booked our flights to Ireland and Scotland, where we're traveling together after the program. That's definitely something to look forward to. Let's see . . . I played tennis for the first time ever on Thursday, before we got the paper topic. Steve is good, but Dan, Eri and I are not--none of us three have played much before. But it was fun and silly, a good thing to do before the stress of the paper began. The topic was ridiculous; no one could really figure it out. So we were all miserable together for three days, especially on Saturday. We called the blue lounge "the room of despair", Adam repeatedly asked me to kill him, and other people were talking about suicidal urges as well. I turned in my paper right at midnight, and I know it wasn't good. But we all made it through, and now it's Sunday!

I slept till noon, went grocery shopping (it was a beautiful day), then we got a pizza for 5 pounds and watched The Prestige, a ridiculously amazing movie full of crazy mess-with-your-mind unexpectedness. It was good. So although it was another stressful week, now it's over, and this new week has started well. And next week is break, which we definitely all need. And Mom and Joe are coming to visit! So I just have to make it through one more week, one more paper, and then I'll be able to completely relax and have fun. :)