More North American Fun

This past weekend I had a couple of girlie events lined up. Friday night I went out for dinner with the group of North Americans I was with at the baby shower. Since Lori is moving back to Canada in less than two weeks, we thought we could get together for one last hurrah. We met up at a Indian restaurant in Summertown, so I only had to walk a few blocks! We behaved and only drank tea, for a few of the gals had kids to get home to that evening. But a great night of gossipy girl talk was had!



Saturday I went shopping in London with two other girls I've met through Brian's work. Gina is a postdoc in Brian's office and is from Colorado. Laura is from Canada, and is the girlfriend of Jeff, who is another postdoc in Brian's group. The three of us ventured to London for the day for shopping and getting to know each other better. Gina and Laura where pretty successful in their purchases, and I found a couple of tops. But I'm saving up some quid (slang term for pounds, like in the US we say bucks instead of dollars) to buy a dress. Brian and I have been invited to a Summer Soiree from the Royal Society and it's black tie! Fun, but also - yikes!

Colvins and Smiths in Belgium

We had a great quick trip to Belgium to visit Charlie over the weekend. Brian, Kelly, John and Marcy were up early on Friday to catch the city bus, to catch the coach bus to London Heathrow to catch our plane. Arrived in plenty of time and traveling with handicapped Dad Boy has its perks (like the ultrafast lane for security and golf carts to travel around the airport). Plane was about 45 minutes delayed, but arrived in Brussels just fine mid-afternoon where Charlie and his host family (parents Yves and Corrine) were waiting to pick us up. They took us to Lasne which is the town where they live. We were able to meet their kids (Arnaud and SeSe) too. (Actually I've met everyone there when I visited in March.) They have the most delicious fruit tarts and champagne and Belgium beer awaiting and of course it hit the spot! Yves and Corrine were leaving early the next day for a trip, so we didn't stay too long.

They drove us to our hotel in LLN (the town where the baseball diamond is) so we could check in. We relaxed a bit and then headed into the town for more tasty Belgium beer and find a place for dinner. Luckily, one of Charlie's new friend Sarah met us out and helped us order our dinners! The full menu in French is very daunting to look at! However, we were all successful in our dinner orders and had fantastic food. Definitely a big step up from the English pub fare!

Had a long baseball day ahead of us on Saturday so we got some sleep Friday night and had a nice leisure breakfast at the hotel in the morning. Can't go wrong with fresh crossaints and coffee. Yum!

Charlie coaches the Juniors team and they played at 12:15. So we arrived around then to watch their game. Arnaud plays on the Juniors team and he played very well as pitcher and short stop. The Juniors won and they had a pretty loud American cheering section!

Next up was Charlie's team, the Seniors at 3:30. The crowd of Belgiums grew to watch and we were making new friends. Especially when the club house a few steps away has a delicious array of snacks and more Belgium beer! Charlie's friend Sarah is actually the score keeper, and we met a few of his other friends Hugh and Chloe who were there watching. Hugh and Chloe will be moving to Chicago soon for his job, so we were telling them how great the Midwest is! The Seniors played a great game and won. More Belgium beer and burgers were consumed to celebrate. We headed back to the hotel for Charlie to shower up and some of his friends followed us there for a few pints. For dinner, we headed back into town and ended up dining with a large group of baseball guys and their girlfriends at a casual Italian place. We were also joined by the president of the baseball club, Carlos, who dad had fun visiting with and asking all sorts of baseball in Belgium questions. Ma, Dad and Kelly were pretty tired after dinner and headed back to the hotel. But Brian and Charlie did some brother-in-law bonding at the bars with Chalie's buddies and had a good time. Although Kelly wasn't too thrilled when they got home to the hotel and woke her up at 4 a.m.!

P.S. This is what happens when you drink too much Belgium beer!

Christ Church College

The four of us visited Christ Church College, which is one of the largest and most beautiful colleges in Oxford. It's most famously now known for their dining hall, where the Harry Potter movie scenes have been filmed. Mom and I also went to the Wednesday evensong service at 6:00 p.m. in the church. This is the same church where Brian and I went to for Easter. Unfortunately we can't take pics in the church, but just believe me when I say it's absolutely amazing!

I think we tired John Boy out pretty well on this tour walking around, but it was well worth it. And since Brian has a University card, the four of us could get in as visitors for free! Good to have some perks being a part of the University . . .

Oxford pics w/John & Marcy

Sent Mom and Dad off yesterday (Monday) morning early to catch the bus to the airport to head back to the U.S. I think we wore them out pretty good! Mom did a good job recapping what we've done in Oxford, and now I'll share some of the pics with you. I'll blog about Belgium and visiting Charlie in a new post. But for now, here are some more Oxford pics!


