I’ve taken a bit of a back-seat on the blog writing this week. Only two written! The Imperial Student Blog servers are groaning a sigh of relief.

Yay, only one week of term left. Don’t get me wrong, I love being at IC, I love learning, I enjoy being a student and I’ve learnt some really interesting stuff this term. But, I’ve also had to learn to wake up at 5 am to meet coursework deadlines, how to sit through six hours of lectures a day and also how to interpret dodgy Spanish-accented English. I’m tired, I’m looking forward to going home, and it’s nearly Christmas!!

To celebrate in true Corrie “is-obsessed-with-food” style, my friend John and I decided to do a week of Christmas dinners, as most of the catering outlets on campus were providing them. We missed Monday – the decision was only made that night – and started on Tuesday in the Tower Rooms (the MDH to all you old-hats). Wednesday found us sneaking into the SCR, and Thursday was time for crowding around a Union table. Friday was celebrated in true style, in Eastside…sort of.

So, Tuesday. John, Ben, Mel, Pete and myself made our way into the TR, laden with stuff – I was tutoring both violin and viola in the afternoon, so I needed each instrument. We found ourselves a table (no mean feat – the room was packed) and I got to sit and look after everyones stuff while John bought mine for me. My instructions were ‘everything’, and I got it for £5.91 – bargain! They informed me that the layout of the canteen area was really confusing, and I felt quite glad I hadn’t gone in there.

My starter was a bean soup, I got Christmas roast food with carrots and potatoes (which John managed to correctly pick out, not knowing my preferences! Go John!) and a Christmas pudding. The food was good; my only criticisms are the turkey was a bit dry, and I got a mountain of stuffing; I’m not normally into stuffing, and it soaked up all my gravy, but I’ll get over it. Also, I couldn’t have the cream with the Christmas Pudding, so it was a bit dry, but as I’m sure Toby will point out, this is my fault for being allergic, and not theirs! We each had a cracker (Ben got a spinning top which he explained Science to me with. Amazing!), and I left feeling fat and happy, to groan over my poor stomach all afternoon.

Wednesday: SCR, with John, Nikita and Ken. I have to admit, I felt a little naughty, but there had been signs in the TR saying we could go in there! So I didn’t feel that bad. There were elves! And a Santa who was giving out chocolates! While we were waiting in the queue, the Santa came and John made me have a photo taken with him. My eyes in the picture say ‘John, I hate you for doing this to me’; to punish him afterwards, I let him have my chocolate. Not quite sure how that worked!

I had much the same as the previous day; the soup was tomato and basil, and we didn’t get a free drink with this one, so I had what they were calling ‘multi-vitamin mixed berry juice’ which was basically some dodgy squash. It was only 40 p though! John and I shared half a loaf of bread, which gave the SCR points. I have no criticism for this food, it was really good, and we also still had crackers. John got a really funny moustache thing; see the picture! £5.61 again, bargain.

I apparently had no aversion to eating the SCR food; I was the first one finished, and by quite a long way too. Two things of note happened; Nikita had her first ever Christmas pudding (which she didn’t like), and John came out with this gem: “I’ve never had grandparents with my pizza!”

So, Thursday. Union with Ben, John and Pete. We stood in the queue for ages, and they almost ran out of turkey. We didn’t get a drink, or soup, but I’ll get over it – it was only £3.50 and we got mince-pies too! Overall, however, I didn’t rate it as highly as either of the others, and we didn’t get crackers. Ben got my mince-pie (I’m only mentioning that so he remembers he owes me…kidding!). I finished really quickly again, and didn’t feel quite so full. I’m worried my stomach has expanded and I’m going to have to eat twice as much as before to be full!

Finally, on to Friday. We headed off to Eastside; I was a bit unsure where to go, having never actually been inside before, but I managed to work it out…I met Pete, Mel, Nikki, Ashton and John, and we went to the bar to order. This is where the Christmas dinner plan fell down – we were supposed to preorder! I completely blame John for this (though I was the one who looked at the advert in the JCR the day before). We had various meals instead, from scampi to sirloin steak, and I ‘scampied’ off to my last Biomaterials lecture of the year.

I rate the SCR dinner highest, with Union coming third, and Eastside failing completely. The week has made me full, exposed me to a lot of maths-talk (Mel, John, Pete and Ben all do maths – Pete has a maths bungee attached to him which always brings the convo. back to maths, particularly topography. Grr!) and been a bit more expensive than your average week.

It was totally worth it.

Other things that happened this week that I may blog about if others are interested – Tom and I met up with John and a load of other people on Tuesday for a pancake and film night, where we watched a horror film and got really freaked out; I played at the Pakistan Society event “Shaam” in a string quartet on Wednesday night; I discovered that jumping off cliffs in Malta may have disastrous consequences for your coccyx – even if it was three months ago.