I exist! I really do!And I'm all cultured now...

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Just because I haven't written for a week dos not necessarily mean I have dropped off the face of the earth; this time, it means I've been to Oxford, London, Llantwit Major, and (today, for the CAVRA exercise) Rhoose Point, where I had to carry an extremely out-of-shape fifty-year-old man up a hill on a stretcher whilst he pretended to be unconscious. The long weekend - which started exactly one week ago and which on the whole required significantly less effort than dragging the fat man 200 yards - was amazing, mainly because my roommate has houses in both Oxford and Oxford Circus in London. I can't really say 'the heart of London', as I discovered that London is sort of mind-bogglingly huge and could not possibly be fully explored in the 24 hours that we were actually there. However, I did get to see and take pictures of Big Ben, the Parliament Houses, Camden Market, the Milennium Wheel, a Salvador Dali exhibit we went to on one of the banks of the Thames, and probably thousands of red telephone boxes. It was nice to have Lydia along (what with her actually LIVING in London and everything) to steer me away from tourist traps (like actually RIDING on the Milennium Wheel) and help me figure out the Tube. Back in Oxford, her brother - who's actually an Oxford student - gave us a really informative and probably much more honest tour of his college, and invited us to High Supper on Sunday. So there, I've eaten a five-course meal in an Oxford university dining hall! They even said grace in Latin, how posh! I think Lydia may actually have been a bit embarrassed at times to be dragging her little American tourist friend and her camera along, especially one day when we had to take a different bus to her house because they were filming something in the main street; let me just preface this by saying that I used to watch that Mystery series on PBS at 9 on Sundays almost religiously (my flight for Wales left two days after the beginning of the new Inspector Lynley ones, which was somewhat saddening). So Lydia basically ran away when I yelled "OH MY GOD IT'S INSPECTOR LEWIS!" in the middle of the street...I dont think I ruined the take, though...aside from her showing me all the Oxford tourist stuff, we spent the entire weekend doing things we cannot do at AC. Namely eating well (read: food with actual spices besides salt in it), washing clothes effectively, taking showers ALONE, and gossipping. I even got to visit her old school, which was having its open house Friday night, which meant all of her friends making me say 'pasta', 'tomato', 'aluminum', and 'yogurt' (in the UK, 'pasta' rhymes with 'canasta', contradicting the famous toMAHto, aluMINIum, and 'yoghurt' which rhymes with 'boggart') for hours on end. My friend Josh insists that I did actually say yogurt the 'correct' way yesterday, but no, I'm fighting that one till the end. You may take my 'color' without the weird u, but you canna take my aluminum!

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