In Which My Excitement Renders Me Somewhat Incoherent

It's been about a week since I last updated. A glorious, whirlwind, amazing week of travel and adventure that I can't wait to tell you about. That, however, must wait for a little while. There are far more important things for me to be telling you right now. For instance, the fact that I am currently lying on my own bed, in my own room, in my own house, in Oxford.

Oxford.

I'm so freaking excited.

This morning Sean and I left the hostel in London, where we had spent the night after returning from Holyhead (which was incredible--details coming soon). We had spent that night wandering around London with my friend Eli and a few of his friends at the college he's attending, and for a few hours we just walked the streets, going up to anything and everything that looked interesting, and generally partaking in holy-crap-we're-in-London giddiness. After spending a night in a hostel room that was blissfully devoid of some of the terrors we've encountered on the trip (i.e. the snoring that shakes the rafters and the restless sleeper in the bunk below), we caught a bus to Oxford. I can't explain to you just how excited we were to finally be getting to the school that has really been the goal all along; we were singing modified versions of the opening to A Very Potter Musical: "Oxford, Oxford--we're finally going back!" By the time we knocked on the door of our program coordinators' home, I was so happy and nervous and fluttery that I thought my feet were going to leave the ground.

The Warners, Frances and Penelope, are wonderful. Penelope is this lively, spunky, maternal woman who seemed almost as excited to have us as we were to be there. She drove us to our houses, talking animatedly, and gave us each a tour of the rooms before going back to her house to pick up Aidan, who arrived shortly after we did. As soon as I got back to my house--alone, because my roommates don't move in until tomorrow--I was so elated that I ran around the house yelling like a hooligan, just because I could.

We have a kitchen, and armchairs, and our own wardrobes, and Penelope told us that there's a cat that likes to loiter in front of the stoop, so we have our own pet (and I am thrilled beyond measure about this--it's not a dog, but I'll take what I can get). And the sun is shining through my window, into my room, in my house, in Oxford.

Term doesn't start officially for a few days, so until then I have time to unpack, do laundry, find groceries, finish reading Bleak House, and catch up on telling you about our adventures in Ireland. So the posts are coming, fellow travelers, if you have any interest in them. I'm pretty happy to have a few days of downtime in which to reflect on them, before we're off again in a very different way.

I feel like I'm only just realizing that I honestly have no idea what I'm getting myself into, coming here to study for an entire semester. And that thrills me more than just about anything else.