Easter in Oxford

Yes, Easter was almost a month ago now, but as I'm catching up, just thought I'd post a quick mention on how we celebrated Easter this year. The past two years, we've gone to Brian's advisor's home and had a nice lamb roast with his family. As things were really crazy busy for them this year, we stayed home and invited our friend and Brian's colleague Gina over for a meal. I've mentioned Gina before, she's one of the few women in the physics group over here, and she's American. Gina came over to Oxford about the same time we did. So it's been a pleasure getting to know her and hanging out. She's actually landed an associate professor job at the University of Delaware for this autumn. So she's leaving Oxford at the end of this month. We will be sad to see her go!

But back to Easter - Gina invited me to join her for the Easter church service, at the local church she attends in Oxford. I've actually only been to services at the big Christ Church - so it was really nice to attend a smaller local church. By no means is it any more modern, all the churches here are extremely old and traditional. But I did notice that the parishioners didn't really dress up for the service, as I expected them to. Looks like they are following the similar American church clothing style these days - pretty casual! It's a protestant church with a really nice service with the pastor in his thick British accent. This church also burns incense where someone carries the metal ball around the church throughout the service. They also inducted a new choir member, a young girl, which was really cute. We enjoyed coffee afterwards and Gina introduced me to her many friends she's made there.

In the meantime, Brian was home working hard on our turkey dinner! I say that with emphasis because as you know we don't get to cook a whole turkey very often. Frozen full turkeys are hard to come by. Somehow, I had found out from a supermarket that was closing and it was really cheap for over here (probably around 14 USD). Gina came over, we showed her our Singapore pics, had a relaxing afternoon and then a nice turkey meal. We took a stroll around the neighborhood afterwards and once Gina went home, I think we all slept well after that tryptophan!