What a difference a week makes...

After returning from the land of the Dutch (and thoroughly washing our clothes, to remove any lingering stank of whatever likely-illegal-in-the-uk-substance fannypack-adam breathed all over us), we realized Will only had 7 DAYS left in Oxford. So, we jam-packed every day full of fun (and definitely not full of school work -- however, if you are either of our supervisors and are reading this, that's just a silly American joke; please skip to the next entry about how all I do all day is write my dissertation) and of things that were on Will's 'to do before leaving Ox' list. And thus, the countdown began...

The countdown board outside our dorm door...

Me and The Vic were not pleased.

So, Day 1: After a lovely Italian meal with two of my closest girlfriends (see hot girlfriends below)...

...the boys met us at Grand Cafe for some margaritas! Then, to keep the party rolling, we had a big beer pong/flip cup tournament in the Linacre CR (see partay below)...

Phase 3 of this madness involved swimming in the Linacre fountain - a not-to-miss tradition for any Linacre student. There are no pics of this (at least not ones I'm going to post), but I have seen the CCTV video of our antics (those video monitors must love their job), and I can assure you, it was quite the scene. We are now legendary at Linacre.

And on to Day 2: After a brilliant day at the park, in the sun, with a bunch of our closest friends, and a few matches of survival-quadruple-frisbee (that's right - for Will's last week, we busted out the big guns: the fourth frisbee... It made survivor-triple-frisbee look like child's play. We don't mess around), we had a farewell BBQ/beer pong/flip cup/party at the place of so many fun times in Oxford -- Kev, Anna, and Mark's pad, the infamous 108.

The crew, and Rob's bizarre bruise.

The tourney, where the guest of honor rained the pain.

Day 3: Of course, this was filled with World Cup! After watching basically every game in the tourney (again, attn supervisors, disregard this 'wild' exaggeration), Will had to see the final. We had a great time yelling at the telly with our buds.

Day 4: We went to the Lamb and Flag, a famous 17th century pub where The Inklings (a literary group including C.S. Lewis) used to meet, to play some card games and laugh with Will's closest friends.

Day 5: Will went into London for the final time (for now) and then we had our last date night (for now) in Ox.

Day 6: Me and my girlfriends on the rowing team (again, see hot girlfriends Jeanne, Kine, and Erica below), took Will out to row for the first time!

What a blast. He was a natural, as I knew he would be, and we had a fantastic outing in a IV, which is very easy to tip. Will's natural athleticism, enthusiasm, and desire not to fall into the dirty Isis water and catch a strange rash, allowed us to row ourselves steadily down the river (with guidance from Andrew, of course, our designated coach, and picture-taker, for the day, who hollered every time another boat was about to ram us. What a multi-tasker.)


Then we spent the night at the Royal Oak drinking Sangria, eating ourselves stupid (the food was so mmmm), and playing Things. Perfect day.

The dreaded Day 7: After tearfully saying goodbye to my best girlfriend, Jeanne, who happened to leave for the States that day (talk about your double-whammy) and running after her bus yelling 'don't leave me!', I spent the rest of the day hugging Will, tearing up, and then wiping mascara off of his shirt(s). We did our last tours of Oxfordy things, seeing the Duke Humfrey's Library was a highlight -- it was built in 1488 and is the most beautiful library I've ever seen... painted, wood-carved ceilings, walls covered floor to ceiling in shelves of ancient manuscripts... it's no wonder Harry Potter was filmed there. Unreal. Then, we had the final dinner at Aziz, a cool Indian restaurant, with Will's buddies.

The Last Supper.

After dinner, we headed to the location of so many hits to our bank account: The Oxford Blue for Thursday poker night.

Will has played tons and tons of Thursday night poker with these British guys, and made some lifelong friends. From what I saw at that pub that night, it looks like they're really going to miss their yank mate. As he walked out of the pub for the final time, they showed their love.

To them, and to me, he's a legend.

