The French eat French bread, but they also eat burritos.

On June 21, I had lunch with the JWS, hugged all my friends, got on a bus, and left Oxford. I passed Magdalen College, and I remembered my first view of it on October 2. Though the bus had been within Oxford city limits for quite a while, my view of Magdalen was my first real clue that I was really, truly going to one of the oldest universities in the world. On that fall day (seriously, how cliché is this memory going to get?), I was so impressed by the grandeur of the city and by my total displacement from home. In June, my last view of Magdalen brought instead a sense that this grand place had become a sort of home. At this thought, I promptly burst into tears which did not subside until we neared London. It was only my “Get Fuzzy” comic book that finally cheered me up. Darby Conley, you are my hero.


Anyway, off the nostalgia and onto the next story: I wasn’t going into London to fly to Kansas City. I was going into London to fly to Antibes, a city in the south of France.


Let me take this opportunity to plug the Hall Family Foundation. The lovely and kind and undoubtedly beautiful members of the giving-money committee (dear giving-money committee: I am sorry that I don’t know your real name) were lovely and kind (and beautiful?) enough to give me a grant that enabled me to attend a French-language school in Antibes. To the Hall Family Foundation: you rock.


I flew to France and was met by my French host father, Pierre Pravettoni. He drove me to his home (we listened to Jason Mraz, Elvis, and some random French person in the car), where I met his wife, Isabelle, and his twin sons, Alexandre and Anthony (affectionately called Alex and Antho). This is the Pravettoni family:

They were pretty much amazing. Isabelle is a fantastic cook, even when she’s cooking boudin noir (blood sausage, which consists of, you guessed it, congealed blood in a sausage skin. I hope you weren’t eating when you read this). Pierre loves music of all kinds. He kept showing me YouTube videos of American artists that I had to had heard of (I hadn’t), or of awesome songs. Check this one out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM. It’s worth five and a half minutes of your life.

Alexandre and Anthony look enough alike that I initially was afraid I was never going to be able to tell them apart. We became good friends though, and I figured out which one was which. In this picture, Anthony is on the left and Alexandre is on the right:

Alex and Antho and I watched a lot of television, especially this terrible French Real-World-Big-Brother-type show called “Secret Story.” I am ashamed to admit I got pretty into it. I also watched Jaws, which is called Les Dents de la Mer (The Teeth of the Sea) in French, which is hilarious, and Castaway, which is Seule dans le Monde (Alone in the World). Also a lot of “CSI: New York” which they call “The Experts: Manhattan.” The twins and I also played a lot of Wii golf. I can now beat any of you, and probably Tiger Woods, hands down.

The last two of my three weeks, a 16-year-old Spanish girl named Edurne came to live with us. She is super sweet and has spent every summer since she was 11 in either England or France:

I didn’t spend my days just watching TV and playing Wii with French people, though. I also went to school in the mornings. There’s not much to say about school: my teachers were nice, my French really improved, and I advanced a class a week. My classmates came from a bunch of different countries: Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, England, Brazil, Italy, Greece, Turkey. It was awesome because we got to tell each other, in French, about our countries and cultures and traditions. I didn’t just learn about France and the French, I learned about all sorts of peoples and nations! It was phenomenal. I loved it.

In the afternoons, I hung out with my friends. We spent a lot of time on the beach:

Enjoying the view:

Antibes is a very, very beautiful city. It was founded by Romans and perfected by the French, and it’s one of the richest and largest ports on the Mediterranean. The water is this gorgeous blue, the old city are these gorgeous sun tones, and the land is this gorgeous green. Want more proof?

This is in the old city.

This is me with the port and the old city behind me, taken from the top of Fort Carras.

This is Antibes and Juan les Pins, from the top of the hill on the peninsula.

This is one of my favorite pictures.

My friends and I also visited neighboring cities. We visited Cannes, where there were no movie stars but there were yachts that probably cost more than my entire college education, including the Oxford part:

We visited Grasse, which was hilly and wonderful and had a great perfume factory:

And we visited Nice, which was just as great as it was in April. Plus, I got a supercute new dress there, bonus.

On Sundays, I went to the Evangelical Church of Antibes, which played Michael W. Smith and Matt and Beth Redman songs in French. One Sunday, after church, I visited Marineland, where I got to see these guys:

I love aquariums, I love animal shows, I loved Marineland.

