Blenheim Palace & Lamborghinis

Today I decided to go on my first sight-seeing trip out of Oxford.  I went to Blenheim Palace, which is a few miles to the north, and is where Winston Churchill grew up.  On the bus ride over in the sleepy and calm morning, we suddenly heard loud engine noises and as we looked over, the bus was passed by a TON of Lamborghinis.  At first we were only passed by 3, and I got excited because I thought perhaps it was Top Gear, but the a ton more kept coming so I realized it was something else.  We ended up being passed by like 30 of them!

As the bus dropped my off in front of the Palace gates, I realized that's where all the Lamborghinis were going too!  I never did find out why they were there, but it was cool watching them parade by.  I tried to get a video of them revving up their engines, which they did frequently, but unfortunately not when I had my camera running.  Here's a video I took anyway:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UmXdj3lWWM&feature=youtu.be

My first view of the palace was breathtaking!  It was a good reminder of exactly I was in England to begin with.  I walked around the gardens for a bit, then went inside.

The inside was pretty cool.  There were some rooms dedicated to Winston Churchill and his story, and then some rooms that told about the rest of the family that had lived in Blenheim Palace since the 1700's.  Currently the 11th Duke of Marlborough and his family live in the Palace, though obviously not in the parts where tours were given.  My favorite thing that I learned was that Winston Churchill loved to paint!  He painted a lot, and he also happened to be friends with the guy who founded Hallmark Greeting Cards, and when the guy started his business, he asked Winston Churchill to paint  some of the first Christmas Cards!

After inside the palace, there were more gardens to explore, including a maze!

All in all it was a great day, full of so many lovely British things:  gardens, history, rain, little children with British accents, and of course, fancy cars on parade.

A Rough Week

The past week was orientation and enrollment week, and for me it had two phases.  The first half was filled with confusion as we were given almost no information, and the second half was full of an overwhelming amount of too much information.  Once I get things figured out though, my program should be good.  There are 14 of us in the Master's program, 7 of which are not from England (we have 5 Canadians, some one from Ireland, and me).  We have all of our lecture classes with the Bachelor's physiotherapy students (except our research class which prepares us to write our dissertation), and all of our lab classes is just with our Master's group.  We're basically in class all day everyday, so there is no rest for the weary.  Or extra travel around Europe time :(  We do get a few little breaks here and there for Christmas and Easter and a tiny bit of summer, so I'll still manage to see a few things here or there.

The worst part of the week came when I was shopping.  Normally, one thinks of shopping in Europe as a fun and delightful pastime, but I think that only applies when you have loads of extra time, are not looking for anything in particular, and have no monetary limitations.  None of these conditions, however, applied to my current situation.  I was mainly trying to find navy blue workout pants.  We have to wear them in all of our lab classes.  Nice looking women's workout gear is nonexistent in England (and I do not by any means have high standards on this.  This stuff is BAD).  After a few stores I just gave up and bought horrendous looking sweat pants because I couldn't handle another store.  It was only on the bus ride home I had the brilliant idea of looking in the men's section instead.  Unfortunately I couldn't find the receipt to return the horrendous pants (sorry, trousers), so I'm stuck with them for the year.  Also annoying about shopping in Europe is there are a million little stores.  Again, if you have no time constraints and are just shopping for funsies, not a problem.  But so hard to navigate when you need something very specific and you have no idea what any of the stores are just by there names.

On the plus side, while getting lost trying to shop downtown, I did pass Christ Church College, which is probably Oxford University's most famous college.  It's pretty!

Here is also me eating a very typical British meal:  Kidney Pie and Hash Browns, with some Tea!

