Hello from Hogwarts!

I'm writing from my new desk in my new dorm in one of the super-new colleges at Oxford (and by new I mean the buildings were generally built between 1911-1926).  Photos will come when I've unpacked.

The journey was an involved one.  I landed at Heathrow with a splitting headache and no tylenol at 9:45 local time this morning.  I met a Greek and a Romanian, both new Oxford students, and together we found a bus that deposited us unceremoniously into an obscure parking lot somewhere in Oxford about an hour later.  From there we parted into taxis.  My taxi ride totaled £3.45...oops, sorry, taxi driver.  The driver left me outside a foreboding wooden door with no indication as to how to open it, but as I was puzzling over the problem, a cheery old man burst through the door and invited me in to join "lots and lots of other young people."  From that point until 4:00ish in the afternoon I've been filling out forms, following people up and down twisty corridors and stone staircases, and meeting zillions of people--no two of which were from the same country or had the same major.  Seriously.  Even the four "English" (I thought) students turned out to be from London, Dublin, Wales, and LA (raised in UK at least).  Also I'm surrounded by geniuses.  I've met a girl who's going to cure leukemia, another who applied here on a whim and got in, and one math student who peppers his conversation with really big math words.

After I untangled myself from the paperwork I FINALLY got to go to my room.  It's very modest but I have everything I need.  I'm pretty jazzed about the sink, even though the cold faucet has a tendency to spontaneously explode in my face.  Perhaps the biggest mystery of the day was the question of how to turn on the light in the bathroom.  There is a cord hanging from the ceiling in the corner, but it looks remarkably like medical equipment and I thought it might be some kind of "help me I'm dying in the bathroom" alarm. However, finding no other device resembling a light onturner, I gave the string a tentative tug, promptly decided that I'd probably just called the fire department, and ran back to my room to hide.  In the absence of alarm bells and herds of military, I crept back to the bathroom to observe.  The light was on.  Victory.

The highlight of today was easily going to a coffee shop with five other native English speakers, no two from the same country.

I shall now fall into bed and slip silently into a coma of exhaustion.  Shower schmower.

PS it turns out they do have spiders in England.  Curses be upon them.