Keble Ball 2011

Well, we had to try one of the biggest Oxford University collegiate event of the year - the college black tie spring ball. Brian's college, Keble College, hosted their annual event last night. Most of the 28 colleges have their own ball - so there can be many to choose from to attend. The Balls are student-planned events, and the college Fellows (a.k.a. the academics) and guests are invited by the students.

It's not a Ball in the sense of a ballroom with a band and long dresses. It's mainly a more modern day prom like affair, but much bigger and a wilder! The Ball is set up over most of the grounds of the college - many marquee tents set up to house 2 stages of live music, many food stalls, games, and plenty of drink options. Recall that the drinking age is 18 here and Oxford is by no means a "dry campus". So any kind of drink is flowing all night long. The Ball is not cheap to attend, tickets were 80 GBP, which is $120 per person. It starts at 8pm and lasts until 4am.

Luckly, as Brian is now a Fellow, we received more perks, which made going all the more attractive. We could purchase 1/2 price tickets, and we were able to retire to the Senior Common Room at any point to warm up, rest, enjoy a very good glass of wine and much better quality food. The Senior Common Room is only for the Fellows to use in college at anytime. The students have a Junior Common Room which is more like a bar with pool tables. Yes, it is just like this in Harry Potter (well minus the bar and pool tables).

We also went with one of Brian's physics colleagues Uwe who is also a Fellow, and his girlfriend Evette. I thought it might be a little weird if just Brian and I went and roamed around the students on our own. It was fun to get to know Uwe (German) and Evette (English) better - they were tons of fun. Unfortunately it was difficult to remember to get the camera out and it got dark quite quickly so we don't have many photos. But hopefully there will be some up on the Ball website.



Check out the Keble Ball website so you can get an idea of what it's all about.

Holy Moly where have I been?!

Obviously I've let my blogging slip a bit  . . . or a long bit! It was a 2011 New Year's resolution to get back into it - and here I am in early May!  Well it's better late than never. I don't want to give up the blogging because it's great for a number of reasons, 1) it's an online diary for Brian and I about our lives abroad 2) great way to share with friends and family with what we are up to and 3) gives me a good extracurricular activity to do!

I think the lack of blogging has to do with a number of things as well 1) shocker of getting over the fact that we'll be living abroad longer term now (not just a fun two years of being tourists, but realising this is our true life reality now) 2) after four years already in Oxford, amazingly I can say that the novelty starts to wear off (see point 1 - it's now our normal reality) and 3) I don't think we're doing as much interesting stuff (again point 1 - we're just working, cooking, cleaning like everyone else)!

But that last point isn't completely fair to say, looking back at our iPhoto library since August 2010 - there are a ton of fun things we've been up to. So I'm going to go through a quick recap of each month with some favorite highlights.

Going forward, my aim is to blog at least once a month. I know it's not as much as I used to when we first moved here - but it's what I think can be a sustainable amount at this point, and if there are more posts than one a month - then bonus!

I'm glad to be back!