Will is on a plane right now headed home for South Florida. Aside from not having to worry about falling into the toilet (again) during my 3am bathroom break since Will won't be here to leave the seat up, the next 3 weeks are going to be very tough without him. Oxford won't be the same. To our Florida friends: please take care of him (and as I stressed to our guy friends already, that doesn't mean to take him to a casino or a strip club) until I get home. To Will: I love you, sweetheart, and I miss you terribly already. Call me. PS) The Vic says Hello.

Hit (on) by bikes and prostitutes: the Amsterdam Adventure

After a very uneventful July 4^th (as, shockingly, the Brits don’t celebrate that great American holiday commemorating our freedom from England), we headed off for a holiday in Amsterdam! I had heard so much about Amsterdam’s beauty and ‘interesting’ culture, that I thought we had to check it out. So, we hopped on a 45-minute plane ride to arrive in Holland/Netherlands to get in touch with our inner Dutch.

Day 1: And the hits just keep on comin’

The first thing we noticed about this city the second we hopped off the train was the zillions of bikes chained to anything that looked immobile around town. I mean, there were even bikes chained to railings dangling over canals. Unreal. I thought Oxford had a lot of bikes until I saw Amsterdam. Total number of bikes in this city: 750,000. Total number of times a bike grazed/hit us during our 4 day stay: approximately 324… give or take a few dozen, depending on whether you count the times, during our bike ride on Day 3, that we actually hit each other.

The second thing we noticed was the beautiful canals. Each street was incredibly picturesque, with boats meandering up and down the waterways, cute iron-clad bridges crossing the canals, and thousands of narrow 3-story houses built in the 1500’s side-by-side with colorful shutters and blooming flowers on the balconies.

And, finally, the third thing we noticed was, yes, you guessed it, the Red Light District. The only time I’ve seen anywhere near that many tanned, made-up, bikini-clad women in high heels (with curiously, unnaturally large boobage) was during Spring Break in Miami. Each street contained a different type of woman (young/old, thin/curvy, blonde/brunette, varying skin tones, ethnicities, and attractiveness), or I guess I should say, different type of woman or man, as Will informed me that the ladies that I saw in what I termed the ‘tall, muscular woman’ section, were actually men.

In addition to the ladies, we noticed a ton of porn shows, sex shops, and interesting looking ‘coffee’ houses. I can’t describe the things the owners of these various establishments said in order to entice us to enter, as their sales pitches are wholly inappropriate for blogging (and, not to mention, my naïve ears), so I’ll just have to leave that to your imagination. I’ll just say that they were graphically descriptive of the services that they were peddling, so much so that I was freaked out and scurried quickly by any such shops whilst pretending not to understand English.

Also, it was quite bizarre to wander the pretty canals of the city and smell someone smoking marijuana at literally all hours. Breakfast, lunch, dinner time – it didn’t matter; we couldn’t walk five feet without a whiff of the gange. In fact, one strange tourist named Adam, who we had unluckily asked to take our picture on a pretty canal, and who we were fairly certain had recently eaten at one of those special coffeehouses, even begged us to take some of whatever substance he was smoking because, to quote Adam, he wanted ‘to share the love with you good people.’ It’s nice to get a compliment like that, even from a high tourist wearing a fanny-pack that had trouble remembering his last name. Even in his Amsterdamy haze, he was able to recognize greatness. That’s right Adam, we are good people. You can keep your bizarre pocket full of unidentifiable and clearly too-strong intoxicants though. We’re good.

After checking into our amazing hotel (The Pulitzer, which was actually 25 canal homes combined to form one massive, and beautiful, hotel right on a main canal), eating a fab Thai lunch, and experiencing Dutch culture via seeing bikes, canals, prostitutes, porn shops, and what we’re hoping was just pot, we headed to some of Amsterdam’s historical landmarks. For our first day, we chose to go to the Anne Frank House, where the Frank family hid during World War II. Walking in the small area that all eight people lived in, hearing the voices of Anne’s father and her friend describing seeing her in a concentration camp after the family’s hiding space was found, and seeing Anne’s actual diaries was incredibly moving. She became a real person to me, instead of just a character in a story that I read in grade school. It was haunting and terrifying to think of what happened to her. We are blessed to have her diary as a constant reminder of that past.

