It's a bird, it's a plane...it's the weeks?

My time here is going soooo fast.  I have less than two months left until I fly home and I cannot believe it.  Next week is midterm, meaning I actually have stuff to do for once - a 1500-word essay for both my philosophy classes.  Ew philosophy essays.  Oh well...I've recently (as in twenty minutes ago) discovered the Education Library...delightfully quiet and light.  New study place fo sho.  I am currently theoretically drafting those essays.  More accurately, though, I'm drafting this blog post.  Priorities, people.

One of my flatmates and I went shopping yesterday!  It was so much fun - we took a bus to the part of town where all the rich people live, wearing their designer clothes and then donating them to the charity shops after like one season.  So, the part of town with the best charity shops ever.  I got two new 'jumpers' (sweaters) because I'm always cold, plus a skirt.  I'm still in need of a real winter coat, not having brought mine due to weight restrictions, but just haven't quite found anything yet.  Have found a lot of crazy vintage fur-trimmed tweed creations, but if you can picture me wearing one of those without laughing, well, kudos to you.

My twentieth birthday is a week from Tuesday...???  I kind of can't believe it.  In a philosophical sense, it's the end of an era, no longer being a teenager; in a realistic sense, I just can't believe I'm that old.  I have no plans yet.  I do happen to know that my flatmates have terrible schemes that I'm going to have to thwart somehow.  Heh heh.  As far as I'm concerned, though, the real celebration will be at the Boyce Avenue concert a couple of weeks later that I got a ticket for.  I am SO excited!!  So excited.  It's going to be AWESOME.

I have found a sufficient solution to the pumpkin problem.  While Halloween isn't nearly as big a thing here as it is in the States, they make a smallish deal of it, in my opinion mostly for the sake of the great hordes of Americans here.  Anyway.  For the past few weeks at our very favourite grocery store (Lidl, which is a German chain and sells things for ridiculously low prices) they've had a big box of 'cooking pumpkins' for sale for £1 each.  So, with the blessing of my German flatmate upon the idea of carving a pumpkin for the flat, I bought one.  We named him Alastair and he does not have a face yet.  But he will, and then when we carve him I'm going to take the little pieces of pumpkin from the eyes/mouth/etc. and bake them and make enough mashed pumpkin to make pumpkin spice lattes and then be done with it.  There's another American in my small group who's so committed to the idea of having pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving that she's going to bake an entire pumpkin herself and proceed from there.  I don't think I'm that committed.  Sorry.

Alright, enough procrastinating.  These essays are laughing at me.

Love,
Melody