Blogging Abroad: Getting Settled

I find that the amount of things I have done this week is slightly overwhelming, so I'm going to try to keep it as concise as possible. This week was one intense in orientation. There was a lot of exploring and establishing of routines and habits this week, as well as a lot of pushing out into the community. What follows is a list of the things I did that I found enjoyable interspersed with various things that I have discovered that I really appreciate about being where I am. Enjoy!

~Having a super cheap and super yummy English breakfast in a pub with new friends (and having a pint of beer come with the meal...)

~Squishing into the Eagle and Child pub with about 20 people

~Church at St. Ebbes

~Singing in church with a bunch of British accents

~Meeting some Oxford locals

~Wandering downtown Oxford and some of the University's colleges with my new buddy, Chloe and a bunch of others over the course of the week

~Marveling at the architecture and realizing that our schools will be aesthetically humbled in comparison from now on...

~Having tea with the group every morning and/or afternoon

~Breakfast buddies

~The St. Giles festival

~Walking and biking EVERYWHERE and realizing that I WILL have legs of steel by the end of all this (along with that, figuring out different traffic laws for pedestrians and bikers)

~Being part of The Vines biker gang for the first day of orientation (about 40 of us riding at one time)

~Going to an Evensong service at Christ Church Cathedral

~High church services in general

~Mysteriously losing my bike... and getting it back again!

~Exploring the libraries (that I'm sure I'll be VERY familiar with by the end of the semester...)

~Being able to flash my university card and get into places closed to the public

~The first chapel of the term

~Creating and exploring our memory palaces with some of my fellow students

~Great late-night chats

~Watching and discussing TED talks

~Visiting the ruins of a Roman British city

~Walking through a gorgeous Gothic cathedral

~Encyclopedic tutors and staff members

~Figuring out how I'm going to be feeding myself over the course of the term (yay for food groups!)

~Finally starting to get a grasp on what I will be doing class-wise

That's about the extent of it for this week. It's been kind of a whirlwind with all that and general orientation seminars going on throughout the week, but a good kind of whirlwind. This next week promises the same with a trip to London planned and my first paper due. So far, there has been lots of excitement, but apart from even that, I am seeing just how much I am starting to love it here for many various reasons. Here's hoping the academic side of things prove as positive an experience (I'm betting it will).

The road goes ever on and on,

Dani