Today was the last day of lecture. We’ll have two weeks off for Easter, a week of revision (study week), and three weeks of exams. My exams only last a week and a half, so I’ll be spending the last week in London. (But that trip is for another blog post.)

So much has happened in the past two weeks, it’s all been rather surreal:

1. I saw A Woman of No Importance at the Mission Theatre here in Bath. Oscar Wilde is one of my favourite authors, and I enjoyed hearing the actress who played Miss Hester attempt an American accent. It was pretty convincing, though I could tell a slight difference.
2. A classmate from Penn State suddenly passed away. We were in the same year, same (double) major, and were both in Schreyer, so we saw each other often.
3. We had our end-of-term international student party in Bristol.
4. I went to Oxford with a group of friends (the morning after said party — I was quite tired and slept on the outgoing train). We took a walking tour around the city and got to tour Christ Church (one of the most famous colleges in Oxford. In case you’re not aware, Oxford is not a single university; it is a collection of smaller colleges).Some of the scenes from the Harry Potter movies were filmed or based off sites in Oxford (specifically the Bodleian–the main library–and Christ Church)!
5. I booked an 11-day trip to Europe: Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, and Copenhagen. I’ll be sure to blog about that!
6. Thursday was the last day of lecture! (as I already mentioned.) I wrote my last essay for the 19th Century British Literature course (on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest), and I had a final Algorithms and Complexity lecture. Being the last day, a group of friends and I took an obligatory picture by (or on–don’t ask why we wanted to sit on pointy rocks) the wall at the entrance to the University.And I even took one with my Flat Lion.
7. Also on Thursday was MusicSoc’s Battle of the Bands. I was wearing my BWS T-shirt and was walking past this chap who stopped, stared at my shirt for a bit, and asked me if I was from Penn State. As it turns out, he studied abroad at Penn State last year! Small world! (Anyone meet a Stu from University of Bath?)

So, amid all this excitement, what is the boring stuff that I’ll remember? Riding the bus up and down Bathwick hill, enduring rain, double-checking my spelling, drinking cider at a pub, having afternoon tea, seeing housemates in the kitchen every morning, jamming with guys I randomly met through MusicSoc, trying to understand thick accents, taking a train to somewhere new almost every weekend, living with the best people from New Zealand, France, Germany, Canada, Spain, (window) shopping at boutiques along the high street, walking beneath some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, being a foreigner, putting vinegar on chips, calling French fries chips, calling soccer football, dialling 001 before US phone numbers, my dumb-phone with battery life measured in weeks, having a postcode with letters in it, saying “cheers”, figuring out how to answer “all right?”. Ok, so some of the things on this list may not sound boring, but they all became routine for me, and looking back and comparing it to my life back home, it’s enlightening to see what I’ve adapted to and how much we have in common.

Cheers!

Location: Bath, UK