One Month! Already?

It is hard to believe as of tomorrow we will have been here a month. The weather has been holding up, staying steadily between 16 and 19 degrees Celsius with some cloudy spells as well as sunny. We only had one day of rain this week. It rained all day and was kind of nice. Ben and I took our umbrellas and went for a walk (since that’s his favorite kind of day).

One nice thing about him being right around the corner and me being home is he gets to come home for lunch everyday. Wednesday we packed a lunch and took it to the park and Ben managed to make some new friends.

Also this week, the Michaelmas term began and, of course, Friday night was a celebration of the end of the first week. Wanting to avoid the noise and undergrads we ducked into “The Oxford Story” a dark ride tour, a lot like the Smurf ride in King’s Island (but somehow didn’t quite live up to the Smurf ride) with an audio tour guide and rooms with moving characters telling about the history of the University and all the famous people that have been there.

Saturday we walked out to the Botanical Gardens and as usual I took a thousand pictures. The gardens were compact compared to Chicago’s but were beautiful none-the-less in all the fall colours. After that we headed over to this French bistro that has some fantastic baguettes for lunch and then spent the rest of the evening looking for some more reading material. I found some inexpensive classics novels and grabbed a few Jane Austin books. I have just about finished the Anne of Green Gables series and yet another Phillipa Gregory book about Queen Katherine of Argon (I’ve been reading a lot of the wives of King Henry VIII). After those I think I’ll read Alice In Wonderland since this is the place where C.S. Lewis taught and befriended little Alice and wrote of her adventures. Amazing how much reading can be done without a TV (though I will admit, we’ve been renting and watching some Inspector Morse and other BBC shows and I bought the 5th season of Absolutely Fabulous for the laptop).

Saturday night we attempted to go out to watch the rugby match but between the crowds of fans and celebrating students it was pretty impossible—England did beat France. I remember looking out the window at about 2 am that night and seeing a group of friends carrying what looked like the largest bloke of the group home. They were taking a break just below our flat and had rolled him atop an SUV parked on the side of the road to have a breather, then rolled him off and carried him on again…

We got an early start Sunday. I had my first Full-English (vegetarian) breakfast of eggs, toast, sausage, and beans. Ben had a stack of pancakes with maple syrup…since maple syrup has been hard to find around here. Then we headed off to the Natural History Museum. The Museum opened the same year at Darwin published Origin of Species and the building was designed in the (at the time very popular) Victorian Gothic style. It was mostly one large room full of the University’s collection of artifacts, including the first even ‘acclaimed’ dinosaur skeleton. It was all pretty educational.

One the not-so-good side…for the last few weeks the Postal Service has been on strike, so I have a little pile of unsent postcards that may have to wait another week to be sent. And Ben and I have made a disturbing observation….is it just Oxford? But for some reason here people have a tendency to nearly knock you over while walking along without ever apologizing or saying excuse me. We’ve both had about three people each just step right in front of one of us at grocery stores while looking at things (customers and workers alike!)…no one seems to be aware of the people around them and it’s got us rather confused…and they are all old, young, male, female...it seems to make no difference who. Can anyone explain?

Well that’s all the gripping I’ll do for now. Till next time! Have a good week everyone!

To the pics >>> http://picasaweb.google.com/amypvaughan