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.
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