Thursday evening

Hi everyone!

This has been a pretty laid-back week, although I have, as always, had freak-out-so-much-work moments.

First of all, Tom got an A- on his State & Local Government midterm!! He was expecting a D, or even a fail, so this was amazing news.

On the down side, however, there was no new House episode this week, and there isn't one next week either =(

I accidentally told my teacher I could probably read a book in French so she's given me one. Gulp. I'm doing an essay on the Loudun nuns, who in 1633ish claimed that they had been demonically possessed en masse, probably in order to get rid of the good-looking new parish priest who had previously been arrested for immorality. He was eventually burnt at the stake, so I suppose it worked. I'm also doing an essay on the media during the Iranian revolution - my Revolutions teacher told me today that I am a brilliant student. He was at Oxford, and I mentioned that I was thinking of doing an MA there, and he was VERY encouraging - although he said "don't do an MA! Do a PhD! There is nothing about you that does not SCREAM 'PhD'!" Haha, apparently I just LOOK clever.

Also, yesterday, my teacher gave me and a couple of other people in class a personalized letter asking us, as exceptional students, to be writing tutors next semester. We would have to take a particular class, but then we would tutor younger students for both credit and money (yay, money!). I'm kind of wishing that we could stay here for another term, but I know it's completely impossible. Oh well, there are definitely some things I am looking forward to about coming back to Europe!

We went over to Eliza & Will's again on Tuesday - they had a new game which Tom wanted to play. The three of them keep hassling me to join in, and so far Tom has only beat me once. It's so funny, he gets really competitive then won't talk to me when I win =P He's off at Exploring Film now. Another lonely Thursday evening =) I suppose I'll survive! So far we don't really have any weekend plans, although we might go back to the Byoudo-in Temple. Uploading photos is such a pain at the moment, with Tom's laptop cutting out every ten minutes, so once things are sorted out with mine (however that happens) you should all be bombarded with an avalance of pictures.

Pork and pars-chips tonight. Oh, I have some VERY funny stories about oblivious Americans.

1. Last week Eliza spent the evening here, and hung around while I was making dinner. One of the things I chopped up was parsnips. In class on Monday, she confessed that she had no idea what they are.

2. In class we were watching 'Good Bye Lenin.' There was an image of the invalid mother in bed under a duvet, and all the Americans were laughing and pointing and going "what is WITH that puffy blanket?"

Oh, and I have yet ANOTHER case of mistaken Australian identity under my belt now - as in "oh, you're Austhtralian! Me too! Where are you from?" Sigh.