What am I thankful for? Oh, *that's* a tough one.

In case you're wondering about timetable, the day in Oxford was November 22.  Which made the next day the 23rd, which I spent on projects and making Christmas postcards for family.  The next day, though, we had no classes, due to some random American holiday we decided we'd celebrate. Something about there being a lot of Americans in the center or something like that.

No, really, Thanksgiving was great.  I did kind of miss the fact that I didn't get to go to my family's houses because that is kind of the point of Thanksgiving.  Instead, I called home and talked to as many family members as I could.  There was an awful lot of baking and cooking going on downstairs in the kitchen, and before too long,  by which I mean 2:00, we had a magnificent Thanksgiving feast going on.  There were probably at least 5 turkeys, a tray or two of stuffing per table, potatoes, sweet potatoes, salad, rolls--everything you'd want for a Thanksgiving dinner but on a grand scale.  Or a 30-person scale.  I think we had at least a dozen pies after.  I kind of missed out on several of those, due to being really full for a good several hours.  That evening, we had a party  upstairs celebrating the fact that we were now officially in Christmas season.  We watched Nightmare Before Christmas, about half of The Hogfather, and Tangled.  All well-respected Christmas traditions, right?  (Hey, sitting around on the floor with your friends, everyone wrapped up in blankets--that's a good Christmas feeling.)

The day after that was also short, as we had an art show set up on the back stairs and in the art studio, complete with little hors d'oeuvres.  There are some extremely talented artists in this program.  I have to admit, my favorite was probably Madeline's cave--she had built it with foam around Christmas lights with little mirrors hanging inside of it, and it looked positively magical.  I told her, and still stand by the idea, that I could live in a place like that (preferably made of something firmer than foam).  Still, though, the other ones were amazing.  About halfway through the scheduled time, we went to the classroom and had some readings.  There were some fun essays, some really amusing or very serious stories, and my essay.  I wasn't planning on reading any, but John asked me to so I did.  I'll post it next.  Put some more work into my projects for art. It was a good few days.

For your viewing pleasure: Some external photos of the London Center.  I actually took them the day after this, but I thought I'd give you some pictures anyway.