Happy Thanksgiving...or as they say it in England, Happy Thursday!

guy fawkes burning

as you can see, i got a new camera, and it is basically amazing! November started out pretty great! we watched V for Vendetta on the 5th and me and Lora went to a carnival/fireworks show/guy fawkes burning the next day. i took lots and lots of pictures with my new camera! it was pretty awesome... but cold.

there's been a lot of visiting going on this month! justin came from Cambridge one weekend, then all of the Cambridge kids came the next weekend and then Allison came to England for a visit and she, Jenna and justin came to Oxford. Wow, Justin probably should have just just went to Oxford if he's gonna come here this often! then Joe came and we went to the Ashmolean! it was really fun! people from Hendrix that are studying abroad in different places have also been coming to visit the hendrix people that are here. lots and lots of visitors.

it's apparently been too much visitation. a guy from Oxford property services came to our house and told us that we have been making too much noise and that the neighbors had been calling the landlord and even the police on us and that if it didn't stop, they would have to take action! no one, not even the landlord, had given us any warning before this, so how in the world were we supposed to know if people were mad at us. Penelope says that's just how british people are...they just don't come up to your face and say STFU! well, we've toned down our partying and people are pretty much done visiting, so it should be ok.

tutorials are going pretty well. my professors are basically genii (geniuses?). my minor tutorial professor can speak 27 LANGUAGES FLUENTLY!!! Ridiculous! she works for the British Library and translates for czech diplomats and coordinates receptions and huge dinners and celebrations for important people and everything! she is basically a beast... except for the fact that she is like 5'2 and speaks like a parakeet. she has parakeets in her house and kyle and i have decided that she is probably an animagus and the parakeet is her animal. i'm going to have her again in the spring for my spanish tutorial, which will be really interesting.

my major tutorial is really fun and my tutor knows sooo much about music. he is a performer too, so that makes him even more crazily awesome! it's been going pretty well. he said i've been doing really good, but my last paper was a complete fail. i have my meeting with him later today, so we'll see how that goes. other than that, they've been completely awesome! i am also really excited because i will end up having both of these tutors again (i don't know if they want me back, but they're stuck with me! HAH!)!

trampolining has been going great! apparently even though i am not an official member of a college in Oxford, i will still get to compete against Cambridge at the Varsity meet next term, and i am also getting to compete in the sort of national college competition later in the spring! it's been really awesome...i'm thinking i might keep doing it when i get back to the US if i can find a place.

my first Thanksgiving meal

even though the British don't celebrate it, we had our own little thanksgiving at our house yesterday. me and bernice did the cooking and if i do say so myself, it was quite a good meal! there were 5 of us and,as you can see, we made a crap ton of food! day 2 and there is more than half of the food left (I'm actually eating leftovers right now!). we'll see how long it lasts!

Coming home in a week and a half. i don't really know how i feel about it. i am really excited to see my family and friends (and my new ipod will be waiting for me when i get there!), but at the same time, it's a realization that i'm a third of the way done with my year in england. i get to go to jewell to see people i haven't seen in months, but i also have to talk to professors about credits and majors and my future and it's all just a lot to handle. i want to come home, sure, but it just drives home the fact that i am growing up and will have to be a part of the real world soon. hmm. guess it had to happen sometime! :P

well, that's all i can remember for now.

kthankxbai!

Jojo

Choir fail #1

hey all, sorry i haven't updated in a while, it's been a weird couple of weeks.

Brief recap of the time since i wrote last:

October's been going pretty fast. tons of drama, of course, but too much to go into here. we had our introduction papers due on the 8th, which i think mine went well, but we won't get them back for another week (yea, 4 weeks to get a paper back!). then the real tutorials started. it's not been extremely difficult yet, though i have at least one paper every week instead of one every two weeks, which took some time to get used to.

my birthday was on the 16th, it was pretty good. i didn't do too much (and didn't get drunk). just basically spent a really nice and relaxing day at home and then went out to eat and to a few bars and a club that night. it was a good birthday. and i got to see someone get alchohol poisoning and get carried off in an ambulance! haha. God knows what i like to see on my birthday! :P

i went to a dance at Regent's with Melody Megan Annie and Corey a couple of weeks ago and it was really fun! i got to "dress up" like a professor, which basically means i put on some nice clothes and danced a lot! It was glorious!

as far as OOSC related business, we went to a castle, a palace, an artist's manor, and Shakespeare's birthplace as well as other places in Stratford upon Avon and London that were of Shakespeare significance and it was pretty cool. other than that, we've just been hanging around oxford and doing not much. there are some cool British people we've been hanging out with a bit that Becca introduced us to. they're basically awesome and annie's kind of dating one of them.