Sunday Morning Meanderings

Once I got rest, food and toilet paper, Oxford was looking quite a bit lovelier!  Saturday I spent doing a lot of errands, at least as much as I could.  As an international student, you can’t do almost anything in England without having a bank account and having officially enrolled as a student.  And you can’t even get the bank account until after enrollment.  My program enrollment time wasn’t until Thursday of orientation week, so that’s a week of not being able to do a lot of useful things.  Another downfall of not having officially enrolled yet was no internet access.  Luckily, this is one of the few situations where it pays to be an over planner.  I had researched and planned and printed out so many maps and stores and where I needed to go for various things months ago, so when I got here and had no internet to look up where the closest grocery store was, it wasn’t such a big deal, because I already had a map with it marked.  Others have not been so lucky. 

I am very happy with the grocery store here.  I’m lucky enough to live close to a very large and extremely well stocked store, which isn’t the case for all the dorms on campus, so I am uber grateful about that.  Most pleasing was that there is a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, which I was most nervous about before heading over.  Blackberries are huge in England, and are really delicious!  Maybe even as good as Oregon blackberries….  The store has a really large selection of International food too, like Italian, Asian, Indian and even American!  Things like Pop Tarts, peanut butter and Fruit Loops are all there when I start to miss them. 

Sunday morning before church ( I have late church, boo!), I walked around Oxford for a bit, getting to know the area.  I started at my dorm room and walked to the city centre and meandered for a bit.  The architecture is old and gorgeous!  A lot of the buildings were kind of intimidating though, because for the various colleges of Oxford University, if you don’t belong to that particular college, you are not allowed inside the building/courtyard areas.  There are certain colleges that open up some parts for a small fee for a few hours on certain days, but that’s about it!  Even the Bodleian Library has restricted access.  Regardless, the buildings were amazing to look at, and it was fun to explore the city a bit!

One of my favorite things so far about Oxford are the large parks!  There is a huge one right next to my dorm.  It’s this massive green field with some trees scattered about.  It’s so calming to look at, hopefully the weather will be nice enough every once in a while for me to really enjoy the parks!

The Arrival!

So here I am, finally in Oxford!  Arriving was an adventure.  My first leg of the flight was fine, there were some good movies to watch.  My layover in Toronto was uneventful, except that I got to eat ketchup chips, which I love so dearly.  I wanted to sleep the entire leg of the second flight (7 hours from Toronto to London) in order to have enough energy for the upcoming day, but alas it was not to be.  In fact, I think I only managed 2 hours total of the entire 7.  So that was quite miserable, and by the time we landed I was uber tired and had a massive headache.  Rachel picked me up at the airport, having recently become a pro at left-hand driving.  It was so great having someone there to pick me up that I knew!  It was so great getting to see her right away!  The drive to Oxford was super lovely too!  It was so green!!  The first thing that I noticed the instant I stepped off the plane was that it smelled like rain, which for me, having grown up in Oregon, is a very wonderful smell indeed.  So my tiredness and headache were forgotten for a bit.

When we arrived in Oxford, there was some confusion at the accommodation office, because I was actually checking in a day earlier than the allotted check in times.  I had gotten permission beforehand to do this, but somewhere along the line there had been a communication breakdown.  They were still going to let me check in, but not until 8pm with another group of students checking in early.  It was okay at first, because some nice people let me store my luggage in their office at a different location that was not my dorms, and Rachel and I went out to eat some food. 

After eating, Rachel dropped me off to try my luck at a few errands and she headed back to Chippenham.  I then proceeded to find out I couldn’t quite open a bank account yet, and I couldn’t get a phone because I had no bank account.  I did manage however to buy my bedding, and made the trek back to the office that was holding my suitcases.   Unfortunately it started to rain on the walk back, which was only slightly annoying at this point.  It became uber annoying 2 hours later as I waited for my taxi for 8 minutes, to take me to my dorm to check in, soaking all of my suitcases.  The taxi also was unable to drive all the way up to my dorm, because the road was blocked, so I had another 5 minute walk in pouring rain.  By this time ALL of my luggage was absolutely wet, and I think I looked like a drowned rat. 

