Last night was the most fun night I have had in a long long time… I’m here in the University Center on duty for the weekend, meaning I really can’t leave the building at all except to go to Panera (which is in our building). A bunch of other girl RAs are also on duty, including my roommate, so we invited the other ladies over for a girls’ night. Before our duty meeting, I snuck out of the building and caught the train to Chinatown, which is only 5 minutes away by rail. I went to the Ten Ren Tea & Ginseng Company, quickly picked up a 1/2 pound of loose leaf tea, then headed back immediately.

We rented the new Woody Allen film “Scoop” and began watching it – we never finished, it is absolutely awful. Two great actors, Scarlet Johannsen and Hugh Jackman, were awful in this movie. When the DVD skipped and stopped an hour into the film, we took it as an omen that we should just stop watching it. Instead, we put in one of my favorite movies, Two Weeks Notice, with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. So we got our fill of romantic comedy and an amazing British accent. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, we tried the new tea I got, Mango Black Tea, and let me tell you, it is AMAZING. It was $20 a pound, one of the cheaper teas at Ten Ren (They have one green tea that they sell at $130/lb.) but it was so good, perhaps the best tea I have ever had. It has real pieces of mango dried up in it. I used my new french press, which I am so excited about, and Hayley’s water boiler, and probably refilled it 6 times, thus about 30 cups off of 6 tablespoons of the loose leaf tea. I don’t think I will ever go back to regular tea – I’m going to Ten Ren again tomorrow, so that I can take my time and get acquainted with all they have to offer. Supposedly they have 200 varieties of tea there.

Following the movie, we sat around and gushed about boyfriends and dating and life until after midnight. It was so much fun. A few of us had to do late rounds in the building still, so we headed out and girls’ night was over. I believe we’ll be doing another on Monday. Priceless.

Three things interesting me within the past three hours:

I need a fast lens for my camera. So that in low light situations (a.k.a. weddings), I don’t have to concern myself so much with blurry pictures from slow shutter speeds. For real, I can’t deal with the f/4-5.6 anymore. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I’ll spare you and myself the trouble. In general, non-expensive lenses = slow shutter speeds. Mom, Dad, you know what I want for an extra-early Christmas/Birthday gift.

I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. The University Center, where I live, makes really tasty ones. I always take four of them, which is literally way too much to eat at once, and I dip one or two of them in my milk and scarf them down, and put the other two wrapped in napkins in my backpack for when I have a break from classes. Problem is, I always feel kind of nauseous after eating more than one. I don’t know if it’s all the sugar, or if they left some ingredient out. If it were a Chips Ahoy cookie, I could eat like 20 of them. It truly baffles me. I have been breaking off tiny nibbles to munch on from tonight’s dinnertime cookies, and almost can’t stand it. But I keep on nibbling. It is an addiction, I fear.

I watched the movie “Troy” tonight with Josiah. (My first viewing of it, not his.) I honestly didn’t know who to root for between the Trojans and Greeks. The youngest Trojan prince, Paris, was a coward, stole someone’s wife, and killed a good guy in the end. Josiah and I both couldn’t stand him. But the Greeks were greedy and bad as well. But they had Achilles, a mighty warrior and good guy at heart. MY favorite character, Hector – Paris’ brother – was killed. I was really bummed. However, it was a good movie. Josiah had to laugh at me because I kept mixing up who was who. The armor between the two armies was different, but still, why couldn’t they have worn different colors, like in the Patriot?