Me and Maura went on a surprise and last minute trip to cambridge to visit Joe and Jenna and everyone at Cambridge and it was AMAZING!! we went to a pirate dance and met the people that live on their floor and had pizza and watched movies and it was great! Cambridge is much more like a city than oxford and it was really interesting. plus i got to spend time with joe and jenna, which was amazing as always. justin got me sick though, and i spent the next like 4 days in bed. : ( not a fun tutorial, let me tell you! now they have to come visit us so we can take them around oxford! hmmm...what else?

Oh! i joined the Oxford Trampolining Club!!!!! my god, i love it! it's really weird trying to get the hang of the differences between gymnastic form and trampolining form (trust me, there are a lot of them), but i think i'm getting it. they said i might even get to compete later in the year! SO EXCITING!!! it's three times a week as well, so it gives me something else to do other than procrastinate from writing my papers!


now on to the choir fail. so i've been looking for a choir to join because i didn't want to be in a church choir, so annie told me about a choir at St Catherine's that we could go to...and choir fail begins. we start walking and i don't know where we're going plus i don't have my glasses. so i know this will be an interesting trip. we looked on the map before we left and saw a little bridge over a lake that was a little shortcut, so we head that way. as we're walking, we start to approach serious horrror movie potential. there is overgrown plants everywhere surrounding a street with less and less street lights and when it starts nearing the darkest part of the area, we see this unlit path leading to a creepy 2 foot wide "bridge" we'll call it, with no lights on it of course, and annie was like oh i think that's the bridge we need to take. i was like H@#$ NO!!!! This is why white people die in horror movies. i had flashbacks to the float trip. anyway, so we keep walking and end up getting completely lost, so we decide after a while to juts give up and go home. we have travelled so far south, we are near the OOSC house that is really out of the way of everyone else, so we decide to go to their house and hang out for a while. so that part of the night was good, but overall, it was an EPIC FAIL!!!! We may try again, but next time, we'll take the bus, thank you very much!

jojo

So, I'm Not a Clubber

this is mostly ranting, so just skip down to the third paragraph if you don't want to read my complaining.

As you may have guessed from the title, i have discovered that the club scene is not for me. Basically all last week Annie and Bernice were set on going to find some clubs in Oxford for us all to go to, so on Friday after our excursion, we got all dressed up for the club and hit the town...not before most of the people did some pre-partying at the house (whose house? ours, of course!). So we head to a club called the Purple Turtle, that we get into for free because we're members of the Oxford Union, and in about 20 minutes, i realized that clubs were not my scene. the music wasn't great and was really loud, there were too many people in a small dance room, and random British guys were being creepy on my friends. So i use the excuse that i need to call my parents to get out of there and go home. i start to get a good sleep going on and then what do i hear? my housemates and...wait for it...3 random British guys from the club. IN MY HOUSE! WTF?!?! It's about 1:30 at this point and i think they'll be gone soon enough and i can get back to sleep. BUT NO! they stay around drinking more, being loud, etc. for the next 2 hours! they don't leave till 3:45! SIGH! no sleep that night.

So yesterday, I think that I'll go to bed early and get a good night's sleep. but everyone comes over to the house and start talking about going to a bar, instead of a club, so we can meet fun people. so we head out and the first place we go to was kind of not our scene and we had a big group of people and a few of us decided to go to a bar while the rest of the people went back to the Purple Turtle. i knew i didn't want to go back to that or any club, especially tonight. so we head to a bar and it was ok i guess, but not exactly what i call a good time. we left and ended up going...of course, to the Purple Turtle. there were more creepy guys hitting on my friends and we had to protect them for a bit then i just sat for a while, cause i was not too happy. i think it would have been a little more bearable if the music was better. when the DJ at a dance club breaks out with Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen (look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about and then picture it in a dance club setting. ugh!), i KNOW it is time for me to go home! so we leave, and apparently a lot more drama happens after i leave, but we'll not mention that on public internet space.

