It has been a rainy Sunday and I am currently celebrating the few minutes of sun by sitting in my room writing to you all. I have spent most of my day up at the library working on my essay. I am countinually disgusted with myself when I look at the refrences cited in my book and see that THEIR refrences are in French and German and stuff...There is no way I can follow up on those b/c books I can't read those languages, and my authors can, and that is nowhere near fair. I expect to be finishing the paper tonight though and that will be a big relief.
Yesterday I met up with Phil and we got on the bus and rode out to an elementary school to do some volunteering. Only, when we got there the whole place was locked up and dark. So instead we explored the park across the street and decided that British kids have WAY cooler playgrounds and that the neighborhood we were in was certainly not underpriveleged and if it is, then please, let me be an underpriveleged person in England!! After that I went to the Ashmolean museum and sat in the cafe and wrote my paper and took pictures of t. For a little while two little lod ladies were sitting at my same table and complemented me at my ability to use such a "sophisticated" machine. They were very cute and gave off the air that anything they might deign to touch would be undergo a Mitas-touch sort of conversion and become proper. They ate their lentile and carrot soups and were terribly concerned at how heavy the butter knifes were. They bid me good luck and then began the process of standing up. 5 minutes later, when they were both on footand put together, they bid me good-bye. It was a stark contrast against my life where leaving consists of 2 seconds of jumping up and swooping my back-pack on and walking out the door.
I have been on a job quest since I got here and my first place to apply was Black's backpacking gear. When I went in to follow up on that the manager fed me the whole "we won't know for weeks b/c we have to send the applications in to the district office" bit. From my work at Burger King I know this to be the number one brush off statement and I spent the next two nights fuming at myself for allowing him to set me aside so easily and trying to convince myself that a year of working at a smoothie store would not be so bad. However, by Friday I realized that I really had nothing to lose and I had been undermined and I had built up the courage to deal with it. So after our last day of classes on Friday I walked in to the store and walked up to the manager and informed him that I was aware of how he had taken my former visit as a light issue but I did not and I really wanted that job and there was absolutely NO reason on this planet that he should not want me as an employee. He just stared at me and asked me "well, what is your availability?" I walked out of the store an hour later with a job and his statement, "I like you and I have hired you because you're ballsy, and I like that," ringing in my ears. I was so happy that I kind of wanted to hug everyone I saw but somehow I refrained and instead shouted congratulations to myself as I rode through the park until I rode my bike into a metal partition at the end of the park and decided that closing my eyes and cooing at the sky might not be the best thing to do while on a bike.
Now I am preparing for this week when I will meet with each of my tutors on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time and for my first day of work on Thursday. My major tutorial is UK and the EU, taught by Robert Fletcher and my minor is John Rawls' Theory of Justice as taught by Omar Kahn, a man who I congratulate on having the longest email address ever.
