Projects and a special visit

This past weekend, one of my best friends came to visit me! Denise and I have known each other for over ten years and a huge facet of our friendship has been our mutual geeking out about various things coming out of England (Harry Potter, Narnia, The Beatles for me and Andrew Lloyd Weber for her... you get the idea). She's studying in London for a few weeks with SVSU and had a long weekend, so she came up to visit me! It was so amazing to be in England with one of my best friends, I don't know if there are words for the sense of things coming full circle we had.

We had a lovely time, and as if we hadn't been apart for five and a half months, we were saying the same things and the same time and finishing each other's sentences (especially when we had a mandatory Narnia rewatch haha we are such nerds), and it was wonderful. Friday night we went out with a few of my flatmates which was a fun time, and it was really nice to introduce my new friends here to one of my oldest friends from America.

Ten years of craziness led to this haha

Over the weekend we caught up on life (Miss Harvard over here is too clever for her own good :-p) and I showed her around York. Of course I had to make her have a proper English tea, so we went to my favourite tea shop in town, Bullivant of York, and I introduced her to its wonders. And we went to see the Great Gatsby in 3D, which was really great! I liked it a lot, but Baz Luhrmann, Leo Dicaprio, and Carey Mulligan are all my main babes so I might have been biased. I think it was really representative of the period and Fitzgerald, even if it strayed a bit from the actual novel of Gatsby. So go see it!!!

I was really excited for my cinnamon toast and tea, if you couldn't tell.

Denise with her first cup of peppermint tea!

It was really lovely on Sunday, so we took a walk around campus and I finally took some photos! Even though the architecture is dreadful, the campus itself can be quite pretty when everything is in bloom. The cement slabs can make me miss the ambiance of Wooster's ye olde English manor style of architecture :-p But that's what all my time in King's Manor is for, as it actually is a ye olde English manor house. Can't beat that.

The one and only pretty building on campus.

Alice in Wonderland hedges haha

Oh wow there is such a thing as sun!

After Denise left, it was back to the grindstone. I had my first group project due in the next afternoon, so after spending about six hours at my groupmate's house, and who even knows how many hours the next morning, we came up with a piece of work I think we're all proud of! Hopefully Jeremy agrees haha. We had to write up a proposal for a textbook about medieval childhood and adolescence  and ours centred on girls growing up. In the end, it was the editing that took FOREVER, but I think we had a really good group dynamic and it all came together well. I'm happy with it! And it was really nice to get to know my classmates a bit better, Jemima and I had some crazy conversations later in the evening on Sunday in between formatting and editing.

Earlier in the week, I had my Arabic oral and listening exams. And the oral was devastating. It was genuinely horrific. I spoke French and English. Multiple times. And there was a whole nightmare of rescheduling it because my lecture changed times so it was at the same time and then I couldn't find the room and oh man. And I could not understand my tutor's accent to save my life, it was terrible. But the listening exam was a breeze, I think I passed with flying colours. So who knows what was going on with my listening skills in the oral haha. The written portion is next Tuesday, and I just have to remind myself it's not for credit, it's just for a certificate.

My first open exam is next Tuesday as well. Pretty much the history department sends out essay questions for a module at 10 am and you have 24 hours to write an essay and that's your exam. I'm not quite sure how I feel about them yet, but I think it will work out ok. Luckily, I don't have two in a row- if I was in two Thinking Through History or two Explorations modules, I'd have 48 hours to write essays for both modules, which sounds rather terrible. I have one for Thinking Through History next Tuesday, and one for Childhood & Adolescence the Tuesday after that. Pretty much since Monday, I've been spending hours and hours in the library doing readings and revising in preparation for my exams, so I won't need to do as much on the day of the actual essay writing.

My archaeology group project is due on 6 June, so it's my last assignment to be turned in, but we're still meeting at least once a week and working on research and such. I've been doing the illustrations for our artefact report, aka lots of drawing and shading and trying not to smudge things. We're down a group member, so there's only three of us, but I think it will come together nicely if I can find an axe-head typology!

I leave on 10 June, which is far too soon for my liking, and I have to start facing that reality. It doesn't feel like I've been here for over five months, and I don't want to leave at all. I bought my train tickets to the airport, and clicking the "one way" ticket option made my heart drop. But I'm going to live it up the best I can the next few weeks (whilst balancing my work ethic, hopefully). I'm going to Alnwick Castle with some Erasmus friends on Monday (the day before an exam, I know. I'll have to do as much work as possible before then!) which will be really cool! It's the castle they used for Hogwarts in the first film, and they have flying lessons on the grounds with Madame Hooch, as well as a haunted cellar and a "dragon quest," so I think I'm in for a fantastic day.