Visual non sequitur, or how is Grace enjoying Oxford

Many of you have been wondering how Grace is faring in Oxford and, providentially, Grace sent me this little summary. I am pasting it in full but, just for fun for you all, I am inserting some random pics from our first few hours wandering Taormina. I cannot tell you a single thing about it, from a historical point of view, so you’re just getting to look around. It’s gorgeous!

Hello from unusually-sunny Oxford, everyone!

I know – I know: where’s our usual blogger? Bring her back! We’re looking for our stories about Airport Ron and tourism. You’re probably wondering why you aren’t hearing from your best friend, itinerant blogger Valerie.

Valerie (oh my god, that’s weird to type) has very generously allowed me, Grace, to take over for a post. For those of you not in the loop, I’m her daughter. I am 22, I travel much less than she does, but as you might have picked up on, I’m in Oxford for a study abroad program. I’ve been here since the last week-ish of June, and I’m here until the day after my mom’s birthday. I wanted to be back by then since she’s turning 50, but things just weren’t going to work out, so I’ve basically just been eyeing gifts in Oxford and hoping if I greet her at the airport with them, all will be forgiven. (This would probably be a much more surprising and impressive plan if I didn’t just say it on her blog right now. Oh well.)

Anyways, I’ve been here for about ten days, I think, which is approximately a month in travel time. I have already started looking right before left when I cross the street, and in an effort to seem as un-American as possible, whenever I have to validate my payment card at Sainsbury’s with a signature, I try to speak as monosyllabically as possible in the hopes of disguising what I now believe to be a broad, obvious American accent.

So far, I have patronized a fair number of pubs, including the one where Tolkien hung out. I was kind of looking for some kind of inspiring decor, but the bar was actually more just like a regular pub with some chalked quotes from the books, which made me think perhaps I could hang some whiteboards in my dorm room with Tolkien quotes on them and start charging admission to unsuspecting tourists. Oxford is packed with them.

England won a soccer game last week that I watched at a pub. Pubs figure big into study abroad, at least in Oxford. It was all pretty chaotic, and I have now picked up on at least one football cheer that goes something along the lines of, “It’s coming home – football’s coming home.” The meaning of this was never really explained to me, but I just kind of went with it, because when you’re in a pub literally packed like a mosh pit and everyone around you is screaming the same phrase, there’s a fair amount of terror/peer pressure. When you’re drinking, is peer pressure “beer pressure?”

We have our first long weekend this week, which means everyone is planning to travel around Europe. My weekend plans (by weekend, what I mean is Thursday-Sunday) include driving seven hours to Edinburgh in two cars.

Since I currently don’t have a driver’s license, I am totally free from all responsibility and can be the token Worst Person on the road trip who has no obligations whatsoever other than “just chilling out” in the backseat.

To be fair, I did volunteer to drive, noting that I would probably “be no worse at driving on the left than I am at driving on the right,” but my perceptive friends, knowing that I cannot drive, were able to read, “I’d be a total wreck driving anywhere and so would our rental car” into that statement, so my very generous offer was rejected.

We’re also staying in an Airbnb with four beds. There are eight people, and remarkably, I am the only person bothered by this fact, which pretty much guarantees that I will be relegated to the couch. I am kind of excited, though. I’ve had the flu this week (please don’t tell the people I live with – you know how contagious dorm life can be) and at one point actually resorted to crying on the street from sheer exhaustion and illness.

My first trip to Europe was in Scotland. I think I was 11, and I remember taking photos of the Loch Ness Monster (evidence subsequently deleted by Mom from the camera because she was trying to make more space for photos and is notoriously not a fan of landscape pictures), going to the Harry Potter café, and buying some fingerless knit gloves that I still own and are just as ugly as I remember them being. I can’t wait to go back. I promise to make wiser glove purchases this time.