A Small Sense of Feeling at Home

I've been in Oxford a little over two weeks now.

I have to admit, I've not gotten to know the city as much as I thought I would have at this point. It's cold here. When your choices of transportation are walking or biking, and you don't have to be anywhere, it's difficult to muster up the energy to go out into (literally) freezing temperatures. The weather has very much impeded my desire to explore.

I worry that I'll become like the Ghanaian relatives I have who live in the US, who rarely leave the homes they have lived in for years because they feel like such outsiders. I don't want to become that person, but it's tough to "get out there" when it's this cold outside. Even with the cold though, I try to make it a point to go somewhere, anywhere, everyday.

Today, I walked to a grocery store, looking for cooking spray (like fake meat, I'm beginning to wonder if it exists in England). I made the 10-15 minute walk to the Co-operative grocery store in Summertown, the closest "commercial" district in our area. A commercial district by suburban Oxford terms is a couple of blocks of businesses, run mostly out of buildings that are no bigger than a reasonably sized house. The grocery store is, by far, the largest business in that area, and it's much smaller than the average US grocery store. A suburb in Oxford terms, is 1/2 a mile away from the center of downtown.

On my way home, as I stepped out of the store, I was trying to dig my ipod out of my coat pocket, when I looked up. I felt, for the first time since being here, a sense of being home.

It's hard to feel at home in central Oxford. Knowing that some buildings in the town have been around since before Europeans knew the earth was round, kind of makes that difficult to do. I was telling Lauren the other day that I didn't feel like I lived here; I felt like I was on vacation. It's still bizarre to be walking around "your" town, surrounded by grand, stone, buildings. I so strongly disbelieved in the wall of a building the other day, that I walked up to it and had to touch the wall for myself (it looked like fake stone from a distance).

St. Michael's Tower - The Oldest Building in Oxford (built in approximately 1040 - yes, it is almost 1,000 years old)

Today however, in Summertown (which is not populated by old, stone, buildings), I felt at home, and it was a good feeling.

the book I did not have and the vague idea of what to teach

I was supposed to have a job interview today that never happened.

Over the weekend, I was browsing the job ads and came across a job for a "temporary" mathematics teacher, to cover "sickness" - it was unclear what was meant by temporary (a day, a week, a month, the rest of the school year?) and sickness (cover for anyone who is sick, cover for a specific person who was sick?).

I don't really want to teach while I'm here, but I figured, it's temporary. I downloaded the application.

It said the applicant needed a National Insurance Number (I don't have one yet) and a DFES teacher certification number (I have no idea what that even is). I applied anyway, stating in my cover letter and application that I had neither of these and would understand if I was to be ruled out immediately because of this. I got a call the day after I turned in the application.

"Can you come in to interview tomorrow?" I was asked. I could not. I said I could come in the day after.

I was told I would have to teach a class for 35 minutes. I asked what I would be teaching that day and was given the answer "well, they just started statistics". Anyone who's taught (and especially those who've taught statistics) knows that is about a vague an answer as could be given.

I was to go in 45 minutes before the class when someone would give me a better idea of what I would be teaching that day and then I would have to prep. 45 minutes to prep from a book I did not have, on a somewhat vague topic, at a 9th grade level (I've never taught 9th grade), at an elite independent school (I have little experience teaching at elite private schools), in England (which I assume has a different style of teaching than in the US).

Not the type of students I have experience working with

I was nervous as hell. How was I to make sense of all of this, with only 45 minutes to prepare for a 35 minute class?

It never happened.

I got to the school at 10:25 (I was told to be there at 10:30) and waited, and waited, and waited. If it got to be 10:45, I would only have 30 minutes (at the maximum) to prep for a class I did not have a book for, and had only a vague idea of what I would be teaching.

At 10:50, I left.

I told the receptionist I had to go. He said "she'll be here shortly" - he had said this exact phrase to me when I arrived at 10:25. I said "she should learn to keep her appointments" and walked out.

If this was just an interview, I wouldn't mind waiting. But, with 25 minutes before I'm to teach a class that I did not have a book for, and only a vague idea of what I would be teaching, I would do a horrible job. I would probably end up not getting the job, and thus wasting several hours of my day.

I felt it was better to waste one hour of my day, and end the feeling of being a nervous wreck instead of wasting several hours of my day, feeling like a nervous wreck, only to be rejected a day or two later.

I still do not know what book was used, and only a vague idea of what was to be taught. But, at this point, I don't really care.

One Week On...

I've now been in Oxford for one week.

It was snow-covered on the day I got here. Snow everywhere, and because the Brits apparently don't get the concept of clearing streets and sidewalks when it snows, getting around was very difficult. The main roads (from the airport to Oxford) seemed clear, but I was half-awake on a bus, so I don't really know.

Lauren met me at the bus station and we were able to get through the snow to Wolfson College, where we have an apartment for the next several months.

Our apartment is just to the right of this picture.

