Week Six - rotary, meteors, particle physics, and bopping...

Week Six - here goes...

Monday started with a trip to Newbury where I made a presentation to the Newbury Rotary Club. The 39 club members (all male save for one police woman) made me feel very welcome. Chris, one of the Rotarians, picked me up from Oxford and took me to the beautiful Donnington Valley Hotel for the meeting (where I might have had a quick cider in the lobby, thanks to Chris, to calm the nerves). The meal was fantastic and the conversation really fun (they wanted to know all about Florida and alligators and hurricanes...) and the presentation went well. And then, another Rotarian, Tony, kindly drove me all the way back to Oxford. After getting lost only like 4 times, we made it to the dorm. My sense of direction has not improved since crossing the pond.

On Tuesday, I spent 30 minutes at 9:30pm in the dark, freezing English outdoors waiting for a meteor shower. It is quite possible that my British friends played a little trick on me telling me that there was going to be a fantastic meteor shower that night -- I started to wonder about this when I started to loose feeling in my fingers. Needless to say, no meteors shot through the sky. For a brief second, I thought I spotted one, but alas, it was a plane.

On Wednesday, I went to a ridiculously cool dinner at New College. A bunch of Linacre College students had dinner with a group of New College students as part of a "college exchange dinner." We met at their bar for some port wine (so classy! I felt slightly out of place in my fishnets), where the conversations revolved around (no joke) algebraic geometry and sub particle physics. (I mostly did a lot of head nodding and "ohhh"-ing, as, shockingly, I have fairly limited knowledge of subatomic particles. Funny, I must have missed that class in law school.) After the interesting convo, we had a gourmet meal in their 13th century dining hall. I'm not exaggerating when I say it looked just like the Harry Potter movie. See below for yourself. It was unreal. After a few glasses of wine, particle physics made so much more sense.

On Friday, I hit Kellogg College's "Glitter and Glamour Bop" with some friends. (see pic below). Good times.

Before I go, I have a few more items to add to the "you know you're back in college when" list:

1. At least once a week, you stay up all night long to write an essay. No matter how much I plan ahead, it seems to happen each week. I figure if I can stay up all night bopping, I can stay up writing.

2. You are sharing a combo washer/dryer with 9 other people so you no longer have the luxury of taking the washer/dryer time to dry your clothes. Hence, your space heater is covered in wet underwear.

3. The dorm shower is so small that you can't bend over to pick up soap without risking severe head trauma on one of the spouts. Our shower is quite similar to a cruise ship shower, sans the rocking. (Interestingly, I also feel like I'm on a cruise ship when I'm in the Sainsbury grocery store -- whenever the grocery guy announces a sale item, it sounds like the ship captain announcing the midnight buffet on the lido deck.)

4. You spend a few hours sitting on a mat in the gym, being silly and gossiping with your new girlfriends. So fun. I love college.