New post! It has been far too long, and so much has happened. Lots of work overload in the last three weeks, and not just me but everyone else too. For example, I am supposed to be writing an essay right now. Is this happening? Clearly not.
So instead, I will provide many a picture of what has been going on in lil ol' Durham town. Highlights shall include: Thanksgiving (x2), snow, castles in snow, etc. Basically, it started snowing a week ago and has yet to desist. I am, however, still in the magical excited period (except the part where hockey is canceled and going for morning runs is more of an icy obstacle course), but all in all I am loving the snow. This picture above is the cathedral that stands opposite the Castle with the Palace Green (Palace White here) in between. The building perpendicular to it in the very left corner of picture is where I have the majority of my classes; thank Dios it is a forty-five second walk from my room.


This is the early morning shot taken from the top of the Castle, courtesy of my friend Emma. This is taken from her own room, which has the wooden beams of the original castle built into it...hard to explain, but it looks so surreal.







And then there is the castle proper, which looked prettily Medieval in the snow. (Picture taken from the steps of the Great Hall...where all meals are served.) Note that these are all the pictures before people actually woke up and RUINED ALL THE PRETTY.

This is our hockey pitch that we played on, before we stamped through the snow/ice, of course. It was so cold, but made running around that much more necessary. Until the boys stole our half and forced us to play a match against them for the last half of practice. Not so fun.



Besides this, we had a lovely Thanksgiving, where Katie (American 2.0) and I made the whole meal for some of our friends. It was cute how they thought we had cooked Thanksgiving dinner before! But we must have had some beginner's charm because everything came out spectacular. We had turkey, cooked to perfection which I had the unfortunate job of carving; mashed potatoes (hours of peeling); sweet potato with brown sugar and cinnamon and then MARSHMELLOWS on top--a novelty to the poor English children (aka our friends) who concluded that only in America would a dish with marshmellows be served as a main course meal (an incredulous Josh quote); broccoli with lemon and butter; gravey; lots of stuffing that Katie made fantastically (in fact, Katie was taking point on this operation and we pulled it off like we knew what we were doing); pumpkin pie (courtesy of our friends whose apartment we were using; and....that is about it, I believe. This was all on the day after Thanksgiving, because I had another one on Thanksgiving proper with a my "Durham Buddy," a person they pair the internationals with who studied abroad in your own country. James just happened to actually study at UCLA and we say hi from time to time. His friend had been in Berkeley at the same time (both last year) and so decided to make a meal and reminisce. It was a really good meal: had sprouts for the first time, the turkey was great, they added pigs in a blanket to be English, nice stuffing, and mulled wine (which was the most amazing thing I have ever had). All was good until the pumpkin pie, which LOOKED perfect, but somehow was lacking.....sugar. Just no sugar. Think about eating that. The apple pie was really good, but the pumpkin pie was just missing that one little thing (and flavor, but that's just details). All in all, it was really good and made me full enough that after the second Thanksgiving, I was sick of food and haven't eaten since. JUST KIDDING. I've just not eaten a complete meal since. Don't judge, it was a lot of food.

Katie and I and our efforts :) It goes: stuffing, turkey, yam/marshmellows, cranberry sauce (recent convert here), broccoli, and mashed potatoes.

I draw your attention to the whiteness that is outside the window. My wearing sweats is justified.

Our scandalous late night activities include.....making of snow angels in Karim's back yard.

Our perfect little turkey with all the stuffing inside....and the nearly-forgotten giblets around it.




I hope you enjoyed the more picts and less words (looking at you, Tim!). Sorry if there are any typos; not really editing this one.

xxx