The Life of Diana

Tonight (November 24th) was the big Audit Feast.  There are two large feasts at Churchill, one in the winter and one in the spring, and each graduate student gets invited to one during their studies here.  I got invited to the audit feast tonight, and it was absolutely wonderful.  First there is champagne or sherry in the fellow's lounge at 7, followed by dinner at 7.30 (which has assigned seating, so the fellows get mixed in with the students and you get to meet lots of interesting people).  Then you leave the hall for 15 minutes while the tables are cleaned and cheese trays, fruit baskets, and petit fours or placed on the tables.  And we returned to the hall for our dessert (hehe even though we had apple pie as part of our four course dinner) where we had completely new assigned seating and got to meet totally new exciting people.  After this we proceeded to the fellows lounge again for dessert wine and by the time everything was all said and done, it was 1 am... talk about a loooong dinner hehe.  For dinner we had Cream of Watercress Soup, Fillet of Sole Nantua, Mushroom filled pastry (for the vegetarian entree) and Apple Tart Tatin with a glass of each of the following wines: Sancerre Domaine de Nozay 2000, Vacgueyras Chateau des Tours 1990 and Chateau Peybrun 1998.  For our proper dessert we had cheeseboards, fruit, petit fours and coffee with the following wines: Ungsteiner Herrenberg Scheurebe Auslese 1993, Chateau Fombrauge 1990 and Sandeman 1997 and cigars to top it all off haha (do not worry... I did NOT smoke... come on, you guys know me better than that!!!). I will try to fill in any other blanks as I go along... but now onto the pictures!!!

My dinner was at table B... and unfortunately I did not take any pictures until the end of the meal... so the only people left were a couple of people sitting directly across from me and David (a.k.a. D Dog haha)

Paul was at a loser-ish table apparently so came over to visit us after dinner was over.

The tables were gorgeous... look at the wonderful floral centerpiece, and also this photo shows the wide variety of alcholic beverages we were meant to drink with our meal.  It is truly amazing to me that people are really supposed to (and do in fact) drink that much!!!  I mean sherry and champagne before dinner, 3 glasses of different wines with dinner, 2 more glasses of wine and 1 glass of port with the proper dessert, and then more after dinner dessert wine... honestly that is a bit much!!!  But I am a good girl, so no worries :)

Oh yeah... so for the two big feasts of the year, gowns are mandatory... hehe as you can tell, my arms are still through the holes for eating :)

Stephanie, me and Moira... hehe apparently Moira just couldn't get enough of the white wine hehehe!!

This is the gorgeous candlabra at the head table.

This is the fellows lounge... apparently someone is a fan of Marilyn Monroe... or at least Andy Warhol.

Here we are waiting for them to set the tables for our proper dessert.

Paul called us ugly... hence the shocked angry face... although we all know that really he is the ugly one hahaha.

And here David and I are much happier since we decided that Paul is wrong and that we are fabulous!!

Stephanie and me contemplating how long the entire feast will last hehehe.

hehe Monique is the *only* person I know that puts on lip gloss for my photos :) ... check out her moist lips.

And here we are at dessert... I was at table E with Po.

They even gave everyone cigars... well not everyone... they wouldn't give them to girls!! Isn't that horrible and sexist??  Not that I would smoke one anyway, but it would have made a cool souvenir.  I did get the case from the guy sitting next to me though... hehe and they brought me a special ladies cigar to make up for it.

Here is a close-up of our fruit bowl.

And here is a photo of me taken by Po.

This is the other tables fruit bowl and cheese tray... hehe what I find funny is that they also gave us a silver platter with grapes and celery... is celery a normal thing to serve with fruit and cheese???

Here are all of my friends convening after the dinner.

Paul, what did you do to your cheese tray???? Why are there orange peels on it?? And chocolate wrappers???

I thought the head tables fruit bowl was quite picturesque.

And then I saw this one!!!

hehe Moira looks *JUST* like dopey from snow white with those super long sleeves on her gown.

Helen was super shiny and sparkly with her blue-ish / purple-ish dress!!

This is a really interesting story... it used to be that when the fellows would come to lunch, they would have to sign in... but they came up with the better idea that instead you could simply place a black-eyed pea in a flask on a scale, and since each bean weighs about 1 gram, it can be used to keep track of how many fellows had lunch and thus how much money is owed.   

So to sum it all up... tonight was tons of fun... I loved meeting so many new people and I loved hanging out with my old friends too.  The food was fantastic and the overall experience was amazing. 

Hugs,

Diana :)