so, bottom line, i apparently don't dig the club scene. Anyway, to happier subjects, England is AMAZING!!! Oxford is even better!!!! the last 2 weeks have seemed like 2 months, but in a good, super good, way! My housemates are awesome and most of the rest of the people in the program are cool too. We've been learning a lot about Elizabethan and Victorian England and we went to some cool places too (Pictures on facebook)! even the Globe theatre for a Shakespeare play! it has been such an amazing experience so far. we have a paper due in 2 weeks and I'm pretty confident about it. i know, weird coming from me, right? but i think it's gonna be a great start to a great year!

it is really weird being away from everybody, but i think i can manage for a while! :P I'm excited the Cambridge people are coming in next week and I'll get to see Joe and Jenna and everyone soon! so it'll be a little better (and i need some time with other people than the 20 i am surrounded by constantly. don't get me wrong, they're awesome, but they are the only people i see every day and i just need a little time with some other people...soon)

i think that's it for now!

Jojo

And So it Begins

Hey everyone,

so my family and I all arrived safely in London and we are settled in our hotel room! I think everything is even more amazing this time around! The family is interesting to be around as always and it seems my sleep patterns are perfect for this time zone. Yesterday, i went to bed at 11:30 and woke up at 7!! Crazy right?!?!?!?!

i went to my first casino yesterday as well!!! i lost 10 pounds : (
we went to the wax museum today and me and my dad stood over in a corner and didn't move and there were like 5 people that came over to see if we were wax or not! lol! it was really funny!
other than those interesting tidbits, not much amazingly exciting has happened so far. i'm already missing friends, but at least i'll be seeing some of them in a little over a week!!

i've only been here for two days, but i've already learned some important rules and lessons:

Rule 1: Stand (and walk slowly) on the right
PEOPLE WILL TRY TO RUN YOU OVER!!!!! there have been multiple occasions where i had to basically jump out of the way to avoid someone walking REALLY fast, so if you're not that person that's running everyone else over, just stay on the right.
Rule 2: Order TAP water (with ice if you can)
if you just ask for water, they bring you bottled water and charge out the wazoo for it! in one restaurant we went to it was 4 pounds and warm! so make sure you make it tap with ice (but they may charge you for the ice).
Rule3: Check and see if gratuity in added in your check already
a lot of restaurants (especially near touristy spots) do this and don't tell you, hoping you'll pay the server their tip twice. check in the menu or even ask just to make sure! and there's no sales tax in most places here, so if the amount on the bill is more than the food you ordered, i would say don't leave a separate tip.

Lesson 1: Don't display your American (or tourist) qualities in a crowded area
you are a better and more obvious target for pickpocketers, people stare and talk about you, and it just makes you stand out (most of the time, not in a good way).
Lesson 2: DON'T CROP DUST PEOPLE IN LINES!!!!!!
really, it's just rude and it makes people want to kill you. there was a guy that did it to us in a line AND on the underground and my sister was ready to take him down! so either just go find a bathroom or hold it till you're not in a crowded place.
Lesson 3: Ask for your check
some places don't bring you your check till you ask for it because they think it's rude to sort of try to force you out by giving you your bill. so if you want to get the check, just ask for it or you could wait around for 30 minutes in an uncomfortable seat in a restaurant that smells funny with people in the next booth that are being annoying and just in an all around uncomfortable and unhappy situation. not that i'm speaking from experience or anything...
Lesson 4: Make sure and check your electrical appliances before you plug them in!
My mom blew a fuse in the hotel room because she didn't get a converter, just a plug adapter. check the back of the power chord and make sure that you know if you need a converter or just an adapter...or you can just blow some fuses and appliances till you figure it out!

Well, that's all i got for right now!

Jojo

Ready to Go

well, i'm all set for my wonderful English adventures. i'm packed up, got everything planned out (i think), plane tickets are printed out, everything's ready.

I'm so sooooo excited! i still can't believe it's actually happening! I get to study in Oxford for a year! AAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I'm going over a couple of weeks early to travel some in England and France with my family before they drop me off for the start of my program, so i'll be leaving the country in a matter of hours (about 18 hours to be precise)! hopefully it will be a lot of fun!

For everyone i didn't get to say bye to before i left, i will miss you all and i will be thinking about everyone every day.

Well...Here Goes!!

Jojo



p.s. I have Skype now! joseph.cornelius.johnson
not really sure how everything works on it just yet, but i'll get the hang of it!