The (Dizzying) Swing of Things

So, I've now been back in Oxford for almost three weeks, meaning that the days are already starting to slip by increasingly rapidly and equally inexplicably.

Many of us here joke about the Oxford time warp, which is a strange and mystical phenomenon in which we never seem to be very busy with school and yet also never have enough time to finish all of our schoolwork. I always feel like I look at the date and give a start, confused as to why it's so late in the game. But then, every time I think about what I've actually been doing over that time period, it makes far too much sense.

To give an illustration of what I mean, I'll give an actual play-by-play of my day this past Friday. Now, keep in mind that I tend toward hyperbole, so this is an extreme example of a day that felt particularly busy, even in the scale of my time here.  But I think you'll understand what I mean. Ready? Deep breath? GO!

10 am: house viewing with my roommates for next year (house was horrible, by the way)
11 am: Mandarin-speaking lunch with friends from my program
12:30 pm: Meeting at Rhodes House about the marquee for the Ball in May
2 pm: Class at the China Centre
3 pm: house viewing (lovely, but expensive)
3:30 pm:house viewing (unsanitary and creepy old place)
4 pm: Psychology experiment
5 pm: American Sign Language class
6 pm: Meeting about RSSAF consultancy project
7 pm: Dinner at Joe's
9 pm: Nina's birthday party

Now do you see why I just give y'all an overview of the highlights of any given period?! If I went into all of that detail regularly, your eyes would glaze over and you'd probably never return to this page out of PTSD-like feelings of revulsion.

That's not to say that it wasn't a lovely day! Granted, it was the coldest and rainiest day we've had since I've been back, and I spent far too much time on my bike, but I got to see a lot of friends and accomplish a lot of things (except any useful schoolwork). I just want to propose a hypothesis about the genesis of the Oxford time warp: random extracurricular activities slowly pull at the threads of all the time you want to use to accomplish things, and then your whole schedule is left in shambles.

That said, there have been several highlights over the last week, so I'll zoom out from the micro level and give you the more fun and much quicker version of events.

On Saturday of first week, St. Antony's College had their traditional Aussie Bop (cheekily nomered "The Bop Down Under"). Since I know several Australian Rhodies, and almost a quarter of my program is from Oceania's largest island, I was, as they say, rather "keen" to make an appearance. Through a stroke of luck, one of my friends was able to locate a long string of mini Australian flags for my costume, and I wrapped myself up in it and made an appearance. It was a great night of accents and funny costumes (my favorite being "shrimp on the barbie", when a friend of mine printed out a picture of the doll and taped prawns to it), good dancing, and late night food truck eating. I always tell people that I never get more excited traveling than when I can find Australians, Canadians, or Germans, since they are almost always friendly and down to have adventures. Needless to say, this bop reaffirmed my faith in the nation at large, and reminded me how cool it is to have such amazingly diverse friends...even if they still can't teach me how to properly mimic an Australian accent.

In stark contrast to the international flavor of that bop is this weekend's festivities, which were heavily American. Friday was, as mentioned above, a party for our friend Nina, who was my roommate in DC when all of this craziness began. Since she wanted to have a large group over, Joe and Evan offered up their apartment for the party, but with the strong caveat that we would have to devise ways to appease the French neighbor downstairs who has previously called the cops whenever more than 20 people were in the apartment. Her main complaints were that people wearing shoes sounded like "an elephant stampede" above her head and that people made too much noise in the stairwell, so Nina brought some recruits over early and we plastered the entire building with signs. "QUIET!" banners in the stairs and "SHOES OFF NOW!" inside the apartment proved effective, and a good thing it was! We ended up having a turnout of at least 100 people (did I mention that Nina's extraordinary and extraordinarily well-liked?), and I only captured part of the crowd when I tried to go all paparazzi on her thank you speech to everyone:

The best spot to take pictures all night was in front of the American flag that we've hung prominently in Joe's common room....I'd also like to point out that he's ordered multiple others after the fact. Here's me with the birthday girl (to the right of me) and her two friends from Harvard:

Tonight, to make things even more Amerrrrrican, we're hosting a Super Bowl party. Now, keep in mind that Oxford is 5 hours ahead of EST. People are going to begin arriving around 9, and I believe that the kickoff is at 11:30. There won't be much sleeping getting done before my 10 am class, but it will be worth it! To increase the home-y vibe, we have people getting pizza and wings, the boys are making ribs, and I'm cooking pepper poppers and making other inherently American dips and snacks. As expats, we have to find a way to stay connected!

Now, I'm off to try to get as much homework done as possible, because I'll be in Budapest, Hungary all weekend. I'll actually be traveling every weekend in February (Malta for Valentine's Day and Copenhagen the weekend afterward), so stay tuned for some exotic pictures and tales of obscure European countries :)