Farewell Oxford

2.5 months and I think I'm finally ready to utter those words. I left Oxford mid-September for a new job and life in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Closer to home but not home.

The absence of posts can be attributed to a crazy last month in Oxford full of finishing up the dissertation, last trips to London and last nights out with friends. And then a very quick transition, turnaround and move to Tennessee.

On Sept. 13 I caught a bus at dawn to Heathrow, looking out the window as two of my favorite people in Oxford – Taz and Jacob – waved goodbye from the sidewalk on St. Clement's St. Oxford was getting colder with weather that reminded me of the week I arrived, exactly one year before.

One year spent in Oxford and I am forever changed.

My sister's friend once told her that you have to mourn everything in life. I couldn't agree more. For me, the mourning usually takes time to set in. And in the case of Oxford, it took several weeks before I even realized I had left. For good. I like to remember lots of things about it.

I remember zipping up my jacket against the cold before a long cycle home. I remember turning on my iPod for a leisurely walk to frequented places: Melissa's house, St. Aldate's, the Tonge building at Brookes, the Cowley Tesco and, of course, Starbucks on High St. I remember the nightly ritual of locking up my bike in the backyard and walking into my house on Iffley Road. I remember times in the Badgers Walk house with Lindsay and Johnna when Oxford was still new and scary. I remember the way Magdalen Bridge looked at night and after it rained. I remember the mojitos at Kazbar and days I spent alone to study and wander. I remember sitting with Taz and Kate in South Parks on what must have been the hottest day of the summer. I remember an evening in another park, wearing a white T-shirt and knowing for the first time that I may have a definitive date for leaving Oxford. I remember lying on a blanket outside on a clear night listening to Tess and Melissa and Pattie laugh until I realized this city had begun to feel like home.

I remember so much more. But have returned to the familiar in a country that I also love. It is busier. There are more cars. Bigger grocery stores and the whole twitter thing I'm trying to figure out (@andrealucado, just fyi). Life is faster here, and I can't ride a bicycle to get around, but man things are convenient!

Despite the comforts of my homeland, I think a part of me remains on Iffley Road and in City centre and at St. Aldates. Oxford was a truly beautiful year and will remain in my mind as such.

So farewell for now and may I return sooner than expected.

The Amazing Race

That's the only reality show I would ever consider doing and I kinda feel like I was just on it. 5 cities in 10 days- that qualifies, right??

Over the past week and a half I hit up Paris with my cousin Dana, her daughter (could someone please tell me if this makes her my "second cousin" or my "first cousin once removed"?) Carrigan and my Aunt Joan, as well as Vienna, Salzburg, Praha (known to the English-speaking world as Prague) and Munich with my fellow Oxfordian Melissa.

It was all great: the scenery, the food, the historical tours - that mostly consisted of WWII themes like fascism - and most especially and importantly the company :)

And now I've returned to my last four weeks in Oxford. I'm not ready yet to blog about how this makes me feel but be expecting some very emotional posts to come as I tend to use this web space as a therapeutic medium. Apologies in advance for any sappiness or misspellings/grammar mistakes that result from not being able to see the screen behind my tears. Ok, that's a little dramatic but this place has kinda grown on me.

That said. Here are some pics from my fab Euro tour. If anyone from the Amazing Race recruitment team is reading my blog please note that I packed all of my belongings in one backpack ("rucksack" in Brit talk), rarely wore make up and showered only when absolutely necessary. I just feel like those are Amazing Race-type things one must be capable of...

And Then There Are Those Days

where you don't have one but two low tires on your bicycle- what you depend on to get from A to B. Where you wait inside for the rain to stop just for it to start again as you took the gamble and left home without an umbrella. Where you decided to join the university volleyball team because "they welcome all skill levels" only to find the team over the summer is unique in that it includes people studying in Oxford for the summer, staying in shape because they play for their university back home and your high school skills go completely unnoticed and unappreciated. Where all you want to do is finally start the Harry Potter series (for the first time! I know, I know...I'm an English major/book nerd/living in England where they filmed parts of the movies and have not even once read a Harry Potter book. I'm a disgrace to my kind) but can't because you made a stupid vow to not read anything for pleasure until your dissertation was bound and turned in. Where your hair dryer decides to burn out and you suddenly realize you're now the age of if not older than half of the professional athletes you watch on T.V, half of the actors you see at the movies and half of the authors of the old classic novels you've been reading. Seriously, when did that happen??

Enough ranting. But I know you all feel me, and if you want to tell me about "Those Days" you've had, I'd love to commiserate.

I promise a more positive post for next time. Until then, let me wallow.

Oxford in the Summertime

is warmer, slower and just overall a bit nicer. It's hard to believe I had an earlier plan of leaving this place in June. I already wouldn't have seen/felt/experienced so many things. For example...

what Uni Parks feels like in bare feet and a tank top

the distinctly British way of bar-b-qing: as often as possible, with lots of sausages (yes, they add "s"-es to lots of words like "shrimps" and "cereals") and Pimms

my tea party birthday, shared with my good friend (and birthday twin) Melissa, at the very sophisticated tea room in the Randolph

the quiet calm before the storm, just after Oxford students leave for the summer and just before a billion foreign (including American) high school students run the place over for ivy-league prep summer courses – a good week that sadly ended Sunday...

the sun rising around 5 am and setting around 10:30 pm – that's my favorite part so far

I know there is much more summer to come, about two months in fact before I'll have to say goodbye to this strange and beautiful place. But no talk of that yet! There's still a dissertation to write and traveling to do and fun to be had.

