Friday!

Let’s see… met with my Classical Mythology tutor today, he continues to be awesome and we discussed the Iliad at much greater length than the Odyssey, which is good because I didn’t really have the time to read both.  Thankfully I’d read both before so it was more a matter of at least finding time to review what I couldn’t read fully than not having read it at all.  I am glad I gave my full attention to a real annotated read of the Iliad though, because we discussed that in some detail.  I arrived in an apologetic panic, however, because I was late!  Fiona had to ring my room and ask me if I had forgotten my tutorial at 10 past 9 – I had it written down as 9:30… /cry!  He was very understanding though as I was furiously apologizing and explaining the misunderstanding which will not happen again!

After my tutorial I was going to head to the bookstore – as I have decided to purchase the actual works he assigns and borrow the critical material on them or read those in the library – but I stopped by Alix and Claire’s room first because I saw on Facebook that Alix hadn’t left for London yet.  We were all supposed to go to London today for a day trip to the museums, but Lauren is sick and Lady Katherine has a trip to Norway next week so she’s got double papers to handle in a short span and I was trying to cram in a bunch of reading with what I think is a cold I am fighting off too.  So we all backed out on the trip last night but she was going to go anyway – super independent awesomeness that she is.  Turns out, she made a call to get extra sleep instead (it is gray and rainy out today, I don’t blame her). 

Claire asked me to return some books for her though and stop by Dr. Philpott’s office on my way out to let him know she was sick and would be missing her tutorial this afternoon as well.  This is the second time she’s been sick and missed class, so he asked me to tell her that if she stays sick he’d like her to see the doctor.  There is a doctor that is affiliated with CMRS whose contact information you get during the orientation period and he comes in for a chat as well (those are what the medical forms you fill out are for).  He is not on-site, but house calls still exist in this country so it is possible for him to come to you (more expensive though).  I am not sure how the insurance thing works, I think you pay and then are reimbursed, because they have the national health care system here.  At least that’s what has happened so far – we have a girl who thought she broke a bone in her foot, but wasn’t sure and went for non-emergency X-rays that came to about £40.  Another one of our number cut himself on a glass, if you recall from an earlier episode, and had to get stitches; the ER trip cost him nothing I think, but the removal of the stitches by the local doctor was about £25.

For EC students: I recommend a £100 allowance for ‘medical expenses’ if you should get a serious flu or what-have – just in case.   

** Later

I did go out for drinks and had a nice time, then went to the Tolkien Society meeting – which was fun but really more of a mixer than a meeting since it was the introduction for the year.  After that we (Lisa Rose, Blue, and I) came home and joined the other girls for some movie time with Monty Python and the Holy Grail – a DVD since the VCR they have here is for some reason only playing things in black and white.

For EC Students:  CMRS has a Universal DVD player, along with a VCR, and many movies that students buy here on the cheap and donate to the Common Room – if you wish to bring some favorite DVDs to share with your fellow students, be aware they will play – but video tapes will not (we don’t think, no one brought any to test) being coded to the countries they are sold in. 

Laura and I both broke out our personal DVD collections, but being things we’d brought just for ourselves maybe to play on our laptops (not knowing they had these facilities) we settled on Monty Python because the whole group could get behind it.

Now for bed!  It has been a long day – and I just found out that the library I need to go to for my Viking Literature books has ridiculous hours on Saturday, 10-1, so I’ll be doing something else tomorrow than I planned – different reading and working on a different paper – because brunch falls right between those hours and a girl’s gotta eat.