There and Back Again: A UK Tale by Cody Murrell

I'm back. I'm settled back in America again. I missed a lot: carbonated beer, salty food, and knowing where things are.

That being said, I still have some things to rattle off about my last few days.

After getting back from Scotland, I spent the day relaxing and not doing any work whatsoever. I had finished my tutorial, so I didn't have to do any of that. I did, however, have an annotated bibliography due Friday and The Winter's Tale to read for Tuesday. So I did read some of that.

The next day, a friend I met over there and I went to the King's Arms for lunch after class. I didn't know if I would ever get it again, so I got black pudding. Mostly for myself, but I wanted to gross out my mom as well. It's blood. And pretty good (it gets a bad rep for what's in it!).

 That same day, Sally and Jaime invited me to go punting with them. Punting is the activity of being on a boat and using a long metal pole to push the boat along the body of water. This particular body of water was the Thames River. It's a nice, calm river to punt on. We just had to watch out for other boats and such. It was a nice, sunny day, but the sun disappeared right when I was starting to feel kind of toasty. Perfect.

It was wonderful. A welcome respite from the work I hadn't done at all since getting back from Scotland. 

That night, Dr. Anderson treated us to a last supper of sorts at The Head of the River Pub. There, he delivered a speech modeled after Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V. We, the band of brothers, were all given names by Dr. Anderson. I was the Scottish liberator. I was pleased.

The rest of the week passed by without incident. Nothing crazy happened. I began to wrap things up in Oxford, visiting stores and collecting souvenirs and buying sweets and other things to taste and bring home. It was a nice, calm end to a fantastic 6 weeks. I miss Oxford. I miss Scotland. I miss the food, the beer (even though it's flat!), the sights, and the fact that everything is so old. It hails from another age, an age where we didn't have fancy interwebz or phones or anything. 

Goodbye, Oxford. I will see you again.