Free Time

Free time is somewhat hard to come by here at Oxford. The 3rd week of term is about to start and so far I've already written and turned in over 20 pages of work. It's definitely a lot more intensive than the typical semester back home. Fortunately, the material has all been really interesting to me so far, especially my current essay which is about Julian failing to revive Roman paganism in the 4th century basically because Christianity had taken too strong of a hold after Constantine. However, even when something is interesting reading 8 different books on it and writing an essay all in one week is a bit exhausting. But in the free time that I have had, I've discovered that Oxford is a fantastic place to be. Most of the buildings actually look like castles, and there is a real castle within walking distance, and really everything is within walking distance. It will be weird to go back home and start driving again; after a few weeks here I'm already used to walking everywhere all the time. Also, it's fairly cold here, but no snow at all and surprisingly hardly any rain, the second of which is quite strange from what I hear. Strange or not, it's been really nice.

I feel like I should have more exciting things to post about, but I really don't. It's hard to explain England, because it seems to mostly be different in a lot of little ways more so than any huge differences. Turf Tavern's Winter Ale is delicious, so is the chicken at Nando's. Almost everybody here dresses really well. The night life is radically different on the weekend than it is on week days. My fears of the other American students here being nerds were completely unfounded, and in fact just about everybody here is really cool. Especially the people here at Wycliffe. I'll try to make more exciting things happen to post about, but it might be difficult when most of my days are spent in libraries or the study room.