Touring the sites of Oxford on top of the double-decker tour bus! Look over there Mum!






Afternoon tea at the Old Parsonage Hotel. Unfortunately the pics with Bettina didn't work out on my camera. But Mom enjoyed meeting one of my friends here for tea & scones.


Name Day dinner (pizza!) and cake with our Swedish neighbors Elin, Magnus and the Name Day honoree Rebecka! She is pretty fond of Brian! Elin baked the tastiest layered cake called a Princess cake in Sweden. It was white cake with rasberry filling and custard cream. Yum!




John Boy at the pub helping the bar staff wrap their silverware. Making new friends of course!

Hello from Marcy!

John and Marcy made it in to visit just fine on Tuesday a.m. They were pretty tired, but Marcy stayed awake until 10 p.m.! John Boy took a little snooze in the afternoon, but was able to get up and make it down to the Kings Arms pub to meet up with a bunch of Brian's colleagues for a few pints that evening. We made a nice little dinner at home so everyone could get some good sleep. Here's Marcy!

'ello from Mum Marcy! If you haven't already started saving $$ to come over to Oxford, do it NOW!!!!! This place is incredible (LOVELY!!). We have done all sorts of exploring in 3 days just here at Oxford University/surrounding colleges. We have climbed bell towers and toured the dining hall at Christ Church where they filmed the dining scenes for Harry Potter. Again, incredible!!! The people are friendly (ask John, he's talked to most of them...) and the city is clean and exciting. Kelly and I went to her Newcomers Club Coffee Wednesday morning, and met some of her local friends. We hung out at a local pub and met many of Brian's associates. And today Kelly and I met her friend Bettina for afternoon tea - scones and clotted cream alone are worth the trip over :) We are heading across the hall tonight to celebrate with K&B's Swedish neighbors for their daughter's "Name Day" (a tradition in Sweden).

Tomorrow we head to Belgium to visit with son Charlie!! His host family will be picking the four of us up at the airport and bringing us to LLN where Charlie lives. He pitches a game Saturday, and the team that he coaches plays also, so we will get to see him in action!! Think he is anxious to see his family (and speak English for a while - although I am anxious to see how well he is speaking French now).

I'm sure Kelly will post more pics after we get back. Isn't she doing a GREAT job keeping us all informed about their adventure? These newfangled things are amazing... :) Blessings! Marcy

How We Live

I've noticed that we live differently than we had in the States. However, we live very similar to other Newcomers or couples we know living in Oxford, who are connected to the academic life somehow like us. We're living without many American necessities. But we also are pretty tech and eco-savvy, so in way, it makes up for things we don't have. Let me tell you what I mean.

Major items we live without in Oxford, which we had in the U.S.
- Car
- TV
- Microwave
- Clothes dryer
- Shower

Items we do have in Oxford, which we use in place of the above:

- Instead of a car, we bought used bicycles to travel around town. There are many reasons for this. Much cheaper than buying a car or using the bus system. It's also difficult to drive a car within Oxford, as Oxford wasn't built to make room for cars thousands of years ago. They also drive on the other side of the road! And when we need to, we can easily catch a bus two blocks from our flat to get to the city centre, and it runs every 7 minutes.

- We still don't have a TV. We could probably find and buy a cheap one. But remember, we still have to pay monthly for a TV license to watch even the basic channels. And British television isn't that great. They mostly have U.S. shows programmed anyway. We can watch TV at the gym and we've figured out how to download and watch our fave American TV shows on the Internet. So I'm caught up with Desperate Housewives and we're watching a lot of Scrubs. We can also download video podcasts from iTunes of the ABC and NBC evening news, so we can keep up with what is happening with the national news. We have an awesome Mac mini computer and 19" flat screen monitor and high-speed broadband. We can rent and watch movies from Blockbuster on our computer screen and it's better quality than a cheap TV would be. We also have two additional laptops and a wireless router. So all three computers can be online, wherever we are sitting in the flat.

- We don't have a microwave. They aren't too expensive to buy a basic one, but I haven't been in a situation where I was thinking I really needed a microwave. We have a electric kettle to heat up water (which supposedly is a necessity here so you can have tea anytime) and we just use the hob (stove top) to cook and heat up food. (We also have an oven, but the standard size is much smaller than American size.) We typically buy and eat our food within a day or so, and cook smaller portions (mainly because food is sold in smaller quantities than in the States). So there isn't much for leftovers to heat up anyway.

