Oxford...

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We both woke up with butterflies in our stomach as it was finally the day when we go to Oxford. All these months of anticipation and wondering were finally going to be satisfied in a matter of hours. Jeremy was so sweet and drove us all the way to Oxford which saved us a good sixty or seventy dollars each plus a ton of hassle because we both over packed like crazy. Stupid Americans. When we arrived into Oxford I think chiming bells went off and little fat angels flew around our heads, it was amazing. The city itself is not nearly as small as I expected, but much more beautiful and quaint that I had imagined. The buildings are all ancient and there were cool open air markets selling freshly made foods from around the world. It smelled delicious. St. Clare’s was not that impressive but it is just a smaller college in this huge university area. St. Johns and a few others were just plain unbelievable and reminded us of Harry Potter. It was so very cool. Mitch and I are going ot have such a great time here and we really want to get bikes as it is a 30 minute walk to school and a 45 minute walk into the heart of Oxford. There is a small little town right outside our dorm area called Summertown where we can buy groceries and go to a coffee shop or two. Our dorm rooms are fine, pretty spacious and we have each have our own kitchen. Mitch is on the first floor and I am on the third which is nice and convenient. We both met our roommates and I got a girl named Jessie from Texas. I was expecting to get an international roommate and was quite bummed that I got another girl from USD, but she seems to be pretty cool and easy going so it should work out just fun. Mitch got an amazing roommate named Jacob, and he is from Sweden. He dresses to the tee, in tight trousers, boat shoes, long sleeve dress shirt, and an overcoat with a handkerchief. He almost looked like a little jocky. Mitch put his arm around him and said hey big guy (he is like 6 inches shorter than him), and he goes Oh know you are the big guy. It was cute. Male bonding. Oh and his hair looks like he was in a Pantene Pro V commercial as it seems to just float in the wind. Mitch was very excited to get to know him as he is just as friendly and out going as Mitch, very surprising. We went to the student pizza dinner at 6:30 and the pizza was absolutely terrible, thank God we did not get the meal plan. We sat at a table with kids from Sweden, Holland, Russia, France, and of course America. It was great meeting all these kids from different parts of the world and hearing their accents and what they thought of England etc. The USD crowd sat a table by themselves totally secluding themselves from the rest of the foreigners. Our goal is to be as friendly and open as possible and meet as many international people as we can in these 4 months. They seem like some pretty amazing people and we are really excited. We went around saying our ages and it came to Mitch and he said 22 and he sounded like the grandpa of the group as some of the kids were 18 and 19. It was funny. We all went back to the dorms bought a bottle of wine and had a toast to our first night in Oxford. I had finally gotten a phone so I got to talk to my parents and my brother which was awesome, I really miss their voices. Tomorrow we have a long day filled with orientation stuff, not looking forward to that, but hey we are in Oxford. All those long days doing of work in Tennessee have paid off and we are in for the time of our lives. Here we go.

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