Hot 'n Tasty!

July 21^st – 27^th: Our last weekend!

What an incredible week! Aside from tons of school work (for some reason all the teachers decided to pile on the papers…I have three!) we did some awesome things. The highlight of the week was probably our trip to London to see Wicked at the Apollo Theatre in West End. There was a pretty large group of us that went, and it was an absolutely fabulous show! We took the good ole Oxford Tube into the city, and arrived with just enough time to run into the train station to grab a bite for dinner. We all had different seats in the theatre, and Gwen and my seat ended up being 7 rows back from the stage! Having seen Wicked before, it was incredible to be able to see the whole things from so close. The expression of every actor was great, and even the costuming was beautiful! We also had a chance to sneak a peak at the pit while they were playing the encore, and it was amazing! The actors and actresses were all great. Elphaba had an incredible voice…even better than the one in New York I think. Glinda had an English accent, which was awesome! Everyone absolutely loved the play…definitely a highlight of the whole trip.

Wednesday was formal hall, which meant we had to get all dressed up for dinner. The whole ordeal had a lot of traditions we had to follow, so many that Carolyn, our program director, felt that it was necessary to send out an instruction manual beforehand. The dinner itself was neat, but I’m glad we don’t do that every night. We did toast to the Queen (check that off my lifelong to do list) and also to a lot of the Worcester College professional staff. We ended the night by singing Ramblin’ Wreck, which I’m not sure honored the formality of the evening. Something about yelling I was a “helluva engineer” right before they recited the Latin benediction prayer just didn’t seem quite right. It was still a lot of fun though!

This weekend we decided not to travel, which ended up being a great decision. The weather was perfect all weekend long which gave us the perfect opportunity to see a lot of Oxford. On Friday we went punting, which was quite the experience. Punting means you get in a long wooden boat with 3 or 4 people and use a long metal pole to push yourself down the canal. It sounds easy…but don’t be fooled. We ended traveling down a majority of the canal perpendicular to the shore…when we weren’t grasping desperately for it to propel ourselves, that is. There we a lot of other tourist of different nationalities (ask Gwen for more politically incorrect details) that made it difficult to navigate. Needless to say, I am sore all over still from the experience. It was a lot of fun though, definitely a must-do in Oxford. Be prepared to work, though!

On Saturday we spent a majority of the day just walking around the city. We toured the meadows of Christ Church College, and tried to get into the grounds. It was close to closing, so they didn’t let us, but we plan to go back because it’s were they filmed some of Harry Potter…and you can’t miss that! We also stumbled across an old bookshop that had thousands of really old, beautiful books. I bought a Greek and English New Testament Bible that was published in 1899!

Sunday was a pretty chill day. We went back to St. Aldates for our last church service, and it made me miss Midtown Church a lot! I wasn’t aware of the news at the time, but apparently there is a lot of publicity around the Anglican Church and their once every ten year meeting, so a large portion of the service was dedicated to praying for their leaders. It was a really cool thing to see! After church we went to a burrito place and brought our food back to campus for a picnic by the lake. Our two white duck friends came to join us! They are known for waddling right up to anyone who sits around the lake and expect food from everyone. They have quite the personality!

By dinner Sunday night most people were home from their weekend travels, and it was fun to hear all their stories. Nothing beats a peaceful weekend in Oxford, though!

Scottish not British

July 14th - 20th: Oxford Week 5

I’ve got to start writing more frequently here. Originally I thought that just doing weekly updates while in Oxford would be enough, but it has been such a crazy week that it is going to take me a really long time to write everything down. Oh well…

Week Four has been a blast. Classes are starting to wrap up now, and everyone is starting to think about heading back to Atlanta. It’s a strange feeling here. Many of us are trying to plan for Fall semester back at Tech, which is difficult to think about when you are in such a different environment over here. My housing boss, Christina, emailed us our resident roster for the upcoming school year, so I have been on email and facebook all week long getting to know all my girls and answering lots of panicked “should I bring a fridge” type questions. All this on top of planning our last weekend trip to Scotland and working out my schedule for the fall… its been pretty crazy to look at my To Do list everyday! I feel like I’m playing the role of about five different people in three different places.

