(St Rebecca of Wheat Ridge and the Venerable Mimi, at Fountains Abbey, Yorks.)
Formative essays are once again creeping up on me, so clearly it's time for another blog post! 'You're still alive?' you ask. Yes, yes I am, you smarty pants. I wish I could say that I've been doing loads of interesting things in the last few weeks, but I cannot lie. You all saw that massive reading list of mine. But! In the weeks before, I got up to plenty of things!
1. I went to London with my friend Mimi, where we spent a few excellent days hitting up museums, ice skating at the Tower of London, drinking wine and playing gin. It was tons of fun! We successfully navigated around a part of the city I'm not overly familiar with, saw the Sherlock Holmes museum, came up with a theory that if a Pizza Express is around, it must be accompanied by a Pret a Manger and a Starbucks, and just generally had a good time. After our ice skating escapade, I managed to fall and seriously bruise/injure my tailbone, which made for a painful rest of the winter break, which was a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm, but Mimi was a saint dealing with my need for comfy chairs and inability to bend over.
2. I went to Harry's sister's for Christmas, which was excellent! Lucy was amazing in the kitchen and I think I ate as much in 5 days as I have in the last month! We also went down to Lewes, which led to *more* eating. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It was really great to see Beth and Harry, and Lucy and Ed, and hopefully I'll get a chance to see them again this summer. I also now have an invitation to Cornwall in April, and I might just have to go...
3. On New Year's day, my best friend from university came to visit me! It was excellent. Sam is my homeboy! But since we're both on break, we didn't do a whole lot. We played cards, hit the pubs, made excellent pizza, and talked up a storm. Seriously, we did not shut up for almost two weeks straight.
Here is a picture of us together:
It is one of two pictures of us together in existence, but we have known each other for five years now. Dang, it does not seem nearly that long! On this day, we went to Fountains Abbey, which is a ruined abbey about 2 hours west of York. It was beautiful in the morning, so we walked about 4 miles to the abbey from Ripon, and by the time we got there, it had clouded over. I loved the abbey so much in the grey that I became a member of the National Trust so that I can go back and see it in the summer, which I'm assured is a much prettier view.
(I'd also like to point out that, in this picture, you can see just how tall Sam is. The third member of our trio, Jake, is even taller. And we used to go hiking together. What was I thinking??)
And then Sam left, and I jumped straight back into school. This term seems a lot harder than last, so I'm really buckling down and trying to study as much as possible. I also have to come up with a dissertation proposal soon, so I've done a lot of thinking and planning, and I'm meeting with my advisor on Monday to hammer out what I might do.
So there you go!
