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.