Christ Church Today

A video to mix it up a bit because I don't feel like typing...

I almost forgot to say! I met a great guy from Chile who is traveling Europe and did an exchange program for a bit in California at Berkeley and also in Venice. He knew so much about stained glass! It was fascinating! And we talked about Harry Potter!! Small world and I loved getting to share what I am learning about the Cathedral.

Laundry Oops and Girls Night

Kirsten and I are now sitting in the laundry room. It's an ordinary day and we are ordinary people who were too busy laughing and joking while doing our laundry that we totally forgot to put detergent in!! And once you shut the door and put the money in here there is no turning back! It won't open for anything! So we sat here while our clothes did a whole wash cycle. We would have washed them again but tonight is girls night out and there is no time for that! So we buckled down and used the sinks in the wash room to soap and rinse our clothes by hand laughing at ourselves the whole time. :) I love that girl



Time for Girls Night Out!

First Floor Dinner Group!

13 of us girls got all dressed up and went to a restaurant called The Living Room! We ate three courses in three hours! We spent one night in posh city!  

Kirsten and I considered this another date night! We shared and even matched accidentally!
Appetizer: Garlic cheese bread and what we thought was soup but was actually fancy tomatoes and goat cheese and crackers. The menu was in English but I hardly knew what anything on it was!

Main course: Chicken in delicious broth with baby potatoes.
Dessert: Rum and Raisin Creme Brulee'
It was all delicious and we wobbled in the bathroom downstairs :) I almost danced myself into the toilet.

Prayer

Tonight began as usual with 9@9 - one of the most fulfilling times of the week. As 9@9 was ending Janine received a phone call from home and we learned that someone in our community could lose her mom in the next 24 hours. We have been praying and sitting together and there is an eerie stillness over the house tonight. All the plans to get together to make travel plans have ceased. Once again we are brought back to the reality of the frailty of life and we realize that none of the stuff we worry about daily really matters at all- where to travel to next and with whom, what to cook for dinner, papers and midterms, applications, volunteer hours- none of it matters. Loving people every day to the fullest and praising God for every breath is all that we are meant to do. I love you all so much and I cannot wait to see you again.
If you are reading this please lift up a prayer for Kait's mother, their entire family, and the Oxford community. There is power in prayer.

The Common Room

Before now "the common room" was a term I only knew from the Harry Potter movies and now it is a term very near and dear to me. It is the room in House 9 downstairs full of couches, pillows, bean bags, a TV and a cabinet full of a wonderful VHS Disney collection and hilarious DVDs. It resembles a high school youth room and on any given night of the week it is the gathering place of our group. It is a place where we do homework, complain about homework, worship together, watch way too many movies (including The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Anchorman), drink tea and eat biscuits, have pillow fights and massage trains, play card games, and fall asleep on the couches at 2am cause we are too tired to go upstairs to our beds. All in all the common room is a sacred place of good times. 


This week we began with our weekly worship time as a whole group in the common room. Monday nights we have our chapel time known as 9@9. (Because we gather in House 9 at 9:00pm. There is a store around the corner called 9 to 9 and we always interchange the two on accident!) Anyways it has easily become one of my favorite things about study abroad. This Wednesday marked Lent - the beginning of the Lenten season. It felt like home to hear the familiar story of Jesus in the desert for 40 days and the story of sacrifice and repentance. We all wrote down things that distract us from God and what we are choosing to give up this next 40 days to become closer to him. We then burned our papers with what we want to sacrifice to God and used the ashes to make a sign of the cross on our foreheads. I feel so blessed to be in a community that supports each other in striving to get closer to God. Each week a different group plans 9@9 and I look forward to seeing how we grow in the future and for my turn to contribute. Every week I catch myself thinking how so many things I am learning and experiencing here would be perfect to use at camp. I will just have to wait and see if I find myself there again this summer. 


We went to a rugby game the other night and it was incredible! It was so beastly! It is definitely a sport for MEN only - football without pads and no breaks every ten seconds. Don't get me wrong I love me some American football but this was so much more intense to watch! There were people dropping like flies on the field and the medic would run out to them while the game was still going on. We were like what would happen if someone pummels the medic!? I learned all kinds of rules about the rules of the game and different terms for things they do. Ruck and scrum are my two favorites!
I also have this theory that we developed while we were at the rugby game. we saw this HUGE manly dude go up to his mom and his puppies after the game and start playing with them and rolling around in the grass. It was absolutely adorable. Therefore we decided that the bigger and manlier the man, the cuter it is when they play with babies and puppies. I polled many of the girls on our group and all unanimously agreed, haha. O and I forgot to mention that it only cost 1 pound to go to the game! You better believe we will be going back again!

