Oxford Castle

I toured the Oxford Castle today with the Newcomer's Club. I tried to sign up for this tour last term, but it was cancelled. So was fun to check out the local castle. Now really, it's not a castle in terms of a romantic, beautiful, royal castle. It's just the remains of a Saxon castle tower built in like the 1100s and then a jail was built hundreds of years later. The interesting fact is that this jail was used for prisoners right up until 1996. Talk about a medieval punishment! Now, the entire area of castle, prison, and mound has been turned into a modern-day tourist attraction and entertainment center with posh restaurants, bars and a 5-star hotel. The prison was actually turned into a 5-star hotel, with a "prison" feeling. A night costs about 230 pounds ($460 a night) so it's a "destination/experience" type hotel. To be honest, I'd rather spend $460 a night to spend in a true romantic Victorian English castle or something.

We climbed to the top of the tour for a great view of Oxford and the spires.








Picture of the crypt below.
















A section of the prison cells they have left to show on the tour.















A bit morbid, the actual pull handle used in the hanging executions at the Oxford Castle Prison in the 1800s. The pull handle opened the drop floor, pulling the floor out from underneath the person being hanged. Yikes!

Had coffee after the tour with a few of the ladies at the cafe to chat. Another successful Newcomer's tour!

Funny Foods

I know we've lived here for almost a year now, but we still can't help laughing and making a bit of fun of their food or food names over here. We still can't believe the mixture of foods sometimes here, such as prawn cocktail. Which all it consists of are small shrimps and plain mayonnaise. They even have potato chips (crisps) with Prawn Cocktail flavor. Blah!

So just recently we discovered these pork nuggets (warning, very un-PC):

Of course Brian won't touch them with a 10-foot pole, and frankly I won't on these either! Ha ha!

And another fave of ours:

Now you'll never look at peanuts in a shell the same again!

January Update

Happy New Year! We're already a couple weeks into it, and not much is different in 2008 than 2007 so far. I thought I'd blog about the latest news, happenings and activities we've been up to. Although don't get too excited, it's been pretty chill here. :)

Just this past week, I've wrapped up working for my cute little home shop down the street. I was a bit sad to be done, but all the staff was changing over, and it's time to get back into marketing, so it made a lot of sense. But I had a great experience there, learned so much more about British culture and people, and made great new friends. Also we have Charlie returning to this side of the pond. He arrived in Belgium this week to get back into playing baseball for the LLN Phoenix, just south of Brussels. So hopefully we'll see him soon, and at least in March for birthdays.

If you're following international news, you've heard that the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and leader of the democratic party Benazir Bhutto was killed a few weeks ago. She was a University of Oxford graduate from Lady Margaret Hall. Her father went to Christ Church College. And her son, a fresher (freshman) at Christ Church College is taking over her leadership for the Pakistan People's Party. I'm mentioning this, because it's very interesting living in a city where there are extremely high-level people from their respective countries living and studying in Oxford. And while everyone carries on about their own business here (which is great), it's slightly unsettling knowing that there are also students/employees who need extra special security because of what they represent.

Back to personal news. We have lots of friends and family members announcing births of little ones or first-time pregnancies. Congrats to Jen Krause and Andrea Barnwell for their little girls this month. And we found out over the holidays that Brian's bro Rick and wife Kate are expecting their first! Whew, Brian and I are really running behind in that department!

Random thing to tell you about. But I still enjoy hearing differences from everyone's perspectives over here. An acquaintance of ours Barry, who is an American, but has lived in England now for 20 years, had his children over here. When they go back to the US to visit the grandparents in Ohio, the kids are amazed at the McDonalds over there. And it's not because they don't have them here, there are tons of McDonalds over here. But it's because of the SPACE they take up. Over here, the McDonalds, or the KFC, Burger King, whatever, is a small store front on the High Street, where you walk upstairs to sit and eat, or just take it out with you. Barry's kids can't believe that in the U.S., a McDonalds has it's entire large building to itself, including a huge lawn all around it. And that the lawn isn't even used for anything. And that there is possibly an entire Burger King right next door, with it's own building, lawn, parking lot, etc. Sounds funny huh? Since that is what we American's are so used to. All of that space. I've said before in my blog, that is probably the one biggest thing I miss as well over here. Is space.

Well we're heading to London tomorrow to get out of town and hit up a free museum and hopefully get some cheap last minute theatre tickets. It's so amazing to just hop the train and check out London for the day!

Sorry my blog is so random today, but just wanted to pop in and let you know I haven't given up on the blogging. Just not much is happening during the dreary months of winter here.