Day 3: 1 Sep 2007

I kept pushing this morning back. My alarm went off at 9:30am, but with nothing to really get to I just turned it off. It was a nice feeling and probably the last time I’ll feel that for 6 months. In the end that was a mistake, because today was both the most packed and longest day so far. As a result I have a ton to cover in this entry and not a lot of time to pull it off. So I finally woke up around 11:00am.

The first thing I did was check my email. There I found an email from a local man named Bob. I had been emailing him about a bike that he had on dailyinfo.com, an Oxford based website for selling bikes. After a few replies I found out that he was located on the outskirts of Oxfordshire. By outskirts, I truly mean way out there. In fact Bob lives in Sandhill, which is the village, that is beside the suburb, that sits beside Oxford. However it was a pretty straight shot and an easy home to get to. So I started walking… 5 miles and 50 minutes later I darkened Bob’s door. I gave Bob 40pounds for a bike and a lock.

Then began the trek back… I had about 20 minutes to get back for a BBQ at the house. Unfortunately, even though its almost a straight shot down Headington Road/M40, except for a single round about half way. I had to navigate an extremely difficult set of pedestrian crossings, and well, I ended up going down the wrong direction for about a quarter mile. I realized the mistake when nothing looked familiar, but it didn’t take much to get back on track. After some hard riding I made it back just in time.

We were joined at the house by the other students from Crick Road for a BBQ. We were scrambling to learn names and put this with faces. I met two other history guys, Josh and Matthew, both from JBU. We had a great time talking about Frank Hubert III (my old youth pastor) and Brian Bollinger (an old school friend from Halstead at JBU). We also set hard at work to plan history trips to different museums and around England.

We had a lot of fun talking and decided to sit down with Dr. Rosenberg and Jonathan Kilpatrick, the director and history professors of the program. We talked at length about the difference between British and Americans, Oxford, and Wycliffe Hall. It was great. But afterwards everyone decided to play some ultimate Frisbee in the backyard. The students were divided into about 5 teams. One of my roommates Bryce, who has turned out to be a pretty laid back and witty guy, and I along with Matt from JBU, a 6’ 4” guy, a couple of gals and Clint, our RD at the house, became the dominant team around. Unlike other teams, we decided on playing a zone defense for ultimate Frisbee instead of the typical manned defense. Bryce and I are both runners and fairly athletic guys so we just ran around and dominated the other teams. We played each game to 5 points and not only went undefeated, but were not scored on the entire tournament. Pretty sweet… it probably helped that we were playing against teams of a bunch of brains.

After awhile we all began to talk about heading into town. So about 10 of us did just that. We took a new path into town, taking a path through a bunch of gardens and along a canal. We crossed several bridges and everything was green and beautiful, just what you’d see in any English postcard. I can see now why Tolkien thought up the shire. Into the center of town we went, and walked around, shopped, and generally tried to fit in as locals.

As a few others went into a shop to buy groceries, Michael and I were leaning against St. Mary Magdelen’s Church in the middle of town. It’s a gorgeous 500 year old High Anglican Church that sits in the center of Oxford, in fact the street splits around it, making a cat-eye piece of land that contains two graveyards bracketing the church. Michael and I heard singing coming through the ancient stain glassed windows and around the stone walls. We made our way around the front of the church and slinked into the sanctuary. A choir was practicing for the Latin, High Church mass that would be tomorrow morning. We sat in the pews and listened to the glorious harmonies for an hour. There something deeply moving and truly reflective about ancient cathedrals. It was a time of deep reflection and it was a very spiritual moment for me. I don’t think that I’m much for high church theology, but the feeling of reverence is undeniable.

Afterwards, those of us who had remained the whole time in the cathedral decided to go to Frewin Court, the program’s headquarters in the center of downtown Oxford. This is also where our mail goes, so you can mail me at:

2 Frewin Court
Oxford
OX1 3HZ
UNITED KINGDOM

Since both houses are on the outskirts of Oxford, Frewin Court is our home away from home. In between classes and lectures many of us will go to Frewin Court to hang out instead of trying to make it home. As such, our keys open our homes, our rooms, and Frewin Court. We sat around and discussed all sort of things like traveling and nerdy things like Elvish, Klingon and Star Wars. We also ate leftovers we had around since the BBQ that we had brought with us. Finally we walked home.

Once home, I ran an internet cable out my window and around to an internet jack in the hallway. After working that out I wrote some emails. Clint came up to the room and asked if I wanted to play Mafia. Of course since no one here knew me or could tell if I were lying I thought there is no better time to play than now.

This turned into a huge mistake. There were 20 of us playing. And since we are all intelligent people who analyze, think through, and try to make all decisions with logic, it took us 4 hours to finish the game. It was ridiculous, but tons of fun. It turns out that I was a townsperson and even though there were intense moments, I came across as a very trustful person. I suppose that will be helpful throughout the semester. But that meant I didn’t get to bed until 3am. A great day.