From Boston to Britain: Cows, Kids, and Other Blessings

Hello again, friends!

I can hardly believe that tomorrow marks two weeks that I have been here. As is usually the case with short-term adventures like this one, it seems that I got here yesterday and that I have been here forever all at once. So much has happened, and time is flying.

This week was the first full week of our Worldviews class. It has been phenomenal! Every day, our group of eight students takes the bus for about 20 minutes out to a little quaint village called Eynsham where our director lives with his family. They have a beautiful stone English home called “Lane House” where we spend from 10am to 6pm sitting around a huge table with coffee and “digestives” (a delicious English cookie!) looking at passages from the Bible, the Qur’an, and various other texts. I don’t think I’ve done this much reading in such a short concentrated time in my life! But I am learning so much and loving it. I cannot say enough about how great the director’s family is! They are so hospitable and have THE cutest children: three girls and two boys (with bright red hair!) ranging from 14 to 3 years old. Every lunch break, we get to play with them. Sometimes when we are in class, they run outside and press their faces against our windows to get our attention or to spy on us. Sometimes we even get notes like this under the door:

We get to have “family dinner” with them every Friday night for the rest of the term.

This week we went to The Eagle and Child for dinner, a pub famous for being frequented by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein back in the day. Appropriately, they named their closet “Narnia.” Another cultural difference between the U.S. and the U.K. is that at most pubs (that I’ve been to anyway), instead of being waited on a table, you order up front at the bar and they bring your food to you. When we walked in to The Eagle and Child, I asked the group of people clustered in the doorway if they were in line. They gave me a funny look for a quick second and then realized what I was asking and quickly nodded “yes.” Later I was informed that the proper way to ask this is to say “Is this the queue?” (pronounced “Q”)

Which leads me to this post’s vocab section:

“the tele” (rhyming with “belly”) = TV

“quid” = pounds. (like “bucks” meaning dollars)

“lou roll” = toilet paper

"takeaway" = food "to go"

“school” = elementary, middle, or highschool. NEVER college, which is always “university” or simply “uni.”

Today was a pretty epic day. This morning, instead of attending the church that will be my home church while I am here in Oxford, we gathered with over 30 other churches from all over the city of Oxford for a corporate event of worship and prayer in the very street where the Oxford Martyrs were burned at the stake in 1555 for refusing to recant their stance on truth. Two people were baptized, including a former 20-year alcoholic as well as a former drug-dealer who had been imprisoned 13 times and experienced the power and love of Jesus four years ago. He now helps others who are in the same place he once was to find freedom from their addictions. It was powerful to witness him break down crying as he came out of the water, praising God for His grace and mercy.

The other epic part of today (although in a very different way that doesn’t really compare to the Love Oxford event) was that I GOT 10 FEET AWAY FROM A HERD OF BABY COWS!!! One of my favorite things about England is that it doesn’t get dark until almost 10p.m. So I have made it a habit of walking or running to a beautiful field called Port Meadow every evening around 9p.m. to watch the sunset. (At least the days it isn’t raining!) These lil guys snuck up on me today! Here they are “in a queue!”