Last Week's Happenings Part 1

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

--Abraham Lincoln 1863

Last week I had two Thanksgiving dinners: one small one with a few friends on Thanksgiving day, and another massive one on Saturday with the whole of my program. For the latter, I and few others narrowly escaped preparing 15 kilograms of sweet potatoes. The preparations were divided into food groups, but at the last minute sweet potatoes were axed from the menu because of the strain on time, the budget, and our sanity. So my group was spared.

I was able to call home via Skype and talk with family (and my cat). It is a bit weird not having Thanksgiving. For one thing, that vacation always comes right at the moment when most students' academic energy has ebbed to the speed of an amoeba. But after a weekend of food and football, the end of the semester isn't so bad.

I have only one week and three days--then I'm done with essays! That's eleven essays down, two to go. And the last one is....the big one. The Long Essay. The one I'm supposed to use for graduate school applications (no pressure).

But........after that I get to have pure distilled fun. My Mom is coming! And we're going to do everything there is to do in Oxford. Then.........I get to go home for Christmas.