safe and sound

so, i got back from my scotland trip last night. we had an amazing time- lots of walking around and good food and the best of company. i am fortunate to have met some incredible people my first time around in scotland and i always enjoy seeing them again.

i'd love to give you all a quick rundown of the trip, but let's just say the expected drive of 6 hours took about 8.5 on the way up in the pouring rain. nice. got lost once. stalled the car 3 times, only because the stupid thing would stall out if we were leaving the interstate in 6th gear and i dropped below a certain speed without shifting it to something closer to 3rd. this may sound elementary, but trust me, i drive stick at home and never stall, so i think it was the car's fault! ha ha!

we spent most of saturday walking around edinburgh in the rain- seeing the sights and eating the foods. i managed to drain my battery on my camera before i arrived in edinburgh, so i personally didn't get any pictures, though i am just going to steal the ones that omar, adam, and catie took. saturday night involved going to 5 or 6 different bars and being out until 3am at a place i used to work for. sunday morning was beautiful weather- and we had quite a nice drive out to rosslyn chapel and back into oxford. great weather on the first half of the trip and everyone got to see the awesomeness of the scottish border country. a few good mountains and some great pictures!

now it's back to the grindstone this week so that i can take my ireland trip next weekend! yipee!

organizational skills

so, after spending the last day researching and running around trying to book my "extended weekend" trip, i have decided to go on a tour of southern ireland with some friends. we're leaving dublin on friday next week and spending three days traveling around. then staying overnight in dublin sunday night and coming back late night monday (actually not getting back to oxford until tuesday morning, but that's due to the bus/ferry we're taking overnight).

i'd like to point out that i finally learned something in business school that was applicable to my life. and that was that when it's time to make a final decision, i'm very good at laying down the law and then organizing people around that law. granted some people are wimps and the prospect of spending two nights on a bus/ferry (since we're doing it overnight thursday/friday to get to ireland in the first place) scares them. but for me and 2 other guys- we're going to persevere through it all. especially since the bus/ferry portion of the trip is now free due to my newfound negotiating tactics. (so i suppose that's 2 things i've learned in business school that have been directly applicable to my life).

this weekend i'm headed up to scotland to visit some old friends. can't wait- it's been way too long and i miss scotland so much. for you long timers you'll recall how much i felt "at home" in scotland and how much i wanted to stay permanently. so, returning to scotland is going to be great, but probably bittersweet at the same time. in any event, it'll be worth it!

does anyone out here in blogo-land know the best way to post pictures online? is it still shutterfly or whatever that thing is called? i have about 89 pictures or so so far that i would love to share with the group. and, as i said before, the whole facebook way of doing it is annoying since many readers on this blog do not have a facebook account to begin with.

i'm off to the library for now. enjoy your thursday morning! tomorrow i'm going to the mini cooper plant- so that should be fun.

some pictures

hey everyone, so here are some photos for your perusal. the top left is one of the house boats i was telling you about. next to that is the trout inn. underneath that picture is another houseboat. the bottom left picture is of the front side of the trout inn. the bottom right picture is the roof of the dining hall we sit in. not too shabby huh? anyway- i need to find a better way to post pictures than the standard facebook thing, so i'm working on it. i have about 80 or so so far. :)

bad idea

so, yesterday i performed a feat the likes of which had never been seen here in oxford. (or at least, that's what i keep telling myself since it was a stupid idea to begin with). after spending most of the afternoon running and then playing ultimate frisbee, i was famished. i agreed to go with some of the group to "the mission" which is basically oxford's version of chipotle or qdoba (mom and dad- they are burrito shops in case you didn't know this). as i was getting ready i happened to check my email- one of the guys sent out to the entire group that i was going to participate in the "chipotle challenge" which is to eat 2 burritos and a bag of chips and queso. not only did he say i was going to do it, but he claimed that there's no way i could finish it all.

being a competitive person, i dropped to the ground and did as many crunches and situps as i could to try to get that famished feeling going for me. there's no way i was backing down from this challenge.

we get to the mission at about 8pm (already problematic for me since i don't like eating past 730 or so), and we proceed to order chips and salsa (no queso at this place. sign number 1 that this isn't a great place to eat- how can you be a burrito joint and not have queso dip?). well, it turns out that these burritos weren't all that large, so i ate mine and the chips and salsa and then the group decided to forgo the competition since it would have meant i needed to scarf 4 burritos to be successful, and at £6 per burrito, this just wasn't economical.

on the way back, however, we ran into a burger king, where it was decided that if i wanted to prove myself, i needed to eat a triple whopper. 3 minutes later, i had proved myself. and to top the evening off, i had some ice cream too!

