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The loose change at the bottom of your purse is in three different currencies
Someone has a cold and you can offer them (legal) drugs from more than one country
You walk into an office supply store and can't remember whether you need an "eraser" or a "rubber"
--You then assume a fake Indian accent as you ask for one or the other in case you got it wrong
www.currencyconverter.yahoo.com is your homepage.
You can convert between dollars, pounds, euros, yen, marks, and Gold Dubloons in 10 seconds flat
The people at the little currency exchange shop on the high street know you by name
The people at the post office know you by name
You still snicker when people ask for the "washing up liquid."
You can hail a taxi in more than one language
No matter what country you're in, it maks you nervous to ask for a "napkin" or "towell" in a restaurant.
It takes you less than three days to change verbal habits to things you never thought you'd say ("pardon?" instead of "what?" Doesn't that sound awfully posh?)
You know how to change the spell check language in Microsoft Word
You know how to change your DVD region on your computer
--You've hacked your DVD region so that you can change it more than four times
You've actually ordered from amazon.co.uk/.fr/.de and you know what each domain name stands for.
You no longer flinch when asking for the "toilet"
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| My favourite facebook group: "Oxford: Where Your Best Isn't Good Enough, since 1117."
You know you're at Oxford if:
1. You’ve ever drunk your coffee while sitting on the toilet – to save time.
2. You’ve heard someone give an academic explanation of how they cooked their food.
3. You’ve ever violated three or more traffic laws per mile during your bike ride to the library – to save time.
4. If you find that aforementioned bike ride to be the most relaxing part of your day.
5. If you read for an hour before you realize your trouser legs are still rolled up from the bike ride.
6. If you’ve ever skipped a lecture to go read for the paper due in a week.
7.
If you’ve ever told the librarian the name of the historical figure
you’re researching – instead of your own name – when collecting your
books.
8. When the most annoying part of your day is the 45 seconds
it takes for someone to stomp their wooden-soled boots through the
library - as loud as they can.
9. If you dream about your research.
10. If you're more worried about losing your Bod card than your bank card.
11. When you feel guilty about spending an hour reading through your notes
before a tutorial so that you might have a vague idea what is going on,
because you should be reading ahead for next week. (confession: I never reread my notes before a tute)
12. When you decide that a lecture, a tutorial and a class is an afternoon off! (so true)
13. When you find that, after living in England for three months, all you've seen of it is the inside of the lecture theatre and the Radcliffe Science Library.
14. You look forward to seeing your favourite porter doing door checks
at 3am when you stumble chips and cheese in hand to carry on doing
work...
15.When it's 1st Week and already you're on your 3rd All-Nighter
16. When you know your Bod card barcode number thing better than your own phone number from placing innumerable stack requests.
17. When that step half way up your staircase looks like a perfect place to sleep.
18. When the porters at the Radcliffe Science Library start to seem like grandfathers because they sneak you chocolate out of pity.
18. When
you walk to lectures, assemble your clothing and finish your mug of
coffee all at the same time, and see at least 3 others doing the same
thing.
Oh yeah.
P.S. I'm not really watching Sliders. I'm . . .glancing at Sliders during breaks from work. Which don't happen very often. Except to write this. Really.
P.P.S. I borrowed Sliders from the JCR video library, which means it's a European region DVD, and you can only change your DVD drive region four times . . .so annoying! And they have such good deals on DVD sets over here!
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| Maybe it's because their plugs run on twice the voltage, but I'm not getting along too well with British appliances. I almost set off our fire alarm at 8:30 this morning because the toaster didn't agree with the crumpets. Our microwave comes with industrial safety warnings. It's no joke--I cook my popcorn on 75% power, and it sits there doing nothing for 45 seconds . . .and then it all pops at once. I'm not kidding. It blows a hole in the side of the bag.
On the other hand, I now have a slow cooker (crock pot) and made a delicious stew last week!
Missions week seems to be going really well. I've heard Ravi Zacharias, founder of the Zacharias Trust, speak for the past two lunchtimes, and he has been truly amazing. Anybody who can talk about metaphysics and philosophy in less than half an hour knows their stuff, and he's been incredible. Definitely go see him if you get a chance.
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| My sincerest apologies for not posting in nearly three weeks! I have had a nearly unbelievable amount of work to do, but I am finally starting to figure out the pattern. Just study every spare moment, and you'll actually be able to answer the problem questions on the homework (incidentally, the whole read-the-book-before-starting-the-assignment idea works rather well too. Lectures are good, but there are only so many examples they can do in an hour).
"Always carry a maths problems book with you. You never know when you'll need some excitement." --Professor Grout (maths)
"If you find this difficult, use the lone pair electrons on the ethanol oxygen atom to attack the carbonyl group of acetone." --Warren, 'Chemistry of the Carbonyl Group' (and if I find that difficult?? What then, Mr. Warren??!)
"Don't you think Ally and Sally should get married? Then they could have cute curly-haired children called Nally and Valley and Dally . . ." --friend at church
"So you've known how to solve 'ordinary second order differential equations with constant coeffeicients' since you were 10 years old, only nobody ever told you! Don't you think that's a swizz?!" --Grout again (you use the quadratic equation . . .but it's not quite that easy)
"So can anybody guess the melting point of benzene?" - Instructor
Me (as I look it up on google): "Maybe . . .around 5.5 degrees Celsius?"
