Knew that would happen...

It is a clear and lovely day despite the earlier (much much earlier) rain that dampened (haha, puns) my plans to watch the sun rise.  Pity that, because lacking anything productive to be doing for an hour + before breakfast I decided it would be a good idea to lay down for a brief snooze.  This, it turns out, was a mistake and my eyes popped back open (with occasional interruptions of the alarm I snoozed and turned off not withstanding) at 10:00.  So for a net gain of 1 hour of sleep I managed to be late to my first seminar meeting – super good.  /rolleyes 

Happily, my instructor had gotten a late start on anyway and I only missed maybe 15 minutes in reality of her speaking about the general idea of the seminar as a class and so on – and she was really understanding, probably because I was SO apologetic and probably looked exactly as tired as I felt.  At least I hadn’t changed into PJs before laying down so I was able to roll right out of bed and out my room to class, which saves loads of time but leaves you with bed-head.

Ah well, after that I felt obligated to volunteer to give a presentation of the reading for next meeting – which in reality is just summarizing the reading we’re all supposed to have done by then and get the conversation going, so nothing too strenuous.  Then I went to lunch were the girls and I conspired to pitch in for a birthday gift for Alix (her birthday is tomorrow, unfortunate that it shares exam day) and we then proceeded to execute our plan to buy and stash her gift while she ate lunch just after us – operation successful by the way.  I added to that a little box of fruit shaped marzipan because Alix has been an awesome friend to me while I have been here and I really appreciate all the time we’ve spent together wandering Oxford and taking walks and going to the museums and such with a friend is always so much better than doing any of those things just yourself. 

After that we went to the Fresher’s Fair, which is basically a big ‘join our club’ and ‘sign up to win free junk’ and ‘give us your e-mail so we can send you spam for a free bobble’ event that we at CMRS get to take part in thanks to the affiliation with St. Peter’s College that we enjoy (they are also the ones feeding us regularly).  I think this only happens in the Fall Semester (or Michaelmas Term here) and is basically like the start of the school year fairs and such we have back at home, only bigger and louder and with more advertizing attached since they have so many colleges here and the event is actually run by the University with different groups going to different days over the course of the week I think. 

I am also pretty sure I signed up for information from about a dozen interesting looking clubs, most of which I’ll have no time to participate in, but the information is no obligation.  Some of them are having first meetings this weekend to ‘try it on for size’ so I might be busy with some of those between reading for my Viking Literature Tutorial and my Arthurian Legend Seminar; I don’t think I am going to worry about Classical Mythology Tutorial until I am into the next week coming up here since we don’t meet until Friday and I am revisiting the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which I’ve read multiple times before.

I am thinking about going and buying some Frebreeze, or whatever they have equivilent here after being rubbed up on by the unwashed masses so much (as, lets face it, most college students can be considered) during the Fresher’s Fair – it was ridiculously crowded and very cramped quarters even though it was held in the fairly massive Examination Facility that the University uses to administer degree and program testing here (and yes, it was cool to go inside there, but it was too crowded to consider any photography). 

Tonight I go to bed early, and tomorrow we have exam all day more or less until dinner, but after dinner we are going out and celebrating both the birthday of our friend and being out of Integral Course (more or less, I mean that longer essay is still due in December)!