I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar

And in the blink of an eye another week has gone by. On Wednesday I will pass the half-way point of my stay in London! I can barely believe that. This is proving to be one of the best experiences of my life so far. The vast majority of people who I've heard talk about their study abroad experiences have said basically the same and I believed them, but now I'm finding that first hand and will be one of those people encouraging everyone with a slight inclination to take a step out of their comfort zone and the familiarity of home for a few months.

I am so grateful for this experience. It's given me a much greater confidence in my ability to function as an independent person. If I can live alone, do everything for myself, in a foreign country what can't I do when I get home? I have plans to move out soon after I get home. Last year I would've been a bit apprehensive about this simply because living with my parents in the house that I grew up in is easy. It's familiar and safe. I don't have to do everything for myself. I don't have to pay for all my own things. Now it's like, 'what was I thinking?' living with one of my best friends in the city I love so well a few miles from my childhood home will be (mostly) a breeze and so much fun. AND on top of independence, I've met some truly lovely people who have become wonderful friends that I am having great times with. I don't think I could or would want to ask for much more than that.

This Winter I want to drive and use the bus as little as possible. I want to bike. It's better for the environment, it's great exercise, and I miss Alfred. Alfred is my bicycle, I'd just watched 'The Dark Knight' (and I have a tendency to anthropomorphize a lot of my inanimate possessions) and he didn't look like a 'Batman', hence the name. We'll see. I'm writing about this here largely so that if I try to change my mind you'll hold me to it, 'Tianna, remember how much you wanted to do this in the beginning of November' when the degrees were positive and your eyelashes weren't frozen together? 

Last weekend it was Jo's birthday so;

We made her a cake

She ate her name!

We made peanut butter cookies & Jess made a smiling star.

Jess & Emmett are clearly satisfied with their respective cake and cookies.

I'm just happy about everything.

And then Emmett and Stevie switched trousers, as you do.

A really lovely evening. Following the cake eating, Stevie, Jo, & I watched 'Stranger Than Fiction'. What a great film. As much as I enjoy Will Ferrell the characters he plays are generally silly and/or obnoxious. Harold Crick is sweet, endearing, and real. Also, I want to own a bakery like Maggie Gyllenhaal. We had good talks and they introduced me to this song.

Did you know that British people refer to '.' as a full stop and not a period? I didn't until a few days ago. 

On Wednesday I have 'Architexts' and this week we moved from Marx to Nietzsche. He has this idea of living your life with the realization that all of your actions are your responsibility. People spend too much time agonizing over the end of their lives that they're not present in the moments that they're living. Basically, I like the idea of taking responsibility for your life and really living every moment to the fullest because we're all here, now and we should be conscious of that. This is your life; do what you want, be who you are, be aware of others thoughts and feelings, love, and understand that all of these things are okay because you're calling the shots in your life. I think that's what I mean, maybe that's not quite what Nietzsche said or meant, but his ideas factor in.

After class I met with Aysha to work on our reviews of 'The Tempest'. We decided to have lunch first and a short lunch turned into a few hours of conversation with Kelsey and Jackson, as it will. We did actually get some work done once we moved to the library.

We watched 'Hard Candy' on Wednesday, which is pretty much solely Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson being amazing. After the film, Alex told a story about how someone he knows (that didn't have English as a first language) thought that a swimming suit was called a 'swimming tux' which we all found incredibly hilarious. So much so that we felt the need to put Stevie's swimming tux on over our clothes. I really love moments like that, just being silly. Life is way too serious most of the time. When I got back to my room I did a quick facebook check, stepped away for a second and when I turned back & had a message from Lizzie! This message turned into a solid conversation. That was really nice. I miss her. She informed me that I was sent a letter from my friends at Pizza Biga a couple weeks ago. I still haven't received it! I miss that place and those people, to hear from all of them together would be great. I hope it's not lost in the mail forever. Sometimes international mail takes forever, right?

On Friday Jess, Stevie, and I were eating dinner in Stevie's kitchen and one of her roommates was cooking. The smell from whatever it was might be the single worst aroma I've ever had the displeasure of smelling. Yikes. We were just innocently trying to eat our pizza when our noses were accosted by this awful stench. So, we moved to Stevie's room and had a small Skype session with Addie. Two worlds collided! My British pals kept commenting on how alike we sounded. I love that and I suppose you can't really escape similar speech patterns when you've been best friends for so many years.

Last night we had planned on pumpkin carving. We didn't want to go to Sainsbury's because it's farther away. We walked to the closer Tesco and stopped at a few other places on the way, no dice. Hopefully, we'll be successful tonight. Instead of pumpkin carving we watched & had a great sing-along to Sweeney Todd.

Today we're going to see some live music, and then having a scary/awesome movie marathon complete with; Ghostbusters and The Exorcist at The Genesis Cinema, followed by The Strangers and pumpkin carving. I'm way too jazzed about already.