One Year...

So Saturday was our 1st wedding anniversary. Hard to believe. Thanks to those of you who remembered to send us a card or give us a call. We appreciated that.

Originally, Rich had a sweet deal for us to fly to New York first class for 200 quid each... and then that fell through :( So we ended up taking advantage of the nice weather in Oxford and actually, we had a great time.

Thursday night, we went to a movie called Sunshine, which was similar to Rich's favorite movie of all time, Silent Running. It was about a team of astronauts, doctors, etc. who went up into space in 2057 to fix the dying sun to prevent the human race from also dying out. Go see it.

Friday, we spent the afternoon walking around Christ Church's campus, had a sandwich by the River Thames, and then went to "The Head of the River" (a pub on the Thames) and watched a bunch of young kids trying their luck with punting (punting is a special boating sport in Oxford). Rather amusing.

Saturday, we packed up a picnic lunch and sat in the sun at a park near our home and read the newspapers. Later on, we had some champagne and had dinner at the Aziz, a Bangladeshi/Indian/Thai restaurant on the Thames. They had the best korma we've ever had... which makes sense because they were voted as one of the top 10 curry restaurants in the UK.

I'm not sure where my fascination with the Thames came from, but it did seem to be a running theme throughout our weekend celebration.

It's been a very relaxing weekend. The best bit was that we bought each other the exact same book for our paper anniversary gifts. How funny is that?

PS. We finally remembered the word that Rich always heard me saying incorrectly. For years, he thought I was saying "surround wrap" when I was actually saying "saran wrap", or as the Brits would say, "cling film". So there you have it. Rich is not perfect :)

Friday the 13th

Do I look 30 yet? Me on Friday night after celebrating my big 3-0 with a few friends at King's Arms in Oxford.


A bit of a strange statue, huh? The rabbit and friend (?) statue is in the center of Cheltenham (pronounced "chelt-numb"), also known as "the city under the hill", which is where Rich and I enjoyed the 25 degree (celcius) weather on Saturday. Better weather here than in Barcelona, I heard.


These pictures aren't as good as the real thing, but the fields upon fields of rapeseed were so beautiful I had to get a pic. It looked like someone had dumped buckets of bright yellow paint all over Gloucestershire.

Have you heard the good news?

Have you seen the episode on Sopranos in which Janice brings a friend home for dinner from Church and he goes around asking everyone "Have you heard the good news? He has risen..." all night long?? That scene really makes me chuckle. Too funny.

Anyway, on our way to the newsagents to get the Sunday paper, we took a detour through the park to take a few pics of the beautiful flowers and blossoms on the trees. Here are a few of the pics:





If you celebrate Easter, enjoy. I'm off to make a roast dinner for the two of us...

Crilers Hhouse

A while ago, I told you about how we are members at the Phoenix Picturehouse. Well, every month, they send us a brochure about the movies that they are showing for the month. We'd been receiving them regularly without a problem until two months ago, when I booked tickets over the phone for one of the screenings. As we were talking on the phone, the woman told me that they didn't seem to have an address for us listed in the database. I told her that they must have one, because we get their mail every month. She said I'd better give her our address again. So, I did.

Perhaps I was worse than most Americans growing up, but I don't remember being too unlike the people I knew growing up. I remember not really being able to understand what was being said on British TV. Obviously that's changed now... I guess I was kind of like some older people in China- so sheltered from people who were different from me that I put up a block and didn't even try to understand. Brits were a bit like aliens to me... most everyone who wasn't from Minnesota was. I'll never forget the time that I talked to my Australian friend, Cat, on the phone (she was one of the few International students at our school for half a year in junior high school). Every time she used an Australian phrase or word, I was left completely confused. She must have thought I was a complete idiot. At the end of one such phone call, she asked me to give her a ring later. I thought, why on earth is she asking me to give her jewelry? She kept repeating herself and finally sorted it out for me... and then I really did feel like a twat.

Let's face it, accents aside, I thought there were two kinds of people growing up- Catholics and Lutherans. I was convinced that Lutherans wouldn't be able to go to heaven. The first time I met an atheist (I think I was 13- imagine my surprise), I tried to convert her cuz I was certain she was going to go to hell. What kind of 13 year-old does that to another 13-year-old? (But that's a whole other story... poor Kellie).

Anyway, my point is that I'm not the only one who'd ever had a problem with someone else's English accent (in this case, American English vs. British English). A few weeks after our phone call, I miraculously received the next update from the Phoenix in the mail.

It was addressed to Rich. I don't want to include my address on the blog, but compare the first and last lines of our real address with what we got in the mail:

Clive Booth Hall... Crilers Hhouse
OX3 0FN... LX3 OSN

How it actually made its way to our mail box is absolutely amazing, innit?

The Headington Shark and Morris Dancing

I can't remember how we ended up finding out about the Headington Shark; more than likely it was just through a google search on Oxford. When I first saw the picture, I thought it was a joke, but then I did a few more searches and came to the conclusion that it must be real. Of course, I wasn't really convinced, so when Rich and I went to pick up our pizza this evening (how can you not eat while watching the Sopranos- they're always eating!!), we decided to go and find it. Lo and behold, we drove down London Road as we often do, and as soon as we turned off on New High Street, there it was, clear as day. How we had never noticed the 25-foot long shark in the roof before is beyond me.

The story behind it, or so I'm led to believe, is that an American who was studying at Balliol College and owned two cinemas in Oxford, placed the shark in his roof on the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki in 1986. According to one website (http://www.headington.org.uk/history/misc/shark.htm), his rationale for placing it there is as follows: 'The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation.... It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.'



So that was interesting... but not quite as interesting as stumbling upon the folk festival that was going on in Oxford yesterday. Rich and I got up early on Saturday and decided to walk into the city centre (just noticed I used the British spelling again on centre- just did it again... to end a word with 'er' or 're'... that is the question) to buy some quality coffee beans for our morning coffee. On our way there, we found the same French market that was in Henley on Thames (the same guy who sold us real tomatoes there was there again). We went to the bakery stand to get a pastry for breakfast and after waiting for what seemed like 10 minutes but was probably only 2, the woman asked me what I wanted and then told me that I had to form a line, so Rich, myself and the two or three other people standing next to us who hadn't realized there was a line (I don't think there actually was until they told us), had to wait behind the group of people who had just arrived and formed a line. As the British guy commented, these French people are taking the British concept of queuing up a bit too far! I told Rich that the French woman working there was what I was expecting all French people to be like in France (but they were actually a lot friendlier than I had anticipated- unlike her).

That was a bit of a tangent. Anyhow, after the agonizing purchase of my pastry (ok, so it wasn't that bad... and it was rather tasty), we walked over to St. Aldates Street where all the shops are and found a bunch of Morris Dancers. (See pics below, which I've borrowed from the world wide web.)



Rich told me about Morris Dancing when we first arrived, so I was really looking forward to seeing it. It was kind of 'tribal' (if that's not pc, I apologize) and reminded me of Native Americans and their sun dancing with the feathers in their hair, bells on their legs and feet, chanting, and dancing to a drum beat.

It's no wonder, really, because it (apparently) dates back to pre-Christianity times. Some say it was done in the Springtime for fertility and luck. In the 1500s, the church adapted the dances for Easter, May Day and other events to raise money for the church. Apparently, the most common form of morris dancing is known as the Cotswald dancing. Of that, the oldest continuous form is supposedly that of the Headington tradition, which is from the Headington region of Oxford, which is where we (and the Headington Shark) are currently located.