so, now that i need to move to 2-a-days in an effort to run and get rid of all those excess calories, i feel completely satisfied that i accomplished my mission. so yes, this is the life of a summer oxford student. great fun, eh?

i have my first official class today- business in the european union or something like that. i still haven't come up with a paper topic yet, but i'm hoping i can in the next 1.5 hours. wish me luck with that. we are going on a tour of the mini cooper factory this friday, and then i am renting a car and heading up to scotland to visit some friends. can't wait!

hope all is well with everyone.

trout inn

so, i took a 5 hour walk today to the trout inn, which is where lewis carroll was inspired to write alice in wonderland. it was a gorgeous day, though a bit warm, and we walked along the towpath canal and through a large open pasture and by an old run-down nunnery. it was pretty awesome and i have some great pictures, which of course are on my camera and not my computer since i still can't get this damn thing to work.

i also had my first experience with the "boat people" of oxford. apparently people buy these long, flat bottom boats, and get mooring permits and then proceed to live in them like apartments. some are quite nice, and others are disgustingly filthy. let's just say there are more of the latter than former. an interesting sight to behold in west oxford (which is the posh section). it's quite a juxtaposition, as many of the homes along the canal are much like our mansion estates on the water (not quite as big, but definitely worth as much), and then out of their backyard windows are these boat people. nice, eh?

i also discovered the joys of baileys ice cream. yes, made with real baileys (and tasting much better than rum raisin [as if that's even possible!]), i managed to devour a cup. i also had quite a delicious korean bbq from one of the other students on the course here. whatever he marinated the chicken in was delicious!

anyway- that kind of sums up my weekend for the most part. i had a finance exam on saturday, but that wasn't too bad and i am pretty sure i rocked it. we'll see however.

hope everyone is well and safe. love and miss you all!

it's going

everyone's been asking me how things are going. so, in one word, great. we haven't technically started our "classes" per se, but we've been doing an intensive integrative on interpersonal management skills, politics in the eu, we're going to have a marketing day tomorrow and a finance day on friday.

i've met with two of my "professors" so far and i think i'm going to be doing a lot of work, which is fine, and i hope challenging. i need a topic for business in the eu, so i'm thinking of that in some manner. although i could do a paper on eu enlargement (ie, will turkey get in and should they, was the addition romania and bulgaria too much of a stretch on the finances of the eu, etc). and then my negotiations class could be fun. still to meet with my private equity and venture capital professor next week. yay!

tonight's the big dinner night at trinity college, so i'm sure we're in for a treat. speaking of which- i'd better go "suit up" and get ready to look nice and impress all the english lasses. oh wait- never mind.

weekend update

well kids, i've been here a few days now and have some more to say. the first is that i forgot how ridiculously stingy the british can be. they've never even heard of such a thing as a refill on drinks (which sucks when a glass of coke in a bar costs £2, or close to $4). also, the best way to sum things up in terms of food is that they like cold things warm, warm things hot, and hot things scalding. oh- and for some reason one ice cube is apparently the most you can get in a drink. for shame. other than that, though, it's been a fun start.

i spent a good deal of my time friday walking around the city, trying to familiarize myself with where i'd be for the next 7 weeks. we had our first "lunch" which is essentially like eating with a very large family. we eat in a large dining hall (built in 1517 or something like that, and which still has the original ceilings and beams (new side paneling though)) at long tables like you'd see in harry potter. our food is brought out to us though, it doesn't magically appear on the table. supposedly on wednesday nights we will be eating in the actual hall used in the filming of the harry potter scenes, but i wouldn't know about that. suffice it to say it's pretty cool. there's a bar in the dining hall where you can buy cheap beer (think a 6 pack of busch lite) or a bottle of wine, and then they'll serve it to you. my solution will be to bring ice cold beer with me :)

for those of you wondering about my actual academic portion of the trip (and i know that's all of you), well you're just going to have to wait until that gets started next week. it's a weird schedule seeing as how i don't have set classes like i would in the states (ie, econ on m/w/f from 10-12), but rather i just have to meet with the tutor (as they're called here) a total of 3 times during the 6 weeks for each of my 3 classes. which means i might have my private equity class next monday and then not again for 2 weeks. or i could have the next one two days later. hope that makes sense. in 6 weeks, with my 3 classes, i will only have 9 actual "class meeting." this of course leaves me plenty of time to study and work on the papers that we be assigned. and also plenty of time to travel about.

saturday was fun, since we decided to celebrate 4th of july by having a burger and a pub crawl. we went to a number of different pubs, one is the oldest in oxford and the ceiling is only about 6 feet high, so i spent an hour either doing my best to stay seated or stooped over. then we went to the eagle and child, which for you literary freaks, is where jrr tolkein and cs lewis used to meet for lunch every tuesday (they called themselves the inklings) and talk about all sorts of stuff, not the least of which being their famous tomes).

