This shot was taken outside of the restuarant where I ate dinner (and no, I saw peacocks neither in the yard nor on the menu.) The place was about an hour's walk north of Oxford proper. We took a shortcut that lead us through horse pastures and along the Thames for a bit before coming to the Trout Inn. It was a nice little restaurant. I had the Fish and Chips, which put me back about 7 pounds, but filled me up quite nicely, which is apparently unusual due to smaller serving sizes here. This became incredibly important when I embarked on my two hour walk home to The Vines, which is situated outside the south side of Oxford, almost to Headington.

The last two days have been a flury of orientations. I spent a large portion of yesterday doing program/city orientation, culminating with a afternoon scavenger around Oxford. I spent some time wondering around the different colleges and shops just getting my bearings of the city proper. The different colleges are absolutely beautiful. All of the architecture is ancient, and history seems to seep out of it all.

Today was primarily academic orientation. I visited the college which I am a "VS" (visiting student) of for the first time. It's know as Wycliffe Hall and was established in 1877 as a school to train up vicars in the church of England. The people running the show here talked to us for quite a while and seem to be rather nice. Each college/hall has its own chapel, and before afternoon tea at 3:30, we attended a chaple service at Wycliffe. Apparently there's a day care service just over the wall behind Wycliffe hall, because when I stepped out back during one of our short breaks I was greated with the delightful voices of little British children. I jumped up and peeked over the wall and saw them all running around and playing on their side of the wall, but the cutest thing was their tiny British accents. ;0)

Tomorrow promises to be much of the same as today, maybe without the 4 hour round trip treck for dinner, but we'll see. Maybe I'll get motivated ;0). At this rate, there's no telling how much weight before I make it back to the land of heaping portion and motorized transportation.