We had a movie screening Monday night for my Jane Austen class. We met in the evening and watched the entire movie in our classroom, and afterwards our professor felt so bad about taking up our entire evening that she took us all out to the campus pub. We got to know her a lot better, and it was great to have that kind of experience with faculty. Bible Study Tuesday night went very well. We have worked out a great routine that consist of someone playing a few worship songs on the guitar, and then a great group discussion about a chapter of 1 John. We have consistently over 20 people coming. I hate that we only have two more weeks to meet!

Wednesday was the last day that we had to get ready before we left for Scotland, and we all had lots of assignments to finish before we left for the weekend. Since we were flying out of the same airport as last weekend, we knew ahead of time how annoying our pilgrimage to the airport was, and we figured it would be best to wrap things up Wednesday so Thursday we could go to bed right after dinner and get some sleep.

And right we were. I went to bed by nine Thursday night, only to wake up at 2am the following morning. I took what ended up being my only shower of the weekend (we stayed in a hostel…what can you expect) and met everyone outside the porter’s lodge at 2:45am. We were traveling in a group of eleven, and surprisingly only one person overslept. I ended up running to get him and then sprinting to the bus station in order to catch the 3:05am bus. We made it with plenty of time to spare, and all proceeded to fall asleep until our bus driver announced we were at the Victoria Station stop, where we were catching our second bus. We managed to meet up with Courtney, who had come into London the night before to spend some time with her brother, and all got to the airport right as the check-in opened for our flight.

We have learned that with Ryanair, the only thing you can count on is that they will be inconsistent. Last week it wasn’t an issue that we had US passports, but this week they had to reprint our boarding passes and made a huge deal out of the fact that they should have charged us a check-in fee. What can you expect? We all made it through the line with plenty of time to spare, and got on our flight right in time. We actually landed in Prestwick about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, which meant we got to celebrate with the cheesy “victory” music that Ryanair plays whenever one of their flights arrives on time.

We had to catch two trains in order to get to Edinburgh, and the train station next to the airport had no one in it to tell us how to get a ticket or even where to go. We saw signs that pointed to Glasgow, which we knew had a train that went to Edinburgh, so we just got on the next train. At this point, no form of transportation can intimidate us!

We sat on the train for about thirty minutes without seeing any kind of train staff that we could ask about buying tickets. We ended up getting off the train without paying, only to be chased down by a guy who Molly described as the “Wizard of the Train” and made us pay the 6 pound fare. It was a slightly intimidating welcome to Scotland. From there we had to walk through Glasgow to another train station to catch a train to Edinburgh…no wizards this time, though. We arrived in Edinburgh about 45 minutes later and went immediately to our hostel. Even though it was only 1pm, we had been up for eleven hours and were pretty much exhausted. The hostel was really cool, just like every other building in Edinburgh it was hundreds of years old and had lots of ornate decorations all along the wall and ceilings. We stayed in a mixed dorm…which wasn’t as bad as it might sound.

There was a “free” tour of the city a little later on in the afternoon, which we decided to take just to get more acquainted with everything. It lasted about three hours and took us through most of the highlights of the city. Our tour guide was actually from Chicago, which made it slightly less authentic, but what can you do? We toured around the castle, through cemeterys, the coffee shop where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter, and several other famous sights. Afterwards we headed out to find some dinner, and ended up eating at a pub that was established in the 1600’s by a woman who had been hung for a hidden pregnancy but survived! The cool thing about Scotland is that everything has hundreds of years of history behind it.

After dinner we walked down the Royal Mile, which is the road coming out of Edinburgh Castle. We found the Queen’s Palace, the new Parliament Building (whatever you do, don’t ask a Scot what they think about the building. You are guaranteed to get an earful about how they spend way too much money on it and how it doesn’t fit in with the city…) and King Arthur’s Seat…which is a huge mountain right in the middle of city. Think Central Park with a mountain range and that’s about what it was. We climbed for a little while, but then it got dark so we decided to head back to the hostel. It was only 11pm or so, but we decided to call it a night.

Day two was the bus tour that we scheduled. We all got up, at out free breakfast of toast and cereal, and then went off to the castle where are bus was suppose to pick us up. As we loaded the bus, we all got a free bottle of Scottish whiskey. Nothing like alcohol at 8 in the morning! From there we started driving out of the city and into the gorgeous countryside.