Try and tell me this isn't cute!

A scrum- it's like a tip off in basketball kind of

When they throw the ball in from out of bounds they lift each other up to catch it!

Then we came back and watched Little Mermaid in the common room which I found at a thrift store for 50 pence. That's right my friends Little Mermaid VHS for less than a dollar!! I was ecstatic and Disney sing a longs in the common room are my favorite!

Video Clips from Paris!

The Eiffel Tower

On Top of the Eiffel Tower

Palace at Versailles

Hall of Mirrors in Versailles

Sainte Chapelle

Inside Notre Dame

The Bells at Notre Dame

Hope you enjoy!! Sorry I am not the best videographer and some of them are sideways. I'll get better!

A Day of Manual Labor

Yesterday a bunch of us went out to volunteer at Wallingford Castle Meadows! They told us it was not for the weak of heart because we would have to get up at 7:30 in the morning to catch the bus to head out to the castle grounds. It is about a 45 minute bus ride to Wallingford, one of the countryside boroughs outside of Oxford. But when I heard the word castle I knew I would have to go! 

So we woke up early and headed out into the countryside. The people of Wallingford told us that the town has been around since Roman times and it used the be the only place where people could cross the Thames River. The architecture of the churches, buildings, and bridges are in incredible condition for their age and absolutely gorgeous. This is the English countryside you hear about and we got to roam around in it. We were lost for almost an hour when we first got there but it was such a beautiful place to be lost that no one minded. Being lost is kind of a regular occurrence now when we leave Oxford :) Naturally when you are lost you need to look over the wall to find the castle! 

We found the castle grounds just in time and got instructions about our work for the day. We cut, cleared out, and burned the brush from the river bank from 9:30 to 3:00 with a nice tea break in the morning and a lunch break in the afternoon. It was intense because they have these nasty black hawthorn bushes that are super sharp! We frequently yelled help so someone could come help tangle them out of our hair. Haha I felt like a wilder woman! I must admit I am not one who usually goes searching for this kind of work but it was such a wonderful place that I didn't mind. I got to help with the upkeep of ancient castle grounds! From the eleventh century! A bunch of us have already said we plan on going back again this semester. I had a really interesting conversation with another guy who was volunteering about Texas BBQ and snakes. He was fascinated and it was crackin me up. They only have like one dangerous snake to worry about here and only in the summertime cause its too cold the rest of the time. Lucky!! It is a pity they don't get to experience good BBQ here though. I miss it alot- especially my potato salad!

After we finished volunteering we had some time to kill before our bus so we roamed around town. 

My best friend Stacy and I ;)

This was the roof of this church. The color and texture of the growth on it was crazy cool.

T

We also had the best movie marathon ever last night! We watched Anastasia (and pointed out all the places we had been in Paris-more showed up than we thought!) and The Lion King (almost our entire group piled into the common room for this one. It was a big reunion and a sing along broke out on every song. Hakuna Matata :) and finally Hercules! We want to go to Greece so bad and I really hope that Greece pulls itself together in time!

Also, I found these at the market and I thought of Daddy! I remember watching Bonanza!! Apparently they like westerns here too! I would have bought them for ya but movies that play here don't play at home cause of copyright stuff. I also bought fresh raspberries and blueberries at the market and they are soo good! Today I am going to make some granola bars and chicken salad. They feel like home to me :)

Words are not enough...

Today I put the study in study abroad and cranked out a commentary paper of a Wordsworth poem like Bam! Done. 

Wordsworth believes that words can never truly cover or describe reality. Experiences cannot be pinned down and one cannot ever hope to relate to someone else how profoundly they have been touched by an experience. This description of inexpressible experiences and words exactly matches how I feel. 

Words are not enough to describe what I see, hear, and feel every day here and as I travel to some of the most well known places of the world- as well as the quiet places that seem untouched and unknown to the world except me. 

Words are not enough to describe how deeply I love the people I had to leave at home and at ACU. 

Words are not enough to describe how close I am growing to our Oxford family and most of all how we will absolutely never be able to put our God into the bounds of our simple language. 

This song hit me earlier today and it is so my song right now. Every word. 

It is called Listen to our Hearts and I love the way we sing it at school with the girl echo. 

Here is a link to the song :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOAdYF5sQQs