yesterday was pretty laid back. played some frisbee, watched wimbledon, played chinese poker late into the night, etc. fun times.

not sure what is going on with my camera, but i am unable to get the pictures off the camera and onto my laptop. this bugs me since the camera is fairly new and it worked once before. (but hasn't worked since march or so). crap. i have some good pictures of various places i've been to so far, but alas, they're stuck on my camera for the time being.

hope everyone had safe and fun weekends and that everyone's 4th celebrations were filled with fireworks, beer, brats and tots. (the tater variety, not little kiddies).

here at last

well, i got here safely. it's been a whirlwind since i arrived. the worst part being that i thought i would be leaving the heat and humidity of dc behind. not true. it was about 88 here yesterday and muggy as hell. not sure how that all happened either, but the uk doesn't believe in air conditioning, so we were all unhappy campers. so i went to the store to buy a fan today so i could at least try to cool off somewhat. i managed to not sleep on the plane, nor get to sleep until 130am this morning, so i suppose the whole jet lag thing isn't going to mess with me this time around.

i am in the handicapped flat (yes, make some joke about me being mentally challenged all you want. like i haven't heard it before), which makes for an interesting sequence of events when i need to turn the light on in the bathroom at 330 in the morning. it's actually about knee-high or slightly lower, so trying to find it was exciting. but- at least all the doors in my flat are extra wide and there's plenty of room to hang out in the bathroom should i need to do so.

the shower is challenging as well. mostly because there is an overhang that runs down the middle of the shower, parallel to the wall obviously, so i either duck the entire time i'm in the shower or i just half hang out of the shower and half stay in. it's fun that way- it's the way all the cool kids will be showering in a few years i do believe.

so anyway- this begins the series of postings from abroad. i hope to keep this fairly regularly updated, but who really knows. love and miss you all!

and so it begins

today's the day! in just a few short hours i plan to begin packing and then leave for the airport. ha- gotcha! i've already packed one bag. so i only have two more to worry about. but yeah, i'm a bit behind in the packing department. it's just that the more i think about what i need to bring, the more i'll forget something important. so i basically just wait until about an hour before i need to leave and then just start stuffing it all in. it's the best way to go.

i had a moment of panic this morning when i woke up from my nap (i mean, i only slept from like 2-330, so i suppose that's a nap and not sleep) and thought for some reason my passport had expired or would expire this summer. there's nothing quite like having a freak out like that early in the morning to get you moving.

interesting experience yesterday with the credit card companies. one of them just asked me the dates i was traveling. another one asked me for countries i would be going to (like i know exactly where i'm headed this summer) and i told her a bunch and then she chided me by saying "you could have just said europe" and i responded with a hearty "you're the one that just asked me to list the countries i would be going to." so the next one i called i thought i would bypass all that and just say europe. that guy told me he needed specific countries. so i just started naming any country in europe i could think of. he stopped me after 10 or so. or maybe because i threw in australia to see if he was even paying attention. it didn't phase him. that or he didn't know that australia is not in europe.

for those of you concerned about my airplane manufacturer choice- i proudly support usa airplanes and not german, so i'll be on a boeing 767. not an airbus. i never liked the name airbus either. it just sounds like you're getting ready to board a nasty greyhound with wings. although, i have to say, one of my study group members this past year worked for airbus, and as a vietnamese-german, the way she says airbus makes it sound so sexy. it's not though. i know better than to fall for that trick. foreigners can make anything sound hot with those accents. at least, that's what it seems like to me since any time i have friends visit from overseas they're constantly asked to say things to my female friends because "the way he says wal-mart is so sexy." i doubt the brits will find my pronunciation of wal-mart to be anything special.

um- if anyone has any thoughts on places i should visit if i have some time, i'd be happy to hear them. i'm planning to go over to france (just so i can say i made fun of a frenchman in his own country)- no, i'm going to go watch a part of the tour de france i think. not because of the whole lance thing, but because when else am i going to be that close? i am also definitely headed back to edinburgh and probably dublin. maybe that's enough for now. i'm afraid to go to a country i didn't list on my credit card travel alert watch list.

hey- did you guys know michael jackson died this week? you'd think a piece of the us fell off the country and floated to sea, what with the constant media coverage. did you also know he was planning a comeback tour? holy crap!

um- billy mays died. that's more important to me. now i won't know what kind of laundry detergent or scratch remover to buy.

okay- hopefully my next post will be from across the pond (as they say). that's a pretty big pond.