*** Warning: the next few paragraphs are sure to be full of many repetitive adjectives all ttempting to describe the countryside of Scotland. Let me say now that I know no word will to it justice, so I recommend just going to Scotland and seeing for yourself what I am talking about. ***

We drove through several small towns, and then Glencoe Valley, which was perhaps the most beautiful part of the drive. There is a strong history of clan fights in the region, and a nice Scottish song about the whole thing if you are interested. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9141134108532362584&q=the+ballad+of+glencoe&ei=NZWHSL7JLYuOigLA5s3YCA&hl=en

Our driver, who was a character in and of himself, thought that it would be a great idea to play this for us as we drove through the valley. My seatmate and I both found this hilarious. She and I got along very well. I am horrible at getting people’s names, so I don’t know hers, but she was Lithuanian and had lived in Birmingham for the past three years getting her Master’s degree. (yay Luke!) She was incredibly interesting to talk to about the feelings between the Scots and the English, and believe me there are some tough feelings between the two groups. I had no idea how much they hate each other, but as soon as I set foot in Scotland it became very obvious. Even our bus driver had a strong dislike of the Brits; anytime he would mention a battle that was fought between the two countries he would add how well the Scotts fought the awful British and how horrible they were in general. It was almost amusing after awhile. According to my seatmate friend, that’s a common sentiment throughout Scotland. The English, on the other hand, find the Scottish to be rather whiny and lazy and difficult to work with. I tend to side with the English…

The highlight of the bus tour was arriving in Inverness and at Loch Ness. Yes, that’s the supposed location of Nessie the monster. No, we didn’t see her, but yes, we saw many many pictures, statues, postcards, flags, and other paraphernalia about her. We took a one hour boat cruise around the Loch which was absolutely gorgeous, and really really cold. It came complete with Scottish music, views of castle ruins, and a glimpse at a Scottish wedding (lots of tartan). The ride back to Edinburgh was pretty much a straight shot, but there were lots of castle ruins along the way. I spent a majority of the time talking to my seat mate about the healthcare system in Britain and comparing University systems. Its always so interesting to get a different perspective about the culture over here!

When we got back into Edinburgh we toured a little more of the city on foot, and Jessica, Sophia and I hiked up to some old monuments on a hill in the center of the city. We arrived at the top just as the sun was setting, which made the horizon look like it was on fire. It was incredible.

By the time the sunset it was almost 10:30p or 11, so we headed back to the hostel for the night. Even though all we had done was ride on a bus all day, we were exhausted and anxious to get to sleep.

Sunday proved to be absolutely incredible. We started off the morning early with breakfast and then headed straight to King Arthur’s seat…the mountain range that is in the dead center of the city. We took the very steep, blocked off way up, which ended up not being the fastest way, but was very intense and got us all in the mood for serious hiking. The whole way up we were right along the base of 10-15 ft jagged cliffs—it was absolutely incredible. After turning the bend on the first mountain there was some space for actually climbing on the rock face, which made for some great photo ops even if we weren’t able to get up very high. The weather was fabulous all day long. It was pretty chilly and windy, but with all our hiking we were warm the whole time. There were very few clouds in the sky, and you could see forever! Eventually we found a way to climb over the rock faces, which lead us to the prettiest field that I’ve ever seen. We laid in the grass for a while just trying to soak in how incredible everything was.

The hike down the mountain was quite the experience. We decided to take the “road less traveled,” which seemed like a good idea at the time, but let me just say that its very difficult to judge the steepness of a hill when you are standing at the top of it. What we thought was a moderate climb down the side of the mountain turned out to be an intense, forty five degree angle decent that most of us ended doing on our hands and feet. There was actually a portion of the hill that I slid down on one foot. Once I was down the mountain I was able to admit that it was a lot of fun…at the time, though, I thought was going to die.

Once we were back on solid ground, we went to an awesome baked potato shop for lunch and hiked to the hill in the center of the city to eat. It was absolutely lovely to sit and soak in the views of the city while eating the best potato that I’ve ever had! The rest of our time we spent shopping and walking around. I tried haggis…which I wasn’t too crazy about. We left for the train station around 4pm, and had a pretty uneventful ride back to campus. We got back to Oxford around 2am, and all slept WONDERUFLLY back in our own beds. Definitely one of the best weekends so far!

watch that spontaneous falling...

