It's over! ... *collapses*
*huge sigh of relief* Well, I managed to survive my week of homework hell (purely self-induced, of course). I had quite a few moments of panic this week when I thought that I wouldn't get my two practical assignments done on time, but I just barely managed to finish them. My Databases practical wasn't bad, but the Computational Linguistics one due today - good lord it was a bugger to finish! The worst part of the whole experience is that I spent ages yesterday thinking that my speech tagger wasn't working, because it didn't produce 100% correct results, but I went into class today and my professor told me that of course my results wouldn't be completely accurate, since the testing data was annotated by hand, and mine was tagged by a computer! *insert mortified screams of anguish here*
Anyways, I still got signed off, so that's all over with. I really should start my take-home exams, but of course that won't be happening because I (duh) procrastinate like a mofo. So instead, I present you with lots of pics from the past couple of weeks!
First off, I have to show off the cake Sarah and I made a couple weeks ago. :) I know, I know, it's not THAT big of an accomplishment, but considering the fact that I never use the kitchens here, I think that our cake-baking adventure deserves some recognition. Plus it looks (and tasted) really yummy!
Our cake, before the icing was put on
Me with the finished product (note the copious amounts of chocolate...mmm)
Let's see, what else...last Thursday, my friend Shaun invited Kathleen and I over to his Formal Hall at Green College. It was much fancier than our Formal Hall, and the food was really great. Here's a photo from the dinner:
Kathleen: "Why is Shaun's face so bright?"
Shaun: "It must be my illuminating personality!"
Ha ha...Oxford students have such cutting senses of humor, don't they? ;)
Anyways, on Friday St. John's held its highly anticipated Masquerade Guest Dinner. I have to confess I was a bit skeptical about the whole masked thing at first, but it turned out to be a ton of fun. People came up with the craziest masks. It was great because it was actually a challenge to recognize everyone! To top it off, Mark, one of our social secretaries, printed out a picture of Mike, our other so-sec, and used that as a mask!
Me, Mike and Katrina
Qiang and me (I was getting crap for not having my mask on, so I was forced to wear it in this pic)
First course - Goat cheese filo pastry with honey *drools*
Camille, displaying the main course (duck, apricot stuffing, wild rice with cranberries and french beans) *drools some more*
Me, Camille and Sarah
More of the dining hall
So the Guest Dinner was great fun. Afterwards people headed over to the Bridge, this nightclub in Oxford. That wasn't quite as much fun. I really just wanted to go for the dancing, but NO ONE in our MCR group made any sort of move towards the dance floor for at least the first hour we were there. *rolls eyes* Do Brits really have to get sufficiently drunk before they'll attempt to make fools out of themselves? Oh well. The club itself was okay, but it was jam-packed with townies (duh, what would you expect on a Friday night?) Anyways, I dragged myself home around 1 because the next morning was our MCR trip to the London Eye!
I took the Oxford Tube down with Jeff, our MCR president, and his girlfriend Sharon. Really awesome people. Anyways, we were supposed to meet at the Eye at noon sharp, but we were really late (the bus took half an hour just to get out of Oxford. The traffic here is crazy!) Anyways, we met up with the MCR folk and ended up going to lunch at Chez Gerards first. Afterwards, we headed over to the Eye. The Eye itself was magnificent:
Gorgeous!
Gorgeous^2!
Unfortunately, it started raining while we were in the Eye, so the pictures I took didn't come out as clearly as they could have. But the view was fantastic!
Parliament building and Big Ben
Thames River
Bridge
And a few more random shots:
Sharon and Jeff
Qiang looking bemused
The pod below us
After the Eye, I headed home by myself to Oxford (everyone else was staying to do really fun things like go to the Tate Museum, but I had my Linguistics practical hanging over my head at the time). It was really lame, though - it took two and a half hours to get back because the traffic was so terrible. So when I got back to Oxford, I consoled myself with the purchase of a kebab:
Ryan would be proud. :)
Anyways, that's way too many photos as it is. I was a bit camera happy last week. :)
Mmmph...does this mean I have to do work now? *runs away*
Anyways, I still got signed off, so that's all over with. I really should start my take-home exams, but of course that won't be happening because I (duh) procrastinate like a mofo. So instead, I present you with lots of pics from the past couple of weeks!
First off, I have to show off the cake Sarah and I made a couple weeks ago. :) I know, I know, it's not THAT big of an accomplishment, but considering the fact that I never use the kitchens here, I think that our cake-baking adventure deserves some recognition. Plus it looks (and tasted) really yummy!
Our cake, before the icing was put on
Me with the finished product (note the copious amounts of chocolate...mmm)
Let's see, what else...last Thursday, my friend Shaun invited Kathleen and I over to his Formal Hall at Green College. It was much fancier than our Formal Hall, and the food was really great. Here's a photo from the dinner:
Kathleen: "Why is Shaun's face so bright?"
Shaun: "It must be my illuminating personality!"
Ha ha...Oxford students have such cutting senses of humor, don't they? ;)
Anyways, on Friday St. John's held its highly anticipated Masquerade Guest Dinner. I have to confess I was a bit skeptical about the whole masked thing at first, but it turned out to be a ton of fun. People came up with the craziest masks. It was great because it was actually a challenge to recognize everyone! To top it off, Mark, one of our social secretaries, printed out a picture of Mike, our other so-sec, and used that as a mask!
Me, Mike and Katrina
Qiang and me (I was getting crap for not having my mask on, so I was forced to wear it in this pic)
First course - Goat cheese filo pastry with honey *drools*
Camille, displaying the main course (duck, apricot stuffing, wild rice with cranberries and french beans) *drools some more*
Me, Camille and Sarah
More of the dining hall
So the Guest Dinner was great fun. Afterwards people headed over to the Bridge, this nightclub in Oxford. That wasn't quite as much fun. I really just wanted to go for the dancing, but NO ONE in our MCR group made any sort of move towards the dance floor for at least the first hour we were there. *rolls eyes* Do Brits really have to get sufficiently drunk before they'll attempt to make fools out of themselves? Oh well. The club itself was okay, but it was jam-packed with townies (duh, what would you expect on a Friday night?) Anyways, I dragged myself home around 1 because the next morning was our MCR trip to the London Eye!
I took the Oxford Tube down with Jeff, our MCR president, and his girlfriend Sharon. Really awesome people. Anyways, we were supposed to meet at the Eye at noon sharp, but we were really late (the bus took half an hour just to get out of Oxford. The traffic here is crazy!) Anyways, we met up with the MCR folk and ended up going to lunch at Chez Gerards first. Afterwards, we headed over to the Eye. The Eye itself was magnificent:
Gorgeous!
Gorgeous^2!
Unfortunately, it started raining while we were in the Eye, so the pictures I took didn't come out as clearly as they could have. But the view was fantastic!
Parliament building and Big Ben
Thames River
Bridge
And a few more random shots:
Sharon and Jeff
Qiang looking bemused
The pod below us
After the Eye, I headed home by myself to Oxford (everyone else was staying to do really fun things like go to the Tate Museum, but I had my Linguistics practical hanging over my head at the time). It was really lame, though - it took two and a half hours to get back because the traffic was so terrible. So when I got back to Oxford, I consoled myself with the purchase of a kebab:
Ryan would be proud. :)
Anyways, that's way too many photos as it is. I was a bit camera happy last week. :)
Mmmph...does this mean I have to do work now? *runs away*