i have a paper due, so naturally i'm updating this blog

i'm really good at procrastinating. its great though, because having a huge paper due makes me do a lot of other random things that i should have done long ago. examples include christmas shopping, grocery shopping, cleaning my room, and FINALLY laundering my clothes. basically anything except writing the actual paper. i rule.

so here i am in the midst of a research paper i've had all semester to write, but being the incredibly lazy student i've decided to be for the past three months, i have about five days to get my act together and write the damn thing. this leaves me stuck on the floor of my flat, knee-deep in library books and notebook paper, caffeinated tea on the ready, some 'explosions in the sky' in the background, and a sleepless night ahead. i can do it! the stupid thing isn't due until wednesday anyway. but i refuse to be writing it my last full weekend in london- a fact i still cannot, and will not wrap my brain around.

it's also so hard to concentrate on school work at a time like this because everything is so christmas-ey. i work in the middle of one of the most expensive areas of london: covent garden. everything is there to tantalize you, from all types of food you never knew you wanted, to cute shops with the most perfect gifts you never knew existed, to lit up trees and hugely awkward (yet festive?) sculpted hedges designed to look like rudolph. it's a rich person's paradise, and a poor student's worst nightmare-especially when that poor student has a near impossible time resisting random objects she knows she doesn't need and will probably never use; it's hard walking through there everyday to get to work and resisting the urge to buy every single thing i see.

must push onward. must write this paper. must have the best last weekend in england i can possibly have.

all sorts of feelings

two weeks left. two weeks left. i cannot believe its almost over, and even weirder, i'm not sure how to feel about it. my dad gave me good advice via skype today: stop thinking about how you feel, just go with it, and let it hit you when it hits you. too much to think about at once; the excitement of going home, and the sadness of leaving the place that has been my home (and a great one at that) for four months. definitely bittersweet. that word has never seemed more fitting.