July 7-13: Oxford Week 3

What a week this has been. Things have really picked up with classes; I had two midterms this week. Both required a lot of reading and writing…not something that I am used to! It was pretty cold and rainy everyday, but we all accepted it as part of the Oxford experience. Gwen and I have found that we are capable of getting a lot of stuff done in the two hours that we have between our classes; this week we went clothes shopping one day and grocery shopping the other. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but all the girls in the program have taken full advantage of a store they have here called Primark. All the clothes are extremely cheap. A lot of the stuff could be classified as “Euro trash,” but if you are careful you can find some great deals. I have purchased several long sleeve t shirts and pants for less than three pounds a piece! It’s been a great way to add warm clothes to my wardrobe!

Bible Study went really well this week. We met in one of the student activity rooms and filled up the space with over thirty people! Gwen’s birthday was this week as well, so Liz and I went and bought cheese pizza and breadsticks to celebrate at midnight, at least that was the original plan. Turns out that in England, Pizza Hut is a high class restaurant complete with a drink menu and fine china. It also closes at 10pm, so we had to slightly adjust our plans for celebrating at midnight. Instead we ended up celebrating two hours before, but the pizza was good nonetheless.

The highlight of the week was definitely our trip to Ireland. Aside from the fact that Ireland is one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen, the fact that we planned and organized the trip entirely on our own gave us a feeling of great accomplishment. Had you told me last year that I could put together a weekend trip to a different country I would have doubted you…my travel skills have definitely improved this summer!

The only aspect of our trip that didn’t go just according to plan was Molly getting sick. The night before we were supposed to leave she came down with a horrible sinus/ear infection and decided to take the weekend to sleep and recuperate. Ireland definitely wasn’t the same without her.

We had to leave incredibly early in the morning, even though our flight didn’t leave until noon. Getting to the Galway required a bus ride from Oxford to London, a separate bus ride from London to Stansted Airport, a plane ride into Shannon Airport in Ireland, and then a final bus ride from the airport into Galway. Thank goodness for the plethora of mass transportation offered here!

We left campus at 5:45 am and walked into Galway about 5:00 pm, eleven hours later. The airport experience was different from any other time that I’ve flown…we used a budget airline service that’s really popular through Europe called Ryanair. The flights are much cheaper than other airlines, which mean they cut cost wherever possible. The check-in experience is very unforgiving and they always overbook, so it’s recommended that you get to the airport at least two hours before your flight is scheduled to depart. We did just that, and stood in line for about twenty minutes to get proper boarding passes. Going through security was also quite the experience. I wasn’t wearing anything metallic, but for some reason I set off the metal detector when I walked through so I had to be hand-searched by an attendant. She was nice and apologetic about the whole thing, but it was still an uncomfortable experience. Liz and Gwen both had to have their bags searched, which meant all of their belongings were completely unpacked and examined. I guess we looked suspicious to security…no telling what a group of American college girls could be up to!

Once we were at the gate we sat in the “queue” for another thirty minutes or so before we could get on the plane. Since seats are first come first serve, the earlier you get to the gate the better your seat will be. We were pretty close to the front, so I got a window seat! Boarding the plane you could hear “unobtrusive advertisements” in the background, which got old really fast. Instead of handing out free drinks they sold them, along with a wide variety of overpriced main course dinner. They also sold lottery tickets, which were surprisingly very popular among all of the passengers. We landed at Shannon with no problems, and found bought our bus tickets without any problem. The bus ride was about two hours, and the bus was one of the most comfortable I’ve ridden on so far. Needless to say, I was asleep almost the whole way. I woke up about twenty minutes outside of Galway, and it was incredibly interesting to see the Ireland scenery. It was very much as I had imagined it would be—everything was very green and there were lots of stone fences everywhere. The suburbs of Galway, however, weren’t all that different from American suburbs. The houses were smaller but they were still grouped in neighborhoods like we have.