Day 2: Hup Holland Hup!

On our second day, besides enjoying some killer room service and a stellar meal in Amsterdam’s shopping district at Café PC, we went to what is now one of my favorite museums: the Van Gogh Museum. He is probably my favorite painter, and this museum had some of my favorite, and quite famous, pieces, like Sunflowers, Irises, Almond Blossom, and Pink Peach Trees. I spent hours staring at these beautiful paintings, imagining him painting them, and hearing the stories of his tortured and interesting life. Lovely afternoon.

Then, the main event: after the museum, we stumbled upon a huge field where they were going to play the Netherlands v. Uruguay game on an enormous screen. So, we got some huge, inflatable orange hats, some Heineken, and some orange shirts and plopped ourselves down in the middle of the field to prepare for the big game. We had no idea what we were in for. It turned out that the field, Museumplein, was the place to watch the game. 80,000 Dutch streamed on to the field, and it was happy mayhem hours before the game even started. CNN was there to capture the madness, and Will and I were even filmed by a Dutch TV crew who, I think, due to our bright orange accouterments, assumed we were Dutch. On the stage under the screen was a famous Dutch singer belting out traditional Dutch tunes and people (including these two Americans) were all jumping around, dancing, kicking soccer balls (I mean, footballs) in the air, running with Holland flags, and blowing on vuvuzelas ‘til their faces turned blue. The girls next to us painted my face with red, white, and blue stripes – like the Dutch (and American, ha!) flag, and I was cheering like I was a die-hard Dutchman, only I had no clue what anyone was saying. That didn’t matter though, because football, like love, is the universal language. When the Netherlands scored that first goal, everyone started screaming like they had won the lotto, no matter what language they spoke. It was unreal. And, ‘we’ won the game. Day 2 Amsterdam : total success.

I'm so Dutch. Look at me blend.

Day 3: suicidal bicycling

After a quick jog through the canals and an amazing breakfast at a canal café, we took our lives into our own hands (and into the hands of 750,000 other Dutch bicyclers) and rented bikes to cruise around town. The amount of cars, motorcycles, and other bicycles that came within centimeters of launching me into a canal, made me want to simultaneously vomit and pee myself. Bicyclers are much more aggressive than they are in Oxford, and the rental bike was way heavier than my Henry, so I was slightly terrified and just tried to keep my eyes on the road, the cars, and the direction Will was taking so that I wouldn’t lose him – but the canals, clouds of pot smoke, and flashes of boob were totally distracting. After I hopped off that bike, I needed some ice cream and shopping to recover (or so I convinced Will – creative avoidance of diet and shopping ban eh? I know. To quote fanny-pack Adam, I’m good.) Despite the near injuries and near soiling myself, however, I still managed to have a fantastically fun time touring the city on my Dutch Henry. We cycled in the beautiful park, Vondelpark, like NYC’s Central Park, and checked out the Flower Market and some street performances, including a great violinist. It really was an amazing way to see the city. And then we capped off the day watching the Spain v. Germany game in a cool neighborhood restaurant with some locals. What a blast.

Day 4: Dutch apple pie and Dutch ovens

After apple pancakes and an English breakfast (we must have been homesick, eh?), we took a leisurely canal cruise to see the city from another angle. It was very nice and peaceful to tour the city by boat after the stressful attempt at extreme city biking, Dutch style. We relaxed, ate a ton of ice cream and Dutch apple pie, and pondered things like whether they called a Dutch Oven a ‘Dutch Oven,’ or just an ‘Oven.’ Solving world dilemmas we were. It was a lovely end to a lovely trip. We had such a great time in that beautiful city, enjoying its history and culture. Aside from nearly being launched into a canal and accidentally entering a sex shop while looking for underwear (I had run out, so Will sent me into a shop to get more, but when the cheapest pair of underwear was 91 euros, I realized it wasn’t normal underwear or your average lingerie shop), it was the perfect travel experience.

Dear Time: Will you please stop already?!

