The Epilogue (or The Aftermath, or "Dear God, nooo!!! I don't want it to end!! why meeeee?!!!!): Back in the U.S. of A.

It has been six months now since we have been back on American soil. So, that means for six months, I have been meaning to write my final post, reflecting on the year and concluding this blog. So far, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it -- I'm not sure if it's because I don't want to admit that the year is really over, or because I'm not quite sure how to sum up in one post how unbelievably surreal it was to spend the last year in Oxford. Well, in my sixth month of waking up to sunshine and heading off to work, with nary a British accent, "cheers, mate!", bop costume (although some of the SoBe fashion is a close match), or fifteenth-century pub in sight, it finally settled in: we are back in the USA. I tried to hold on to our status as Oxford residents, as honorary Brits, as long as I could -- I wore my Jack Wills clothes around whilst telling Will 'ello!' -- but, alas, I "'ello" no more. The last of my English toiletries are used up (that Boots deodorant couldn't last forever, and I finally replaced my Beatles toothbrush), the Vic is back from her UK tour (after Jeanne patiently allowed security at three different airports to inspect the bust innards as she imported the Vic safely into the US), and my Union Jack keyring symbolically broke and fell at the threshold of our Brickell condo. It's official; Oxford it over. Hence, it is time. I must write the final chapter. Despite my desire to never honor the bird who chased me down and pecked at me like I was made of bread crumbs, here is my swan song.

First, I want to make sure I take time to reflect on how I spent my year and on all the experiences I had. With time, my memory will fade, so really, this is to remind myself just how awesome it was (without reading the whole tome that this blog has become; lucky you, readers. i.e. mom). Luckily, the presentations I have been making to local Rotary clubs lately on my year can assist me with this. This is basically what I told them. After looking back at my pictures, I can lump my activities into five categories:

(1) earning a degree -- I got my Masters in Higher Education, with a focus on legal education. I got to experience the Oxford tutorial system and learn from the best, thanks to Hubert, David, and my lovely classmates.

(2) participating in all thing Rotary -- I attended meetings, gave presentations, volunteered, took trips like the ones to Windsor, Blenheim, London, Eastbourne, and Leicester, and made a new English family, thanks to Jola, Lars and all the many Rotarians I met over the year.

(3) participating in college life (see chart below for time allocation) -- I rowed, I bopped, I wore a gown to dinner like the kids in Harry Potter. I sculpted, made mosaics, watched rugby and cricket, played croquet, punted, drank Pimm's, swam in the fountain, pub-quizzed, and partied whilst wearing crazy costumes (50's, 70's, 80's, 90's themes for bops entitled glitter, carnival, kink, and jingle). Most importantly, I made life-long friends from all around the world.

(4) learning English culture -- It misted, drizzled, rained, and snowed. I learned all the different ways water could fall from the sky. I learned to love tea, bangers and mash, yorkshire pudding, and digestive biscuits (I still have some biscuit remnants on my thighs to prove it). I tried to learn the lingo (trainers, knickers, plaster, pudding, mate, quid, bloody hell!, wanker, fit, ace, brill, ginger, pull, tidy, on yer bike!, and, of course, the x) and the accent ('ello, gov'na!), and to decipher what my friends from Scotland and Liverpool were saying; the sarcastic sense of humo(u)r, however, will take years for me to grasp. I pubbed, I biked, I tried not to be the loud yank, and I embraced the sports (like croquet!), the games (like pooh sticks and dragon boat racing!), and the holidays (like Bonfire Night! although it couldn't compare to our Fourth of July, which, no, I did not celebrate there). Basically, I tried to be British. Just like Madonna.

(5) travelling in the UK and around the world -- We went to Salisbury, Stonehenge, Stratford upon Avon, Devon, London, Lisbon, Lagos, Morocco, Rome, Venice, Greece, Croatia, Turkey, Amsterdam, and Ireland. And it only made us itch for more.It was a busy year. I tried to soak up as much Oxford as I could. I tried to see as many different things and cities as I could. Travelling like we did and living in a different country really gave me a new perspective on the world, how small it is, how different our culture is, but how people are still the same at the core. I tried to cram a lifetime's worth of experiences into my short visit. Our time there made me realize how short a year really is -- it just flew by before we knew it. We moved back into the Miami condo the exact date we had left for the UK one year earlier, and it felt like the blink of an eye. Now all I have are my many memories, my broken keychain, some faded Jack Will's hoodies, and dreams of life and friends in Oxford (who, in my dreams, to my surprise, speak in yank accents - 'ello!)And now, to conclude.

Honestly, in a lot of ways, the year we spent in Oxford seems like one really long, extremely detailed, amazing dream. The kind of dream that, when you start to wake up, you try to force yourself to fall back asleep, just to get to experience more of it. When we got back, the first few weeks felt a little strange -- like we were just on a little holiday in Florida before we were supposed to head back home to Oxford. After that initial strangeness wore off though, we slipped back into life here like the whole year in the UK had never happened. Nothing in Florida had changed. Despite a short stint living on our buddy Sam's futon, we moved back into the same condo. We were doing the same legal jobs. We were walking the same streets, with the same people, in the same flip flops. How is it possible [gasp] that life just went on as usual without us, without anything changing? and without the whole of Miami mourning our absence?! (Other than my mom, who I think did mourn for a while... until she discovered skype, that is.) It just seemed bizarre to me that I had experienced all that I did (traveling, learning new cultures, customs, meeting new people, eating different foods, hearing different perspectives, dealing with crazy weather... living a completely different life), so much crammed into twelve months, while everything here stayed exactly the same. (Well, almost everything: our house plants actually did better under the care of our tenant. They have been under my supervision now for six months, and I probably could have called the time of death weeks ago. I keep thinking that maybe the brown will turn green again given enough gallons of water. I guess even water has its limits.) And it suprised me that I myself could slip back into my pre-Oxford life so easily, without a trip in my flip-flops or a "quid" sneaking its way into conversation. The thing is, though, that I might have easily transitioned back into Miami lawyer life, but it just doesn't seem as exciting as it once did. Now that we've had a little taste of adventure and travel and change, we want more. It's like when I first got glasses -- they were a pain in the butt at first, but then it was fantastic as I could see details as I never had before (fantastic, aside from discovering that I had many more freckles than I was previously aware of), and there was no way I was going back to the blur. Well, this past year abroad was the glasses. Right now is the blur. So I'm just going to have to find a way to get the glasses, albeit a different pair, back.

More to come on that in the future.

It might be a good way to finish, or at least to end this particular chapter, by quoting something I saw sprayed on a sidewalk as grafitti during our year. (although less cool since, thanks to google, I have learned some random dude said it, but I'm still going to tell myself a random, insightful traveler thought it and wanted to share it with the sidewalkers)

If you want to live a magnificent life,
know that you are the author of your story,

and every day,

you have the opportunity

to write a new page.

I'm ready to write again . . .