Tuesday

We got into our lovely private coach and left for Oxford around 8, although I like always woke up at around 6:30. I'm hoping when I get home I'll be able to knock that off, because I'm not going to bed early enough for that to be ok.

We got to Oxford university (which is actually not a university. It's more like the administration building for a bunch of other independent schools, and it just does the big standardized tests) and all the different universities and branches are all over the city. It was a huge college town. It was cool, but we were originally going to see Ted's daughter, who went to grad school here. Instead we were just given maps and told to explore, which, I am just kind of tired of. I know it's partly me being lazy, but I am tired of being dumped in an area that I'm not sure the significance of or what I should see, and then cut to Paige spending a few hours wandering around. I miss seeing museums with art we studied, or architecture we learned about, or now, plays we've read.

So I got a manicure.

Kind of lame, but at the same time it felt so so so nice to pamper at least one part of my body. Plus, it gave me one on one time with a local who then told me the places I should visit, like a church part of Harry potter was filmed in (I didn't go). Her idea of small talk started directly with "so how's the job situation over there? We here it's quite poor", which Marc and ted totally prepared us for, so I got to talk politics and economics for a while. Then we talked about different school systems, and how college means more liked 2 year program, but a university was where you got a degree (I assured her that my school would be changing their name to university next year. Haha). It was interesting times for sure,and I think I learned a lot more with her than if I had wandered with my map.

We were supposed to see Charlecote Mansion and Gardens, but they lost our reservation so instead we went to ???. It was a big mansion with huge tulip gardens. The staff was really helpful and nice about telling us little bits of information, and the backyard was really pretty. The weather had just brightened up too, so that was a nice change of pace.

We got to our holiday inn, which is huge and lovely with multiple pillows and big squishy beds. We couldn't be happier. Stratford itself is surprisingly large; there are a LOT of little shops all over the place. They have a "lush", which is this homemade cosmetics store that i really like; its against testing on animals,and they have petitions and you can sign the window of their store front...just really fun.

Tonight we saw Shakespeare's "comedy of errors", and it was fantastic. Th directing was really clever, the actors were funny, and it was just very fresh without being too dorky. I loved it. It was a modernized set and costumes, but they kept all the original words and just emphasized certain things a little more or less. I thought it was hilarious. I still need to write my academic journal entry for it though, so that's what I'm off to do next.

Internet here is ridiculously expensive, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to post these blogs. Maybe at the theater. But if they don't show up until after I'm home, or Thursday night when we're at the airport hotel, that's why.