So, 9th and 10th week are here. To quote our friend Mark, OMAG. Where, oh where, has the time gone? We're just having too much fun. I know, now you feel really sorry for us, right? So let's see, what have we been up to... besides working on my dissertation (yes, both of us are actually doing schoolwork whilst here), I went to an end of the year dinner for those of us who are 'going down' (i.e. leaving Linacre this year. funny phraseology, eh?) and then had to entertain myself for the weekend since Will went on a 'boys trip' (which I was assured involved no bachelor-party-esque hired entertainment) to Devon. Here is a picture of him with his boys below. My mind was at ease when I saw this one:

Yes, they are playing poker, in a hot-tub, on a homemade inflatable poker table. Boys, I think you may have discovered a void in the market for floating poker tables. So, whilst Will played golf and hot-tub poker with the dudes, I kept myself busy by rowing, punting, watching World Cup, clubbing with the crew at Kukui, managing to roll in nettles whilst in the lawn, covering myself with hydrocortisone to dull the pain, and having brunch with my girl Jeanne, not necessarily in that order. It was quite the weekend.

Once Will was back, we spent each night doing fun Britishy activities. On Monday, we went to dinner and a movie with our friend Anna -- everytime Russell Brand spoke, I laughed til I peed.

On Tuesday, we went to a Rotary BBQ outside of Bicester with the whole Rotary Club of Bicester. Aside from embarrasing myself by eating my weight in cheese, biscuits, and pudding (a British, and less-fatty-sounding, way of saying 'dessert' ... actually, little sidenote on that terminology and how it thwarted my attempt to eat myself stupid: when I went up to the dessert table, and was trying to figure out which nine desserts I'd sample and strategically cram into my dessert bowl, I had a very 'who's on first?' moment with the host. 'Oh, is this pudding?' I said to my host, pointing to a liquid-looking substance. 'Yes, it's pudding', was the response, so I promptly decided that it would be choice #1 of 9 and scooped it into my bowl as the base layer. Then, however, after I had strategically piled 5 other desserts on top of it that I thought might compliment each other, and was eyeing something chocolately, I was like 'Wait, is this pudding?' and he was like, 'Yes, that's pudding.' And I was like, 'You mean, this is pudding.' And he was like 'Um, yes, that is pudding.' SO, long story short, they were all 'pudding.' They were British 'pudding' (i.e. dessert), but they were most definitely not American pudding (i.e. liquidy vanilla/chocolate goodness). Result: a base layer of key lime pie filling, and 8 desserts piled on top of it that were not meant to be served a la lime. Big limey eww.)

On Wednesday, we went into London. I conducted interviews with trainee solicitors at the London office of Freshfields' (a huge international law firm, 24,000 lawyers, 28 offices around the world) for my dissertation on legal education. It was incredibly interesting to see the enormous office in the middle of London's legal district. They set me up in a conference room with white glove catering service. (Literally, a cart pushed by someone wearing a tux-like uniform rolled by every 10 minutes with fresh coffee and cookies.) It was first-class all the way. All the people I interviewed (which I met through my lawyer friends in Miami, shockingly -- it's such a small world) were incredibly nice and made me feel so welcome. Don't get scared mom, but I could actually see myself working there. In addition to conducting interviews that day, we wandered around the city, checking out what it would be like to live there. It is just so huge, and there is just so much going on -- you could never be bored. We had a lovely Pho lunch with a couple that we know from Linacre, Sean and Anne, and had a fantastic homecooked Italian meal by another couple that we know from UCL, Mary and Fin. They made London feel like home. What a fantastic day.

On Thursday, we headed to the countryside for yet another fantastic dinner party and homecooked meal by my friend Jennifer who is on my course at Oxford. She lives in a 500 year-old house with an 81 year-old adorable landlady named Sally who had so much spunk and personality, and so many stories to share, that we spent the entire night gabbing and laughing with her. She didn't act a day older than me and fit right in with all of us 'kids.' I hope I'm just like Sally in my 80's! In addition to hearing Sally's stories about her time with Orlando Bloom (she basically knows everyone in the UK) and the ghosts that haunt the house, stuffing our faces with Jennifer's delicious mexican food and Guinness chocolate cake, line dancing, playing Sally's antique piano, and wandering around the beautiful gardens and house with endless staircases and hidden hallways, we just talked and laughed the night away. It was one of the most memorable nights we've had in Oxford. Thanks to Jennifer and Sally!

