home, briefly. (lots of italics in this one)

during my last several weeks abroad, home was conceived of in terms of food, and since i've been here, i've done a pretty good job of packing in the quality American-style dining that you just can't get in England. besides the mother's cooking (i really can't begin to explain how good this is), there's been the hefty sandwich from Beli Deli in San Carlos and the gourmet one from Whole Foods, the frosted mocha at Boronne's, delivery pizza (yes from Pizza Hut!), burger, fries, and a proper milkshake at the Peninsula Creamery, and really good Asian food, repeatedly. the only thing left to do before i leave California is In-N-Out, but, i'm rather ashamed to say, i may not have the stomach for it in the next couple days.
jet lag + total lack of schedule has meant i get to watch World Cup, although i'm kind of embarrassed that i didn't do this while in a country that really cared. it's just that the essay-writing in that last week at Oxford kind of screwed up my days; i'm making up for it by cheering for England from here.

i guess the tone of this blog has tended towards the cheerful...i don't want to be a drag, but i had an upsetting, infuriating experience today and i think it's okay to write about it. (spotting this article in the Times made it feel even more pertinent.) it's not that i can't handle being talked to on the street...i've spent enough summers in cities (most notably, DC; i don't expect different from New York) to get used to it. it's annoying and even offensive, but it's also mostly harmless--i can ignore it, i can even find it funny sometimes. but today, walking around San Francisco, i felt really thrown, and humiliated, and furious. i'm apprehensive about writing this here, because it's vulgar and nobody wants to read that, but that's exactly the trap, isn't it? somebody else says something terrible to you, but you end up feeling guilty for it. so i'm going to be explicit. i was walking down Market St. and out of the blue some guy next to me says "you have beautiful nipples." obviously i'm shocked and disgusted; i frown and clutch at my hoodie. if only i could have gotten away then, it just would have been some crazy isolated comment, but it gets worse: he keeps talking to me. "well, don't let them stick out like that if you don't want people to look." my mother and i are looking for a store at this point, peering around the corner, and then continuing down Market, so i can't get away from him. "don't cover them up!" he says. at this point, i am so angry, and the shock has subsided enough that what i really want to do is stop, finally look him in the eye, and say "fuck you." but i'm with my mother, who hasn't heard any of it, who doesn't know anything's going on at all, and i don't want to make a thing, so we finally cross the street and i stride away. shopping, driving home, it's quite the struggle not to cry. i feel better now, the whole thing is less enormous and terrible than it was this afternoon; after all, the only way to win in this situation is to be able to shake it off. it helped that when i got home, i called a friend and had the aforementioned milkshake. somehow i feel like i should apologize for bringing this up, but actually that's exactly what i don't want to do.

and yet the blog has been bitterness-free thus far! oh well, it obviously wouldn't be me without a healthy dose of anger. i know you'll understand.

dangerous side-effect of watching the entire Sex and the City series in the last six months: i'm determined to bring only my most fabulous clothing and shoes to New York on Monday. but really--if i have eight weeks to pretend i'm a grown-up in the city, shouldn't i also get to pretend that i'm a fantastically well-dressed one? yeah, that's what i think. okay, so i don't even know what Manolo Blahniks are except for on Carrie's feet, but i'll be so busy traipsing around in my strappy Nine West sandals i won't even notice the dirty-mouthed assholes on the street.
things get exciting soon: new apartment, new roommate, two new jobs with new offices and bosses and co-workers, plus one entirely new city. downside: there is absolutely no hope for me and the New York subway system. i will get very lost, a lot.

happy

my hair puffed up the other day. more than usual, i mean; i washed it and went to my Spanish class and all of a sudden it was enormous and everywhere. ACB used to have a theory that the volume of my hair corresponded directly to my emotional state---so that if i was extremely excited or extremely upset (frequent-enough occurences), the curls would amass to wild and usually comic proportions.
but i haven't been particularly excited or upset recently. i've spent the last few weeks in a placid good mood that matches the sleepy, warm weather in Oxford right now. we had a bit of a false summer about a month ago, and the entire town was heavy with blossoms, wisteria sweetening the Worcester air and inky tulips dotting the lawn. then it stormed for a week, and what was left of the flowers outside my dorm was mostly a handful of decapitated stems and purple petals smushed into the creases of the cobblestone.
but now, now it's properly summer. the college spends most of every day reading/sunning on the Nuffield lawn. it would probably be smarter to stay inside in the afternoons, but that seems wrong somehow. and then at night, when you do have to be inside, it's gotten to that point where the heat makes you feel sticky and disgruntled and you can't sleep. this is not fun. so the heat, or rather, the humidity, was responsible for the hair puff-up. i'm going with braids for now.