I was in Antibes from June 21 to July 11. The goodbyes in Antibes were sweet:

On July 11, I flew back to London. I went to The Globe again (it’s such a magical place), and then I visited Oxford to see some JWS friends for the last time and to pick up some luggage that I hadn’t dragged to France.

Finally, on July 14, I got on the United Airlines flight that would return me to my country. When I landed in Washington, DC, I didn’t start crying from happiness because my mouth hurt too much from smiling. I kept jumping every time I heard an American accent, wanting to run up to them and cry, “We speak the same language!!” I ate a Wendy’s hamburger for the first time in nine months, and I called my mommy. Coming back in the country was a very good experience.

And finally, finally, I got back to KCI. This time, I did cry on the plane as we landed. It was so overwhelmingly wonderful to recognize an airport! I haven’t tried to count how many airports, train stations, and bus stations I’d been in since October, but it was a lot. Most importantly, my family was waiting for me in the airport. I’m tearing up right now, over a month later, thinking about how much I wanted to run from the airplane to the gate, how I couldn’t hold in my tears of joy even before I saw them, how good it was to be hugged and held by my parents and brother, how glad I was to not have to miss them again for a long time. You don’t learn how true the clichés are until you leave home for a long time: home is where the heart is, there’s no place like home, I wish I was homeward bound (okay, that’s a song lyric). Oxford had become a kind of home for me, and I’ll miss it. But my real home, the one I’ll always want to come back to, is 5421 N. Tracy.

And now, friends, you have travelled with me from October to July, from England to France, through fun, boredom, travels, hominess, loves, hates, homesickness and joy. I feel like I should say something pithy or clever to end this blog, but I’m not going to because I’m not done with this blog. I’ve found that I like telling stories, I like sharing YouTube links, and I like filling the blogosphere with parentheses. So, please check back here every so often, and you may find something I thought was funny, a story I thought was interesting, links to YouTube videos or news stories, or just pictures of my senior year.

Thanks for keeping up with me this past year!

Trinity term

I wrote something like 12 posts for my first term. My last term will be summed up in one. It's not because it was the least important: it's because a) it was the busiest and b) it's August now.



My last term started off with a totally exciting visit from my Aunt Debbie and cousin Sarah! They visited my aunt's niece in New York, and afterwards flew to London and spent a few days there. Lucky for me, they decided to spend one of their London days with me in Oxford!



I, sadly, have no pictures from that great day because Sarah manned (womanned?) her camera quite well, but this is what we did: saw Regent's; ate at The Eagle and Child (Sarah tried the green beer, which was deemed not-good); visited my house; visited Blenheim Palace (where we saw them preparing to shoot the 2010 movie Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black! and also a real-live Duke getting angry!!); and shopped at Primark (which was really created with Sarah in mind). It was so great to see them, especially because Aunt Debbie use her travel agent skills to help me plan my year abroad.



The next big event of Trinity Term was May Day. On April 30, most people (not me or my friends) pull all-nighters with lots of drinks, and then they all cram into a half-mile stretch of High Street at 6 am to hear the Magdalen College choir sing from the top of the bell tower. Here's what High Street looked like just before the choir sang:





And here are the Jewell people that woke up early to enjoy the beautiful music and beautiful morning: Brett, Robyn, me, Sabrina, Bill, and Erin:

May Day was the official beginning of spring, and let me tell you, spring in Oxford is gorgeous. One of my favorite parts of spring was the geese. I think I've mentioned the Christ Church geese before. Well, they had babies! We got to watch the baby geese grow up, and I think we all felt sort of parentally protective of the "geese puppies" (as Robyn called them). At least, we felt protective until the mommy geese attacked us after getting too close:

Cute, though, right?

Spring is a time of many Oxonian traditions, including the Tortoise Race. Now, many of you may not know that Regent's Park has its very own tortoise, Emmanuelle. She is about 80, and legendary in the number of wins she has had in the Corpus Christi Tortoise Race. Many Regent's students went to the races to support Emmanuelle, who, despite being the oldest tortoise there, pulled out yet another win:

The weekly formal halls continued during Trinity Term, and we were lucky to host some of our Cambridge friends at one of them! Amy, Nicole, and Carly visited one weekend, and they clearly enjoyed themselves:

So far it looks like I did nothing during the spring except have fun, right? Well, that's sort of true: even in my two tutorials, I enjoyed myself! I had an absolutely phenomenal (pulling out the big words here) tutor for both the tutorials: Lynn Robson. She didn't let me get away with half-baked work, she challenged my ideas and appreciated it when I was original, and she just generally made me work harder than I have ever worked for any other professor.