I have to admit the dissertation part is proving difficult to a student accustomed to summers off, but I'm sure a second wind is in me somewhere. It will probably come from my supervisor's list of corrections I'll receive this week. I know you're all dying to know specifics about this long paper I've been writing, so don't worry, I'll give details soon, but I think I'll save it for another post. It deserves its own.

Dear dad,

As you may have read a few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to my mom for Mother's Day about just some of the many reasons I love her. As it is now Father's Day, I would like to do the same for you dad. Not in a I-guess-I-should-because-I-did-for-mom kinda way and we should keep things even and not because I am too far to tell you these things myself (I'm currently just a staircase away from you), but because I love you like I love mom and for all kinds of different and unique reasons, and I want the public to know how great you are. Not just as a speaker and writer but as a dad. So here it goes dad. Just a few of the fatherly reasons I love you:

You've made life a story for us, naming characters and games (wiggly worm comes to mind most vividly) that make each day an adventure, and that perspective, though not always as fresh as I'd like it to be, has stuck with me all these years.

You surface honesty in our conversations. If things aren't ok, or if things are better than they've ever been, the real deal comes out when speaking to you.

You have lived the past 25 years as a male minority in your own household and have never, ever, not even once complained about it.

You have given me the travel bug, the writing bug and the faith bug... all bugs I don't mind having for the rest of my life. 

You came to every game and musical-type performance, no matter how lame, and always made me feel like a superstar. Even if I the played the role of "woman #2" or caught the volleyball during a volleyball game. 

You taught me to swim by slyly backing up without my noticing as I swam toward you a stroke at a time the full length of the pool. Although I thought it a dirty trick at the time (I might have even cried), that lesson continued and carried over into so many areas where I went further than I thought I could because of your encouragement.

I could go on forever. 

I'll just say I am beyond blessed and love you more than you know.

Happy Father's Day! You deserve recognition on all days, but this one is especially for you.

Your daughter,

Andrea

Moloka'i

For the past 8 days I have, at various times, gotten sunburned, dug my feet deeply into the sand, lain on the beach for way longer than is healthy, gotten a zero-gravity pedicure (zero-gravity is the only way to go when getting a pedicure), gone on power walks with my mom along the shore, played tennis, talked with my sister and brother-in-law (whom I hadn't seen since they got in their car at their wedding reception, driving off into their mutual futures), gone paddling in a 6-person canoe and stared into incredibly clear ocean water...in other words, I have been in paradise. Hawaii. A little place plopped into the middle of the pacific far from scary words like DISSERTATION DEADLINE, WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY and LIBRARY CATALOGUE.

My family vacations here every summer but this time we decided to take a little outing to the neighboring island of Moloka'i. This is a strange place- beautiful, of course, but strange. You can read more about it and its 8,000ish population here. We were only in Moloka'i for about 24 hours but we hit up all the major sights in one afternoon. The biggest draw? A leper colony formed in the 19th century that still exists today. 

This was the purpose of our visit. We don't typically seek out leper colonies to tour while on a relaxing beach vacation, but my dad was doing some research and filming for a new book and found a really interesting story about the priest, Father Damien, who worked in and transformed this quarantined area back in the day. 

Moloka'i has one hotel, one bar and lots of occupants resistant to tourism and the capitalistic/opportunistic mindset I've grown comfortable with. Their story and efforts are worth the time if you have it. Everyone we met who lives there is passionate about living there. I think you would have to be. 

These are just a few of the breathtaking views we were privileged to see while my dad was filming and on our own excursion.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

I've been a few places over the last few months that deserve some blogging attention, as belated as it is. The stamp collection in my passport now proudly consists of three new members: Germany, Greece and Austria, visited in the months of February, April and May and all unforgettable in their own right. 

Instead of detailing each adventure, I'll try to summarize these trips with a few key words and pictures. 

location: Vienna, Austria

date of travel: May 21-24

travel buddies: George Naveen Thomas and Zi-Su Kim

sights visited: Schonbrunn Palace, opera house, Zi-Su's house, his family's Asian food store, flea market, pretty parks, big cathedral, other large and architecturally breath-taking buildings

highlight: riding bikes around downtown and eating home-cooked Korean food

low point: losing my passport and boarding pass as we were in line to board the plane in Gatwick

location: Berlin, Germany

date of travel: Feb. 19-22

travel buddy: Amy Jo Couchman

sights visited: parliament building, Berlin wall, Potsdamer Platz, Hitler's bunker, concentration camp outside the city called Sachsenhausen, Jewish memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, "biggest chocolate shop in Europe" 

highlight: Fat Tire Bike Tour, in which we saw several of the sights mentioned and had fun trying to bike through ice and snow

low point: begin very cold at times, loudest hostel snorer of all time in the bunk bed next to us

Athens and Santorini, Greece

date of travel: March 28- April 4

travel buddy: Amy Jo Couchman

sights visited: Parthenon, Mars Hill, various beaches in Santorini, Oia (we think Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed here?), volcano, "hot springs" aka a pool that's a little less freezing than the rest of the Mediterranean in late March

highlight: lying on a beach in Santorini for an entire day with the place practically to ourselves and getting upgraded from a 6-person dorm room in our hostel to an amazing apartment in Athens

low point: being really sunburned and lathering ourselves in greek yogurt, following the advice of a local who swore it would "take the sting out"...we were a little disappointed with the results