OK, here’s the deal. I’ve promised a bunch of people (well, two) that I would tell of my experiences in Oxford here on the blog. I haven’t done it yet. Sorry. It’s now a month after I returned from my week vacation with Alex, and I’m going to have a go at it while I sit here sipping on a Rum and coke. Hopefully that’ll make writing about it a little easier. Why? No, there’s no scandal, no tales of woe and horror. And that’s the problem. The whole vacation can pretty much be summed up in the word, “meh.”
But I exaggerate. Let me bring you back with me a month ago today. Alex and I were packing for Oxford. She went last year, in 2003′s summer. She had a great time. It’s not just that she went to Oxford, she enrolled in “The Oxford Experience” through NYU. The “Oxford Experience” is a program run by Oxford which basically allows them to raise money by having some of their professors teach weekly classes in the summer to people (mostly over the age of 50, nothing wrong with that) who would like to come and have, well, the Oxford experience. You stay in the facilities at the college, take a class in the morning, and have the evenings to yourself.
OK, I can hear you saying “get on with it, so… yeah, where was I? Oh. She loved doing it last year – she has a thing for history to begin with, and Oxford is anything if not historic. And so she wanted to go again in 2004, and bring someone with. Her mother was indisposed, so I became the lucky candidate. I acted unenthusiastic (after all, I’ve already been to Australia – if you’ve been out of the country once, who cares?), but secretly I was quite excited. Why? It would give me a chance to get some Marmite straight from the source.
Finally July rolled around and we left on Virgin Airlines for ye merrie olde Englande. Virgin provides movies, video games, music, food, foot massages, hot baths, pottery lessons and daycare facilities.
Landing in England, we struggled to find the bus that would take us to the Sheraton. We arrived a day early so as to not rush ourselves trying to get to Oxford. It was a good idea – After a day of travel, it’s better, if you can, to relax in a hotel and regroup your senses. We woke up on Sunday and had a nice room service breakfast. Unfortunately, English scrambled eggs are apparently made from cardboard. They did not include Marmite with the breakfast.
The long busride to Oxford wasn’t without some excitement, if you call traffic exciting. Considering this was English traffic, and the bus driver dealt with it by taking us on some back roads, and I therefore got to see more of the English countryside and some nice small towns, it was exciting.
After that, we checked in at Oxford, went to our rooms, and that was that for big adventure. Tomorrow I’ll start giving a few general impressions and small memories from the trip, like the castles we visited, how I succeeded in finding Marmite, and how we unsuccessfully tried to recapture the party fun Alex had last year by shoehorning a couple of fellow Americans into going to a couple bars with us. Also, I should say that, though I also previously promised photos, you’re going to have to wait even longer to see them because I’m unsatisfied with my current gallery software and I’m trying to find a better way of putting up pictures.