We headed out the next day to see the town - Lauren showing me her office, and other sites she frequents. On the way home, as we were almost back, she asked what I thought of what Oxford looked like. It was hard to answer at that point, because everything was white (snow, not people, although it is a lot whiter here than the Bay Area). I realized that in a few days - rain was in the forecast, which would get rind of the snow - everything I saw on my first couple of days would look different because it would be green instead of white.

We went walking again over the weekend and I was completely turned around, partly because we had gone a different way and partly because everything looked different without the snow. I met some of Lauren's American Oxford friends, who seem like good people, and started to get my bearings of, at least, the few blocks around Wolfson.

I've made it to the point now where I have ventured out pretty far without Lauren - I walked for over 2 1/2 hours straight yesterday - seeing the university part of the town, the "bad" part of town (about as "bad" as El Camino in Mountain View - not bad at all), wandered into a place with a sign that said "private", and pulled a calf muscle along the way.

Today, I got a bike. It's a dumpy bike, from guys who sell fixed-up, beat-up bikes and it made me so happy. It has a rusted handle-bar, the tires (or tyres as the Brits would spell) look like they're about to split with cracks, but I don't care! It was cheap by Oxford standards, and it's amazing how much faster things go by when you're on a bike, as opposed to walking.

My awesome two-toned bike

Tomorrow, I go to the Newcommer's get together, a group made up of people who have been brought to Oxford by their partners. I'm not sure what I think of it based on the literature I've read. The group has an English language conversation group, which makes me wonder how many will be shaky with the language. It should be good though, for me to meet people who aren't Lauren's people. I need that, to feel more like my own person.

There have been some snags since I've been here - I had to wait over a week to get onto Lauren's bank account, I'm still waiting to get a National Insurance Number, which will then allow me to get a job, and of course, waiting for my computer monitor to arrive so I could feel somewhat more connected to the world.

I can't say I really like it here, at least not yet. Something about sitting around all day in a relatively small town, without access to a number of university facilities, without much money at my disposal to do things, along with the cold weather and limited transportation has led to a lot of down time. I find myself listening to a lot of podcasts and I think I've played every sudoku game on my ipod. Getting a job would help with a lot of this (except the cold weather part) so I hope I get my NI number soon and hope a job comes soon after.

Pack Rat

I've spent the past 4 days unpacking. Not unpacking at a destination I'm moving to, but at a stop-over, in Towson, Maryland.

The big container, "the cube", that had a bunch of our stuff in Mountain View was delivered to my parents' house on Thursday morning. As I saw the truck pull up, I had a sense of relief and anxiety. It had arrived, I was relieved; it had to be unpacked, I was anxious.

If my parents lived in a flat area and I was dumping all the stuff into a garage, that would be one thing. My parents' house is on a hill up from the street, which involves climing up 18 steps to get to their front door....


The plan was to put some of our stuff in the basement, climbing down 12 steps...

...or the attic, climing 14 steps to the 2nd floor...

...then a ladder-type thing to get stuff into the attic...

If all the stuff we were moving was sheets, towels, and pillows, it wouldn't be a problem. But we're moving books, and bookshelves, and furniture, and more books, and a heavy sewing machine, and a heavy printer, and even more books. None of this was going to bode well when it came to climbing up and down stairs.

To top off the anxiety I was feeling, the newscasts were going wild of a snow storm headed to the Baltimore area starting on Thursday night and going into Friday morning. Needless to say, unpacking was going to be oodles of fun!

I started unpacking almost immediately and took my first break a 1/2 hour into the venture. I noticed that walking up and down stairs was giving my left knee some kind of pain. Walking stuff all the way from the cube to the attic or basement was not going to be a good idea.

I came up with a plan: I decided that during the day I would take stuff to the first floor, and dump it in the living room, forming 2 groups - basement and attic. Anytime I needed to go upstairs or down to the basement, I would take a box with me. At night, I would move boxes into the attic from the 2nd floor where I had piled them in my sister's old room.

Day one was frantic. With the "big" snow storm (it wasn't very big) on its way I wanted to get as much stuff into the house as possible. I spent Thursday evening attempting to balance boxes, while walking up the ladder-thing to the attic. It's a minor miracle the only injury I had was scraping my back against some metal thing on my way up to the attic.

Day two was "snow day". All of 1-2 inches of snow fell and did nothing to affect my unpacking, other than making sure I didn't put boxes in the snow. Day two ended up being the most productive day of packing. I estimate that I unpacked somwhere in the neighborhood of 26 boxes (I'm not being specific by saying 26, I just don't see why 25 needs to be so special all the time). I moved stuff into the attic and into the basement; I was a machine. By the end of the day, I could see the end of the unpacking, which, hopefully, would be done by Day three. I was wrong.

I was lazy on Day three. I moved stuff to the attic, and got a bad scrape on my pinky which discouraged me from packing much on Saturday, so I went to see a movie instead. Up in the Air just might be the most overrated movie of 2009, and diverges so much from the book that I left the film dispointed.

