I know this is my hell week and I shouldn't be blogging (ironically week 42 of the year...I better get good grades on all of this), but my laundry's in the machine now, and I think I'm allowed to be unproductive for 20 minutes.

-My Politics in the USA professor is obsessed with American dental care. He has quite nice teeth himself, but he's mentioned what nice teeth Americans have at least four times in four weeks now. Every time we come across a picture of Obama or Biden, he remarks on the "far superior" American dental care. Perhaps it is superior, but we pay through the nose for it.

-Apparently, the idea of having a flat, unfitted bedsheet between you and the comforter/duvet is unheard of in Europe. I noticed this while staying in the Arran House: It was just a fitted sheet and a duvet, with a throw blanket at the foot of the bed in case you got really cold, but I guess I didn't think this was a national phenomenon until my (lovely) flatmate Rosie cracked up when she saw I had TWO sheets on my bed. After thinking about it, I realized that the reason they don't do flat sheets is because with their comforters (called duvets), you take the decorative, outer layer off of the actual warm part, kind of like a pillowcase for your comforter. So when your comforter/duvet gets dirty, you just take off the cover and wash that, which is much easier than washing the whole bulky thing. Because our comforters don't often have covers, we have a flat sheet between our bodies and the comforter so we just have to wash the thin sheet and not the whole bulky comforter every few weeks.
I am a genius.

-They turned on the heating in our flat, which I was glad about for approximately ten minutes. It's cold in the mornings, so I thought being able to turn up my radiator when I get up would be a good thing. Perhaps that is a good thing, but the aggravating part is that the radiator is always on, even if just a little, so our rooms are saunas now. Additionally, my floor is unusually warm since they turned on the radiators, with very warm spots interspersed all over the carpet. I'm not concerned by this, since it's probably just a pipe running under my floor, but it does make the room even warmer than it needs to be, and walking across my room is kind of like wading through a kiddie pool with lots of "warm spots."

-I went to the admissions office to talk about transferring to UEA. Apparently people do it all the time: they had a pre-printed instruction sheet/checklist to give me titled "Guidelines for Visiting Students Wishing to Complete Degrees at UEA." This is very, very awesome. However, I wasn't necessarily expecting to have to reapply to UEA since I already go here and was accepted once, but I actually have to apply to the school directly for my final year, using the British version of the Common App, called UCAS. It doesn't look hard or onerous, but it is time consuming, and I'd love to have an offer to stay by Christmas both so I can get my plans in order and just to get it off my mind and have time to think about what I'm going to do. Perhaps after this week I can start looking at it. I might as well apply, presumably get in (not that hard, since I already go here--as long as I don't fail everything or get into trouble, I should be fine), and then decide from there.