Tuesday Night 7/1

Alright, time to slow down on my expenditures a bit, but I know that the first few days I am here it is always more expensive than I will hope as I had to pick up bits and bobs here and there to get my life set for the next few weeks. A bus pass for a week (15 pounds); more money to my cell phone pay-as-you-go account (20 pounds); a calculator (I still have grading I have to do for my first set of summer classes); a file folder; some books (18 pounds); a fan (9 pounds) as it was close to 80 today and I find I can't sleep very well without the white noise from the fan; and so on. I have probably spent close to 90 pounds in cash, and maybe another 30-40 pounds in my credit card. That's in just three days...

Oh, well that doesn't include dinner tonight when myself and four students decided to try a new-ish sushi place here in Oxford. It's a chain of places in England called "Yo Sushi". Modeled after a traditional Japanese sushi fast food restaurant where you pick up individual color coded sushi plates as they circle around on conveyor belts and then pay for each bowl at a set price, it was fun. It was also far more expensive than any of us thought it would be. While I originally agreed to pick up the tab in whole, something I tend to do at least once on a trip for some students, the 90 pound bill with tip added was a lot more than I expected (though I guessed closest to the amount before hand). Basically, I broke the tab in half, with me paying half the bill (though I placed the whole thing on my credit card) and the students splitting the other 45 pounds among themselves. A lot of food for about 11 pounds each, which for them was about the cost of sushi out in the states (though I think they might have gotten a bit more). All of us agreed that three things stood out: pumpkin tempura (sounds odd, and I think it was squash more than pumpkin, but damn good), shrimp grilled and panko crusted (which was good enough we all split 3 plates of it) and as I was the only one who ordered desert, mochi, it got split too. Now I have had mochi before and its Chinese equivalent: sweet red bean paste dumplings. Mochi is a sweet desert of sweetened pressed rice around a ball of sweet red bean paste. I let the students each try a piece and while they didn't think they would like it, they ate my desert. So we ordered more and they shared one plate while I ate the other (only 4 smallish pieces).

The group that came out to dinner was a good group and culturally diverse. Mark and Kier are from Trindad, both very good students that I have had in my classrooms in the past. Keir is a brilliant and talented young woman, though probably a bit too academically intense at times. I have had her in four of my classes, including one here at Oxford and she is a molecular biology major so she doesn't have to take that many humanities courses. But she is smart as a whip. Mark is a bit more laid back, but also intensely smart and funny and will eat just about anything. There was nothing left on any of the plates at the restaurant. Shannon is a young woman from New Jersey who is also Mark's girlfriend and they make a very interesting pair. AJ was the new student of the group, kinda quiet (though I have him in my Civ 2 class) but he was pretty cool too. A good group of people I am sure I am going to spend a bit more time with over the next few weeks. Besides they all promised to buy me lunch at some point for treating them to a good portion of their dinner.

However, we all agreed that we have to eat some place cheaper next time. It appears cheap sushi is non existent in Oxford for the moment.

My university mailbox is filling up with exams from Florida Tech students I taught during the first summer session. I will be working on grading most of them tomorrow during the day and Thursday. Tomorrow night we are off to see the play "Wicked" in London. I am looking forward to it and to the student's reactions to London. On Friday a good portion of them are off to Ireland for a four day weekend, while I am once again remaining behind in Oxford. I will probably head down to London on Sunday morning and I might even spend the night, though I am not quite sure yet what I am going to do.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. I am still waking up by 6am (the sun comes up before 5!) mostly because of the Covered Market and the deliveries made in the morning. So far for the last two mornings somebody has dropped a lot of glassware and begun cursing around 6 am. I thought I understood English swearing, but this one went on for almost two minutes unbroken!

I know I still owe you pics, but I haven't taken too many. I will do so on Friday and more over the weekend, especially as I wandered about Oxford for two days. I want to get some pictures of places I haven't been and do some things I didn't do last year (especially free things to watch the money). Hopefully I will have some interesting ones for you all to gaze at and enjoy...