news from room s10

I'm sorry to be away so long. I've been really ill for the last week and a half, and am only now coming out of it. People say they have the flu all the time, but when you get the real flu, influenza, it burns your insides up for days and days and leaves your lungs sore and chaffed.

I have one more paper to finish, and then I'm done. It should have been done this morning, but I'm still having a hard time concentrating. The other paper, well, I'm taking an incomplete, and I'll worry about it in April, after Spain.

The boy I was kissing? He came to visit a few times; he brought tea and movies and stroked my hair. I don't know quite what to do: I don't remember the last time a boy was this nice to me, this kind. I sort of like it.

Thursday, my friend Stephanie and I go to Edinburgh for a few days. I'm nervous, but excited, to go back. Then my parents are coming here to Oxford for a week. I can't wait to see them. And then, when they've left, I take off for Spain: one week in a tiny sea-side town set in the foothills, riddled with caves and covered in sunshine. There's a strong ex-pat community there, which means Irish, Aussie and Brit bars with live music to go to, after days reading at the beach.

The weather here has turned warm and beautiful. The sun shines in my bedroom and all I want to do is nap on the grass outside, by Magdalen tower. It was really hard, being so sick, and so alone, for so many days. I spent a lot of time missing Darren. There's this part, though, of Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, where she talks about her characters being transformed by a fever, purified by it. I'm not nearly as in love with him as I was a week ago, and that's progress.