I studied Shakespeare, which was...amazing. Truly, the Bard was a genius. If you want, I can wax rhapsodic about The Great Man for hours and hours. (What kind of phrase is "wax rhapsodic" anyway? It brings to mind candles melting on a piano or something.) I also took a tutorial in Early Modern Drama, which means all of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Let me tell you, as amazing as Marlowe and Jonson and Middleton are, they can't hold a candle (melting all over a piano) to Shakespeare.

In addition to falling in love with Shakespeare's words (but not with Shakespeare--have you seen the painting of him? He has a fro-mullet), I hung out with my church group, the JWS. One of my favorite outings was when we went punting:

That's me rocking the punting pole and Rob rocking the relaxation. Punting is pretty fun. It's like rowboating, except there's the constant threat of falling in because you're a) standing up and b) sticking a pole that weighs more than I do into deep mud and thus risking forgetting to let go of the pole and letting the boat go on without you. Also, ducks get closer to punts than rowboats because there's less chance that they'll get smacked in the head with a paddle.

I did that once, by the way: smacked a duck in the head with a paddle. Except the paddle was a rowing blade, and we were going 26 mph rather than 2.6, and I didn't know I smacked the duck because it was behind me. I hear the duck lived, though. Good news.

Speaking of rowing, the day that the above punting picture was taken was also the last day of the Trinty Term rowing races: Summer VIIIs. I rowed again during Trinity, which was intense but so much fun:

I am far right, in the shirt that could say "BOY" but actually says "BOW. My housemate Erin is number 5, and my housemate Sabrina isn't in the picture, but she was the cox. Regent's Park Women rowed so well, but we unfortunately didn't result well. Regardless, I had a blast!

Here is the legendary 2009 Summer VIIIs Regent's Park College Women's Boat Club:

Lottie, Clare, Ailsa, Kathryn, Joy, Becky, Charlotte, Erin, and Sabrina is kneeling.

After Summer VIIIs, I met Jacque and Madison in London to celebrate our birthdays. I saw The Lion King (best. musical. ever.), and then the three of us spent Saturday exploring and take great pictures like this one in Trafalgar Square:

Jacque's on the left, Madison is in the middle, and I am on the right.

Our birthday dinner was at Pizza Express, a fantastic restaurant that should start franchises in Kansas City:

I went to London several times during Trinity Term. I just really like London. Already, I miss it. On one of my trips, I made my mecca trip: I went to The Globe Theatre.

For those of you out of touch with English-major-meccas, The Globe is the primary theatre for which Shakespeare wrote. It is round (like...a globe), open-air, and simple. The first time I went, I saw my all-time favorite Shakespearean play, As You Like It. I stood on the ground in front of the stage, got up-close-and-personal with a few actors, and generally experienced one of the top-five highlights of my trip to England:

Not long after my trip to The Globe, it was time to begin the endings. At our last formal hall at Regent's, we all dressed up and put on facepaint (it was a "rave"). We were all sad to leave, as evidenced by these posed sad faces:

As another ending and good-bye, our house got together for a barbeque in our backyard. Here are our wonderful neighbors:

Front row: Sabrina, Jennie Mills, Maggie Mills; Middle row: Bobbie Mills, Robyn, me, Hannah Goodliff; Back row: Martin Mills, Erin, Andy Goodliff.

And from top to bottom: Maggie, Jennie, Robyn, Erin, Andy, Hannah, Bobbie, Sabrina, Martin, and me. We were so blessed to live with such amazing people!

During my last week at Regent's, my friend Brett and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company do The Winter's Tale. It was amazing. Also, we found this place:

Get it?

Three days later was Regent's Park's valediction ceremony. Everyone who was leaving Regent's that year never to return got to sign their name in this huge book. The book has names in it dating from 1816. In British years, that is brand-new, but in Joy/American years, that is really, really old.

After the valediction ceremony there was a reception. Here I am with the legendarily amazing Lynn Robson:

And here is the last group picture Beta Rho took together:

Sadly, my time at Oxford was at an end. I dreaded leaving my JWS and Regent's friends, I had already begun to miss living with Robyn, Sabrina, and Erin, and I cried on the bus to the airport on Sunday. However, my adventures weren't over yet.

Coming up next: France!