Off to France

Well, I spent most of break feeling guilty for not doing more schoolwork for Oxford, and then I got back here and cranked out two master's program applications. (Sometimes it really is better to take a few days completely to relax and then put your nose to the grindstone. Note to self, keep remembering this.) Still working on that DPhil app, but it's not due until next week so I'll keep grinding it out -- and, in the meantime, it's off to France tomorrow for the last week of break!

And this isn't just any trip to France. Back in November, one of the other Rhodies sent out a lengthy and impossibly imaginative email to the rest of us. He had an idea (people here, as I've noted, tend to have big ideas), and he wanted us all on board. Why not gather a large group and go find a castle in Europe and rent it together for the last week of winter break? I repeat, a castle. When else, after all, would we ever have the chance to do this?

It was an outlandish, ridiculous, wonderful idea, and a bunch of us gunned for it. So, a group of Rhodies (as well as some Marshall scholars and friends-of-friends and other people, around 25-30 total) will be headed to Chateau Marouatte, near Bordeaux in southwestern France, for a week. The chateau is a 14th-century castle near wine country, and activities for the week include wine tasting (of course), visiting some prehistoric cave paintings in southern France, exploring the castle grounds, and having banquet-hall parties and epic games of hide-and-go-seek. And my birthday. Which will probably be the most unusual, far-flung, fantastic birthday I've ever experienced with these travels and these friends (including my good friend Reagan from Stanford who will be coming along). I won't post any pictures here until I have my own!

Until the next post, may these noble knights and ladies march forth for yonder castle walls...