There's the Good Ole' English Whether

For the first week, we had almost perfect weather. No rain, decent temperatures. Well, I guess that's over now as it has rained for the past two days (including today).

Sunday
I did not do any excursions yesterday, luckily for me because it was raining a good bit. I woke up around 9:30 and stayed in bed for about an hour. Then, I took a shower and went walking around for a bit. I needed to get some more money (£53 for Stratford took a toll on the ole' wallet) and some other things, so I headed out to Broad Street, which runs along one side of Exeter and is the main drag of Oxford. I found most of what I was looking for, so I bought a panini from a local coffee shop (the Hall doesn't serve lunch on the weekends). For the rest of the afternoon, I researched and started writing my paper, so I felt as though I actually accomplished something for once. About 6:30, I went down towards the quad just to stretch my legs and get out of the room for a bit, and I passed a few disgruntled people. At first, I thought it was the weather, but I found Matt, who had heard a rumor that dinner was at 6:30 (obviously it wasn't). I'm going to go off a little bit of a tangent here. In our packets, it says that dinner is always at 19:00 (or 7:00), but it seems as tough each night a rumor is started that makes everyone think dinner is at 6:30 or 6:45. Now, the packet does give some nights that dinner will be served early, but this wasn't one of them (actually none have been). I honestly don't know how that happens, but people were peeved that they came out into the pouring rain for nothing. I never hear these until I walk down for dinner at 6:45 or so, so it hasn't affected me. Oh well. We finally walked up at 7, and there are a few tents outside, and evidently, we were supposed to have a picnic, but because of the weather (or as the sign said, "Due to the good ole' English Whether"), they had to move dinner inside. As it turns out, dinner was going to be at 6:45 until the rain delayed plans. The dinner was pretty good (hamburgers, chicken kabobs, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and strawberries and cream -- I didn't have any strawberries -- eeeeewwwww). Afterward, Matt, John J, and I decided to have a writing session in someone's room while John J and I also did our laundry. Actually, we ended up just talking. I fell down the stairs once because my shoes were wet and the stones were rock. It was fun just talking and making up really random scenarios (you don't want to ask because then you would think less of me), and we stayed up until about 12:30. Around 2 o'clock, I heard a random shouting match between two guys (remember I have to keep my window open, and I face out toward Broad Street) who were calling each other " you pansy" or "you panties". I have no idea.

Observations:
- English streets have a lot of cobblestones to trip, slide, and fall on when it's wet.
- I have the magic touch with the drying machine token taker (yes, I bet there is a better word for it, but bear with me) as I was the only one to get it to take the tokens (you just have to treat it right).
- I tried vegemite because I heard that it was really gross. It wasn't that bad, but I don't think I'll eat it again.
- For UK friends, I have now heard the phrase "paradigm shift" twice. For those of you who don't understand, my friends (I guess I use the term loosely here) created a game at 4:00 one morning freshman year when I wasn't awake, and then proceeded to make a game of telling me the name of them game but never telling me the rules of the game. They named the game "Paradigm Shift".