- In Oregon, we had a laundry room with washers and dryers and just had to plug quarters. Well here, I'd have to walk our laundry down to the laundrette and pay an insane amount of money to wash there. So we realized it's more economical to buy our own washer and install it. We do have room for a dryer, but it's not common to have a dryer here, and they don't work that well anyway. They also use up a lot of electricity, so your electric bill is higher. The washers are very different than in the U.S., and it takes about 3 hours to do one load of wash (which is a smaller amount too). But they are energy efficient, don't overuse water and have a very high spin cycle. Therefore, most of the water is already out of clothes before we hang dry them in the flat, and they are dry usually within less than a day.

- Well you've read the story earlier about the lack of a shower. This is the one American luxury we wish we did have. But we've learned to do without, and we can still get clean. We are just used to baths now! We have the little hand held shower thing, but I'm finding it more annoying than helpful at this point. We can also shower at the gym, which is what Brian does most of the week.

I'm sure there are more examples, but these were the main ones I thought of so far. If I come up with more, I'll add to this post.

Baby Shower - North American Style

A Newcomer friend, Lori, is due to have her third baby boy in early July, so there was a nice baby shower on Sunday for her hosted by other Newcomer friends. Interestingly enough, baby showers are not common over here in England or Sweden, so I would guess they are not common on the mainland either. Elin said in Sweden, typically friends/family members come to visit you at the hospital or at home and bring you gifts then. But they don't have showers/parties ahead of time.

All the attendees at Lori's shower are Newcomer's and are from North America (I think a fairly equal mix of Americans and Canadians). So we had a proper baby shower for her and she really appreciated it. Her two other children were also born abroad, so she's never had a baby shower. What's great is I haven't had a chance to get to know Lori very well, but we'd visited a couple of times, and it didn't really matter, since that's what's so great about the Newcomer's club. Everyone is supportive of one another and like to get together, even if you're not really close friends. It doesn't matter too much!

Sherry, who is American, hosted the shower at her semi-detached home they are letting (renting) from another British couple. It's furnished with all very nice and new furniture and appliances, and the biggest excitement at the shower was to see an American-sized refrigerator! Now this might sound funny to you, but the standard British fridge size is the about the size of a regular American freezer (the small space on the top.) So the ladies were all admiring the large fridge and wishing it would fit it their tiny flats!

We ate some Mexican snacks (another North American appreciation), played some games (I had to guess baby food flavors, and they were British concoctions!) and she had some fun Oxford gifts to open.

What I really enjoyed was a feeling of doing something "normal" or at least "familiar" by attending a baby shower. Sounds a little funny, and not that I've attended many, but maybe it was the company of North Americans, doing something North American that was really comforting.

London, Part III

Friday Brian had a conference in London, and I tagged along. Well, not to the conference (yikes!) but to travel there and back. A few other Oxford postdoc/grad students also went, so there was a small group of us on the train. There were a number of museums close to Imperial College where the conference was being held. So I spent half the day at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the vast collection of art from centuries ago and from all over the world. It's a huge museum with four floors taking up seven miles if you were to walk around and see everything.

Two of my fave areas were fashion and the Raphael cartoons. (Talk about completely two different things within the same museum.) The fashion section had displays of popular outfits from centuries ago until present time. The V&A just acquired the pearl "Elvis" dress that Princess Diana wore to a visit to Hong Kong in the 1989. It's stunning!

The Raphael cartoons room might be a bit difficult to explain. But cartoons actually just mean painting on paper. The cartoons from Raphael depict different biblical scenes and they are enormous in size. About 2000 pieces of regular sized paper make up one cartoon. The cartoons are actually initial "samples" of a design to be woven into a tapestry. Only one of the actual tapestries hang in the V&A, the others are in the Vatican in Rome. But the cartoons themselves are beautiful and because of their size, they are quite amazing to see.

After I spend a good part of the afternoon in the V&A, I walked up to Harrods, London's best known and most posh department store. Tourists like to visit Harrods to see the food halls. They are very glamorous and have amazing displays of meats, cheeses, fruits, teas, etc. I also walked around on the fashion floors and felt a bit out of place, since the likes of Dolce & Gabanna, Prada, Versace, Chanel, etc., had full spring collections there.

Next I went to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park and walked around. I visited the grounds of Kensington Palace where Princess Diana lived and took some pics. By 6 p.m. the academics were done with their conference, so I met them at a pub called the Queens Arms where many people were enjoying their pints outside on the street. Well, actually it was called a Mew, which is like an alleyway, but much nicer. I think about three Porshes and two Ferraris drove by as we had a few pints!

