Oxford, Bruv!

The weekend went by too fast, and now I am contemplating another week of class. (Well—okay, a few days of class, but still.) My roommate has been away on a trip to Barcelona and it has been heaven having the room to myself. Tom, Enda, and I celebrated my freedom from roommates on Thursday night by eating cheese and digestives (aka crackers) and playing Monopoly in my room. The next night I cooked dinner with my friend Courtney, because neither of us knows much cooking and we are determined to learn. We made spicy mayonnaise chicken and homemade mashed potatoes and it was delicious, but I have to admit we wouldn’t have been as successful if her flatmate Liam hadn’t stayed in the kitchen to guide us.

Then I went over to Mike’s kitchen for dinner with the Family (as we call our group). I wasn’t going to eat anything, but Grayson and Tyler (the boys did all the cooking!) made a meal that put mine to shame: homemade mashed potatoes, a veggie mix, and chicken much better than mine. So yes, I ate two meals…so sue me. Grayson also bought a pomegranate and I had pomegranate seeds for the first time, which are addictive. Then we played Monopoly—weird that I played it twice in two nights because I don’t even like Monopoly, but Grayson was excited about finding the British version (pounds instead of dollars obviously and the names are different—there’s Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, King’s Cross, etc.). Possibly the best part was Mike, who’d never played before but kept giving away all his money trying to cut all these deals with everybody.

On Saturday we went on the school-sponsored trip to Oxford. We had a nice English gentleman as a tour guide, but I wish he would’ve told us more about the history. I was looking forward to seeing which I would like better, Oxford or Cambridge, but it’s hard to tell. I definitely learned more about Cambridge and I think we did more there. At first we walked around with the tour guide. We saw the college—I want to say it’s called Christ College—where they filmed the Great Hall scenes for the Harry Potter movies. You could go in but it cost 8 pounds, so I decided against it. We did get to explore New College for free, where we entered one of the dining halls and it looked close enough to something from an HP movie. I can’t imagine going to school there. All the dorms are in these beautiful old buildings. Must be nice! We also saw the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian Library, which is in an area filled with buildings ranging from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth. Pretty cool. I was hoping to run into Philip Pullman somewhere, but no luck!

Had lunch at a pub called the King’s Arms, where I got a pretty boring roast beef sandwich. The chips (fries) were good though. One of the people I was with did get the ploughman’s lunch, though—I got to try it and I liked it! Also, something really random happened while we were there. I looked up and all of these characters out of Super Mario Brothers were trooping in through the door. They were a bunch of Oxford students in homemade (but really good) costumes. I saw Mario, Wario, Princess Peach, Bowser, Koopa Troopa, and (best of all) Toad, big mushroom hat and all. I was a bit disappointed there was no Yoshi, but you can’t get everything out of life, I guess. It was bizarre. I managed to get a few sneaky pictures of them, though. On the way out we asked what it was for. They said they were just celebrating being halfway done with the school year and decided to dress up in costumes just for fun. I respect that.

Probably the coolest part of the trip was this open area we found in New College—a big yard filled with old trees and encircled by crumbly, medieval-looking stone walls. Everything was scattered with snow and so pretty. We walked around there for a long time just taking pictures. Afterwards we tried to get into the Bodleian Library, but it was too late for tours so we ended up going to a bookstore that’s supposedly in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the biggest. And it was enormous. You could get lost in a place like that!

Then we got back on the bus and the school took us to a shopping center called Bicester (pronounced “Bister” for some odd reason) Village. I don’t know why they took us there because it was full of places no one could afford—Prada and Tommy Hilfiger and so on. There was actually a line to get into the Prada! We ended up going into a Pret a Manger and sitting for 2 hours. You see this Pret a Manger restaurant all over the place here—I saw so many in London. It sells sandwiches, soups, coffee, etc. I haven’t actually eaten there yet because I was still too full at the time. I did get made fun of for calling it “Prett-ay-Mayn-jer.” It’s a French name so it’s “preh ah mahn-jhay.” I think I like the way I say it better.

On Sunday Mike, Andrea, Zhen and I went to St. Alban’s, which turned out to be kind of a fail because everything closes at 5 on Sundays. But Andrea got the shoes she wanted and we had dinner at Nando’s, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Nando’s is really big in Canada and the UK and it’s known for its spicy chicken. It was pretty good, but I prefer Chick-Fil-A personally! The Brits don’t really seem to do fried chicken much; everything is always grilled. This is why I am very much looking forward to eating my mom’s fried chicken when I get back home.

And I guess that pretty much catches you up. Tomorrow is Mike’s birthday so we are throwing a surprise party for him. Other than that, it’s just school and (possibly) a trip to Windsor Castle on Saturday!