Michaelmas, reloaded

[raven]

My internet is working! This is the surprise of the day - I only registered about four hours ago, and it's supposed to take two working days - but it's a nice finish for a nice day.

I am in Oxford, naturally. I got here round about lunchtime and moved myself and my things into my flat, which is actually quite nice. My room is much smaller than the attic, but has more in the way of modern amenities, and I'm really quite pleased with it. My parents took me food shopping and then disappeared back up north, leaving me to get settled in. Which I did almost instantly - not in the sense of doing my unpacking, which took forever - but in the mental sense. It feels so nice to be here, to walk across the cobbles and around and into familiar places. It feels especially nice that it's Michaelmas and yet it's not freshers' week - I'm a second-year all of a sudden, which is strange and thrilling at the same time - and it's new but not unfamiliar. I'm doing that thing where I make no sense again, but that's still what I mean. I'm glad to be back. I'm really glad to be back. I'm slipping so easily into the routine of life here, the bit where I'm an autonomous adult, and the claustrophobia is disappearing. It's all good.

After unpacking the shopping, I went down to Wadham to meet Jenny, me_ves_y_sufres, who is a new fresher and currently carting around enough tinned food to survive the apocalypse and enough vodka to cause it. She wandered off to a freshers' meeting after a bit, and I went off to be very organised, setting up my ethernet with a minimum of disasters, and then wandering around the city for a while. It's as beautiful as ever, and today absolutely thronging with people and life. I am still smitten with this place. In the end I went to G&D's and met jacinthsong, steerpikelet and anariel_di_gaia, who insisted on telling me lurid anecdotes about misadventures with menthol lubricant. At length foulds appeared, a tad blue and with quite dejected-looking hair. He got dragged into a conversation about, among various other things, the death of Adric, the demise of teh_commune, the importance of Oscar Wilde being a top and Laurie's amazing-sounding Tonks costume.

And to finish off the evening, I managed not to kill myself with my own cooking. So far in the flat it's only Maria and me, who are getting on quite nicely, and in all honesty, tonight was very civilised. Maria's a much better cook than me, so she fed me some Japanese noodles while I made pasta, and salad, and ate it with my feet on a chair with me_ves_y_sufres, who spent the evening with us drinking tea and talking about Russian literature. The rest of the flatmates arrive tomorrow and Tuesday, at which point it will probably get a lot more chaotic around here, but right now I'm enjoying the peace and quiet. I'm sitting here writing this and eating a lemon cheesecake yoghurt - best thing ever - and feeling truly relaxed for what feels like the first time in months.

It won't last, of course; tutes and lectures start next week, but never mind. Tomorrow I have to go shopping, go to the library, put up posters (one from Boston's Freedom Trail, an "I Want To Believe" poster from CaféPress, a print of "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper, and the "O*M*G" banner gamesiplay and the_acrobat gave me in Chicago) and probably help Pat deal with her kids. Maria also has kids, so there might be a lot of people tramping about the flat, but I don't think I mind. Speaking of which, I think our flat needs a name, but nothing witty springs to mind.

Right, yes. Lemon cheesecake yoghurt, working internet and the next episode of Supernatural. Life's good.

Comments

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

So, er... what do you do all the rest of the time?

[pinkishmew.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's the same idea as at yours, except that we don't hand in an essay to prove we've done the work. Research on whichever topic the module is on that week, reading many many plays and novels, weekly task for the seminar: reading (a play, a novel, critical theory, a concept) and discussion ideas, learning linguistics terms (just for that one module). This year I'll have 'making a costume from one of Terry Pratchett's plays' to add to that one, which will take up most of my time, I'd expect.

We do get checked up, just in a more discussion-based way, I suppose.