Thanksgiving and B-day: Double Whammy

I know I haven't posted in awhile; I've been swamped in work. Today is my birthday (21! Yay!) and so I have given myself the day off and am therefore free to blog. Here are a few of the things I have been up to this week:
-I went to mass at St. Paul's Cathedral...it is a beautiful cathedral, and they had a choir made up of men and boys; they wore choir robes with stiff lace collars-very cool
-I got carded for buying a liter of generic red bull- apparently you have to be at least 18 to buy so much red bull at a time. "It's cool, I'm 20," I said importantly, flashing my id. "I can handle my energy drinks."
-I wrote a five page paper about the symbolism behind some of the architecture of ancient Babylon, and a ten page paper about whether or not culture in humans and culture in chimpanzees is different in kind or degree (glad THAT paper is over)...
-My choir is working on Brahm's requiem, and we have our performance next week. It's pretty difficult to sight sing in German...
-On Monday, one of my boy roommates announced that he was going to shave his head, so he went into the bathroom and did it. Then he got two of my girl roommates to pierce his ears (with a needle and an ice cube!), and he put in a pair of diamond studs. The whole ear piercing affair, which took place in the kitchen, was rather grisly, and I eventually had to excuse myself from watching. Not to mention that my roommate now looks like some kind of thug (boys really are silly)...

Thanksgiving was Thursday (I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, by the way) and it was a little strange to wake up and go to class. All I really wanted to do was sit in my PJ's and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, but instead I went to my Ancient Egypt class and my Roman Britain class. In my Roman Britain class we went on another field trip, investigating the remains of the Roman wharves and the Roman forum and basilica. The sole remaining piece of the Roman basilica in London was the brick base of a column, and it was down in the basement of a posh hair salon. My class of ten traipsed down there, irritating the hair stylists and the customers, but it was worth it. All of the ancient Roman remains that we have looked at have been in basements, either the basements of art galleries, car parks, or in this case, hair salons. People just build right over them.

At one point in the class one of my classmates pulled out a brownie and was munching on it while our professor was lecturing. He looked at the brownie and said: "Oooh! I want some of that! Look at me, I'm American! It's Thanksgiving and I want some pumpkin pie!"
"Hey!" I said, smiling a little but also somewhat irritated. Was he making fun of Thanksgiving? Maybe he was just jealous because he doesn't have a holiday that promotes unashamed, extreme food consumption. In either case, I felt a pang of homesickness. I wanted to be home watching football with my brothers, and I also wanted some pumpkin pie. For real.

My study abroad program sponsored a Thanksgiving buffet downtown at a nice hotel, so my roommates and I made the trip down. The dinner was quite good, and I had turkey and potatoes and some other nice, hot food. It was kind of interesting, all these displaced American kids coming together and making our own little Thanksgiving. While it wasn't the same as being home, it was nice to be with my friends and with other Americans on the holiday.

So now it's my 21st, which doesn't quite have the same significance over here as it does back in the states (after all, the drinking age is 18), but I'm prepared to go out and celebrate it anyway. My girl roommates and I are going to go out dancing, so I'm pretty excited. In the meantime I'm going to hit up a museum or two. I hope you all have an excellent Thanksgiving break, and until next time...