Finally, an update!

There's so much going on that it's hard to find the time to blog! But I turned in a paper at 3 today, so now I have a little bit of time.

Ah, where to start?! Hm, let's see. Last Saturday it was really nice outside so a few of us went on a search for an (American) football to toss around. We ended up buying a Nerf football and hiked down to the Magdalen College playing fields because football on the lawns here would be frowned upon. So there were six of us, barefoot, passing the football around when this dude comes up to us and tells us we can't play there. Why? Well because that's the cricket pitch, duh! Apparently we might mess up the delicate cricket grass with our bare feet...yeah, these people are psycho about their grass! So we hiked some more and finally found a public park in which to play. Then we played 3 on 3 and I actually learned the rules of American football. In England, go figure. Not going to lie, though, I was super sore after a few hours of it.
On Sunday, we decided to be stereotypical Oxford tourists and go punting. In case you don't know, punting is a kind of boating. The boat is a narrow, flat boat that you propel with a pole while standing in the back of it. Between the five of us, we managed to go, oh, maybe twenty yards. We spent far more time hitting the banks and trees than we did actually going forward. We had a great time, though. The best part was when we were getting onto our boat, we saw this soaking wet kid that had obviously fallen in at some point. We asked the boat guy if the kid had fallen in, and he said in his British accent: "Yes, but that's what you get for being French." Heh, yeah European solidarity!
Monday, Tuesday, and most of yesterday were spent in the library and bookstore doing some reading and other homework. The big bookstore chain here is called Blackwell and it is AMAZING!! (I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but is is really THAT cool.) It has 5 (I think) floors, and on the top floor they sell used books. The layout is really twisty and cool with rooms full of books everywhere! It's such a great place to go do homework, and I really think they should bring them to the States.
The past few days weren't terribly exciting, but yesterday afternoon we had quite the adventure. We are only supposed to get to see one Shakespeare play at Stratford-upon-Avon, and we saw "A Winter's Tale" last week. But, there is also a business school program going on here right now, and they went to see their play last night. Somehow, though, they ended up with extra tickets, so we got to see "As You Like It" last night. We took the train there, which was awesome. It's very chill and relaxing, and there are seats with tables which I find really cool. We got there a little early, so we worked in a coffee shop until the play started. And holy crap, the play was incredible! I don't even like "As You Like It" that much, but man did I love that production. The roles were so well-cast, and the actors had amazing synergy that made the play click. After we left the theater, our adventure really started. We were supposed to meet the business group outside to ride back with them, but we could not find Yannis, their leader-guy, anywhere. We looked for fifteen minutes or so, but he just was not there. We had talked to him about how we were going to meet up to ride the coach with them, so we knew they hadn't left without us or anything. So we finally gave up and booked it to the train station and got the last train back to Oxford. We had lots of fun on the way back, so we didn't mind riding the train. But we didn't get back til well after midnight, so we were tired this morning! It turns out that the business group was there after all, but Yannis had to go to the doctor so he couldn't come. Oh well, it was a fun adventure!