This Week (Guest Post from Viveca!)

This has, overall, been a really great week so far!

To start, classes Monday went quickly. In my Competitive Advantage class we got out early (so I had time to go grocery shopping!) and we watched a great movie called Dragonwyck in Gothic Lit. In our Monday night class we had the opportunity to hear Peter Tatchell speak. Most people don't know who he is in the U.S. but supposedly over here he's quite famous. For those of you who don't know (as I didn't before Monday), he's a really famous human rights and LGBT right activist here. He's been arrested over 300 times in countries all over the world for protesting and has helped get numerous anti-discrimination laws passed here. It was really amazing to hear him speak, and it will probably be hard for any of our other guests to live up to his presentation! After class I made homemade white vegetable lasagna for the first time and boy was it good!

Tuesday's class went quickly and my academic week was over! I spent most of Tuesday evening updating my cover letters and my resume for spring internships (ugh). This morning I had SHINE, the volunteer organization I work with. The funniest thing happened today during their lunch- The woman who makes the food had made potatoes, rice, vegetables, meat, and then gave each of them a taco shell. Not one kid knew what it was! Even stranger, none of the teachers knew what it was either! The kids all started screaming, "I don't know what this is! What is it? I don't like it!" and the teacher hesitantly told them, "It's one of those things from Chinese restaurants, it's like a crisp... like a papadom." I spoke up and said "It's a taco shell! They're used for Mexican food. I guess you don't have many Mexican restaurants here!" The teacher said back, "Well we don't all live on the Mexican border." Hmph! What an experience. I guess I just assumed everyone at least knew what a taco was!

When I got home this afternoon I did laundry! Which, may not seem like a fun thing, but, our basement flooded a few weeks back and sewage got into it. The basement (including laundry room) has been off limits for about three weeks now. Do the math- no laundry for three weeks! Yuck. So, it was extremely nice to be able to go downstairs and clean all my clothes not in our small bathroom sink.

This weekend in addition to Amalyah visiting, we're getting a last-minute visit from Rachel too! Should be fun! Next week we're going to The Woman in Black, supposedly one of the scariest plays EVER (according to my Gothic Lit professor- so I believe him!). After that is Halloween weekend! One day we're going to Strawberry Hill House. Doesn't sound too creepy, but I'll explain more about it later. And then hopefully another day we'll do the London Tower Experience- a sort of historical haunted house.

Lots of things to come- I'll make sure to keep you updated!

Viv