We decided to grab dinner before we headed back to Oxford, and found an Indian restaurant just up the street. We ordered a number of different things to share. Brian ordered a chicken and pepper dish which said it was hot. But so far, hot here isn't all that hot. Well we renamed it fire chicken after we all tried it and I seriously couldn't think straight for about 5 minutes after tasting it - it was brutal! The rest of the food was great and it was fun to visit with some of the students from Oxford I hadn't met yet. Headed back to Oxford via train and was home by midnight.

May Morning

In Oxford there is a tradition on May 1st. It's referred to as May Morning and I had to check it out. However, since it involves getting out of bed at 5 a.m., I couldn't convince Brian to join me. With the promise to treat myself to a large vanilla latte, I dragged myself out of bed at 5 and rode my bike down to the city centre to see what May Morning was all about.
At 6 a.m., the Magdalen Boys School Choir, climbs to the top of the Magdalen College Bell Tower and sing a hymn, the Hymnus Eucharisticus, a tradition of over 500 years, to greet the dawn. Crowds of people (students, tourists, locals, etc) gather underneath the tower to hear them sing. The crowd is mostly students though, with many of them still in formal wear from attending college balls the night before. This also means that they are still pretty drunk and ranbunctious, which makes for an interesting sight at 6 a.m. After the choir sings (which only lasts for about 10 minutes) then there is general revelry and festivities in the city for a few more hours. Many restaurants and pubs open at 6, so you can either go get a full English Breakfast (which includes eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread/toast and blood sausage - yikes!) and/or start drinking some pints!
I watched the choir sing from the tower, found a large latte and pastry from an open cafe, and then watched some of the Morris dancing in the streets before I headed back home by 7:30. I have to admit, it was fun to check it out, but now I can cross it off my Oxford To Do list, and won't have to get up early next year!

Congrats Shae!

Wanted to send a big congratulations to my high school friend Shae on her marriage to her long-time boyfriend (since the 6th grade!) this past weekend. A number of my other great girlfriends from home made the trip to Florida for the wedding and they all look fantastic like usual! Miss you girls!

Garden Tour

Now I know why the British adore their gardens. The climate and soil and perfect for spring gardens here and so many beautiful flowers and plant grow well and for many weeks (unlike the short growing season of the Midwest). Throughout the city of Oxford, it smells like one big lilac since they are blooming and grow everywhere. White, lavender and dark purple lilacs are abundant and beautiful. Supposedly, everything is blooming almost a month early, since we've had so much sun in April. Which I think is great, but the British are all very worried about it and think it forecasts another extreme heat summer. I say "bring it on!" and anything to them over 75 degrees F, is too hot. So I'm guessing we'll be okay.

This past Monday, I went on a garden tour with the Newcomers. I was with a tad bit older crowd this time (they all could have been my mother in terms of age) and yet still had a great time. Three of us were British, four were American and three were Japanese. We rode in cars to a village south of Oxford called Garsington. In the village is Garsington Manor, which was originally owned by one of the well-known brewery families in the area. Now it's owned by another very well-to-do-family, and they have a production company which stages operas in the summer on the garden grounds. Check out www.garsingtonopera.org to get an idea of this gorgeous place. We looked into ticket prices and this is definitely an activity for the very high class of Oxford and London. Tickets start at 100 pounds per person per show and that is if you were already a "Friend" of the opera (which means you've already donated a ton more money each year). So I think we'll have to pass on that one! Viewing the gardens was really great, but I'm not much for knowing my plants or flower names. It's funny to be around the British when they get excited about one thing in the garden and it's like a 30 minute discussion on this one item. Actually this happened on the tour when we spotted some rhubarb growing. Was at least a 20 minute chat among a few ladies about how to grow it, how to prepare it, how to cook it, etc! Needless to say I sort of zoned out with that and found some more things to take pics of.

For lunch we stopped at a nearby plant nursery since they had a cafeteria. We don't quite do it like that in the States, but it's very common here.


In the afternoon, we visited the University of Oxford arboretum. At first I wasn't too sure how much I might like looking at trees all afternoon. But we were on the hunt to find the fields of blue bells since they are indigenous to England and this is time they are in bloom. We were successful, and it was quite a sight. Seemed as though a whole field had a purplish-blue blanket on it that just went on forever. We then walked through areas of azaleas and rhododendrons, which some were in bloom, but others had not yet. And it was fun to find the resident peacocks living in the arboretum. One was leisurely enjoying a picnic next to a family and the other was showing off its feathers. I can't remember if I'd seen a peacock, so I had fun taking some pics.