Arriving in Galway was very exciting. We had received explicit directions on how to get to the hostel from the bus station, and we found it without any problems. We had also check out an “Exploring Ireland” book that came in very handy throughout the weekend. Our hostel was in the dead center of town, right in the middle of a long line of pubs and restaurants. It was a great location…a little loud at night but we were so tired that noise wasn’t an issue. After checking in and dropping off our luggage, we headed out to find some dinner.

If you made it this far in this entry, then I am very impressed! I just did a word count in Word (where I've been typing all these entries) and so far I've typed over 46 pages...approximately 26,000 words! If you made it this far leave me a comment, I'd love to see who is actually able to get through all my ramblings!

Mind the Gap

June 30-July 6: Oxford Week 2

My second week in Oxford has flown by! Everyone has settled well into a daily routine, and I am continuing to enjoy being in such a peaceful, beautiful environment. Classes are going well, and since this semester is only six weeks we will be having midterms very soon. In ethics we’ve switched from issues dealing with procreativity to issues concerning healthcare, which is something I enjoy debating because of my job at Vascular Surgical for the past couple of summers. In Jane Austen we just finished Pride and Prejudice, and it is definitely in the running for one of my favorite books of all time. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a happy ending!

It’s strange to be on a college campus and not have dozens of extracurricular activities to take up time in the evening. Time that would usually be spent in meetings, in chapter, or at practice is now ours to do with it what we want. There are several grass tennis courts on campus that people play on throughout the day, and I’ve heard that there is a soccer team in the works. Apparently it’s tradition for the GT Oxford students to play a game against the UGA Oxford students at the end of the summer. Several friends and I have been meeting to run in the evenings. We are horribly out of shape, but we’ve managed to run twenty minutes or so every night this week. The weather here is perfect for running, in the evenings it’s usually about 60 degrees with a slight breeze. There is a trail that circles the perimeter of campus we like to run, it goes past the lake with all the tired ducks, and then behind the tennis courts where we say hi to everyone playing tennis. Lately we’ve been doing abs after running…its pretty intense!

We had our first Bible Study this week, and almost twenty people came! We met in the living room of one of the dorms here, its great to have such a great meeting space in someone’s room. Someone donated a guitar to the Oxford Program at the beginning of the week, so Molly was able to sing some worship songs before we started. We are keeping everything very low key; we read a chapter in 1 John every week and then have an open forum for discussion. It’s been a great way to get to know other people on the trip.

This weekend was incredible! Twelve of us spent two days in London seeing everything there is to see. I felt like we were back on the road again, we got up super early and went to bed super late both days. Day one began with breakfast at the dining hall—it was our last meal of the week and we are not ones to skip a free breakfast! We left campus around 8:30, and were on the bus by 8:45. Several bus companies offer student travel packages, and we were able to save a little money by purchasing 12 one-ways to London and splitting the cost between all of us. The ride was very comfortable, and having been trained to sleep whenever we ride on buses, the whole group was out in a matter of minutes. Everyone woke up as we entered London, and we were able to get off right at Victoria Station, right in the middle of everything.

Our first sightseeing destination was the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. It was very different from what I had imagined. The palace itself looked more like a royal office complex than a royal home. Everything still looked very elegant though, and watching the different bands march into the premise was neat…it brought me back to my days in band! There uniforms were the stereotypical red with fuzzy black hats, and they played a variety of entertaining music, including the Beatles and soundtrack to the Incredibles! It was all very entertaining. Afterwards, we headed into St. John’s park for lunch, which we packed to save a little money. London is SUPER expensive!

We walked to Westminster Abbey next, and then Big Ben and Parliament. There was a group of people picketing outside the gates with signs about 9/11 and 7/7…it was interesting to see that people everywhere can disagree with their governments. We crossed the Thames and rode the London Eye next…also a really cool experience. The structure doesn’t really fit in with any of the surroundings at all, but it’s a great way to see the city. We took a ton of pictures, needless to say. From the Eye we continued to walk along the river. There were lots of street performers and random booths everywhere, including a huge used book collection under one of the bridges. We took a picture next to the bridge that is in Love Actually (of course!) and then stopped to take pictures next to the Globe Theatre. By the time we got to London Bridge (which is actually really ugly and completely made of concrete, by the way…) we were exhausted from walking and chilled for a little right outside Tower Bridge. We had great views of both the bridge and the Tower of London. We rode the metro back over towards where the bus stop was, and went into Harrod’s for a little while. We definitely didn’t get anything…everything was way out of our price range. I did find a dress that cost 10,000 pounds—over $20,000! It was just as much fun to look at the people that shopped there as is was to look at everything in the store. There were many different nationalities there, and we assumed they were all princes and princesses. Whether or not we were correct is up for debate, but they all had drivers with Bentley’s waiting outside the department store for them…

After Harrod’s we ate Fish n’ Chips at a pub for dinner. We ran into the parents of a Georgia Tech student there, and they were excited to talk to us for a little bit. You never know who is around and watching you…that’s for sure!

