The British do America better than the Americans

Here are some things we have noticed that are a bit different from Abilene/ we didn't expect/ whatever we feel like saying...

they are all random. but we hope we can enlighten you.

1. every girl wears opaque tights and skirts. 

    literally. I think they can tell we're American by our wearing jeans...and sperrys.

2. We would not ride a bike around oxford to save our lives.

    We take our lives into our own hands just walking around...

3. Dr. Pepper is actually better here.

4. We live off of frosties, tea, digestives, bagels and porkchops.

5. You can NOT call people "ma'am" or "sir."

    We have probably offended many people; "ma'am" and "sir" are only suppose to be used for the king and queen.

6. British sinks have two water faucets. One for cold and one for hot.

     or let me rephrase that; one for titanic ice water and one for boiling third degree burn water.

7. We LOVE rugby. 

8. People actually do wear lots of red.

     Thanks study abroad department.

9. The british love the word "yall" & all things Texas.

     we're magical. 

...that's all we can think of; but we're sure we'll add to this later.

This week has just been a typical oxfordian week. 

Emily got a GREAT volunteer job working at Christ Church.

Ashley is still looking...  

This weekend should be wicked chill,  just a bunch of rambling around the city. 

and then we will start getting ready to go to Ireland on Thursday...less than a week away! 

Cool, well until we blog again...

For the First Time, We Feel....WICKED

Wednesday is market day! We officially love market day. We 

bought lots of yummy cooking ingredients. However, we're not exactly chefs. Emily has a little experience

 from watching her mom, but other than that, it's mostly guesswork. Emily made

 some killer porkchops one night, and as you can see, Ashley roasts a mean new potato.

This weekend, we took a trip into London. The main reason we went was to see Wicked, which we're sure you're all familiar with. We took a train to London, bought our tickets, and then realized that we had pretty much no plan for the day. 

We saw this cute little old man selling tickets for a bus tour. After talking to him for a while, he asked if we were from New York. Much better than Kentucky, we think. We decided to take the tour to all the basic tourist spots in London, where we could get on and off to take pickies. And boy did we take pickies. We saw just about everything. Somewhere between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, it occurred to us that the whole group is taking a bike tour of London later this semester....whoops. We've heard London is cooler the second time around anyways. 

Time drew near to the big event and we started getting REALLY excited. Bailey's birthday was this weekend so we ate some delicious Italian food before the show as a birthday feast. We had pretty good seats. The show was AMAZING. We can't even stress it enough. Ashley had to tell Emily to shut up a couple of times for singing along too much. And Emily may or may not have cried a little. Anyway, the show was great, and was made only better by Fiyero.

We've just accepted the fact...

welcome back.

well let's see what's been happening....

Classes have begun. but that is NOT exciting, so moving on.

A group of us tried to go to the Red Lion to watch the inauguration last night. (because we were told every British person alive was super excited about it and thought it would be fun to watch it with those unlike ourselves) but apparently...they really don't care. haha. It was not showing anywhere so we just came back and watched it at the house.

but maybe that was the best. 

we sang the national anthem.

or at least Ashley and Jen did.

These are just going to be random stories...

So us and our trusty sidekick Jen went to Border's bookstore today because Emily is in the hoity-toity CS Lewis class and needed the Chronicles of Narnia.

Well being the friendly American (or lost American) Ashley is, she went and asked the worker for help. Long story short he thought we were from Kentucky.

KENTUCKY?! REALLY?! We wonder if he has met anyone from Kentucky to compare us to...

the only famous person we can think of from there is Johnny Depp.

I don't think we are like him at all.

but...yeah, no. nothing.

and then Ashley led us to the fire escape exit thinking it was the real exit, so we all went up there and pushed against the door. 

only for it to obviously not open and we just had to turn around and walk away.

just picture that. 

& we saw a little British woman judging us. hahahahaha.

THEN.

we went to the open market. It is awesome. It's what you would think of when thinking of a market. It was just like in My Fair Lady where Eliza sells flowers...if you've seen that.

weird concept, we know.

anyways, we have no idea what we are doing anywhere we go. We have accepted that...

so as we are in the market we really wanted this loaf of cake, so Ashley takes it because she is going to pay for it...well we didn't know you were suppose to pay for it at the table you picked it up from, so we walked away.

basically stealing the cake.

hahaha.

As we walk across the market and meet up with others in our group, we learned...yeah, we were suppose to pay for that back there...we shoplifted in Oxford.

but DONT WORRY...we went back and paid.

we don't condone pinching.

welp, hope all is well where you are.

Look Familiar?

Let's see....it's been a busy few first days in Oxford. But we are loving every minute of it.

On our second day here we did lots of boring orientation meetings. Afterwards, we visited this hidden pub in town called The Turf. When we say hidden, we literally mean a labyrinth. The pub was really cool AND historical. It's probably best known for getting President Bill Clinton into a bit of trouble a few years back for being the place where he did not inhale marijuana.

We went "rambling" around a park near the house called "University Parks" on Saturday. Then we went to the covered market for lunch and shopping. As we came out of the market, 

our jaws DROPPED. The lovely young woman to the right was just chilling with a friend (the girl, not the goat thing). We don't know if anyone else is a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia, but we feel like it was only fitting to see the actress who plays Susan while we're visiting the land of C.S. Lewis. AKA Anna Popplewell, who we later discovered through imdb.com is studying at one of the colleges here in Oxford.

Later, we went to this pizza place one street over from the house. We don't think we were very good at making friends with the waitress, who we think was French. Word to the wise, if you're ever in Europe, don't eat pizza with your hands. Take the extra time to cut it to avoid dirty stares. Thankfully, we had our friend Taylor across the table telling us how we were fulfilling the role of "annoying Americans." We're really good at it.

We Made It.

Cheerio from foggy Oxford town! Wow, we know that picture is big... we're experiencing technical difficulties...Ashley and her new mac, especially in a new country and on 30 hours of no sleep, equals a big picture. for now.

 anyways. 

We made is through the long trek. aka, a massively long and turbulent plane ride. 

We aren't exactly sure how this little "blog" is going to work...

Ashley might post something one day, Emily the next...it's just a joint adventure.

Well, hm...let's see...today we had our first experience at "On the Hoof"

yum. delicious.

After watching The Holiday last semester, Ashley made it her goal to befriend young British children. Who would have thought that her goal was fulfilled our first night here at On the Hoof?!? We made friends with some eighth grade girls.

Ashley gave them a dime and she thinks they will treasure it forever.

or go exchange it for about 4 pence.

People really do talk with accents here.

it's cool... it's kind of like we are extras in SpiceWorld.

or Harry Potter.

I am sure this blog will get more interesting as we actually do stuff... so forgive this first entry.

but it's better than the whole... "we've never done this before, we don't know what to write" 

hopefully.

Grace and Peace,

ashley and emily oxfordians.