Our entire program spent the last week living at University College Oxford.
We took our normal classes with our normal professors (who already are 'tutors' from Oxford), but we lived in the University College dorms and did a bunch of activities.
The most eventful of the activities was probably something called "Punting." It is the picture where I am standing on the back of a boat. The deal is that four people sit in the boat and one person stands on the back and attempts to propel / steer the thing with a really long metal pole. The only issue was that we were only supposed to do it for an hour, but (long story short) we got kind of discombobulated and lost and ended up taking about three. There was even one point where Tessa got out of the boat and Nicole and I took turns sitting in the front, each of us holding an end of the pole as Tessa pulled it along from land.
The food was great in Oxford! Well... not so much at the actual school, but when we went out to eat, it was phenomenal! Our group even got to meet up with my friend Mary (who is going to Oxford this semester) one night for gourmet pizza, which was really nice.
We climbed to the top of the tower on the Church of St Mary the Virgin and got gorgeous views of the entire city.
The last night we had a lovely three course dinner... all fancy and everything. There was goat cheese and roasted figs... followed by steak on baby leeks, potato, and roasted cherry tomatoes... and ending with pear and something desserty thing (that was really really good). We all got dressed up, and attempted to eat with the correct fork and drink from the correct glass all night. It was really nice.
Today we came home, but on the way we stopped at Blenheim Palace on the way. It is a HUGE palace... I am not exaggerating! There is a lake that took a thousand men a year to dig by hand and gold encrusted everything and beautiful paintings. The best part, however, was the gardens! It reminded me of being at the Fells in New Hampshire or the Arboritum in Dallas, TX. Anyway, it was beautiful, and I'm sorry that I'm skipping a lot of details about this trip, but I have to go pack because I leave with my housemates for Italy tomorrow! SPRING BREAK!
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