Some Things Never Change

Yeah, I still jump in Europe. I'm looking pretty good in that tie, too, now that I think of it.

Anyway, I know it's been 15 days or something ridiculous like that since my last post, and I'll go ahead and warn now that this is going to be my second to last post on this Blog. It's been a good run, albeit one which slowed down in the last month, but I've only got one left in me, and I'll write it on Saturday 8th, my last full day here.

But as for this one...

We're down to our last week of classes. British Poetry is going well. Really well, actually. I'd like to point out that there are kids from UGA in that class, even some girl who's a creative writing major at a purely liberal arts school, and I really feel like the LCC kids from Tech in that class are just as insightful, creative, and capable. Ivan Allen doesn't deserve half the crap it gets.
Psych is going well too, but I need to get an A on the final to guarantee an A in the class. I'm not too concerned, though. Sydney, on the other hand, will be after this weekend is done. She has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, after all. (She's also going to be cranky if she ever reads that.)

I'm kind of hoping I get straight A's this semester. It'd be embarrassing to get a B on a summer abroad program. And also, if I get even one B my GPA will drop .1 points. Hey, that's a big deal, don't make that face.

Joey moves into our apartment on Saturday, and he'll be there for two weeks before we can join him. Ryan Hoffman, as far as I know, will be working in the meantime to finish putting our giant whiteboard and entertainment center together. Ryan Adams will be in the Northeast with Amanda until I get home, and then he and I are going to take a road trip down to Florida on the 12th to get a couch for our apartment from my Oma.
I've got a busy week when I get home before school starts.
Joey and I have plans to stick to a strict exercise regiment once school starts, as we are both a little tired of being sticks. I also am going to have a strict training regiment for my upcoming Ocarina of Time race with William Hicks and his girlfriend at Brown.

Oh! I also found out today that Group 1 is getting shafted on our flight time home. Groups 2 and 3 leave for Heathrow 2 hours after us and get home 3 hours before us because the people in charge got them a direct flight. For the life of me, I don't understand why we have to burn 3 hours of our lives on a layover in Chicago. Our flight doesn't land until 10 PM and then we have to get through customs and get our bags and it won't be 2 AM until I get home.

Alright Sydney's in my room whining at me now. We're all going out tonight, (its our last weekend after all), so I'm gonna head out. To any of you that still pay attention to this, I'll write again in 8 days or so. Bye.

Back at Oxford

Scotland was awesome guys. Probably my favorite stop on this entire trip thus far.

There was a hill called Arthur's seat outside our hostel in Edinburgh (and when I say hill I mean it was a couple hundred meters tall, so it was a big hill). Emily and I climbed it the day we got there and had a great view of the city and everything else in the area, since there weren't any trees up there on the hill. If I had to say, climbing it was my favorite single thing thus far. haha.

I'd probably go back if it weren't for the train ride. It's a seven hour ride from Oxford to Edinburgh, and as I mentioned in my last post, we had to get on the train pretty early in the morning in order to get there with enough time for it to be worthwhile. So Emily and I caught the 4 AM train out of Oxford to London, and then a 7 AM train from Kings Cross to Edinburgh. I tried to sleep on the train a bit, but wouldn't you know that a screaming baby got on the train and sat right in front of me. So I went those two days on about 2 hours of sleep. Awesome.

We also went to visit Edinburgh castle, then spent a few hours in a Scottish Pub later on at night. We walked about 3 miles to visit another castle the next morning, and then we went back to Oxford.

So I'm back at Oxford right now. This is Midterms week, so I've been pretty busy trying to get work done. I get my Psychology Midterm to take home tonight, and then my British Poetry test is tomorrow afternoon. Both are essay tests. Awesome.

But tonight I'm going to visit my family in London for dinner (they've been over here in Europe for about 3 weeks now, along with my dad on a business trip).

Hope everything is going well with you guys.

A Forward Update

Since nothing really exciting has happened over the past few days, I figure I'll go ahead and tell you guys what we'll be doing starting tomorrow (Friday).

Friday:
Catching the 10:31 train from Oxford to London, then seeing a bunch of things in London (Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, London Eye, Tower of London and Globe Theater) before going to see Les Mis. at 19:30.

Saturday:
We catch the 23:30 train back to Oxford and arrive at 01:06, then take a 2 hour nap, pack up, and catch the 03:59 train from Oxford to London, then the 07:00 train from King's Cross to Edinburgh. We arrive in Edinburgh at 11:37, immediately meet up with the rest of the group, dump our stuff in our hostel, and then rent some bikes to bike around the city and see the cites.

Sunday:
Head back to Oxford at 14:52.

