Goodbye, my lovely Oxford.

What a year!

I was just looking back at some picture from when my family visited me for my 21^st birthday. I can’t quite believe that it’s only been 10 months.

It feels like so much has happened since then:

Another round of cancer for my mom (praise the Lord she's doing great!)

The World Journalism Institute

Oxford

My older sister moving to an apartment. . .(that's the goob's normal face, hence my great love for her)

Lining up an internship for next summer

Learning kung fu (just kidding)

Displaying newfound maturity

Now I’m about to head back to my home country after being out of the country and not seeing my family for the longest time ever.    

Going back to this!

So since my last blog post, I’ve had a few adventures (I’m depending on my "diary"—English for "planner"—to remind me what I actually did, so you’ll get a nice dated outline again, as I clearly exhibit an addict-type dependency on lists and bullet points):

November 17^th

Had my first experience at Fire and Stone, a great pizza place with 5 pound Thursdays and pizzas named after major cities from every continent (except maybe Antarctica?). And no Matt, I did not order one of the American pizzas. Afterwards I got to hear Ravi Zacharias (such a wise man!) speak at St. Aldates student night.

November 19^th

The number one thing on my “to do in England” list was see a Premier League game, and some of the lovely people from Azusa Pacific University planned at trip to see a Manchester City game. Although the team colors are girly (light blue? Really? That’s almost as bad as Cambridge’s mint green…) and the team is hated by Manchester United fans, the day was great fun, capped off by a visit to a Manchester pub heralded as “Pub of the Year.” We concluded that the rating was heavily rigged.

November 24^th

Thanksgiving brought a lovely ball at St. Aldates—our first exposure to Oxford’s famous balls (and this was one of the much less extravagant ones, we’ve been told)—and it was magical. It was masquerade themed, so while most people wore fancy Venetian masks or at least costume shop masks, I used my 5^th grade art skills to make a pink cardstock mask. (I didn’t really need it while I was dancing anyway.) Another American taught me a bit of swing dancing, there was a FANTASTIC jazz band and an open bar (at a church function?! The drinking culture is so different here!), the Oxford all-male acapella group Out of the Blue performed, and there was a gondola in the middle of the room (to make it really feel like Venice). Lovely!

November 26^th

I started my day helping at Livewires (one of the children’s ministries at my church). The children were lovely and it was a great way to meet more people at Woodstock Road Baptist. I’ll miss that church!

After Livewires I went to Erika’s house—she’s from the States but is married to an English guy—for Thanksgiving dinner (again!). Delicious and relaxing. I love her family and will miss them dearly.

Later Claire and I went to the RAG (a student charity organization) ball to volunteer in the casino/eat our lives away (our neighbor is part of RAG, so he got us spots working at the ball). It was incredible: so much food and music, so many fancy dresses…so many poker chips to count….

November 28^th

One of the other George Mason students set up a tour of the Oxford University Press museum and kindly invited any others along, so I got to go see the company that publishes the books we all have to spend hours reading. I now know where I will be applying to work.

Printing the old-fashioned way

  
November 28^th and 30^th

Christmas dinner here is like our Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey or chicken or duck, potatoes, veggies, gravy, stuffing, and of course mince pie (which, to my relief, does NOT include mincemeat) with cream or brandy butter and sometimes even Christmas fruitcake. We had our first Christmas dinner (complete with Christmas poppers, which pop when you pull them open and have a little toy and a paper crown inside!) at the Jesus College dinner dance, and two days later our gourmet-chef neighbors invited us over for a delicious Christmas duck dinner.

December 2^nd – 6^th

I got to see Hannah Young again! This time it was in Paris. We stayed at a hostel in Montmartre, hung out with our hostel mates, and raced around Paris to see the Eiffel tower (we went up it at night!), Notre Dame, Shakespeare and Company, the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the mini Statue of Liberty, the basilica du Sacre Coeur, the catacombs (a visit inspired by this article! Don’t worry, we went the legal way), Versailles, and the Orangerie (where Monet’s water lilies are displayed—a highlight for me! I LOVE impressionism, and I read a book about the water lilies when I was little girl—and found out one of the girls in my hostel had read the same book! If I get to go back to France, I want to visit his gardens at Giverny.).    

Crêpes by Notre Dame

Catacombs

Paris is a sparkling city. A lot like New York and London, I think, except more sprawling and iconic.

December 8^th to 14^th

Said goodbye to Claire. (Said lots of goodbyes.) Be warned, all ye future traveling students, this is the most miserable part of studying abroad. The English, Americans and other internationals I’ve met have been wonderful and it is so hard to say goodbye to the people and the town.

Before I fly home today, as a final memory, here’s a list of 5 of my top study abroad memories. Thank you for reading along! 

·         Balls (St. Aldates, RAG)

·         Buckingham Palace

·         OUAC (track and field)  

·         Paris

·         Evensong at Westminster Abbey