After dinner we were very full and very tired so we decided to head home for the evening. We caught the bus home without a problem and got back on campus a little before midnight. It was a great first day in London!

Day two of our London experience proved to be even more exciting! We planned to get up and be headed out by 7:30am, and when we woke up to pouring rain we were all really disappointed. We decided to keep our original plans and just plan for rain, so we left as planned and caught the 8:00am bus. We arrived in the city a little after 9:00am and went straight to the metro to buy day passes. The tube was very easy to figure out, and we made all the way across the city to the Tower of London in no time at all.

There were hardly any people at the Tower because of the rain, so we were able to get tickets pretty quickly. We went straight to see the crown jewels, which were absolutely incredible. They had a scepter with a 535 karat diamond on display! The actually crowns were bordered on both sides by a moving sidewalk, so you only had a brief glimpse at them. It was incredible to see!

We spent a couple more hours taking various tours throughout the complex. The “beefeaters” gave hour long tours explaining some of the history of the place, and they were great at telling interesting stories; I definitely learned a lot. I never realized that people still live in the Tower of London, but there is actually a small community that still lives within the walls and maintain everything. Who knew?

After the Tower we got back on the metro and went to Trafalgar Square, which we quickly noticed was the main headquarters for the Gay Pride Festival that was going on all throughout London. I have never felt more out of place in my entire life, that’s for sure! It was quite the experience, and something that I will distinctly remember for a long time. We wanted to see the Piccadilly Circus area, and as we walked in that general direction we stumbled across the gay pride parade, which was hilarious and very entertaining. I had to go buy train tickets for a friend, which required me crossing over the parade route. That clearly was not an option, so I had to walk several blocks until I found a metro that let me cross under the road. After I got the tickets the parade had basically finished, so instead of walking all those extra blocks I decided just to try and cross the street where people were following behind the parade. You can guess the people I was walking next to…I very quickly figured out that I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I couldn’t get to the other side of the street because of the large number of people and the barricades that hadn’t yet been removed. So yes, for a short period of time, I was in the London Gay Pride Parade 2008. Not to many people I know can say that…

I was incredibly happy to get back with the group and after a brief pause to exchange crazy stories we headed over to Covent Gardens, a cool street market area of London. From there we took the metro to Portobello Road, and saw Notting Hill and George Orwell’s house. The whole area was very trendy and a really cool place to shop around and people watch. We then took the metro to King’s Cross and took pictures at platform 9 ¾, which they have cleverly labeled and decorated with half of a luggage cart, so it looks like you are actually going into the brick wall. Definitely an important photo op!

We decided to visit Chinatown for dinner, and found an all-you-can eat buffet with decent food. We were absolutely starved and each ate our weight in Chinese food. It was a strange buffet because there were rules associated with the meal: you couldn’t leave any food on your plate and you only had 45 minutes to eat. We were up for the challenge, though, and managed to stuff ourselves quickly and efficiently without leaving any leftovers. Don’t doubt the willpower of starved college kids who are on a budget!

After dinner we could barely move, so we decided to call it a night. By the time we got to the bus stop it was almost 11, and we didn’t get into Oxford until well after midnight. It was a long, tiring, day, but a lot of fun!

Sunday was a much needed chill day. We went back to St. Aldate’s Church in the morning, and then spent the rest of the day reading and working on homework. The weather was cold and rainy most of the day, so it was perfect for resting and recovering from two crazy days. Next week is Ireland…and we are already very excited. This coming week is midterms for both classes. I’m not expecting them to be too hard, but it’s crazy to thing that we’ve reached that point in the semester. It seems like yesterday we were just pulling into Oxford…