I did manage to get checked in though.  By the time I got to my room, I basically just made my bed, took a shower and crashed.  I was starving, but all I had for dinner was some ginger candy from Jennica.  I also had no toilet paper, which is quite a trial.  I perhaps wasn’t in the best mood by the time my head hit the pillow, but I did manage to sleep (even with the window open, in an attempt to dry off my suitcases, but that attempt didn’t go so well since it was still raining outside, and only let in cold air into the room). 

My dorm room is small, and I did have a moment while looking around where I thought “I am a few months shy of being 30.  Don’t I deserve more from life than this?”  I’ve been spoiled the past 10 years of living in real apartments instead of dorm rooms, and have gotten used to a bit of comfort.  Alas.  The bathroom/shower will probably be the hardest to get used to.  The kitchen is nice though, and really large.  And so far almost none of my other flatmates have even touched it, so I might really luck out with that.

Three Hour Tour

Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with Gilligan's Island.  I was going to title the post "Three Year Detour", which actually describes what I am going to talk about, but it just sounded so much like Three Hour Tour that I couldn't resist.

So.  My Three Year Detour.  As I sit at the cusp of my departure from Palo Alto, I pondered for a bit the events that brought me to the area.  A little over three years ago, I "B-minused" out of grad school (they do things a little differently in Boston, turns out.  Who knew a B- was a failing grade?).  I was unable to juggle acute Traumatic Brain Injury and graduate school at the same time, and had to leave.  For the first time in my life I was left without a plan for my life.  I am the sort of person that will plan their life out 10 years in advance, but in that moment I had nothing.  I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do.  I had worked for so long for something I thought was good and right, only to see it swiftly taken away from me.  In that moment I got a Priesthood Blessing from my home teacher, and in the blessing, God said that as I bear my testimony, holding on to the things that I know to be true, and take a step into the dark, light will follow me.  The blessing also said that we often cannot see God's plan as it is unfolding around us, but I should know that God does indeed have a specific plan for me.  So with those words in mind, I followed the prompting I had to move to Palo Alto, a place where I didn't know anyone and at the time that I moved did not have a job.  But I trusted God, that He knew what He was doing and He would make things all right.

Three years later, at the brink of leaving, I've looked back over my time and learned a few things about why God wanted me out here.  First and foremost, I have found that there were people here in this area that God wanted me to help.  There were people who told me specifically that I came into their lives at the exact right moment and gave them the exact help that they needed.  There are moments where I felt that someone needed a little extra support, or friendship, or love, and that God had brought me here at this time to help these people.  Secondly, I have definitely discovered that there are things that I have experienced here and things that I have learned about myself, about other people, and about God, that I couldn't have learned in any other place, and I know that I will be eternally blessed because of it.

The funny thing I realized while thinking about where I was at in life when I moved here compared to now as I am leaving, God is putting me back in almost the exact same position that He took me out of.  When I left Boston, I had two years left of graduate school before becoming a physical therapist.  Now, I am also two years of graduate school away from becoming a physical therapist.  But this time my location is WAY better, my program more tailored to where I want to focus my career and where I want to end up, and my school works hand in hand with a program in Italy.  So in other words, my current life situation is similar to what I left behind, but ONE BAZILLION time better!  It turns out when God tells you "Hang on a sec, I need you to do something for me..." and we follow through, God know how to show His gratitude!  When we do anything God commands, He blesses abundantly.

I know that as we strive to commune more with God and listen daily to the Spirit, He can guide us and lead us to the exact things we can do to help those around us, and He can teach us the exact lessons that we need at this moment in our life.  And as we do His will, He blesses in every instant.  While it was hard for me to understand why I was coming to Palo Alto, I am grateful that I came, that I took a 3 year time out from my life plans to work hand in hand with God.  It turns out that as we make our way along our journey of life, when God is in charge of the detours, it makes for a much more scenic route on the road to the Promised Land, a route that we will be forever grateful we decided to tread.