Pyromania.

Halloween here isn't exactly the sugar-crazed affair that it is at home (definitely more about booze than candy), but we managed to have a pretty good celebration on Wednesday. Daniela carved a couple of pumpkins that we lit up during dinner (and, when the lids began to burn from the inside, we lit the stems for good measure and made weird pumpkin torches). None of us had costumes, but we spent a good half hour hanging out in front of the union watching students in fancy dress come by and get scared out of their wits by a friend of Matt's brother, who was dressed up as a pile of trash bags sitting along the street and would jump out at groups passing by.

I had two presentations this week, one on reception studies for the MA Theories and Approaches class and on reception of the Aristophanes myth in Plato's Symposium. They both went fine, although due to lack of material for the latter, I eventually resorted to using Mariah Carey and Jewel Lyrics for filler. They were actually strangely appropriate -- it's a very pop-music notion that each of us has an "other half" out there that we're just waiting to find. Pssshhh.

Another fun language thing started up this week: a spoken Latin group on Friday afternoons! My Greek prof is leading it, and quite a few of us turned up for the first session, which mostly consisted of him talking at us in Latin and us asking each other how-do-you-do and what's-your-name questions (Quid agis? Quid est nomen tibi?). Surprisingly, it wasn't very difficult to get used to being jabbered at in pretty simple Latin. Hopefully we'll be able to have more sophisticated conversations soon.

The PhD application process is now officially underway. Writing personal statements, as usual, has been accompanied by feelings of worthlessness, existential angst and insanity, along with urges to jump out the window and/or chuck school altogether and join the circus. The strange part is that I find all this almost comforting: it's so familiar from last year that getting back into the mindset has been like getting reacquainted with an old friend. How sick.

Luckily, there have been some fun things going on to get me away from the computer, including the Bonfire Night fireworks last night on the Downs. (Guy Fawkes isn't till tomorrow -- remember, remember, the fifth of November -- but Bristol celebrated on Saturday night.) The fireworks got off to a good start at about 7:30, but they stopped abruptly after a few minutes after a shell went haywire and exploded into the crowd in front of us! A couple ambulances came screaming in, but nobody seemed to be seriously hurt, and they started the fireworks up again after half an hour or so.



The great fall weather here continues to hold out, and I've had some of the most beautiful runs and walks ever in the past couple of weeks. Check out pics of Halloween, pretty fall leaves, and the Bonfire Night festivities here!