So we've got a busy weekend coming up, as you can see. Should be fun though.

Title Goes Here

I just woke up, and I felt the burning desire to write to you guys since I haven't done it in so long, but I'm still too tired to come up with some kind of title, so I just...did. Yeah.

Anyway, let me get you up to speed.

Back to July 2nd, which wasn't really a spectacular day. I think the most exciting thing I did was get all of Sydney's pictures from the travel portion (since I didn't take any myself). Somehow, she took 2,500 (!) pictures over the course of 4 weeks. I don't understand how. But now my job is to sift through each and every one of them and delete the ones with are lackluster. Joy.

July 3rd was the first day on the rails. Sydney and I went out to Birmingham and then Aster for.....confidential reasons. I say that because if I detail exactly what our purpose was she'll probably get mad at me. Again. But it was our first experience on the British Rail System, and our 15-day passes are definitely going to come in a lot of handy. Even if we don't get around to using all 15 days, I'm pretty sure we'll more than make up the cost of them in 10. But the trains are all really nice...think first class on a mid-size airplane and you've probably got it.

July 4th was my first day traveling by myself. I went to Heathrow to pick up Emily (yes, she's here). I got there are around 9:30, two hours before her flight was even supposed to land, and when I got there the arrivals board said her flight would be delayed until 11:50. So I sit down right next to the big door where all the flights come out and start writing my book. I finish Chapter 107 around 11:50, and decide I should keep a sharp eye out for Emily, since she'll probably be through customs and all that around 12:10. Well I wait......and I wait. By 1:30 I'm having the information desk call to look for her, and she's not anywhere to be found, so I cave and pay to get on the internet in the terminal, only to find that what we called Terminal 3 Arrivals during our planning on where to meet up is actually Terminal 3 Check-In. So I'm in the wrong place. I head to the actual meeting place and find her right away. Turns out she got through customs in 2 minutes and walked right past me without me seeing her, and then we spent 2 hours waiting for each other in different places.
But we hopped on the trains after that and made our way back to Oxford. Then we took a stroll around town, got some dinner, and came back to set my room up for two people (there are actually two single beds stacked one on top of the other in each room, so we pulled them apart and now there are 2 beds. Of course, one doesn't have sheets (and apparently we're not allowed to have visitors so it never will), but I'm sleeping on that one so all is good).

Yesterday, the 5th, me, Emily and Sydney all went into London and saw a few of the sights. Paddington station lets off right by Hyde Park, so we went there first, and, bolstered by the quickness of our walk to get to the park, decided we didn't actually need Underground Passes. Mistake. As soon as we decided to move on from the park, and it took us 40 minutes just to reach the other side of the park, we knew the Underground was a must. So Sydney and I (Emily already has a week pass) coughed up 5 pounds for a day pass (Not a bad deal imo) and we started using the Tube. Our first stop was the National Gallery Art Museum, and from there we went and found some dinner. Next stop was the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, and then we hurried back to the underground to get back to Paddington. The last train from Paddington to Oxford left around 21:20.
We got there too late. So we had to run to catch a train that would take us halfway to Oxford, stopping at every stop along the way (so it took an hour and a half), then caught a bus to take us the rest of the way. We didn't get to Oxford until 0:12, but at least it was an adventure. I'm certainly starting to feel like I could get dropped anywhere with a public transportation system and find my way back home. Haha. MARTA doesn't seem so scary anymore. At least during the day.

And then today is the 6th. I have class shortly, and nothing exciting has happened thus far, so I'll cut this gripping narrative off right...

...now.

Dude, your face was redder than your sweater

Sorry it's been two days, and I don't actually have too much to say now, but I wanted to thank everybody for wishing me a happy birthday.

The entire dining hall sang to me at dinner tonight, which was mortifying, and everybody kept telling me afterwards that (I wore a red shirt today, unknowingly) that my face was redder than my shirt.

We spent the night in the pub on campus and generally just wandering around Oxford, and we've actually made plans to continue celebrations tomorrow, since everything closed early tonight, so we're going out to dinner and then to another pub. I had a couple drinks tonight, but nothing enough to have any effect, much to everybody's chagrin. Haha.

In other news, I finished Chapter 106 of The Reunion today (that's chapter 6 of the third book for those of you who don't know), and am pretty excited because I introduced an awesome new character. Or is he new? Hm....

Anyway, I'm going running at 10:00 tomorrow, which I'm happy about, considering it's the first real exercise I'll have had since leaving. I also unintentionally ended up showing off a bunch of Tae Kwon Do moves, which impressed everybody, except Sydney, who just laughed at me a lot. What else is new?