Dinner Party outside the house.

It literally looks like you walked into a Jane Austen novel.

Thought I was joking about line-dancing? Nope.

Jennifer made me wear my boots!

The field right outside her home.

I've never stood in grass that high - it literally reached my waist.

On Friday, in addition to watching World Cup and hitting the Bridge, we punted! Will, one of my best girlfriends, Jeanne, and our friend Andrew all headed to the New College punts to punt ourselves down the River Cherwell whilst sipping Pimm's that was clearly not mixed with the proper proportion of Sprite. It was quite an adventure. We had an absolute blast.

Will, the master puntsman.

Showing off my punt skillz.

Me and the J.

Snyders do punt.

We thought it made perfect sense to have a race after disembarking the punt. This could have had something to do with the strength of the Pimm's and dearth of Sprite.

And, that, in a tad more than a few words, was our week.

It was packed, it was awesome, it was Oxford.

Dear Time,

Slow the hell down.

Sincerely,

The Snyders

Off to Uwanda... or was it Raganda??

It's the end of an era. Eighth Week, in addition to being the final week of my final term as an Oxford student (noooooo!), was also the week that Kev (Will's, and my, best friend over here) left for his African adventure. He's now in Uwanda, or possibly Raganda-- not even he is sure which (hence the combination Uganda/Rwanda terminology)-- on a two-month work assignment. With every end comes a new beginning though, right? (Will and I are telling ourselves this to console each other as we are still mourning the loss of Mr. James.) In a way though, Eighth Week proved this adage to be true... as one plane was about to sweep Kev off to Africa, another plane brought in my girl Aisha from America. So, we spent the week finishing up my schoolwork, attending end of the year dinners (including a formal hall and the Sports Dinner for all the Linacre athletes - yes, shockingly it does include me, the rower), attending end of the year lunches (at Kellogg College and Linacre), attending end of the year parties (including the Rubix Cube party where everyone started the night in six different colors and attempted to end the night wearing only one, making for some interesting outfits), watching Linacre's production of a Midsummer Night's Dream (which took place in the quad, right outside our dorm window), taking Aisha all around Oxford to show her its awesomeness, and tearfully saying goodbye to Kev on Kev. Thus, I give you: Eighth Week, in pictures...

We had an amazing dinner at The Trout, a fantastic restaurant out in the countryside in a seventeeth century building. It overlooked a waterfall and peacocks sauntered past us whilst we sipped Pimm's. Faaaaaaantastic.

Aish and I might have done some touristy shopping.

See if you can spot our purchases above.

Touring the city : Trinity College is just magnificent.

And, no visit to Linacre is complete without a dip in the fountain.

Rubix Cube Party... thought I was kidding about the outfits, eh?

Nope, Oxford students don't mess around with their fancy dress.

Sports Dinner:

Me, Kine (half of the stern pair in our boat), and Nicole (captain of the rowing team)

For Kev's Farewell Party, after an awesome bbq at his house, we returned to the scene of the crime (or at least the scene of WAY too many hearts games): the Vic.

A farewell lunch at The Bear a few days before he left.

(Yes, he really milked this 'leaving town' thing... dinners, lunches... you'd think he was going to Africa or something)

Not even my sad face was enough to make him stay out of Africa.

On the day Kev actually got on the bus to leave, we had yet another farewell lunch at the Turf, where we all cried and told each other how awesome we are. We're incredibly sad to see Kev go, but we know we'll see him again soon. (Soon, right Kev, right?!?) This was actually good practice for Will's departure in a few weeks. I'm going to freak out, for certain, when he leaves July 16. The only thing keeping me sane is knowing that it will be nice to get to spend a few more weeks with my new love: Oxford. Oh, Oxford... how am I ever going to let you go?! (aside from the obvious, of course, that I can no longer afford you without getting a job. minor detail. All those bop costumes really started to add up! You just can't skimp on bop though. Words to live by. You can thank me later.)