Tuesday July 10

Its early morning, another day back to teaching and getting the kids back to classes. There weren't that many who made breakfast this morning, probably a dozen or so, maybe about half the group makes breakfast most mornings. I wonder if in the future that might be discussed. Anyway, today is back to classes, and back to work on the history of science course. Hopefully the room issues is settled by today. We have classes for the rest of the week, then moving early on Saturday, before another full weekend of travel and stuff to do as a group. Saturday is Blenheim Palace and Cotswold Wildlife Park, both of which aren't far from Oxford (30 minutes or so I would think from the map). Sunday is still up in the air, but we should know by tomorrow what we are doing for the day. Originally it was off to London and the Tower as a group, then Covent Garden and finally the British Museum (what we sort of did this past weekend, minus the Covent Garden part), but with the London excursion kaboshed because of the terror threat, perhaps it will be off to Hampton Court Palace or down to Portsmouth. I think as a group, the kids will enjoy Hampton Court, but that would pretty much be it for the day because it is so close to London that the travel time would eat up nearly 3 hours of the day. Portsmouth and the naval yards would be fun for a bunch of the guys, but since we are half women, I am not so sure how they would do with a bunch of ships and the fact that other than the naval yards, there is not a whole lot else to do. I would say we could head to York for the day, but that is a long day of travel, probably 2-3 hours on the coach. I'll talk to Heather about what we will do tomorrow.

Yesterday was a slow day: Breakfast, then back to my room to get some work done, update the blog, read email, etc. Around 1, I met the Westminster Ice Cream Club, the five students I got lost on Sunday, and we went and got ice cream from probably the best place in Oxford, or so I am told. Most of the kids got Bailey's Ice Cream, I got plan old vanilla. The other flavors that day (all special flavors made each day I am told) were mango and double chocolate. For some reason the last pairing sounds oddly tasty, but I am glad I didn't get it. We wandered off to get a picture taken (it is in another post with some other pics), and then headed back to the university. I stopped by the Oxford University Press store and realised that there are a lot of their books I use in my classes. I didn't buy anything mostly because I can get the same books in the US through OUP for half off (ie the US price). After that, it was back to the dorms for me, then later in the afternoon grocery shopping. I should be able to save some money now since their is a refrigerator in my room that they brought yesterday morning. I went to the bigger downtown supermarket which was less crowded, had more goods, and fewer annoying kid tourists. More about them later...

After grocery shopping, it was laundry now that the laundry room was up and open again after they cleaned some asbestos away from the old water heater deep under the renaissance constructed building. Took about 12 dollars to wash and dry three loads of laundry. More expensive than a US laundromat, only because I probably could have done the same amount of clothing in just two machines in the US. However, now I have clean clothes through next wednesday or so. I will have to do laundry then before we head off to Paris two weeks from now because I need clean clothes for that trip. The laundry took a couple hours, about three and a half or so, and in that time I read, ate dinner, and watched part of Miami Vice (the recent movie) on the tv down in the common room. About 9:30 or so, I came back to my room, settled down and read until I went to bed around 11. That is an exciting day off for me...

Except for the very annoying trip out to Borders around 9 while I was waiting for the last of my laundry to finish. I wanted to pick up the Economist which had come out a day or two earlier and get my weekly fix. Borders was the only bookstore still open to 10, and it was a surprise. It seems since it and the local mini Sainsbury (half the stuff, twice the crowds) are the only thing open that late, it was full of tourists, particularly unsupervised Italian, French and American kids. They were probably teenagers, either waiting out curfew or waiting for a bus to take them back to where ever they were staying. Sitting on the floor blocking entrances, or leaving books and magazines everywhere. The store, at 9 o'clock, looked like a tornado had gone through it, and the supermarket, with a huge line, looked like the day before a hurricane was going to hit...mostly empty shelves of instant consumables, and stuff everywhere. I was told by the girl at Borders working the counter (after she yelled at the same group of American students to move three times from the front of the store where they were sitting in the aisles) that they open two hours earlier than normal during the summer just to try and put everything back. Since I didn't go to the lower level where music is and toys, she said that it was worse down there. And that it was like that every night, and worse on Fridays and Saturdays. On Sunday mornings, the store doesn't open until 11am, but everyone is in like 4 hours early to do a super reorganization and clean up to get things back where they belong. I don't think I could handle that constant chaos...hell, I put things back on the shelves when I am just a customer and see things in a certain section out of order. Too many years in retail as college jobs I guess.

Anyway, I will post some pics, grab a shower, and get ready for class at 11:15 this morning. I don't think anything exciting is going to happen today, and frankly, I don't expect to spend more than a pound or two at all (I have all the groceries I will need for lunch and dinner). I may go out and walk about to get exercise (I haven't been doing that in the mornings after the first few days because I have been walking so much during the day) later this evening when the streets are emptier, but one morning I am going to have to get up early while we are living here in the center of town and go out and get pictures while the streets are mostly empty.

Send me email and if you want a postcard, email me your address. I left my address book at home, so I have a few, but not all of them.