On Oxford (part i: Arriving)

Made it.

Whew.

I just flew in and boy are my arms tired . . . sorry for that. Jet lag will mess with your reasoning skills. This is the first time I have ever had to deal with serious jet lag. There is a five hour difference between here and home and a six hour difference between here and the airport from which I left with my friend and traveling companion Eric. If that was not enough to throw me, flying through the night, which ended up being an extremely short night since we were heading east, definitely messed with me. I only got a few hours of sleep and sleep in a plane is never the same as sleep in real life. But hey, they served us a snack and two meals, so I guess I can't complain.

There wasn't much to see as we flew. There was that dreadful combination of night, cloudiness, and flying over ocean that made the window or aisle toss up rather irrelevant. However as we approached our destination, we flew over Ireland just as dawn was breaking and got to watch tiny, distant city lights get swallowed up in the sunrise. That and diving into the clouds over London were both very cool.

Getting from London to Oxford was actually our biggest difficulty. Signage was pretty good inside Heathrow, the airport where we landed, but the Central Bus Station was a night mare. We finally got tickets for a boss to Oxford, walked out to the stands where buses were waiting, and headed for our bus. We were waiting in the queue for our bus when it suddenly pulled out and drove away. This left us bewildered until we realized that we were in the wrong queue. Instead of waiting in a ten minute line to pay five pounds to exchange our ticket, we decided to chance it and hope that the next bus would accept our tickets for the bus that had just left. Fortunately, he did and we were finally on our way to Oxford.

It is amazing to see the buildings that are so much older here. Everything is so much more ingrained into the environment, kind of like it has settled there and the landscape has grafted in the houses and streets after years of living alongside them. Then there was the Jacobean styled McDonald's we passed. That was weird.

Our residence for the term is called the Vines: it is a fantastic old brick house down a narrow lane and it has all sorts of creaks and groans and drafts to make us feel welcome. The room is a lot more spacious than I had expected, and I think I will be able to make myself quite at home here.

It is still weird to me that I am actually here right now.