oxford beginnings

Hello folks! Today has been quite a day. We left St. Deiniols this morning and went to Stratford-upon-Avon (home of Shakespeare) and saw one of his plays--Twelfth Night--at the Courtyard Theatre, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was an AMAZING performance. John Lithgow was in it:) (footloose....shrek...3rd rock from the sun..anyone?). He played Malvolio and did a wonderful job. Not that he was the whole show, the rest of the actors were brilliant. I am looking forward to seeing more plays--we are going to see two at the Globe next week.

After the play we came here to Oxford. We are staying in what I think is a small catholic theology college. The rooms are nice and big and we have a whole common room with comfy couches to ourselves.

We are just footsteps away from the Eagle and Child (known more commonly as the bird and the baby) the FAMOUS pub where the inklings (tolkien and lewis) would meet to have a pint and talk about their literature. I will definitley be poking my head in there this week. We basically just walked around tonight, scoped out some churches to go tomorrow morning and got some dinner.

Kirsten, Hilary, Dave, Caleb and I got some delicious and cheap fried food from a stand called Hussain. A pizza was just £1.50---great deal. We sat on the steps of some monument and ate our dinner. It is nice here, there are lots of college kids, so I kinda feel like I fit in.

While we were eating a guy came up to us asking for change--apparently he got kicked out of his housing and was homeless and needed money for a place to say. I realize he could have been lying, I am usually really skeptical about these things but a few of us did give him some change. his name was simon. if you think to for a minute maybe say a prayer for him...even if he was lying and just scaming us because we sounded like tourists, there is a small chance he was telling the truth, so i'm just going to hope that he was one of the honest ones and that tonight he has a roof to sleep under.

Maybe this is just a surface observation, and if I really lived here I would feel differently but my oppression so far of the UK is that they are very concerned with humanity and i get this sense that humanitarianism (if that is a word) is strong over here. Oxfam stores are everywhere and it seems like every grocery store has products upon products that are fair trade. Maybe I am just blind to these things in America, but I feel like there is less of it there. Again maybe that is just a blanket observation, but it is the sense I get and it is one of the things I really like about this place.

Well I think that should be it for me tonight. I need to check my laundry. Internet is FREE here-wahoo...so perhaps I will be using it more.

Let me know what's up with things back home...I feel so distatched sometimes.

Love you all!
Until next time....

Cheers!