everyone said that summer term at Oxford would be lovely--the town really did start to glow in the good weather; besides, there are just so many fun things one *has* to do in Trinity. we got up at 5am for May Morning and heard the choir off Magdalen Tower (and then ate a fry-up breakfast). we've drunk Pimms on the lawn, repeatedly. i was in a summer term play (the website is mediocre, but now that i've started linking, i really can't stop). we checked out the big rowing event, Summer Eights. we make nightly visits to the G&D's vermont-style ice cream parlour. yesterday was designated Ben's birthday (he was out of town on the real thing), so we walked the couple of miles to the outskirts of town, through Port Meadow, and had lunch at the Trout; then came home and watched the brilliant Everyone Says I Love You. we saw a friend in a very interesting production of Macbeth staged on the grounds (that is, in front of the mound, around the inner courtyard, and in the actual chapel) of New College. we had the Provost's dinner that i already told you about; today i went to a garden party at the Maison Francaise; tomorrow is the Worcester garden party; Monday is the JYA "strawberries and fizz" for all of our tutors. i'm feeling festive and wearing lots of pretty dresses.
(we might want to take a moment here to just consider Wikipedia...kind of amazing and really very funny, i have to admit.)
most importantly though, we've been punting on the river Isis. that was just plain blissful. i started out pretty shitty at the pole-handling at first, but after a while i settled into a steady and very happy mediocre. when you're not actually doing the work, you're reclining in the boat drinking and feeding apple to the baby ducks, so it's altogether a win-win situation. right now, my priority is booking another punting expedition as soon as possible. first: pictures.

so yes, summer is pretty lovely right now. the only thing is, a major portion of my good mood was due to the fact that i had a little bit more time than usual to work on two very interesting essays and i was leisurely stretching my reading out over several days and thinking that work should always be calm like that. but now, well, they're actually due, one Wednesday, one Friday, and i might have conceived of them on a larger scale than is really reasonable. if i close this entry right now and read a play before bed, that might help.

let's do a bit better...

okay, maybe there's a reason i don't post drunk, the reason being that i don't do it very well. i'm gonna try and make up for it, although this entry will have to be abbreviated too, which is why i'm going to spice it up with pictures.
first, the Provost's dinner. there was an official, that is, professional, picture taken of us all dressed up beforehand in the main Worcester quad. we'll see how that turns out and whether it's worth the ridiculous price. in the meantime, we have the ones we snapped ourselves.

the dinner was indeed very Oxford, with seating arrangements (the Provost must be surrounded by women; i sat across), and Deans and Tutors as fellow guests, and port to follow dinner (which was guinea fowl). there were so many drinks involved--each one a formality, of course--drinks with Elisabeth before we walked over, some kind of sparkly red thing for mingling in the Provost's drawing room, white wine for the starter, red wine for the main, something else for dessert? i don't even remember, plus the after-dinner drinks---basically we were a bit trashed at the end of it. then i got up at 6am the next day and wrote an essay. good times.

THEN we went to Cambridge, which is an absurdly long and jerky bus ride, considering the actual distance as a bird flies. Cambridge is pretty, huge colleges, greener, more of a small town.
we got back in the earl y evening, had dinner, went to see Amy's play.
i'm tired, and my room is a mess, and it got hot again, just after my visitors left, so i could never convince them that England isn't just rainy and dismal.

see another picture of me below, at the top of the St. Mary's tower overlooking All Souls college and getting teary about this place; i will miss it.

past midnight

i have written lots of semi-drunken entries, but never actually posted one, so this will be the first. tonight was our leaver's dinner at the Provost's lodgings, with sparkly alcoholic beverages in the sitting room beforehand, followed by a dinner involving guinea fowl, followed by another dessert wine during which our seating arrangement switched. it was lovely and Oxford, and never mind the fact that i have to wake up tomorrow and write an essay from scratch. i think, if i'm not a baby about it, i'll quite enjoy it, actually.
tonight was quite brilliant and hopefully good pictures resulted from it. i just think the past two terms have been an education in being friends with boys, as opposed to gentlemen, and I'm a bit more accustomed to one as opposed to the other.
we took official, 25 quid pictures tonight, so hopefully i will end up with something good. i have 2 and a bit weeks left. we're going to Cambridge tomorrow, for 24 hours. it looks like i'm beginning a habit of very short posts, but i really can't sustain anything more interesting at the moment. i'll try again very soon. love, p.