Because it was Saturday, my dad was able to help, and we were able to move our mattress and box spring (do box springs have springs in them? I've never had one that does) into the house. This was the biggest thing that needed to be moved, so it was a relief to get that done.

I probably could have moved everything into the house by the end of Day three, but I was just not in the mood. Instead, I played with my neice, made nachos for the family, and made a make-shift lamp shade collar for Geordi, who has been licking a surgery scar periodically over the last few days. At the end of Day three, while watching "48 Hours Mystery", I made the decision to empty the cube on Day four.

I finished packing on Day four. I had 13 boxes left at the begining of the day, in addition to some furniture pieces and our futon (which my sister was going to take directly from the cube). In the morning I was able to get all 13 boxes into the house, putting about 1/2 of them in the basement and the others into the attic. In the afternoon, I brought in the furniture peices. I spent the evening moving furniture pieces into the attic and then I was done.

Today is Day 5. The day the brings the next leg of the journey. Tonight, I hop over the pond and begin life as Kodwo in Jeffersonia.

When the Lights Go down in the City

This blog is a break from the De Anza Math Teacher blog, because I am taking a break from being a De Anza math teacher. I'm in the process of moving to Oxford, England and, as I write this, I'm on a flight from San Francisco to Washington DC, with Geordi at my feet, not feeling his best, doped up on pet Zanex, prescribed by his vet. The move has been stressful since I decided that I would follow Lauren to Oxford, back in the late summer, but the overwhelmingness of the move came to a head over the past week or two, and taking Geordi on this flight has been part of it.

In fact, that's kind of where the most recent stress of the move begins.

Geordi is going to be staying with my parents in Towson, Maryland while we are in England (and possibly longer if all parties like the living situation). We looked into a variety of ways to get him across the country and settled on an overnight flight with Continental's program that ships pets in cargo.

Then came December 21. On December 21, two medical things were supposed to happen - my mother was scheduled to have a pretty complicated medical procedure done at Johns Hopkins and Geordi was scheduled to get a health certificate that would allow him to fly. My mom's procedure when relatively well. Geordi on the other hand...

Getting a travel certificate should be routine. The vet looks at him, says he's okay, signs a form, we leave. Not so easy. Geordi had a rotten tooth that had to be extracted. They could do it that day the vet said, sure we said, they pulled it, we brought him home with some medication and we thought all was good.

December 22. Geordi gets blocked - he can't pee. We rush him back to vet, they want to keep there for a few hours and they discover he has a bladder stone. Surgery. Fantastic! I see my wallet getting lighter by the minute.

Also on the 22nd, a big cube was to be dropped off for us to load up our stuff in. They were to get there between 12 and 4, so we sat and sat and sat, until 3:45 when the guy showed up. I was hoping to start loading that day, but there was other stuff that needed to be done....

Lauren's father's family was scheduled to arrive that evening, so we had to go get a minivan from a rental place, and pick them up in San Jose. Packing didn't happen that day.

On the 23rd we got word the Geordi would be allowed to come home on the 24th. This threw a wrench into our plans because we were supposed to go to Sacramento for Lauren's family reunion. I would not be going on that trip now, because I would need to pick up Geordi and care for him.

With the help of Lauren's family, we were able to do some loading of the Relo-Cube that was to take all of our stuff to Towson. The family left that evening and I was in the apartment alone, for the first time in over five years.

My Christmas Eve day was spent packing, getting Geordi from the vet, more packing, and yet even more packing. My nervousness really kicked in that day because the day before we got word that I would have to take Geordi on my flight with me, and seeing him after surgery made me worry about what a difficult task that would be.

On Christmas day, Lauren's family returned, and we did more packing - in fact, the rest of the weekend was spent packing, getting things in order to leave the Bay Area, and more packing.

The 28th of December was our 3rd anniversary. We spent our anniversary cleaning. I spent about 2 hours cleaning our oven and fridge only to have the apartment manager glance at them and say they were clean. I was hoping for a more detailed inspection after all the work I'd done. We finished loading up the cube that evening and the cube was ready to be picked up.

For our anniversary dinner, we went to IHOP. IHOP always reminds me of my college roommate, Arwin. He said he liked IHOP because "it's cheap and it's good". IHOP was the first place I ate when I moved to the South Bay; I was hungry and saw one and went in to eat. It was fitting that my last food outing in the South Bay was also at IHOP (though not the one I ate in 8 years ago).

I'm out of the Bay Area for a while, and Geordi has now made it safely to Towson.

The toughest part of the flight with Geordi turned out to be taking him out of his carrying case and walking, with him in my arms, through security. He was quiet the entire flight (thank you Zanex!) and on the 1 1/2 drive from the airport to my parents' house.

I'm in Towson for the next 10 days, getting Geordi used to my parents and my parents used to him, seeing my family, and feeling nervous about the next big step - moving to Oxford.

Lights by Journey