Pancake Day
Today is Pancake Day here in the UK. That's their much milder version of Mardi Gras, or Fasching -- basically a day when you glut yourself before Lent begins (and you have to give up the sweets, etc). So they make lots of pancakes and eat them. But these aren't pancakes like we're used to -- they are kind of a thicker version of crepes. They traditionally eat them with sugar and lemon juice, but my friend Denise likes them better with fresh-squeezed orange juice instead. So, the girls planned a get-together for lunch, and we ate lots of pancakes, which were very tasty. We also finished some valentines from last night, and I made thank-you notes for the ladies who helped with our last Enrichment. Oh yeah, and JoAnna and I bought our tickets for London in two weeks, when we go to see Phantom of the Opera.
Chinese Spring Festival
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, and I got to celebrate New Year's Eve with some Chinese friends from the Linguistics MA program. Since 2005 is the year of the rooster, we had lots of chicken (yum!). I helped make home-made Chinese dumplings, and I never knew how complicated it was to fold them up! We ate lots of good food, I was given several nice little gifts, and I got to use my chopsticks for the first time (which were a Christmas gift from one of my flat-mates). I also found out that my chopsticks are decorated with phoenixes, which made me very happy. (I really *am* a Gryffindor, after all!)
Assignments
Today, I got my last two assignments back from last term. For all who might be interested, I got 68 on Pragmatics and 65 on Corpus Linguistics (that would be the paper that I hated). If you remember, 70 and above was a "distinction" mark, so 60-69 is a "good pass" mark. So, I'm quite happy with that, on the whole. I am still in line for an overall distinction, but a lot of that will ride on my dissertation, which has me worried right now. I plan to go talk to my advisor tomorrow morning, though, and see if she can offer me some advice for narrowing down my possibilities. I'm seriously considering doing an analysis of the characterization of James and Lily Potter in the Harry Potter books, but I have some worries about that. So I'll see what Elena has to say about it, as well as about some of my other options.
Today's Quote
Look! There's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up. (10 points)
No comments:
Post a Comment