Busy Week

My mom and aunt left on Tuesday and made it back to the States safely. I'm very envious of them for being able to eat real food. My diet consists of a chicken breast (either grilled or roasted) and grapes-oh, and I had some Ritz crackers the other day. Yep-only one meal a day. It's not by choice-I know it isn't healthy, but I don't know what to do. I have walked down each aisle of every major grocery store in England and cannot find food that I will eat. I've been trying to branch out of my box-try new things and it isn't working. Actually, in the month I've been here-I can only think of about a weeks worth of good food where I was actually full-everything else I eat is just to "make do." I am very happy that I finally learned how to grill in my stove. I've decided from now on, I will have an entirely electric kitchen-no other options. Some say you can control the heat better with a gas stove, but they haven't met me. I ruined scrambled eggs last night-that's hard to do-my kitchen still smells like burnt egg. My sweet little roommate rarely uses the stove, so he isn't much help. His diet consists of frozen foods-he warms of pizza or some type of pasta and that's about it.

I miss bread!!! I've tried about 5 different kinds of sliced bread-trying to find something edible to make toast out of. So far, I haven't been successful. And where are biscuits??!! There's no bisquick or anything close. I love bread and the only bread I've been eating is pita, which isn't bad, but I'm tired of it. I will never take Pillsbury for granted again. Fortunately, I'm not wasting away (yet).

I went to Birmingham today to the Birmingham Museum and Gallery. I want to switch my internship from the National Gallery (London) to Birmingham. Birmingham has a great Pre-Raphaelite collection and I really like the way the gallery is set up. It isn't as massive as the National Gallery, so I think I will be able to do more hands-on work and with my painters. They also have numerous lectures over the next few months all pertaining to the Pre-Raphaelites. The only problem is the commute-taking the shortest route by train-it is still about two hours each way. I have two classes on Tuesday and one class on Thursday, so I plan to intern on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday for about 5 to 7 hours each day. Fortunately, I only have two papers for this program since I already completed my thesis. However, they're still pretty large papers-one is about 20 pages, the other is about 15. I've already started both of them-I'll try and get a head start-they're not due until the end of April/beginning of May. I'm also going to look into volunteering at the art gallery in Leeds-maybe I can do that a few hours a week also.