"Ah! The clever student looks it up on Wikipedia. Except that Wikipedia is wrong." -Instructor
(burn . . .)
"Please don't put Carbons in everywhere. We've been here a whole term. We use sticks now." --Organic prof (ouch . . .basically, in highschool, we wrote out organic compounds like HO-C-C-C-OH. Here we do HO/ \ / \OH, with the points on the slash marks representing carbon. Only it's really confusing with really large compounds. OK . . .I'll draw up some nice pictures soon)
"The results of this 'spatial awareness test' research were quite controversial. Can anybody guess why?" - Instructor
"Men performed better than women?" - Ben
"Yeah, actually. This was the only IQ test section that men consistently performed better on." - Instructor
"Oh." - Ben
(well, Ben did score 24 out of 24 compared to a high score of 18 amongst the girls, so he earned his time in the sun)
I hope you're all doing well! And please pray for OICCU, the Oxford Inter Collegiate Christian Union, this week. We're hosting an outreach week with banquets and speakers and free lunches to invite non-Christian friends. Pray that people's hearts would be open and that this week would reach out to lives here in the university.
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| . . .told in bright shiny stream-of-consciousness narration!
Best quotes from week at Universal Studios:
"HOW do they ALL KNOW it's my birthday?!?!" --Little brother after all the costumed characters told him happy birthday. He was wearing a sticker that said "It's my birthday."
2nd best quote: "AAAARRRGGHHHHGHGH." --me, after the freaky Egyptian on stilts stuck his hand in my face coming out of The Mummy ride. Those guys seriously have the best job in the park.
"I didn't WANT to go to the roller coaster first. I wanted to go to Jurassic Park. Because I knew if we came here first, I'D GET STUCK IN BABY SWAP!" --Little brother again
"PSYCHE!" --3-year-old sister
"It tasted like a biscuit." --Mom, after being recruited to test cinnamon rolls in an "undisclosed location" on the Universal Studios backlot. She also tested trashbags for a whopping total of 25 Universal Bucks!
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It's December 22. I'm sitting in Starbucks, surrounded by notebooks and accordian folders. Working on hyperbolic substitution three days before Christmas.
And it doesn't even seem weird. Isn't this what everybody does this time of year?
Help.
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Two days after Christmas, and the quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail.
My to do list (on a sticky note on my desktop):
BINOMIAL EXPANSION INSERT
Finish solvent cards (drawing/formulas)
pka flash cards
adiabatic/diabatic/polar solvents . . .
trig identity flash cards
Read COX Quantum Theory!!!!!!!
packing structure flash cards
Solved problem examples? Especially ones assigned by Sarah? Go back over? I don't know . . .
Do all physics mechanics problems (neatly!)
And if I put in a solid 8 hours a day until New Year's, I think it may be possible . . .
Caribou has improved their music selection (somewhat), though, sadly, not their coffee. I like it here.
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Number of sticky notes on my desktop:
22 . . .and counting
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Number of flash cards completed:
38
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Pages of worked math problems
13
Highest number of items on my to do list: 27
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New Year's Eve:
Number of flashcards: 99
Items on the to do list: 23
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Flying back to school:
I don't actually remember much of today. It's all sort of . . .fuzzy.
Dad took me to the airport and my bags were exactly 29 kg and 32 kg. 32 kg is the limit. Wow.
I waited for the plane for 2 hours and ate a big burrito, lost my cell phone, found my cell phone, attempted to get Pounds out of an ATM, and talked on the found cell phone.
The guy next to me on the plane was a really big guy. He didn't talk to me the whole time, but he was very nice and kept passing my food to me since I was in the window seat.
Once I got through customs and made it to the train terminal, I took the direct to Oxford. But I had two 30 kg bags with me, and so I had to go through every back door in the airport to find an elevator. And THEN, even though I was going to try to lift the big bag myself, I looked so pathetic that a guy who wasn't even getting on my train helped me get the bag up.
Once on the train, the guy next to me tried to talk to me, but he had a really thick London accent and I could only understand about every other word. I had forgotten how different it is to be surrounded by accents! It loses its novelty very quickly I guess.
As I disembarked the train (with the help of another nice older man who carried my big suitcase), I walked into the terminal and saw a bunch of closed gates. In my foggy, jet-lagged, sleep-deprived state, I asked the men working if I needed my ticket to get out, at which point they started on a discourse in more very thick accents about how big my bags were ("Uh, is that your kitchen sink outside?") Atlanta, and some music star, while my foggy brain realized I had no idea where my ticket was. And then another train station employee came over and joined their conversation until I finally found my ticket and they called me "ducky." You know you're in England when you get called "ducky."
So I finally made it to my college, even though I didn't have the key to my locker, unpacked all my bags and thought "Wow, that wasn't hard at all. My room is really clean." Until I had the maintenence guy break into my locker to discover enough stuff to cover my floor--wall to wall--with three feet of miscellaniai. Which is what it's still doing now. I think I need to make a trip to Goodwill.
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