South African winter's passed and it's back to the UK where wintry weather reigns (or rains) eternal. The break was really good. It was lovely to see the family again and meet Jackson (our new dog) for the first time. He's really lovely (except that his colliesh nature means he nips visitors' legs, mistaking them for sheep) and a good addition to the family. Somehow he recognised I was part of the family (from seeing and hearing me on skype - or recognising my smell from my bedroom?), and decided I didn't need herding.
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| Jackson |
Everyone back in the UK is asking what I did over the "summer". I guess a (summery) summary would be: hung out with family, especially mom, took part in the TLC Summer Challenge (in which we read through
The Silver Chair in a week and wrote reflections on each chapter - if you're curious, you can read mine
here), watched Olympics on TV (I saw all of our medal races), did some Greek text analysis for my thesis, read stuff for and tried to come to grips with my thesis and syntax essay topic, visited friends at UKZN (my old uni), finally went on the Moses Mabida stadium arch skycar (from which there's a cool view of Durban and the sea), watched Paralympics, went on a family weekend away to the KZN Midlands and tried to get as much sun as possible. I was most impressed that we had a couple days of over 30°C weather in August (which is still technically winter). One day even may have topped 40°.
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| Moses Mabida Stadium |
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| View of Durban from Stadium |
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| Family trip in the Midlands |
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| Natal Midlands |
I departed for the UK on 11 September (the safest day of the year to fly(?)). I decided to take the shorter, more direct flight this time which meant flying up to Jo'burg (my first domestic flight ever) and then heading from there to Heathrow where I arrived at about 7 the next morning. I preferred having one longer (11 hour) leg to two short ones (7 and 9 hours via Dubai), and I even got a teeny bit of sleep (maybe half an hour - an hour at the most). I flew on Virgin Atlantic. It was pretty nice - their food wasn't quite as good as Emirates but the service was good in general and there were lots of empty seats (including the one next to me).
I arrived in Oxford around midday on 12 September and got the key to my new room in Franks Building, which I'm very happy with, despite the higher rent. I only got my boxes back from Tam 'n Heather's place the next evening. This meant eating out for a day and sleeping in a sleeping bag at night, but that was okay.
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On Friday 14, I left Oxford again (having hardly unpacked anything) as the Worcester Christian Union had a weekend away (called "House Party" - the official UK term for such CU events). We had an amazing time catching up and preparing for the year ahead, studying the bible and worshipping God. We stayed at a converted vicarage at Viney Hill in the Gloucestershire countryside (an extremely pretty part of England). One of my highlights was going through a walk in the Forest of Dean (which I believe is one of the oldest and largest forests in England). We were only on the outskirts and following well defined paths and roads. But it was still really amazing to think that when I read about such places as a child, I never dreamt I'd ever find myself actually walking in the English countryside. It was about as believable as finding myself in Narnia :-P.
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| The Vicarage |
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| Forest of Dean |
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| The walking party |
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| Old church |
I came back to Oxford on Sunday afternoon and spent most of last week unpacking, settling in to my new room and relaxing. This week I'm back to work on my Greek analyses and readings. There are still two weeks till term officially kicks off, but there are a lot of events for new students (some of which I'll be at to welcome them) so it will be a fairly busy two weeks.
